Insert Coin to Start: It's The Arcade Thread!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Insert Coin to Start: It's The Arcade Thread!

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

After ~15 years in storage, I've finally convinced a sucker (my father in law!!!) to help me complete the arcade build I started so long ago. I got scared about tracing/cutting the wood panels and chickened out, and it's sat in a garage ever since.

Until now!

Behold, the Slikstik! Pride of MAME machines circa 2006. I'll take lots of pics as we build stuff.

When I first built the computer for it, I used an old AMD64, and used MaximusArcade for the frontend. Now though, running Windows 10 on "newer" hardware(i5-4700, GTX960).

My Q: What's the best FrontEnd for arcade use these days? While I'll still probably throw console emulation stuff on it too, I'd like something that will work well in "cabinet" mode using the arcade controller. I guess it might need to hook in to Steam for stuff like SF5 I suppose, but I think even back in the day you could hook exes into a list.

I've used/am familiar with aforementioned MaximusArcade, EmulationStation, and I think I tried LaunchBox once upon a time but no idea if it's still good.

Halp

# ¿ Aug 28, 2021 21:50

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:55

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

d0s posted:

If you're going to be building a cabinet from scratch anyway, I would honestly not bother with using the Slikstik and build a control panel that is actually comfortable to use. I get that lots of people have nostalgia for that Street Fighter II US cab layout and Happ parts but they're honestly not great to use for extended periods and are mostly designed for surviving environments where people are actively trying to vandalize the controls, and just feel horribly imprecise and clunky. The "3 buttons in a straight line" layout is also really anti-ergonomic.

Most people have moved on to sticks like the Sanwa JLF and Seimitsu LS series and buttons by the same companies, which can be found at various places:

https://paradisearcadeshop.com/
https://arcadeshock.com/
https://focusattack.com/

I personally would recommend Seimitsu LS-32 sticks and Seimitsu PS-14-G (snap mount, flat top)/Seimitsu PS-14-GN (screw mount, convex top)/Sanwa OBSF-30 (snap mount, convex top) buttons for "all around" arcade playing. There are also the Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT sticks which are preferred if you are going to be playing mostly fighting games, but to me feel strange on other genres.

You can find some nice ergonomic layouts to cut into your panel here: https://slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html, which would be an improvement even if you stick with the Happ parts.

Here's an image showing how much clearance over the panel various stick models are meant to have:

The wiring is very easy, you can probably just pull out the harness and USB interface and everything from that slikstik and just wire the new controls to it where the old ones were.

This is a wicked post! I've used Sanwa stuff in like fight sticks and stuff before, so I know they're quality stuff - if I didn't already have literally everything (wood, vinyl siding, t molding and stuff) I'd 100% build it like you'd mentioned.

I definitely want to swap out the bat sticks for ball tops at least one day.

The biggest thing now is a) putting it together b) finding a monitor that works and c) getting software working

This project is old enough that my original size for stuff was to fit a huge 32 inch Sony CRT thing in here, with an AGP video card that had S-video out.

Sadly still have light guns, but they definitely don't work on an LCD. Maybe I'll get that wii bar thing working.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2021 01:30

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

I'm using Retroarch via Launchbox now so I can use the mame2003plus core specifically because the computer isn't amazing

edit: but I'm not against a better solution for performance, I tinker with these projects 20x more than I ever play a game on them

# ¿ Sep 4, 2021 02:47

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

Is a 4:3 monitor in the 22-25ish inch range physically possible?

# ¿ Sep 8, 2021 21:04

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

mycophobia posted:

Yes

Well I want one!!!

George RR Fartin posted:

Like, a CRT? 32" Televisions were a pretty common sight back when people actually bought them. I wanna say there's a practical limit to the size a CRT can be, but it's mostly related to it eventually being impossible to move or place on a cabinet without crushing it. A quick and non-authoritative google tells me:

"The Sony PVM-4300 monitor weighed 440 ⁠lb (200kg) and had the largest ever CRT with a 43" diagonal display."

It's just shy of a quarter-ton, and being a PVM, I assume it was meant to be used in actual TV studios. A review I found said it cost $40,000.

Typically, once you got over the low 30 inch threshold, people would just buy a rear projection TV and pretend it didn't look like garbage.

This is cool, I want to try a quarter-ton PVM

I also just wish I could find a screen for this cab

# ¿ Sep 8, 2021 21:42

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

I have redone the romset on this arcade machine like 4 times now

-Mostly a recent FBNeo set
-Like most of the CHD stuff doesn't work there, so mame2003plus for that
-Okay well TAPPER is critical and doesn't work so now I'm just splitting it more aaaaaaaaa

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 02:01

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

I'm currently running the cab on an older (gently overclocked) 2500k with an nVidia 760 for slightly more modern sfuff like street fighter 4

Would that work well for more stuff in the current set? I know stuff like Gauntlet Legends isn't always 100%, but if I could switch away from FBNEO that'd be cool

I don't care about accuracy as much as "this game works and is very playable"

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 02:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:55

BaronVanAwesome: Sep 11, 2001; I will never learn the secrets of "Increased fake female boar sp..."

Never say never, buddy.
Now you know.
Now we all know.

Baba Yaga Fanboy posted:

All right, cats and kittens, after some serious father-son team-up woodworking action, I've finally finished my custom arcade cabinet! Big thanks to the thread for the useful information and the plans posted a while back- lurking through here gave me every bit of information I needed to put this bad mamma jamma together!

This runs on my laptop, using an old version of MAME since I already had what I needed for it. The front and top are are custom-made by me, using art from screengrabs and Clip Studio to put everything together just the way I like it. For the front art I wanted to give a general idea of what games I have, and the top art I wanted to have the vibe of a character select screen featuring characters from my favorite games.

Handles are a godsend on beasts as big as this one. If you're thinking of doing a custom cab, I highly recommend adding handles even if the plans don't mention 'em. We also installed some custom shelves inside to hold the arcade guts plus other assorted things, so the cab doubles as storage space! I didn't take any pics because the insides aren't all painted and pretty.

My games mostly lean towards beat 'em ups because I want to be able to get big groups together, though I do have a few fighting games (including some not listed on the front, like Darkstalkers and of course Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game) plus I got a dual-stick setup for good ol' Smash TV!

Again, big thanks to the thread for the good vibes and good info. I haven't done a whole lotta posting here but you've all been big helps.

If you're thinking of making your own custom cab, carpe arcadiem, my friend. The sooner you make it, the longer you and yours will get to enjoy it.

Good post + cool build, storage is a good call

# ¿ Apr 19, 2023 07:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Insert Coin to Start: It's The Arcade Thread!