Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

General purpose discussion about gaming and emulation.
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Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Nico0020 »

Just curious. Also are you running MAME with tons of things or a single game original machine?
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by DaMadFiddler »

I've considered building a MAME cabinet a few times, but ended up deciding I'd be happier playing on consoles hooked up to the main TV, which is a much larger screen than any arcade cabinet could hope to provide. The only reason for a MAME cabinet would be the nostalgic aesthetics of it, but the majority of the games I play are console games, anyway... not arcade games. It would get uncomfortable to play at a cabinet for an extended period. At least, that's my take on it.

I know that Quzar has a bunch of old arcade games, though I'm not entirely sure which ones.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Nico0020 »

I always thought I would have a "game room" when I got older with all my systems n such hooked up. Then I decided to be reasonable, ran out of money, and knew if I would play the game emulation was just a button away. So I sold off nearly all of my retro stuff for a good amount. Only retro-ish stuff I still have is my dreamcast collection, as I will continue to build that for obvious reasons. Being born in 87, I did not get to visit Arcades as they once were, so that nostalgic hold is not there for me.

As far as more recent arcade games go, I remember I did see a double machine of Virtual ON for sale in san antonio (bout 4 hours away) for like 500 bucks. I'd love to play that on an actual machine lol.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by DaMadFiddler »

Nico0020 wrote:I always thought I would have a "game room" when I got older with all my systems n such hooked up. Then I decided to be reasonable, ran out of money, and knew if I would play the game emulation was just a button away. So I sold off nearly all of my retro stuff for a good amount. Only retro-ish stuff I still have is my dreamcast collection, as I will continue to build that for obvious reasons.
That's sort of the same conclusion I reached. Our entire setup is a bigscreen TV, a nice speaker system, a PS3 (for movies, music, and Playstation games), and a Wii (for Wii and GameCube games, emulation, and homebrew). Minimal clutter, and we still have access to the vast majority of games we're interested in, regardless of era.

I do miss my Dreamcast sometimes, though. I had built up a fairly substantial collection, which I intended to keep. But my ex stole it a few years ago, along with my GameCube (though fortunately not the games) and original Gameboy cartridges. (Or, more accurately: I'd loaned it to her before the break-up, and my efforts to get it back afterward all failed. I have a feeling she's probably pawned it by this point, as she's either avoided me or made excuses every time I've tried to get in touch with her to get my stuff back).

I've played with the idea of rebuilding my Dreamcast collection several times, but I just can't justify the expense. Some of the things I had were a little more difficult/expensive to track down (Ikaruga, Japanese Rez, Under Defeat, Power Stone 2, Sonic Adventure 2 anniversary pack that I bought from Lik-Sang), and there are only a few games I'd want that aren't available in some form for either the Wii or the Playstation. Still, sometimes I get a strong urge to spend some time with a Dreamcast again. The DC is inextricably linked with my memories of college, and I miss that sometimes. I don't think I'd ever really put a lot of money into replacing my Dreamcast collection, just because there isn't a whole lot of sense to it. But if I saw a good enough deal on a comprehensive package, I don't think I'd be able to pass it up.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Skynet »

I'm half way through building one. The only component I'm missing is a monitor for it. I just need to apply a few more coats of paint, screw in the joysticks and wire them up. PC is all setup with the front end I'm using and MAME is all good to go. In terms of actual work to finish putting it together, should be done in a few hours it's just that I'm extremely lazy and have had no real motivation to finish it. :lol:
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by DaMadFiddler »

Are you going to use an LCD or a CRT? If I were to do a MAME cabinet, I'd go with a CRT (possibly even an actual television, since so many people are giving/throwing them away right now) both for the "authentic" look and for light gun compatibility.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Nico0020 »

What frontend are you using for MAME?
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Jeeba Jabba »

DaMadFiddler wrote:Are you going to use an LCD or a CRT? If I were to do a MAME cabinet, I'd go with a CRT (possibly even an actual television, since so many people are giving/throwing them away right now) both for the "authentic" look and for light gun compatibility.

Word.


I only like playing my Dreamcast, Saturn, PSOne, or SNES on a CRT television. Doesn't feel right on a flat-panel at all.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by pixel »

Nico0020 wrote:What frontend are you using for MAME?
http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/ <--- Use this.


I'll be building one within a year. Right now, I'm trying to figure out a good look for a 4-player, CRT cabinet. It's always been my dream to have my own arcade machine -- and I get the feeling if I couldn't play The Simpsons four player on a chunky CRT output, it wouldn't feel right.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by DaMadFiddler »

Jeeba Jabba wrote:I only like playing my Dreamcast, Saturn, PSOne, or SNES on a CRT television. Doesn't feel right on a flat-panel at all.
Indeed. Standard-def signals in general just don't seem to look as good on flat panel televisions. That's one of the (several) reasons I have a CRT-based rear projection TV.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by DaMadFiddler »

pixel wrote:I'll be building one within a year. Right now, I'm trying to figure out a good look for a 4-player, CRT cabinet. It's always been my dream to have my own arcade machine -- and I get the feeling if I couldn't play The Simpsons four player on a chunky CRT output, it wouldn't feel right.
You could always pattern it after one of these:

http://www.engadget.com/2005/08/31/drea ... -machines/
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by JuddWack »

I retrofitted a Hang on Jr machine for MAME on a serious budget. It even had a working coin door. The only thing that cost a substantial amount of money were the controls and iPac.

