First Cabinet - The Party Mame

[adamated87]

This is my first mame cabinet. My brother and I have purchased a PGA tour '09 cabinet and are going to turn it into a 4 player Party Cabinet.



We're both huge TMNT fans, so that is the main purpose of this build (ie appropriate colored buttons and sticks)

We're using an old hitachi (or sanyo... I dont remember) 29" CRT with RCA input (bleh) which we never use any more.

Also using my brothers old pc that he played the original battlefield with, and the HDD died, so I'm going to replace that and then get it installed with XP and Hyperspin as my FE.

[adamated87]

My goal is to run any game that I want to that doesnt need a trackball/spinner/gun/ect...

N64 is my biggest concern if 6 button layout will work across the board. Smash Bros will be the most common 4 player game, and I can't imagine that there will need to be more than 6 buttons a piece.

Here's my button layout thus far:



There will also be a coin button and start button near the top of the panel by the bottom of the screen.

I will be removing the existing CP plywood and configuring my own to replace it. Is it recommended to have a CP that is parallel to the ground or is there normally a tilt to it? I would prefer a level surface for drinks and such to sit on it.

[CWorley]

Consider adding a trackball so you can play Golden Tee, Silver Strike Bowling, Bags, etc.  Those are good party games.

Good luck!

[Drnick]

Control panel normally angled at 7 degrees front to back.  It just makes things more comfortable to play.  You can get some cup holders to put into the panel, but you won't get much love round here if you do.  How about some side mounted cup holders. Less chance of getting beer/soda in your control panel.

I would second the Trackball, nothing like a good game of golden tee with a few beers and a few buddies 

Very few N64 games will work well with a standard joystick. I would look at wii VC games that support classic controller and I bet that there are very few N64 games on that list.  If it needs the analog stick its gonna function like poo. Games that could be played only using D pad and buttons would be OK. Use shifted functions to access additional buttons if required by emulator.  You wont need more then 6 buttons for any game that uses the dpad

[adamated87]

So, on the note of joysticks (I'll talk to my brother about the trackball) I bought the Spitfire Arcade and Fight stick from GroovyGameGear.com

http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=370&zenid=pbpb4db3m37klbe5l9309gbq85

In the name of cost, I decided to go with these guys, however i thought they were switchable to 4-way... I was wrong.

Has anyone invented an addon that would turn these 8-ways into 4-ways and then be able to switch back to 8-ways fairly simple?

I drew up this thing that would essentially plug into the bottom inside the restrictor plate. Has this been made already? I did a quick search here and didnt find anything...

My other option is to buy a dedicated 4way stick, but I dont want this thing too complicated... If I didnt have to pay much more, I'd buy 4 decent switchable sticks, but it seemed like a pretty good jump in price for anything decent.

[PL1]

As always, Caveat Emptor.

RandyT has nothing there implying the Spitfire is switchable to 4-way.

Looks like you got the Spitfire mixed up with the OMNI-2.




Scott

[adamated87]

Yeah, that was definitely a mixup on my part, It's just hard to justify $100 for just the joysticks on my first machine...

I think that I want to make a solution for this... I want to save as much money as possible without sacrificing quality, and if I come up with something usable and cheap, then it's a win-win for everyone.

[retrostark]

i eventually want to get a 4-player machine for my house, and super smash bros. would be awesome to play on a party machine. keep us posted.

[adamated87]

I've made some progress. Particularly with the audio.

So, I had an old set of speakers laying around, and I was able to hook them up to the speakers that were mounted on the cab (a decent pair of 4ohm pioneer car speakers)



They sound great! the bass is kinda outshined now... but that's okay.

Here's the little control module:



It has an AUX and a Headphone jack, which means that I may consider this cab to double as a jukebox. We'll see about that though...


I was able to take the time to strip the cabinet down:


I also tested the power strip that they rigged up with an external switch: it and the Marquee light work great.




Okay, so now to the good stuff.

I need a graphics card with RCA (Yellow) out. This PC has PCI-e. It had a card with s-video, but the card is shot, and the warranty is expired, so I'm dead in the water on that. 

Also, I'm looking for a router, i heard that the M12VC is a good choice. I just don't want to shell out 200 for it and a bit set. Is it worth it? Know of a better deal?