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i bought this heaping pile of poo poo in early 2008 for $300: my only requirement when I went looking for one was that it had a working low-res monitor (none of those fancy medium-res monitors that Golden Tee uses!!). it was completely gutted except for the monitor and my only goal was to make it a MAME cabinet some day the first thing I did was the easiest, which was the control panel. I probably finished this back in 2009 or so.  my goal was for it to accommodate 4 players, as well as trackball games and spinner games, without looking like a franken-panel then for a long time, nothing happened. my wife and I bought a house in 2009, and that took up all my free time. then we moved again, and THAT took up all my free time. then we had our 1st daughter, and then our 1st son. however, i found free time this year when she needed me to take a few weeks of vacation to help her around the house after our son was born. so when all 3 of them napped, i worked on it:  that is the room I decided it belonged in. it's kind of a sunroom/florida room/whatever and I figured it would be perfect because it's not the goddamn living room but it's also not the unsocial basement. so if we have people over, people can play it and not be like hermits so i finished the room finally:  and started to work on it more the following day:  look at the size of those icons! speaking of arcade monitors, that one had the slightest amount of image burn, and I  so bad over stuff like that, so I set up an ebay alert for "brand new wells garnder 25" arcade monitor" and after many months, one finally showed up: i drat near cried when i saw it. these things are always so filthy and crusty and sound like they are ready to explode. having a brand new one felt awesome. i actually bought 2 from the guy because i knew i would never find a new one again so the first order of business was one of the worst:  the bottom foot or so of the sides were total poo poo. if I was going to put artwork on top of this thing, everything needed to be perfect. so i did this:  it sucked major rear end tipping that thing on its side by myself; all my neighbors were at work while i was doing this so i was on my own. i put casters on them to make my life not a living hell while doing this.  there it is with the replaced sides. i didn't do the best job but i figured a lot of priming and wood filler would make everything look even this was easily one of the worst parts of this whole endeavor:  yep, just that. a greyish color took me almost 2 goddamn weeks. basically, when you put vinyl artwork on the sides of these things, the surface has to be PERFECT. if there is a tiny bump or even human hair anywhere on it, it will show through the artwork and will look like poo poo. so you have to prime it. and sand it, and prime it, and sand it, and prime it and sand it. Literally 5 different times using 5 different levels of sandpaper discs. speaking of artwork, I decided on what artwork to use for the MAME cabinet in this time. i really hate seeing MAME cabinets that say "JERRY'S ARCADE PARADISE" on the marquee and with sideart consisting of Donkey Kong playing ping pong with Pac-Man and other sacrilegious poo poo. so I found out (after a lot of research) what game my cabinet originally was. it turns out it was TMNT, the 1989 arcade game. the reason it took so long to figure out was because the game is a 4 player game, and whoever had this before me REPLACED THE ENTIRE FRONT OF THE MACHINE just to make it a 2 player game. I took out the 2 player coin door, and made the door larger:  to accommodate this:  and yes, I am aware the colors do not match TMNT colors. it is basically impossible to find anything purple for arcade stuff, not to mention i really like the RGBY color-scheme that has been around forever. the one negative about using a TMNT cab was the game only had one speaker hole because it was a mono game. i saw one guy on youtube and he carved another hole for the 2nd speaker and it looked so lovely. so i did this instead:   it actually sounds fantastic! so i get the stereo sound but without putting an ugly, non-symmetrical 2nd hole. anyway, back to the artwork. now that the sides were smooth as glass from priming and sanding like a mental patient, it was ready to be applied. this part almost made me poo poo my pants:  basically this absolutely required two people. there was no way to do this without a second person. don't even try it. Luckily lifting the artwork fell within the range of weight my wife was allowed to lift by a doctor, so she helped me. I sprayed down the side of the cabinet with a solution called Rapid Tack and my wife slowly unraveled it from the middle to the bottom as i furiously scraped the artwork with a credit card. there was one time i got a huge bubble that i could not get out, and because we used the "wet method" i was able to pick it up and try again without ruining anything  here it is completely applied and after i cut out the excess artwork:   finally, after all of this poo poo, i was ready to finish the control panel  this was the one i finished years earlier, except this time with the re-sized "box" for it to sit on. i also filled some holes that i found would be useless (there are no games where player 3 and 4 use 6 buttons). also I filled in the two holes above where the trackball was going, because i thought it might make it hard to use the spinner with them right next to