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This webpage was designed at 1280 x 1024 screen resolution but should display well down to 800 x 600. Please let me know if this is not the case! (galactic background shamelessly stolen from the Yllabian Space Guppy Berserker MAME Project. Hey, a fellow Canadian...)
Toto's
Arcade Cabinet Dream(s) Hi! This innocuous little page documents my Dream Design for a custom, two-player, arcade cabinet. It's inspired in large part by "The Ultimate Arcade Machine" project - which really is incredible - along with dozens of other equally impressive home projects whose construction is detailed on the Web and whose purpose is to play classic arcade videogames in emulation. The catch is that I'm not really in the best position to build or buy this dream machine yet, and my dear wife of twenty-six months won't approve of something so rash so soon. So my timeline is ten years for the whole thing. :-) I've
decided to start planning things with the control panel. I find that the
physical interface between your hands and the gaming machinery is very
important and should not be undervalued. You may have heard of the HotRod
SE control panel for PC, the OzStick
Ultimate, the X-Arcade
stick, the MAS
Systems Super Pro.Stick, or perhaps the soon-to-be-renamed Romboxx.
They are all very useful controllers, well-designed and surely built to
withstand the usual torture inflicted upon arcade machines. But their
functionality is limited - certain games absolutely require specialty
controls for enjoyment. Here are some useful questions to ponder before
you buy or build a device for your arcade fix. |
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| Where
will I use rotary joysticks? (or a combination of trigger joystick and spinner - usually two sets) |
Where
will I use a single trackball? (especially since MAME does not yet support light guns) |
Where will I use dual sticks? |
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Caliber
50 |
Centipede |
Black Widow |
| Where
will I use two or more spinners? (apart from the above scenarios) |
Where will I use two or more trackballs? | Where will I use dual trigger sticks? |
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Blasteroids (while
waiting for wheels:) |
Ataxx (Atari
Arcade Classics prototype:) |
Assault Battlezone Vindicators (two sets) Vindicators II (two sets) |
| Is there a bigger list of games with these possible control schemes? | ||
| See here. This partial list was extracted from the Message Board at the BYOAC site. | ||
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So you see, although MAME currently supports over 3000 games and the above "oddities" form only a small percentage, they ARE significant enough to warrant proper treatment. These very rough drawings done in MSPaint are not to scale. Relative sizes and positions are purely estimates. Minor esthetic updates planned in the next month. |
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The
first crazy incarnation...
 click for a larger picture |
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ITEM
LIST:
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8-way
standard joystick, two units: Please note: many cabinets have been built with a dedicated 4-way joystick, solely for the purpose of playing certain maze games such as Pac-Man and platform games such as Donkey Kong. Apparently, if an 8-way joystick is moved slightly to a diagonal, this causes erratic movement in a 4-way game. The need for this extra controller varies from person to person. It appears that with care, some users have simply adjusted; others simply must have the real thing and either install a dedicated 4-way or switch the actuators on their Super sticks. (See the link at the top of this box for a picture of the procedure. Thanks to Doug Hansen of DHansen's Arcade Stupidity Project.) |
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| Rotary
joystick, two units: Ditched in favor of trigger joystick + spinner layout. (Therefore the table entry for Swap Panel B below has been removed.) |
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Trackball,
two units: |
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Spinner,
two units: There are two models of OSCAR, each with a choice of four different knobs. One model for $51 US is tailor-made for connection to the Opti-Pac PC interface, by Andrew Warne of the UK. Up to four at a time! Sorry Happs, I ain't buying two of yours at $120 each! The creator of this OSCAR product is a strong presence on the www.ArcadeControls.com forums; a person of kind heart and remarkable ingenuity. |
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Action
buttons, fourteen units: |
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Additional,
smaller buttons for Mame configuration, six units: |
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PART 2 - Reality Check #1 |
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So, I'm calling around local amusement companies and scanning message boards, and eventually I get the feeling that I'll have to change my tack a bit. Instead of insisting on this one big-ass, catch-all panel, I might want to strongly consider a modular approach. That is, construct several different panels and swap among them as needed. PROS: CONS: |
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So here are some smaller panels I have thought up. (panel images updated to reflect provisions in I-Pac encoder. There are designated spots for Player 1 Coin, P1 Start, P2 Coin and P2 Start) |
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Swap
Panel A |
Relatively quick, simple and cheap. Four buttons per player would have been enough for most games, and I don't see myself playing a lot of Street Fighter. However, I wanted to have enough buttons for SNES emulation, so that meant six per, not including Select and Start; those would be covered by Credit and Player buttons. What's that? You see eight buttons per? Well, if I ever figured out a way to run PlayStation/Saturn/Dreamcast consoles (physical machines, not emulated) using this panel, it ought to be ready! :-) |
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Getting
expensive... So for the money invested, why not allow ambidextrous operation?
The Opti-Pac interface sounds like just the right tool for this arrangement. I don't even know of any other encoder that allows two trackballs, much less two T-balls AND two spinners connected simultaneously. |
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Swap
Panel D |
I've decided that trigger joysticks are going to play a very important role in my future cabinet. But there is no way I am going to pay $75-$100 for each single, new unit from Happs!! The solution is to find an acceptable PC joystick with a decent grip to sacrifice. The grip part is severed from the base for grafting onto the shaft of an arcade joystick. One example of this is found in the very impressive and technologically advanced MAME GTX Cocktail Cabinet. Another is by the OSCAR guy again - see here. |
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 click for Gravis' info site |
It
took some digging around, but I believe I have finally found the most
cost-effective answer: the Gravis Destroyer PC stick! Click
the picture to visit the manufacturer's site. At just $10 US
MSRP, it's a real steal - I hope they don't run out of them before I can
get a dozen! I actually picked up a badly scratched unit from Cash Converters, just to see how it felt. Pretty cool... |
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Swap
Panel E |
It looks as though an enterprising Mame fan in Greece has implemented the plunger idea for his cabinet! The panel design and layout are a bit busy for my tastes but the enthusiasm is unmistakable and welcome. I plan to ask him how he got this plunger working; hopefully it's not there just for show. :-) | |
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Still left to solve:
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PART
3- Cabinet ideas
click each to enlarge |
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Click and observe the pictures of "Super Megalo" style cabs at left and right. See anything in common? The box for the 50-inch-plus TV! I'm hinting at the modular aspect of cabs based on this element. It would be neat to have a roll-away joystick podium for regular games, then to have a racing console platform for just 3D driving games... Both of these modules would need the larger casters you find on hospital beds or grand piano carriages, not the cheap little crap you usually find at the hardware store. Could be a neat project alone just to take the Logitech Formula GP steering wheel I have and stick that into a sit-down module, along with its pedals. |
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Why the Showcase Cab format? Well, there are several functional and esthetic reasons! LOOKS: FUNCTION: CONS: Here is a link to a Hanaho A-33 that JoseQ of (the late, great EmuViews news site) acquired. |
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