Help me decide...

[crashwg]

I'm looking for a good color combination for this settup:

Mini Galaga, probably red balltop, 6 or 7 buttons (haven't decided yet) I may remove the thumb button.  It will have the galaga cpo, but obviously altered to fit my needs.  What colors should I make the buttons on the cp?  I tried a few combinations in paint and noticed that all red is a little overwhelming and some red some black looks like checkers...  I'm at a loss.

[RedboX]

Its hard to say without seeing the CPO, but heres the usual two options I've seen.

A is standard Neogeo Colours
B is based on standard Neogeo

[paigeoliver]

You think you are going to get 2 players simultaneous on a mini? You might squeeze in two thinnish 9 year old girls, but there is no way 2 adults could comfortably play on a mini at once.

And if it only has one joystick (and a vertical monitor, since it is supposed to be a Galaga), then it only needs two buttons, unless you HAVE to play Mouse Trap, in that case it needs 4.

So before I pull out my twop stick please don't tell me that you are making a 2 player horizontal cabinet and labeling it "Galaga". Always best to make SURE the name of the game on your cab can be played on it perfectly.

[Tiger-Heli]

Its hard to say without seeing the CPO, but heres the usual two options I've seen.

A is standard Neogeo Colours
B is based on standard Neogeo

Redbox, how confident are you of that color order - Red, Yellow, Green, Blue.

I know KLOV shows that on one cab, but I have seen E-bay pics showing:

Red-Yellow-Blue-Black
Red-Blue-Yellow-Green
Red-Yellow-Green-Blue

And in Smittdogg's CP packs -

Red-Yellow-Green-Blue

A quick look at arcadeflyers.com shows

Red-Yellow-Green-Blue http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=flyer&id=2671&image=1
Red-Yellow-???-??? http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=thumbs&id=3770
Red-Yellow-Green-Blue  http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=thumbs&id=2215
Red-Yellow-Green-Blue
http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=thumbs&id=3728
Red-Yellow-Green-Blue
http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=flyer&id=2031&image=1
(and the other Neo-Geo cabinet shots show the same thing.), so I think I answered my own question!

Odd thing is if you play bstars2 in MAME, in the intro it shows the colors as Red-Blue-Yellow-Green, so I was basing my CP on layout A and this color order.

Weird!!!

So now I need to swap my button colors.

[RedboX]

Redbox, how confident are you of that color order - Red, Yellow, Green, Blue.

I'm fairly confident, I'm basing it from my memory and also some cabinet picutres I've found, but mostly on this (and other games):

[Tiger-Heli]

Redbox, how confident are you of that color order - Red, Yellow, Green, Blue.

I'm fairly confident, I'm basing it from my memory and also some cabinet picutres I've found, but mostly on this (and other games):

I came to the conclusion that you were right also.  Cabinet pictures can have the buttons swapped around, but the flyers were done by SNK, so they should be correct.  It's just weird that bstars2 was wrong in the game.

Better to find out now than later, though.

[crashwg]

It's only going to be a single player, but I was thinking I wanted to be able to play fighters against the computer.  I am now debating on weather or not I really want to have that many buttons and I'm considering a neo-geo type setup.  Isn't it only like 1% of games that use more than 4 buttons anyway?  I realy like the red yellow green blue scheme though, so either way I'll probably go with that, thanks Redbox.

As for the orientation of the monitor, I was originally planning on going with a rotating monitor to satisfy both types of games, but due to available monitor not having a degauss button and space issues I'm ditching the rotating monitor.  As for why I decided to go with horizontal, the cab will also have console roms and such on it and I'd rather not have to do a butload of configuration.

[jerryjanis]

Isn't it only like 1% of games that use more than 4 buttons anyway?

I've been working on a web page that takes the information from the SortInfo program and lets you pull statistics out of it.  Here's a list of the games that use more than 4 buttons:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/sortinfo/index.php?num_switches=1&do_search=1&switch0=buttons&operator0=%3E&switchvalue0=4

That's a total of 244 out of 2679 games (about 11%).  However, most of the games are fighters, quiz games, or wouldn't play properly anyway (beatmania).