it (the spinner is going right above the trackball). those two buttons were going to be "pause" and "exit" and I found out the USB interface i bought can do "shift keys" so I could hold P1 start and press player 3's punch button or something and that will pause or exit or whatever i want here it is after i carved some of the top off to match the original TMNT control panel:  as you can see from the ridiculous amount of wood filler, i hosed this part up soooooo bad. i had to use a router (not the computer kind) to make the back "lip" thinner than the rest of it so it would lay properly on the monitor bezel and i must have been drunk or fallen asleep or something because the router went down way too far and started making holes in the control panel. oh well; nothing a gallon of wood filler and black paint can't fix:  while it might look nice, there was one part i hosed up on this too. if you notice in the pic before this, there is no "curve" from the top lip to the sides. just straight cuts. for some reason I forgot i would need to make that "round" (like i did the edges) and i basically had to keep molding my own "curves" with wood filler. it was loving ridiculous and added at least 5 days to this project anyway thanks to the black paint it was nice and smooth and i was able to put on the artwork:  a funny thing about that artwork. if you look at the original TMNT cabinet, it had spots for each player. to my amazement, a arcade reprint site i went to actually had the TMNT control panel but if you didn't want the turtles included. how many people could possibly need this? thank god for that site. it's even more amazing when you consider that this artwork was available NOWHERE else, like they never used it for any other turtles thing ever, so the person who "removed" the turtles had to do some insane photoshop work here. another funny thing about that artwork; as you can see, i did a really half-assed job cutting out the holes for the buttons. why wouldn't i?? the buttons have a "lip" around them, so you will never see the lovely cutout job I did except I somehow forgot i was using translucent pushbuttons with LEDs and you saw every single lovely cut mark i did  i had the whole loving thing almost done and had to pull out all the pushbuttons!!!!!  so what i did was i bought a black paint marker, and painted the "underside" of the pushbutton lips black. i had to do this for every loving button that i had already twisted in, put a microswitch on, and wired for ground and input. i almost loving gave up this far along in defeat. but i'm as stupid as i am stubborn so i painted every one of those sons of bitches and the buttons look even better now (imho)   i think i did a decent job of being able to accommodate drat near every game without making it look like a frankenpanel. you can feel free to give me opinions on it being too busy or whatever but i think i did a decent job, considering there's no other stupid poo poo i could add other than a steering wheel or flight stick or some other dumb crap also you might see a wire dangling from the left side under the control panel. I put two hidden USB ports in those spots. you literally cannot see them unless you are on your back and looking up at it from beneath. i put them there in case i ever want to add a gun for gun games, or even if i just want to transfer some files and not dig for the PC inside. i really wanted this machine to look stock so i did not want any USB ports visible, and i did not want any buttons that say "CREDIT" or any of that poo poo. if you want a credit, you really do have to put a quarter in (i made it so it comes right back out though, but you have to keep pumping them in). i also didn't want separate buttons for "EXIT" or "PAUSE", so if you look closely you can see one button on player 3 (green) says "pause" on it, and one button on player 4 (yellow) says "EXIT" on it, and they act as normal buttons for play but if I hold P1 start those buttons will pause/exit. it is a nice way to not have to add buttons. also the buttons lighting up are not there to look nice (i actually hate pointless LED lights) but they tell you what buttons are active. for example, the start buttons do not light up until there are credits inserted. also, the button lights change depending on the game you select. if you select Donkey Kong, only 1 button lights up (the button you use to jump). But if you select Street Fighter 2, all the buttons light up since all 6 buttons are used. if anyone cares about what software i am using, i went with launchbox ($50 for a lifetime ownership; definitely worth it because Hyperspin requires a master's degree in comp-sci to figure out) and groovyMAME. groovyMAME is a fork of MAME that is made specifically for arcade CRTs and it has all the settings for the lowest resolutions for every game, making them look arcade-perfect. one thing i noticed is i have to get used to arcade controls again, i constantly jump when i mean to press forward or back! ugh i also think i might use this one day to help my son and daughter; like we will give them a quarter when they do something good (instead of those star stickers some parents use) and then of course they will use them to play on the arcade. my luck they won't give a poo poo about video games lol uh, that's really it i guess. this project took me so long to finish that i am actually kind of in shock it's finally done. feel free to critique or give me a suggestion or something. 
