Several newbie questions

[pommie]

I'm in the process of researching to build a cocktail cabinet and still have a few questions to get my head round.

1. I don't quite understand the limitations when you talk about playing horizontal and vertical games? When I play either games on my Windows XP machine they run fine or run in a window. Would this not be the case when I build my cabinet?

2. I wanted to have a cabinet as close to the original as possible (just with CP opposite each other), If I was to have a single joystick opposite each other would all games that were labelled "flip" automatically flip the screen 180 during 2 player mode?

3. How would games react if they were not "flip" enabled? Would the person opposite have to come and sit in my stool? If yes is there any way around this (I read something about pressing a TAB key or editing an ini file but I got confused).

4. I would still like to play the side by side games like 1942, therefore would it be possible and practical to add two sets of joysticks in one of the CP?

5. Lastly am I expecting too much and should I keep it simple and as close to the original design i.e vertical games only, flip only and single joysticks opposite?

Thanks for any info

[pommie]

I have searched through the online articles and previous posts, Im not being lazy honest.  

If you can point me in the right direction to get the answers thats good enough for me.

Thanks

[APFelon]

1. It depends on whether you use a computer monitor or not, which means if you want to play games as close to "real" as you can, you'll want to use a real arcade monitor. If you use an arcade monitor, and try to play vertical games on a horizintal monitor or horizontal games on a vertical monitor, your picture won't seem quite right. Whenever I play vertical games on my horizontal monitor, I sometimes have to tweek the vertical size in order to get the whose screen on the monitor. There are adjustments you can do to get around the tweek (I am a lazy, lazy man) but it still won't seem quite right.

2. Yeah, they should. Best way to check, I suppose, is to enable the flip and give it a try. If the picture flips when2p is up, you know you have a winner.

3. Hm. Not sure on this one. My guess is that there is a way to manually flip the screen, but I'm not certain how to do it. Someone with more expertise than I can probably answer this question.

4. Depends on how you want to lay out the CP, and whether the monitor is horizontally laid out or vertically laid out. If horizontally, you will be playing on the "long edge" of the cocktail and therefore will have more room to play with. It might be a bit cozy with a buddy along side you, though.

5. Depends onwhat YOU want to do. I am a "keep it simple" kind of guy, so I am in the process of building a vert cab for vert games. I am not overly unhappy with the way vert games look on my horiz monitor, but your milage may vary.  You are certain to get diverse opinions on this, however.

Good luck on your project!

[paigeoliver]

The best thing to do with a vertical cocktail is to choose a joystick type (either 4-way or 8-way), and put two buttons on each control panel. I would limit the machine to vertical games that use the control type you selected. There are MANY more vertical 8-way games than there are 4-way ones (about 670 8-way ones, and about 120 4-way ones), but the 4-way list has a lot more of the big name games in it, while half the 8-way list are a lot of games that pretty much play exactly like 1942, but with better graphics.

You don't have to limit yourself to games that can flip. Most vertical games can do it anyway. For the ones that don't, you can get around this by virtually modding the game to one player only. Very easy to do, just tab to change the game config, and remap player 2 start to some button you can't press from the panel.

You will have to turn on the cocktail dip switch for every single game in your cabinet.

[eightbit]

If you want an all in one cocktail cabinet people often do the vertical games with a player on each end. Then they put a long CP down the side with 2 player controls for the horizontal games.

Heres an ebay auction example-
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3255158362&category=13716

Edit: Are you sure you want a cocktail? They actually consume more floor space than a upright.