Entertainment/Gaming Consoles

[Undertoad]

People are actually doing that, though, aren't they? Have plans been posted and stuff?

Y'know, you and me, we oughta put our heads together because if we do that we may be able to both 1) install a car stereo for your wife and 2) build custom game consoles for profit. All we need are Griff's tool cabinet and some time.

[perth]

Originally posted by vsp
I've been tempted to purchase a used arcade cabinet, buy an entry-level PC, toss MAME on the hard drive, and combine the two with existing software to create an arcade machine that plays over 3,000 games accurately.

ive been working on this for a while, except im going to build a cocktail (sit down) cabinet. hardware for this sort of thing can be found here.

i have to learn to solder before i can do anything effectively, so i doubt ill ever get around to finishing, but its neat to think about.

~james

[j03L10T]

You could find it at e-bay, including a japanese formated ps1. I agree that it is mind blowing to try to configure a "cabinet" for video games to include one of every controller available. Personally speaking, I like YOUR ideas much better even though I'm not much into computers but the idea of a mega-arcade unit such as the one you describe in your vision appeals to me very much.

[perth]

http://www.mame.net/
http://www.klov.com/
http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

first one is the emulator. the second one is because that site kicks ass. the third one is because its useful to poeple interested in building their own cabinet. :)

~james

[wolf]

Originally posted by Undertoad
People are actually doing that, though, aren't they? Have plans been posted and stuff?

Yes, people are. And I just saw one. The front of the thing was festooned with buttons and trackballs, and pots. It was very cool, and was made for use with MAME. I thought immediately of vsp when I saw it.

Unfortunately I'm getting old and forgetful, and can't for the life of me remember where I saw it.

I have narrowed it down to:

1. Some website that features such things. I will keep looking

2. Article in one of the gaming magazines (not a full article, but one of those short cool things this month featurettes that run at the front of the mag)

3. Segment on G4 tv. (Imagine that, an entire cable channel devoted to advertising games. Gotta love it.)

In the meantime ... does anyone know if williams brothers arcade hits is available for playstation (1 or 2)? I have this irrational need to have joust on every game system I own. Sometimes it's just too much hassle to unplug one to plug the other one in, you know ...

[wolf]

It must have been in a magazine. Oh well.

I did find this one though ... http://www.movielocity.com/mame/index.htm

[vsp]

Originally posted by wolf

In the meantime ... does anyone know if williams brothers arcade hits is available for playstation (1 or 2)? I have this irrational need to have joust on every game system I own. Sometimes it's just too much hassle to unplug one to plug the other one in, you know ...

Yes, it is, for PS1. The disc is titled "Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits," and it contains the same six games (Joust, Sinistar, Defender, Defender II/Stargate, Robotron:2084 and Bubbles) found in the original PC Williams Arcade Classics release.

(That was the software release that sent a lightning bolt screaming through the Internet community, inspiring many to start on homebrew emulators of their own. The first was Dave Spicer's "Sparcade," which I still have an alpha release of on my old HD -- the second public demo with six playable games. The first version of MAME (as "Multi-Pac," covering several flavors of Pac-games) followed a bit later; its open-source nature led to it eventually assimilating every other major emulator's games as well. TECHNICALLY, the Mac version of Williams Arcade Classics (with three games) came first, but...)

Anyway, the front is pictured <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1945750762">here</a> for as long as the relevant eBay auction holds up. Good luck haunting your local EB.

[j03L10T]

I really would have a tough time picking a favorite between the william's disc and atari's (through midway). They both load incredibly fast, have an equally timeless assortment, and are smoothly and easily controlled with the exception of "pong", on midway's. I think I am about to dig my ps1 out of the closet tonight when I wake up, and find a way to incorporate it into my "set top box"/vcr configuration and without breaking anything in the process. That is, if I am lucky. I've been so clumsy lately.

[vsp]

There are lots of homebrew cabinet projects out there on the web. (There was even a commercial release, called Ultracade, which was basically MAME at one-coin-per-play with 80+ games plus whatever game packs the owner had installed. How they got around the licencing issues involved in selling this is beyond me, and I believe they're now defunct, but I saw an Ultracade machine in an Ocean City, MD arcade this summer.)

For me, it's more of a time-and-effort issue than anything else, as well as the fact that it'd involve a certain degree of physical tinkering (and, again, I'm lucky if I guess correctly which end of a soldering iron to hold, as high-school Metal Shop was a loooong time ago).

The control panel is, of course, the heart of the unit -- even an awesome game is no good if you can't control it properly. There are lots of issues involved in the design.

