Project: My first cabinet - Mid 90s and before! [Complete]

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minorhero:
You definitely had a lot more time spent in arcades then I did. Once a year for 1 week we traveled out of our fairly rural county and went on a beach vacation. At the beach there was not one, but two arcades that I got to visit almost once a day. BUT, that was all the time I had in arcades for the whole year. I remember being absolutely ecstatic while I was there, but I only had a few quarters a day so my time was typically over all too quickly.

I played a lot of street fighter 2 and my quarters stretched longer on that game then many others. I also remember when Tekken 3 came out because my older cousin who spent significantly more time in arcades then me was absolutely wild about the game and was pretty excited to show it to me. I played against him and was wrecked in seconds :P, I believe it was at a higher price point then other machines so I didn't play it much afterwards.

Modern arcades I have been to have been absolutely trash by comparison. I went to one with my kids recently hoping to give them a similar experience to what I had as a kid but almost all of the machines were claw machines or various ticket generating machines. There was only a couple of actual games in the whole arcade.

Xiaou2:
My mother divorces my father, when I was almost 6 yrs old... and on certain occasions he would pick us kids up, and
sometimes we would get to visit some of the wonderful 80s arcades.

When I got older, I moved to the City... and had a few various jobs, at a nearby mall. Being in the mall so often, I
would end up spending a bit of my earnings, in the malls arcade. Eventually the Manager of that Arcade was planning
on leaving... so I put in an application, and eventually got trained, on the job.

I have to say, that it was one of the hardest and most stressful jobs, that Ive ever had. The pay was utter Trash, too.
The cool part, was that I got to learn how all of the Arcade mechanisms functioned, as I repaired + restored them.
The bad part, was almost everything else:

- Trying to diagnose wiring (and wiring/electronic hacks) issues, PCB issues (luckily, they had a place where you would send
boards to be repaired).

- Trying to get machines functional ASAP, as Upper Mgt. would be all over your A**, if they noticed a machine down for a
few days. They could tell by sales figures, if things were not right.

- Trying to repair complex things... while getting stuck behind the Ticket counter... while people took FOREVER to try to
spend their 20 tickets... and the tantrums that kids might end up throwing, in the process.

- Trying to keep the employees from playing games on their shifts, after already putting in a 9 to 10hr day.
- Dealing with Irate "Karen" level customers.. that try to Shake and or Break machines.
- Intermittent Bill Changer machines... that I had to be On-Call, to return back to work at night, if they failed.
- Getting up at 6am on a thursday? To hand-record every hard to find, and hard to see.. coin meter.. and then counting
every single token in each machine... including the hoppers in the bill changers. All of this had to be completed, before
9am, when the store has to be Opened to the public. That, and a load of paperwork / data entry.
- Driving 45 minutes away, to clean, collect from, and check the functionality... of Kiddie Rides, in a different mall location.
- Putting in like 50 hrs every week... to try to keep everything functioning properly.. to prevent potential Termination, from
poor sales figures.
- Certain problem machines, that no matter how well you repaired them... they would keep breaking down, due to
poor Mfg. design.

I completely Agree with you about the modern arcades.

- The 80s arcades were actually the best. They had the most unique and challenging games.

- In the 90s.. most of the companies made all of the games way too easy. Such as car games, in which it wouldnt even allow you to crash / drive off the road.

- They also added the "CONTINUE" feature... which basically Destroyed the Arcades... Because once a person Paid their way to the End... they often rarely / never
played that game, ever again.

- Because of the lack of Skill / Challenge within most of the games... the Addictive quality of the games was Lost... and the biggest spenders, stopped spending.

- Eventually, a lot of Arcades started buying these Massive and much more Expensive "Gimmick" games. Like Namco's "Alpine Skiier" (which was like $1 to play).
They took up the space of like 2 standard arcade machines, and since they had almost no gameplay at all... people played them once or twice, then never
again. That particular machine, would only make a few dollars per week... vs some of the other games, which would make anywhere from 50 to a few hundred
dollars per week... every week.

- Spending so much money on these large screen gimmick games, and them not earning back the purchase price... only created budget issues, to where
the parent company could not always afford to buy the latest "GOOD" games.

- In the 90s, there was another huge issue happening... and that was the transition from 2D games, into 3D polygon games. Some of the very first
3d games looked Atrocious... and often didnt play well either. Everyone remembers the GOOD 3d games, like Daytona USA... but few remember
the many Horrible 3d games, that came before it.

- In the 90s, a lot of the companies also stopped making their own custom and unique controllers... and just purchased Generic stuff from Happ Controls.
Long gone were the days.. of games with Trackballs (except for Golden Tee games), Spinners, Dual Controller games, and specialized controls.. like
Atari's Race Driven... which used basically a Drier motor powered wheel, that had like 900 degrees of rotation + a strain gauge for the most
precise brake pedal control... ever put into an arcade machine.

- A lot of the new game offerings, started to become all "Lightgun" games. Some were good.. most were "Meh".

- Eventually... as you have stated... the entire Arcade Industry went into making some of the Worst "Kiddie Gambling Machines".
They often have no skill required... so many people never played them... as they were not really any fun to play.

There is always the Excuse, that the Arcades died, because of Home Console games. That really isnt the Truth. The truth is, is that when all
of the Challenge was removed from the games... and all of the Creativity was also removed... the Customers stopped coming / spending.

Part of that is due to large companies hiring so called "Designers" whos job is more centered on Management of a Team / Project...
rather than actually being Artistic / Creative. When in fact, its rare to have a creative individual, that is also "business minded".

