Pedestal Arcade 4 players with trackball, modern gaming PC

[Ye Bobbum Man]

Helo all,

Having previously built a raspberry pi-powered bartop arcade, my next project is going to be a 4 player pedestal arcade powered by a gaming PC as opposed to the Pi which, while awesome, deals with limitations as you get to the late 90's/early 2000 games and beyond.  Plus I am incredibly fortunate in that I have a close friend who spends a ton of time assembling, buying, and selling PC's and PC parts and he is hooking me up with a very nice PC (i9 13900K processor, 4070 RTX, so on) for next to nothing.  My goal is to have an arcade machine that can play MAME, NES, SNES, PS1, Dreamcast, Neo Geo, Genesis, and some others on the arcade top using Launchbox/Big Box but that I could also use to play modern games on Steam (with either a controller or with the arcade top for certain titles)

If at all possible, I was wondering about the ability to play more 'modern' beat em ups, platformers, and shoot em ups (think games like Shredder's revenge, Streets of Rage 4, Cuphead, Super Meat Boy, etc) using the arcade controls as opposed to a controller.  Big reason is that I have 2 boys, age 5 and 7, and the 7-year-old has left-sided hemiparesis (significant weakness) and no fine motor control of his left hand due to prior brain surgery for epilepsy.  He can't use a controller thumb stick or d-pad but does pretty well using an arcade joystick, which has the additional benefit of helping to get him using his weak hand, something that can often frustrate him.  I know that any game with analog controls really won't work on the arcade top but was thinking that some like I mentioned above could possibly work well.  Also I'd like to be able to play more modern fighting games like Injustice or MvC3 on the top as well (5-year-old loves playing the old Capcom superhero fighting games).

I figured there may be some pitfalls and difficulties with this plan so wanted to see what this community had to say before I got started on it.  My kids have a blast on the 2 player bartop arcade and we are in the process of converting their current toy room into more of a move/gaming lounge and would like to have this arcade as the centerpiece.  On down the road I would like to add lightguns to the setup but don't plan on installing them initially.  Anyway, that's the plan and any input would be much appreciated. 

[Ond]

G'day Ye Bobbum Man. Some initial thoughts, in no particular order... The 'community' here may not have much to say at all.. it's very quiet these days. BYOAC still is an awesome resource though. With some research on your part you can look up many previous builds including 4 player pedestals and read up on advice from veterans.  New builders commonly want to build arcade machines that "play everything". The more we learn about building, best practice, do's and don'ts etc. the more we understand it's better to start with a specific (limited) list of games and design for that. Feel free to ignore that advice, I did, until I eventually understood as well.  Going from Raspberry Pi to i9 CPU and RTX 4070 seems like overkill. I don't know what the balance of processing demand is for the emulation of all the different platforms you mentioned, but in general I think it's still weighted heavily toward CPU.

[Zeosstud]

I agree the jump from a Pi to a modern gaming PC is huge, but in your situation, why not. Having a buddy that can hook you up with a great PC for a great price. Fantastic. Personally, I have a little input from things I have been messing with, as far as lightgun games go. For me, just playing Area 51 on Mame 0.248 vs Mame 0.263, my 10th Gen i5 plays the game at 98% on older Mame, but at like 60% on the latest version. When I load it up on my gaming PC, which has specs just under what you mentioned, the game plays at 100%, so, yeah, if you can, bring the power. When you get Launchbox/BigBox going as your frontend, you will have an almost unlimited number of gaming platforms you can pull from. Enjoy your new setup with the kids, that is what it is all about.

Zeosstud