Advice for my arcade cabinet

[TastyWheat]

Hey everyone, I'm a first time poster, but long time reader of these forums. I am very impressed with the work you have all been doing and would like to try my hand at building an arcade cabinet. My goal is to make a MAME arcade cabinet using a computer monitor, and a computer. Nothing to complicated, no coin door, and i am planning to buy the arcade stick instead of making one. I know there are some good sticks out there you can just plug into a computer, which would work perfect for me. I want it to be two player and not a really big system. I have all the tools available and will probably do little to no soldering, seeing as i will just plug my arcade stick into the computer and set the control to coordinate with the emulator.

My two questions are: is there any possible way that hook up a gun to the computer, so i could play light gun games such as house of the dead. I am also looking for how fast my computer is going to need to be in order to run the MAME's i want to run. Just to give you an idea of the arcade MAME's i want to run, here is some:

House of the Dead
Tekken
Gauntlet legends
Street Fighter 3

Games of that era are my main focus, but I'm not sure how fast and what specs i will need in a computer to run those MAME's. If anyone could give me some guidance i would be very grateful. Before you ask, i am very experienced with Emulators and how they work. I'm pretty good with computers but i wont lie, i am not the best.

Bob

[RyoriNoTetsujin]

is there any possible way that hook up a gun to the computer, so i could play light gun games such as house of the dead.

Lots of options there: ActLabs guns (if you can find them) or Ultimarc.com AimTraks for just a couple of examples. No option comes without some concessions though... that's a much longer discussion.

House of the Dead
Tekken
Gauntlet legends
Street Fighter 3

Gauntlet is your bottleneck here (as it is the most demanding of those you listed.) Like the other "benchmark games" (NFL Blitz, etc.) you're probably going to need a Core i5-2500K or better to run it at full speed. I have the 2500K, and it only gets it up to about 120% speed if throttling is turned off.  I don't think Legends is fully playable yet though, anyway (I don't really play it, someone else will have to chime in.) Freezes up due to graphical glitches, I think?

I believe HOTD isn't playable in MAME yet either; you'd have to use the Model 2 emulator-- but I can say it works quite brilliantly with the 2500K as well.

SF3:TS will run on surprisingly little. Runs on my gf's Celeron based mini-pc. Even my Android tablet (dual core 1.2 ghz) can run it full speed, and that's on a fairly shoddy port of MAME! 

[TastyWheat]

Thanks man, ill check them out. I am not too strict on keeping those games. I wouldn't mind dropping gauntlet legends, the original is just as good too gauntlet is just as good too right? I wonder if i could use a dreamcast emulator to run house of the dead and just program the the buttons to the emulator. Hmm... food for thought. Thank you again!

[Diet_Pepsi]

Thanks man, ill check them out. I am not too strict on keeping those games. I wouldn't mind dropping gauntlet legends, the original is just as good too gauntlet is just as good too right? I wonder if i could use a dreamcast emulator to run house of the dead and just program the the buttons to the emulator. Hmm... food for thought. Thank you again!

Gauntlet Legends does have some emulation issues depending on what version you want to run.  Gauntlet Dark Legacy, however, is playable and I am running it with no issues using my i5-2400.