Can you get away with only One "insert coin/credit" button?

[Jakobud]

Lets say you have a 4 player cabinet. Can you get away with only one "Insert Coin" button for the cabinet? Or does each player need to have one? Basically, did all arcade cabinets treat each coin mechanism as going into one common pool of credits? Or for certain multi player games did each player have a dedicated coin mech which only gave that player credits?

If only one credit button is doable, is there anything special to setup in Mame to do this?

[thatpurplestuff]

I think it will cause you problems on some games if you try to only use one coin button... if I remember correctly beat-em-ups like TMNT, X-Men, Simpsons, etc each had their own coin slot and auto started the character once a coin goes in.  I've had multiple gaming sessions where 2-3 people would be playing, a new person would join up to play and hit the coin button a ton of times for their player, and then end up leaving and it was a huge pain because the player wouldn't die until all of the coins they entered were used up.  If you had MAME accept one coin push to activate all 4 coin slots, you would potentially be starting all 4 players at once for games like this.

One option would be using "shift" buttons where you could hold p1's button while pushing the coin button to give p1 a coin, hold p2's button while pushing the coin button to give p2 a coin, etc.

[Vigo]

One option would be using "shift" buttons where you could hold p1's button while pushing the coin button to give p1 a coin, hold p2's button while pushing the coin button to give p2 a coin, etc.

That is how I would do it. Map key combinations in mame for each player to be "Start + player X Button 1"

[keilmillerjr]

If your mame has direct input forced, I can create a script to:

Coin 1 < 2 second = drop coin 1
Coin 1 < 3 second = drop coin 2
Coin 1 < 4 second = drop coin 3
Coin 1 < 5 second = drop coin 4
Coin 1 > 5 second = cancel

Or something along those lines. I'm back on track on my build, and will likely continue working on my frontendhelper app.

[olsen]

I only have one coin button on the panel and so far, it's fine. Instead of using player 1 start as my shift on the IPAC, I made the lone coin button the shift key. That way it's a little more intuitive. You hold down the coin button and press whatever player start button you want to coin up.

[pbj]

4 player cabinet needs 4 coin inputs. 

[mvolke1]

I always put separate insert coin buttons. People enjoy putting in intimate tokens. I still get a kick out of loading up a game with credits. I only have two though.

Another option could be hiding a standard button under the console that's out of sight.