While most games involve a joystick and one or more buttons, there are so many oddballs out there... two joysticks (Crazy Climber/Robotron/Battlezone/Assault), a spinner (Tempest), a spinner AND a joystick (Tron/Mad Planets), rotary joysticks (Ikari Warriors/Heavy Barrel/Gondomania), trac-ball games (Centipede), joysticks or knobs that depress or lift (Discs of Tron/Super Punch-Out!), unique designs (the Star Wars yoke). Now figure in driving games (analog steering wheel, analog pedals, two-gear games like Out Run, four-or-five-gear games like Night Driver, complicated setups like Spy Hunter...) Now figure in shooting games (Crossbow, Vs. Duck Hunt, Operation: Wolf, Point Blank...)

Somewhere, the line has to be drawn, else your control panel would be eight feet long and weigh six hundred pounds, with toggle switches to turn various sections of it on and off. But the fact remains that there are lots of games that are in MAME but simply can't be played (or played efficiently) on an average PC due to these issues, and if I'm going to shell out the cash to build an arcade-cabinet solution, I might as well try to accommodate as many of these as I can...

There's also the side issue of four-way joysticks vs. eight-way joysticks. (Some games, like Sinistar, had more than eight directions, but most joystick games were designed more humanely.) Four-way games (Pac-Man) don't respond well to eight-way joysticks -- this is a very common problem with console versions, because the player will hit a diagonal and the game will go crazy-go-nuts at times. Likewise, playing an eight-way game with a four-way joystick is often impossible, and awkward at best.

Vertical or horizontal monitor? Some games use one, some use the other, and that's (unfortunately) not an easy thing to change on the fly unless you're extremely creative with your cabinet design.

Stand-up or cocktail cabinet? The cocktail looks cooler, but generally provides less space for control-panel modifications.

The alternative to all of this, of course, is to buy (or make) a custom control panel to plug into the PC. A lot of companies offer these (the X-Arcade and the Hot Rod are brands that come to mind) as pre-made plug-in joystick panels for the PC, and I saw a bunch at this past summer's Classic Gaming Convention in Valley Forge, some more full-featured than others, most around $400. Retrogames had a review of a cheaper one-player model (under $100) linked recently.

[vsp]

As I said above, the PC release of WAC was the first major arcade-games-on-your-computer release that delivered actual authenticity. When it shipped, I bought it on day-of-release as a birthday present for myself, and cranked it up on my Packard Bell Crashmaster.

I started playing Sinistar... and my old television went NUTS! The volume started shooting upwards, the channels started changing by themselves... this freaked me out quite a bit, considering that _I didn't have a remote for the TV_, and had never been able to find one that was compatible. (I'd bought it from a college girlfriend for twenty bucks; the TV was a JC Penney model from the late 70's, and the remote had been accidentally dropped into someone's drink glass sometime in the 80's and rendered inert.)

I petitioned rec.games.video.classic for help -- I knew the games were intense, but I knew they weren't THAT freakin' intense. The answer someone came up with was that the TV used an ultrasonic remote, as compared to the infrared remotes that are common today. Apparently, WAC's version of Sinistar threw the PC into an oddball video mode that generated just the right frequencies to trigger the TV, causing random behavior.

"Only YOU would find a quirk like that," I was told. I took this as a compliment.

[j03L10T]

What about a "rolling" control panel, two feet wide and four sides. The connection from controler to unit could perhaps be infra-red? And what if the unit itself could be portable such as the ps1 w/ built in monitor and easily transplanted from "cocktail" table view to stand up console? Oh, this is so much fun.

[vsp]

<b>Activision Classics:</b> A pile of Activision's Atari 2600 offerings (think Pitfall et al) for the PS1. This was generally held to be of inferior quality to their Action Pack counterparts on the PC. (There is a newer PS2 disc, called <b>Activision Anthology</b>, that's received better reviews and also includes some cheesy 80's soundtrack music.)

<b>Arcade Party Pak</b>: 720, Smash TV, Klax, Toobin', Super Sprint and Rampage. Smash TV was born for the Dual Shock controller, and some of the others aren't bad, either.

<b>Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Collection 1</b>: Tempest, Super Breakout, Centipede, Missile Command, Asteroids, Battlezone. Some control issues, but decent ports of the originals.

<b>Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Collection 2</b>: Paperboy, Gauntlet, RoadBlasters, Marble Madness, Millipede and Crystal Castles. Again, control issues hamper this one.

<b>Arcade's Greatest Hits: Midway Collection 2</b>: Blaster, Root Beer Tapper, Burgertime, Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest, Spy Hunter, Moon Patrol, and the rare Splat!. Recommended, even if Spy Hunter really needs a steering wheel.

