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Sanity Check my ideas?

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Praxi:

I am wanting to make a mame cabinet, I want to support a lot of games! More specifically, I imagine playing a lot of Gauntlet with the family (so 4 player) and the occasional Donkey Kong (think I want joysticks that support 4 and 8 way).  I have been doing a lot of reading, and want some sanity checking of my ideas so far.  I'm going to use a Raspberry PI running pimame.  I plan on running a pair of GP-Wiz40-Eco USB to support 2 OMNI2™ 4/8-way joysticks and 2 Roundhouse Arcade and Flight Sticks.  I plan on 8 buttons for the OMNI2's and 4 buttons for the Roundhouse's.  I planned on building a Control Panel similar to this one.    http://www.ogredog.com/mame_cp_construction.htm

Any comments or suggestions people can make?

shponglefan:

If you want to support a lot of games, you might want to use something other than a Raspberry Pi for the brains.  It's main strength lies in the fact that it's cheap and compact; but it's underpowered for running anything besides classic MAME games (and even then, not perfectly).

Can't comment on the joysticks, but why 8 buttons?

drventure:

Yeah, you won't need 8 buttons. Heck, I can think of only a handful of times that I've used more than 2 buttons, even though I have 7 for each player. Way overkill. But if you intend on playing lots of fighting games, you'll need at least 4.

For the sticks, I really like the Ultimarc U360's for their flexibility. They don't feel like standard arcade sticks though, so it all depends on what your shooting for there.

I wouldn't bother with a Pi. Pick up a cheap used machine off CL or something. That'll get you all but the most demanding games running.

Save the Pi for a bartop, dedicated shmup, micro machine or something similar.

Praxi:

I thought some of the fighting games took 8 buttons?  Think I got 8 stuck in my head on some tutorial I read, probably about  console emulation.  How many buttons should I go with then to meet the majority of the fighting games? 7? (Thinking Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Combat)  I already have the PI, so I will try it first.  I have the second gen one with 512 memory, and I see a lot of threads about PSX emulation working well with that.  If it doesn't work well can always grab a spare computer later.  I looked at the U360's, they do look nice, but trying to do this on a pretty tight budget.  Its for the kids mainly, I would rather they beat the stuffing out of a $10 or $20 joystick vs a $60 joystick :)

Thanks for the input! :)

PL1:

Welcome aboard, Praxi.

MAME fighting games use up to 6 buttons.

Neo Geo + MAME layout uses 7 buttons. (4 in a curved row = Neo Geo layout)

Some console games use 8 buttons IIRC.   :dunno


Scott

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