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Sep 15, 2017 08:22
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 10:08 |
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this post is too good for this forum, ban this sick filth
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Sep 15, 2017 08:33
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if there's one forum here that would appreciate low resolution CRTs as much as I do, it's this one
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Sep 15, 2017 08:34
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great restoration OP. is that one of the pirate Street Fighter chips? also nice cat gym
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Sep 15, 2017 08:34
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Gazpacho posted:great restoration OP. is that one of the pirate Street Fighter chips? no it's not a pirate chip; it is a computer with a special video card that outputs at 320x240 running win7. the cat gym was a gift a friend got me as a housewarming gift. we kept it in that room until we re-did it. we are gonna make it a den and a room for kids toys for now. the cat gym is in the basement and they like it there a lot. we have a backyard that is completely barriered in so we let them roam around the backyard which they love too. there is no way for them to escape; i patched every single hole i could find! i also have another "arcade machine" back there that i loved when i went to pizzerias and bars in my early 20s but i figured no one here would give a poo poo about it but i personally love it  i still play Photo Hunt. the copycats in the app stores are pale comparisons
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Sep 15, 2017 08:37
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i don't really have much nostalgia love for old arcade poo poo, but that's really cool. congrats on doing a nice restoration, feels good to build and restore poo poo i see that's xp, are you running a computer and then running emulator? when you turn it on does it go directly to a game or do you boot into xp and then manually run the emu everytime? also you said giving them a quarter, does it actually run off change at all? (btw they won't igve a poo poo and will just roll eyes at DAD! AND HIS STUPID BORING OLD GAME and just go gently caress off to play wtih their phone instead)
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Sep 15, 2017 08:42
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xp? that's windows 7 should've used linux!
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Sep 15, 2017 08:47
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holy poo poo nice work but can you play wii bowling on it?
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Sep 15, 2017 08:49
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Displeased Moo Cow posted:holy poo poo nice work but can you play wii bowling on it? haha i doubt the PC is good enough for wii emulation. it is an AMD brisbane 64 3.2ghz or something like that. it runs Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Killer Instinct at full 60fps though, so i am happy Xaris posted:i don't really have much nostalgia love for old arcade poo poo, but that's really cool. congrats on doing a nice restoration, feels good to build and restore poo poo thank you! it is win7, not XP. though I am thinking of changing it to windows 10 now that i have a new SSD that i am not using (win10 has incredible boot speeds). the only thing that worries me about win10 is it minimizing a huge session with friends to show me a pop up of PLEASE UPDATE WINDOWS 10 NOW, SIR i know i can turn off win10 updates, but you still get pop-ups telling you to talk to an admin or go to settings to turn updates on or something. any way to disable that too? yeah it really does run on quarters. i did not install any credit buttons. i wired them up so the credit is triggered by the quarter. they are even individually wired, so if you put the quarter in the leftmost one you get leonardo, and if you put it in any of the other ones, you get the other turtles (TMNT only being one example of a game that operates like this). the way it boots windows is like this: i put a hidden pushbutton on top of the machine, near where the power switch usually is on these things. i simply wired it to the PC motherboard's ON headers. so you press the button, and the PC turns on. however, the PC is on a surge protector where when one thing gets turned on, it will turn on everything else. so i push that button and the PC turns on, which then turns on the monitor and the amp. it then boots into windows automatically and loads up the front end automatically if i press that pushbutton when i am done playing, it will shut down windows, turn off the PC, and then everything else turns off with it. it's pretty cool considering all i had to do was buy a $25 surge protector Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Sep 15, 2017 |
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Sep 15, 2017 08:56
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cool video game op no sarcasm in this post
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Sep 15, 2017 09:56
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This is loving cool.