<b>Arcade's Greatest Hits: Williams</b>: Described above.

<b>Atari Anniversary Edition</b>: Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone, Black Widow, Centipede, Gravitar, Missile Command, Pong, Space Duel, Super Breakout, Tempest and Warlords. Probably a better buy than the above Atari Collection 1, if you can find it.

<b>Intellivision Classics</b>: Activision's other early-console offering. Lots of two-player-only games (particularly sports). Interesting if you liked the console, though there are control issues.

<b>Konami Arcade Classics</b>: Gyruss, Scramble, Super Cobra, Pooyan, Roc'n'Rope, Kicker (Shaolin's Road), Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Circus Charlie, Time Pilot and Road Fighter. Nice variety here, with some classics that've stood the test of time.

<b>NAMCO Museum Vol. 1 through 5</b> In order:
Volume 1: Pac-Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Rally-X/New Rally-X, Bosconian, Toy Pop
Volume 2: Mappy, Xevious, Super Pac-Man, Gaplus (Galaga 3), Grobda, Dragon Buster
Volume 3: Dig Dug, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaxian, Tower of Druaga, Phozon, Pole Position II
Volume 4: Assault (which does NOT work as you'd expect with a standard Dual Shock pad, sadly), Ordyne, Pac-Land, Return of Ishtar, Genji & Heike Clans
Volume 5: Dragon Spirit, Pac-Mania, Metro-Cross, Legend of Valkyrie, Baraduke

Volume 2 is the best of the five, IMHO, but I'm a Mappy junkie.

That's about all that made it to the States. Other solid collections (Capcom Generations Vol. 1-5, Parodius Deluxe Pack, Twinbee Deluxe Pack, Namco Encore, Namco Anthology, Nichibutsu Arcade Classics, Irem Arcade Classics) exist if you have a modded console and don't mind a little Japanese in your menu screens.

[perth]

this is the layout i came up with for my arcade cabinet which i doubt will ever really get finished. i actually am planning a cocktail cabinet with only one control panel (this layout) on the long edge, for most games. there will be a simpler control panel on each short edge, a 4 way joystick and 2 buttons, for games like galaga, pacman and other simple games that play well like that.

the buttons will be laid out basically for my comfort, with a keyboard hidden beneath for pc functions. the trackball can be uses to function similar to a spinner and with 2 extra buttons at the top doubles as a mouse. with an 8-way on one panel and 4-ways on the others, i get the best of both worlds. if youve ever played pacman on a machine with an 8-way joystick, you understand why that is so important.

~james

[Griff]

Dave's gaming stuff got toasted as well, didn't it?

Hey!

Yeah, it did. Here are two fun pictures.

http://msdelta.net/~dave/images/house-fire/P0001315.JPG - PSOne and GameCube.

http://msdelta.net/~dave/images/house-fire/P0001316.JPG - The rest.

Both are big pictures; the second one is smaller, Kilobyte-wise, and shows more.

Matt and Giles bought me an Xbox, Splinter Cell and a TV to play it on. I cracked this weekend and bought a GameCube (and saved the receipt, so insurance will reimburse me for it). So I'm working it back up.

GameCube, Xbox, PS2 and PSOne are stupid easy to replace. It's the rest that I'm worried about. N64 units are increasingly difficult to find in mint condition. Dreamcast is seemingly impossible to find brand-new (though I haven't looked super hard at local game shops). Getting an original NES that doesn't need to be blown in is probably not going to be easy. I guess a Genesis in decent condition will be alright if I look around on eBay.

And then there's the games... I had a lot of good Nintendo and Genesis carts that are totally ruined. Ugh.

Remember how much I talked about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3? I probably put over 150 hours into that game... all my save-game data is on the Xbox's hard disk. :\ My CTR save, which was at 100% completion (and involved probably 60 hours of game time) is gone. Miraculously enough, all of my memory cards (except PSOne, which was probably the worst-hit console) were able to copy data. So I have my Halo save, my GTA3 saves, my Super Mario Sunshine and Super Monkey Ball saves... pretty much the one glimmering ray of sunshine in the whole console mess.

But back to what I'm doing now... well, I can't drag myself away from Splinter Cell. Cam wasn't lying - it's fucking great. <b>Fucking great</b>. It is definitely hard (and I'm only on the 5th mission), but it's fun, and not frustrating (though Paul would argue otherwise). I will hopefully beat it in a week or two. I flew through a lot of it this weekend. Or rather, I got a lot done. I didn't really fly through it - we probably already have 20 hours on it. Hopefully I can get it done in another 20?

Cam, have you beaten it yet? If so, how was it as a whole?