I happend upon MAME about 5+ years ago and thought it was a great idea at the time, but i really didn't have the resources to go about then. Now I've rediscovered arcade emulation and my situation now allows me to jump in with both feet. ...actually when my wife finds out, there will be words, but what the hell, I deserve this
. In a previous life I was a graphic designer and desktop publisher and I know my way around Photoshop and Illustrator. Now I'm not the greatest graphics designer BY ANY MEANS but I do have an eye for what looks good.
My idea for a cab: I like all things cool, and one time I was hooked on this short lived anime called GeneShaft. The anime wasn't that great but what I thought was really cool was when they climbed into the giant robot, this operating system with cascading hexagons would pop up. when all was good the OS gave a pleasant "enjoy" graphic, and when it was bad -"panic". I always wanted my PC's "start" button to say "enjoy" instead
. So this cab pays homage to GeneShaft, and we'll call it Blue Gene. (yes i know there's a IBM super computer Blue Gene, but they just went and took all the "blue" names didn't they)
I WANT A FOUR PLAYER CAB, so all you who say you don't need it -can go somewhere else. The only reason I say this is because this cab is to bring back arcade memories; I had spent way to many quarters on Gauntlet II -and now you're telling me I can play for free! -I WANT the 4P option.
My list of games it must play is pretty simple...
Gauntlet II
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Pac Man
Toobin
and some fighters (I'm having a hard time getting my system up to speed for these)
The system I have on hand is a Biostar motherboard with LOTS of ram and a 2.3 Ghz Athalon 64 Dual Core and an ATI Radeon X1600 Pro vid card: That sounds good, but it's not cutting it. All of my 3D fighting games have choppy sound. I purchased an old copy of XP 64 to take advantage of my system, then nLite'd it. It made big improvements but stilll not good enough.
I've purchased the hottest processor that will fit in this motherboard, a 3.2 Ghz AMD Phenom II quad core. It arrives tomorrow, hopefully that will get me in the ballpark to play Dead or Alive 2 smoothly.
One game I'd REALLY like to play -but isn't gonna fit in this build is Assault -no room for 2 more (flight) sticks without overdoing it.
I'm nearly done collecting my parts. P1&2 have U360's and 6 ggg concave buttons w/ microleaf switches. P3&4 have 8way J-Sticks and 4 buttons. A big 3" Happ trackball is also in the mix.
For a display I started with a 27" Sharp CRT with s-video, but it was just PAINFUL to look at -I spent my money on the Hanns-G 28" 16:10 LCD monitor which has a beautiful picture compared.
Here's my own design for the sides. -I left the construction lines so you can see where all the lines come from
I think I'm ready to start cutting wood. I'll post pics of my control panel endevours next.