[Rawker]

what's the percentange of 4 player games that use more then 4 buttons?

[TalkingOctopus]

what's the percentange of 4 player games that use more then 4 buttons?

There are only 2 that I know of:
Dungeon Dragon : Tower of Doom
Dungeon Dragon: Shadow over Mystra (title is wrong but it is something like that)

[jerryjanis]

what's the percentange of 4 player games that use more then 4 buttons?

There are only 2 that I know of:
Dungeon Dragon : Tower of Doom
Dungeon Dragon: Shadow over Mystra (title is wrong but it is something like that)

Those games have only 4 buttons apiece.

This is exactly the type of question that my web page is supposed to answer:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/sortinfo/index.php?num_switches=2&do_search=1&switch0=players&operator0=%3D&switchvalue0=4&boolean0=AND&switch1=buttons&operator1=%3E&switchvalue1=4

You can enter your own critera and make any kind of query you want.  It doesn't look like much, but it's pretty powerful.

[paigeoliver]

what's the percentange of 4 player games that use more then 4 buttons?

Zero, both the D&D games have 4 buttons, not more than 4.

Also, when going by sort info for that sort of thing you are going to get an extreme amount of bad data. Many driving games are listed as having crazy amounts of buttons due to things like 4-way shifters being counted as 4 buttons all by themselves. Other anomolies are of course the quiz and Mahjong games, and "no joystick" all button games, which often had 5, but can be played with 3 if you use a joystick instead of left-right buttons.

Stargate and Defender both technically have a buttload of buttons, but have 4 or less if you are playing them with an 8-way (they then only have fire, smart bomb, hyperspace, and then Stargate has Inviso). Same for Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, and many other similar games.

Basically the only REAL games with more than four buttons are.

Mortal Kombat series.
The expanded Streetfighter series (including Marvel Vs. Capcom, etc).
Time Killers and a few other obscure fighters.

I mean you could TRY to include Mahjong and quiz support, but then you would need 20+ buttons per player, or something else equally rediculous.

[Buddabing]

what's the percentange of 4 player games that use more then 4 buttons?

There are only 2 that I know of:
Dungeon Dragon : Tower of Doom
Dungeon Dragon: Shadow over Mystra (title is wrong but it is something like that)

Those games have only 4 buttons apiece.

This is exactly the type of question that my web page is supposed to answer:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/sortinfo/index.php?num_switches=2&do_search=1&switch0=players&operator0=%3D&switchvalue0=4&boolean0=AND&switch1=buttons&operator1=%3E&switchvalue1=4

You can enter your own critera and make any kind of query you want.  It doesn't look like much, but it's pretty powerful.

Nice!

What I personally want to know is what two or more player games are there that are cooperative, ie. players helping each other. There's Space Duel, Ripoff, TMNT, C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa (I play that one with my son), but what others?

[osiris]

Just some things you might want to think about.

Right now I'm essentially using your layout with the "thumb button"
What I've found its it bassically forces you to set up each game  so the buttons are "right"
mainly the bottom row being

1234 for neogeo games, and

123
456 for capcom fighters.  Kinda a pain... recently I read a discussion supporting a

1234
456    layout which makes TONS of sense, since it requires NO special set up, if i were you I would HIGHLY recomend considering this layout. Infact im considering ripping out my controls and making a new cp  in this pattern.    Just a recomendation.

[jerryjanis]

What I personally want to know is what two or more player games are there that are cooperative, ie. players helping each other. There's Space Duel, Ripoff, TMNT, C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa (I play that one with my son), but what others?

Ha ha...  The only way to figure that out is gonna be to start playing!  Man, there are so many games like that (I bet that a decent percentage of the Mame games fall under that category)...  Double Dragon, the Dungeons & Dragons games, the Simpsons, and if you haven't tried Ninja Baseball Batman then you're seriously missing out on some fun cooperative 4 player action!