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arcade plans
crtrrss:
hi! i found a working neo geo on craigslist near me for $75! i will sell all of the original parts except for a few wires and the monitor and make money off this thing! im going to replace the control panel with a cool rotating one i found online ( heres the link http://1uparcade.rmfx.com/arcade-const-panels.html ) his control choice was kinda weird so im designing my own. the panel has 3 sides and so far i only have 2 designed ( 1 for racing and 1 normal arcade) and i need suggestions for the 3rd side. im going to use chrome rimmed rgb led buttons from ultimarc with a ipac and a pacled64! its going to look awesome! also planning to add this usb lcd screen to the machine for various reasons ( heres the link to this to http://www.ebay.com/itm/180833562988?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649 ) and hope that it could work with a front end and display the title of the game or the weather or some function from a front end. even if it will work, would the touchscreen part work with it too? and help is appreciated.
Dawgz Rule:
My suggestion is to keep it simple. I think it will be difficult to squeeze in a steering wheel (don't forget pedals) and still maintain all of the necessary clearances. Also, be sure you have a good purpose for the LCD beyond the cool factor. Do people really need to see the weather? Find the games that you want to play and focus the construction of the cabinet around those games.
paigeoliver:
It is notoriously difficult to integrate racing controls onto a normal machine, even with a rotating panel. This is largely due to the fact that there are a whole bunch of different kinds of pedals, wheels and shifters and one kind can't always sub well for another kind.
Steering wheels.
360 degree optical steering wheels are common. Many titles that use them expect 2 or more of them.
270 degree analog steering wheels are also common.
Bounded optical steering wheels are less common (Roadblasters is one).
Pedals
Different games use either analog or digital pedals and will want anything from 1 to 3 of them.
Shifters
Different titles will expect anything from 2 speed to 4 speed. (I think some of the really new stuff has even more gears). Mame is also notoriously bad at handling arcade shifters because despite everything they say about emulation accuracy being most important they always hack the game drivers to work right with keyboards instead of real shifters.
Buttons
Many titles are unplayable without one or more buttons on the steering wheel or shifter.
Also, a standard Neo Geo doesn't have enough clearance between the panel and the monitor to put a rotating setup on it and doesn't have enough room in the cabinet to raise the monitor to create the clearance. The 1UP machine was scratch built in order to have the proper clearances for the rotating panel.
I have done a lot of multigame builds and have usually found that it is a heck of a lot cheaper and easier to do multiple machines with different controls than it is to try to do some of the more esoteric stuff you see people doing in order to support more games.
crtrrss:
thanks for the advice. I realize that steering controls will be hard to integrate into the machine, but its doable. Since im not going to spend about $400 for each racing control, im going to use 2 $20 ps2 racing controls and have the pedals hidden behind the coin door when im not using them. Plus, the ps2 steering wheel has buttons on the wheel, so i can use those as the shift stick control.
crtrrss:
would all of these things like the rotating control panel work on a Golden axe cabinet?