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Sep 15, 2017 10:19
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thats really drat nice but it seems like you replaced everything and basically built a new one from scratch lol
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Sep 15, 2017 12:02
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The Four Player TMNT Cabinet Of Theseus
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Sep 15, 2017 12:12
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that's pretty rad. nice work
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Sep 15, 2017 15:11
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nice
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Sep 15, 2017 15:13
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windows 7 never looked better
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Sep 15, 2017 15:38
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owns owns owns
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Sep 15, 2017 15:59
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Hell yeah now you just need a convenience store smell generator. (Cigarette + slush puppy scent)
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Sep 15, 2017 16:51
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drat dude that is sick as hell
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Sep 15, 2017 16:59
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NoneMoreNegative posted:The Four Player TMNT Cabinet Of Theseus
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Sep 15, 2017 17:04
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fun fact: this (and the associated cartoon and toys etc) was TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES in the U.K. due to the word NINJA turning kids into bloodthirsty killing machines whenever they heard it.
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Sep 15, 2017 17:15
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NoneMoreNegative posted:fun fact: this (and the associated cartoon and toys etc) was TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES in the U.K. due to the word NINJA turning kids into bloodthirsty killing machines whenever they heard it. wasn't there an associated nunchuck ban as well
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Sep 15, 2017 17:40
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NoneMoreNegative posted:fun fact: this (and the associated cartoon and toys etc) was TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES in the U.K. due to the word NINJA turning kids into bloodthirsty killing machines whenever they heard it. lmao Europeans are scared of litterrally everything
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Sep 15, 2017 17:42
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does it have nudie photo hunt
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Sep 15, 2017 17:56
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absolutely kickass, OP
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Sep 15, 2017 18:19
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NoneMoreNegative posted:fun fact: this (and the associated cartoon and toys etc) was TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES in the U.K. due to the word NINJA turning kids into bloodthirsty killing machines whenever they heard it. lol i remember 'ninja' was one of the banned words in the web filter back when i was in high school
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Sep 15, 2017 18:30
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quote:i'm as stupid as i am stubborn good on ya, you've done a great job
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Sep 15, 2017 19:00
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it's because the british don't have guns, so criminals use knives instead, and as a result knives/swords/other edged tools and weapons are the big scary thing you can't allow the children to see. an irish girl i went to school with said that after they banned knives the delinquents at her school would just sharpen a screwdriver into a point in shop class and stab each other with those ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Sep 15, 2017 19:49
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thanks for the positive reinforcement! i am glad you all like it because this is one of the rare times that this was so much work that it almost doesn't feel even feel accomplished that it is now done! like if i knew how difficult this would have been when i first started I probably would have never done it. in my head it was just "clean up the sides, make a box and a new control panel, no big deal" but this could have also been a huge undertaking because i am not really that handy with stuff like this. i ended up with 3 major power tools i never owned just because of this thing lolNoneMoreNegative posted:fun fact: this (and the associated cartoon and toys etc) was TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES in the U.K. due to the word NINJA turning kids into bloodthirsty killing machines whenever they heard it. I remember when i was about 10 i was in a 99 cent store and i saw Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles stuff and I was like "wow, this is bootleg but it doesn't look like the bootleg garbage I am used to seeing" not realizing it was official stuff that somehow made its way to the US. I still don't quite understand how or why it was in a US store but that is my TMHT story Endless Mike posted:does it have nudie photo hunt haha the Megatouch cab does in fact have nude photo hunt. i have of course turned it off in the BIOS. also the machine used to run off of a CD ROM but I changed it to run off of a CF card and you would not believe the copy protection poo poo on this old rear end machine that made it nearly impossible. qirex posted:wasn't there an associated nunchuck ban as well and Probotector whip posted:Hell yeah now you just need a convenience store smell generator. (Cigarette + slush puppy scent) you might be joking but i actually wanted a slush puppy machine and my goal was to make this