For my monitor I just used a 27in CRT TV with S-video to some video card my dad pulled out of his "computer parts that will probably never be used" box. I thought it looked great, just really heavy.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Nico0020 »

dreamcast looks amazing in vga, but when I play NESemulation and such on it the image looks terrible. I hate the "smoothing" options in HD consoles also. Luckily the VGA box I own for dreamcast has a simple switch that allows you to switch over to composite/svideo so I can have it hooked up to a HDTV and a CRT at the same time.

I find those mame frontends kinda funny at times. Not sure why I would build a cabinet to play super mario 64 (though I can understand some console ports of arcade games)
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Lartrak »

I have an actual hardware Neo Geo standup, with a 25" screen. It's a one slot, which is a little annoying. It's also a conversion. In retrospect, I should have waited for a 4 slot non-conversion. It only would have been like $50 more, maybe $100 more. But as is, it cost like $320 and came with Puzzle Bobble. The screen has a weird thing going on with it that I haven't figured out yet, but it works pretty well otherwise. I also replaced the joysticks when I got it as the ones in it were really worn out.

I've got Metal Slug 3, Puzzle Bobble, Magical Drop 3, Last Blade 2 and Shock Troopers for it. Games aren't TOO bad -Metal Slug 3 cost $100, Shock Troopers $75, Last Blade 2 $30, and Magical Drop 3 $30.

It's pretty neat having it, and whenever my nephew comes over he always begs to play Metal Slug 3 to the point where it starts to get a little annoying - sine he always wants to play it with me. I love the game, but I can't play it constantly over and over. Oh well.

Whenever there's a party or something at the house, I usually put in Puzzle Bobble and just leave it on. Probably one of the best games for random non-gamers to try.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Smurph »

I am in the process of building a MAME cabinet. Currently cutting out the pieces.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Skynet »

For monitor, because I'm using a design some guy made that doesn't really accommodate a CRT too well, it'll just be LCD. I know I should use CRT, but LCD is what I'll use.

The front end is Maximus Arcade.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Nico0020 »

It's pretty neat having it, and whenever my nephew comes over he always begs to play Metal Slug 3 to the point where it starts to get a little annoying - sine he always wants to play it with me. I love the game, but I can't play it constantly over and over. Oh well.
and thats the reason I can't even stand to see the game castle crashers anymore. My nephew loves the game, and can play it for hours and hours straight. I pretty much hate the game now. lol, children.
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Nico0020 »

KINDA on-topic:

There used to be this store about 15 mins away called (literally) "The Anime Store." They sold a lot of high priced crap, and rented dvds (which I'm pretty sure no one actually did. The moved their store to a bigger location one day and added in an arcade. It was amazing, twinkle star sprites on of their neogeo machines. My friends and I used to go on friday nights and hang out there playing their machines (which were almost all only a quarter to play except DDR). There were always a ton of teens in there playing DDR, but I didn't care about that since those machines are any place that actually have arcades.

Needless to say, the store didn't make it after their move. I had not been in a long time, and one day the store was just gone. Would have been cool if I could have bought the machine that had twinkle star sprites though (also had a metal slug game, a fighting game, and a puzzle game on it.)
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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Lartrak »

So... I've been thinking. I'll be getting my own place relatively soon. And my Neo Geo cabinet is probably not coming with me. Its trip into a basement was basically one way. While I might eventually get a Neo Geo candy cab, in the mean time I was considering something smaller for the apartments/condos I'm looking at at this stage in my life.

Specifically, I was thinking I'd like to get a cocktail cabinet, which is actually pretty functional as a small regular table in addition to being a games machine.

The question is if I should get an original or make a MAME cabinet. Price is probably the biggest concern. And that's the annoying thing. I'd rather get an original cocktail dedicated machine, honestly, but I think it would cost significantly more than making a MAME cocktail cabinet.

If I did buy an original cocktail machine, anyone have a thought on what game to get? I'd like Robotron or Joust, but both are incredibly rare and expensive. :(

On a final note, it's been a long ass time since I played on a cocktail machine. If I built a MAME one, I'd make it two player. How do cocktail games handle two players being on opposite sides of the screen? The only one I can really remember was a Playchoice-10 cocktail, and that actually had two monitors. I guess since most of the old school arcade games alternate, would it flip the screen? But what about games like Joust?

Edit: I feel dumb.

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Re: Anyone here have an Arcade Cabinet?

Post by Quzar »

I've got three arcade machines. Super Street Fighter II CE (the only problem with it are the controls are iffy sometimes, and it's in a rebuilt cab which is kind of beat up ... and it sometimes takes two or three tries to turn on), Lethal Enforcers (a gun game, need a new lens for player II and I've not been able to get sound to work, which I'm 99% sure is a problem with the board), and Star Wars Episode I Podracer (it uses an adapter to go from VGA out of the system to the arcade monitor which every once in a while flakes out but this is rare, also the airbrake resets the game if connected).

I spent some time after I got them getting them to work at all (got them at an auction for a total of 475$ 50, 75, and 350 respectively) but then rented out my basement (where they are) to a friend and haven't spent much time with the finishing touches since then.

I've also got two pinball machines: Hanglider and Captain Fantastic, the latter of which is at least clean and both of which are not working. They're fully EM which makes them very difficult and expensive to repair (last quote I got was over 500$ a piece). Both most recently worked I believe in 1988, and my parents had bought them somewhere between 1980 and 1982.

Also have a DiamondTouch video poker thing that needs a new touchscreen controller (was 20$ at the aforementioned auction, and my mother was the one who paid for it).
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