Its also an Issue that still plagues modern game companies... when comparing 2d Animators vs 3D animators. Those with 2d animation
skills produce FAR superior / realistic / emotive... animations... where as the modern 3d animator, often makes very clunky looking
animations, that are not realistic at all. Again, its very rare to find a traditional 2d artist... that also is Technical enough to bridge the
gap into 3d tools / animations (as the tools are not intuitive, and are a real pain to try to create with).

Of course... It only makes sense that a company would want to destroy its own Arcade presence... because you can only sell a
comparatively small number of expensive arcade cabinets. Where as... if you produce a Hit Console game... you can sell
millions of copies, globally.

They likely shifted their best Programmers and Artists, into Console game production leaving a skeleton crew of some of the
worst of their hires... to try to make something to sell for their rapidly shrinking arcade division. Eventually, most of them
just shut down their Arcade production, altogether.

minorhero:

--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on October 18, 2023, 03:04:21 am ---- Eventually, a lot of Arcades started buying these Massive and much more Expensive "Gimmick" games. Like Namco's "Alpine Skiier" (which was like $1 to play).
They took up the space of like 2 standard arcade machines, and since they had almost no gameplay at all... people played them once or twice, then never
again. That particular machine, would only make a few dollars per week... vs some of the other games, which would make anywhere from 50 to a few hundred
dollars per week... every week.

--- End quote ---

This part rings especially true to me. I remember at one arcade they got in this giant virtual reality game (no idea of the name). It must have taken up at least 4 times the room of a regular arcade game and it was priced at 2 dollars a play. It was also super esoteric. Or at least it was to me, in that I couldn't figure out what there was to do exactly. When you put on the headset (which was on it's own crane arm) you found yourself in a room and could fly around around it with the hand controls. And... that's it near as I could see. I played it exactly one time because it was so darn expensive. It never had a line and only rarely did I see someone playing it. The novelty was that it was VR in the 90s and it was probably the first introduction to VR that anyone that played it had. It certainly was for me. The nintendo virtual boy had either not come out at this point or came out shortly before, but this machine was in 'full color'. Or at least as full color as 90s 3d could be.

minorhero:
Finally something with a picture to post for an update :P

I got in my box of buttons and decided to mockup my control scheme. It was super easy to do it with the help of slagcoin.com. I printed a couple of templates out at different ppi and measured the marked distances until they more or less matched what was reported, then used that ppi. For me it was 100ppi seemed the most accurate. Then I taped the template to a scrap piece of MDF and drilled some small pilot holes in the center of each button location.

I followed this up with my hole saw. Afterwards I superglued some more scrap to the sides to raise up the control surface. Here is how it looked:

This scheme felt really nice so I think I will keep it. I originally planned to go on to wire this up so I could test it out on the computer I am going to use for the cabinet, but.... that was before I looked up what it takes to do a full ipac install. To do all that only to have to take it all apart so I can move the buttons to the real control surface seems like a lot of uncessary work. I should be able to test run games with a gamepad just as well, so that's my new plan.

Speaking of ipac install. I have the IPAC Ultimate but most of the videos I have found online deal with the IPAC 2. So I am unsure how to handle the ground wires for the ultimate. There is 1 clearly marked ground and the wiring harness that I also bought has a connector already wired for the ground. I also have a big daisy chain of ground wires. My issue is wondering if there is an elegant way of using the wiring harness for as it is for ground and also the included ground daisy chains without ripping off at least a couple of connectors and soldering them together. Because how its currently setup I can ground exactly 1 thing, and then I wouldn't have a place to install the daisy chain so it connected back to the ipac board. Does that make sense?

The solution I have so far is to install the ground connector from the ipac on one of my 3 prong buttons, and install the daisy chain starting on the 2nd prong of the button and then put the positive wire from the ipac on what is usually the ground for that button. Does that sound right? This is the limit of my electrical knowledge :P

PL1:

--- Quote from: minorhero on October 23, 2023, 06:35:23 pm ---Speaking of ipac install. I have the IPAC Ultimate but most of the videos I have found online deal with the IPAC 2. So I am unsure how to handle the ground wires for the ultimate. There is 1 clearly marked ground and the wiring harness that I also bought has a connector already wired for the ground. I also have a big daisy chain of ground wires. My issue is wondering if there is an elegant way of using the wiring harness for as it is for ground and also the included ground daisy chains without ripping off at least a couple of connectors and soldering them together. Because how its currently setup I can ground exactly 1 thing, and then I wouldn't have a place to install the daisy chain so it connected back to the ipac board. Does that make sense?

--- End quote ---
1. Connect the daisy-chain ground for the Ultimate I/O board to the "GND" Dupont pin on the board.

2. Connect the other daisy-chains to the daisy-chain ground connected to the Ultimate I/O board.
- You can do this without cutting the daisy-chains by making a M-M Quick Disconnect (QD) jumper OR you can cut the daisy-chain, strip the wire, and crimp on a male QD.

--- Quote from: minorhero on October 23, 2023, 06:35:23 pm ---The solution I have so far is to install the ground connector from the ipac on one of my 3 prong buttons, and install the daisy chain starting on the 2nd prong of the button and then put the positive wire from the ipac on what is usually the ground for that button. Does that sound right?

--- End quote ---
Sorry, but that won't work for what you're trying to do.

Three-tab microswitches are Single-Pole, Double-Throw (SPDT) switches.

The three tabs are Common (COM), Normally-Closed (NC), and Normally-Open (NO).
- When the switch is not pressed, the COM lever arm makes contact with NC.
- When the switch is pressed, the COM lever arm breaks contact with NC and makes contact with NO.
- When the switch is released, the COM lever arm moves back to contact with NC.

NC
COM
NO

Scott

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