room literally look like a pizzeria. since it is an attached room at the back of the house (you can kinda tell it was not originally part of the house; it cut into the backyard) I wanted the outside of this room to even have cloth awnings and a sign with our last name and "PIZZA" outside and on the cloth awnings. I even bought a legit payphone (it weighs 75 pounds) and if you look at the Megatouch game, you can see actual pizza tables I got in the background and was in the middle of setting up. then we had our 2nd kid and my wife asked if I can hold off a bit until they are all older so we can put a bunch of their toys back there so it isn't taking over our living room any more  these were the exact tables I bought:  again, you can kinda see them in the background of the Megatouch arcade pic. i also have an NBA Jam cabinet that was converted to some lovely shooting game, but i was able to peel off the paint and restore the NBA Jam sideart. i honeslty have no idea what to do with it though because it is going to be stupidly redundant having another arcade cabinet back there. i was thinking maybe a MAME cabinet for "other" games like driving and shooting but it might look stupid having an NBA Jam cabinet with guns and steering wheels
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Sep 15, 2017 19:49
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:thanks for the positive reinforcement! i am glad you all like it because this is one of the rare times that this was so much work that it almost doesn't feel even feel accomplished that it is now done! like if i knew how difficult this would have been when i first started I probably would have never done it. in my head it was just "clean up the sides, make a box and a new control panel, no big deal" but this could have also been a huge undertaking because i am not really that handy with stuff like this. i ended up with 3 major power tools i never owned just because of this thing lol lol awesome
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Sep 15, 2017 19:54
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:also the machine used to run off of a CD ROM but I changed it to run off of a CF card and you would not believe the copy protection poo poo on this old rear end machine that made it nearly impossible. go on
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Sep 15, 2017 20:11
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youre going to need to acquire a couple neon beer signs if you want to really put the polish on a dad lair
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Sep 15, 2017 20:14
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Roosevelt posted:youre going to need to acquire a couple neon beer signs if you want to really put the polish on a dad lair haha i know! my dad actually has a bunch in his garage. Maybe I acquired my "sickness" from him atomicthumbs posted:go on it's essentially a 486 motherboard with a special "dongle" for copy protection. I am not sure why, but the copy protection is tripped when the game is ran from a hard drive and not a CD ROM drive. on 2 different arcade forums, there were people working for YEARS to try and get around the copy protection. somehow I got lucky enough that when I was doing this, the copy protection was finally cracked. like I am talking 2 days after I was trying to figure it out.
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Sep 15, 2017 20:17
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:it's essentially a 486 motherboard with a special "dongle" for copy protection. I am not sure why, but the copy protection is tripped when the game is ran from a hard drive and not a CD ROM drive. neat
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Sep 15, 2017 20:56
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:I remember when i was about 10 i was in a 99 cent store and i saw Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles stuff and I was like "wow, this is bootleg but it doesn't look like the bootleg garbage I am used to seeing" not realizing it was official stuff that somehow made its way to the US. I still don't quite understand how or why it was in a US store but that is my TMHT story There is a clone romset in MAME with the UK revisions, should be the tmht set . Give it a spin, I think the only difference is the title splash, they don't swap out weapons on any of the turtles etc.
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Sep 15, 2017 20:57
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NoneMoreNegative posted:There is a clone romset in MAME with the UK revisions, should be the tmht set . Give it a spin, I think the only difference is the title splash, they don't swap out weapons on any of the turtles etc. I actually did try this and the lyrics for the song are changed!
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Sep 15, 2017 21:14
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This is true craftsmanship. Your efforts were incredible to restore this and improve it beyond what I thought was possible with a MAME, while still keeping its integrity maintaining the original form. Make sure it can play Sunset Riders!
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Sep 15, 2017 21:20
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that's cool as gently caress. i didn't work nearly that hard and it shows, that vinyl stuff is awesome. good luck on your pizzaria room i bought an xtension cabinet and mounted a TV in there but i didn't get around to setting up anything inside of it for around 3 years. after i couldn't get a snes classic i went ahead and made a retropie setup. works like a charm but compared to this its kinda lame!!
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Sep 15, 2017 21:23
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holy fuckin moly good thread
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Sep 15, 2017 21:26
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Shaggar posted:lmao Europeans are scared of litterrally everything uk is not europe
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Sep 15, 2017 21:29
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