Complete newbie to mame but am wanting to build a cabinet to play Atari, Nes, and Snes games.
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I don't play fighting games so I was going to go with some Happ sticks/buttons and use the traditional 6 button layout.
NES games use up to 4 buttons: A, B, Start, Select.
SNES games use up to 8 buttons: A, B, X, Y, L, R, Start, Select.
The consoles themselves usually have two additional buttons: Power, Reset. Depends if you want those as well. I put them on my Bartop, where Power=Exit, and Reset=Reset.
As for the other buttons, Im not sure what is best. I will have the traditional 1P and 2P. I'm assuming I need an Exit and Enter button. I would like to have vol up and down since I don't want to have to reach in the cabinet and adjust vol. I'm a big Zelda and Metroid fan, so I thought about save and load. Then there is the coin buttons, which i thought about wiring them together as 1 coin credit button. These start to add up and The last thing I want are tons of buttons everywhere but...
I figured on the top center of the control panel I'll have the 1P, 2P, Exit, Enter, Save, Load and then on the front or side I would have the vol up/down and coin button. That would get me by without having to use a keyboard.
Not familiar with Retropie, but the emu that I am using has the option to auto save/load on start/exit. And its works fantastic when playing Zelda, or other long non-arcade like games. Look into adding a dedicated shift button, if your keyboard encoder supports it. You could than do Shift+A = Pause, Shift+B = Exit, etc. For volume, just add a physical volume control dial, or use a Shift+button combination.
Whatever route you decide to take, thoroughly test out this whole software setup, button config thing, before you start buying buttons, drilling holes, designing artwork, etc.