Your ultimate MAME machine

[Wackychimp]

Ok so if you had unlimited funds and unlimited time to build it (and play it) what would you use to build your ultimate MAME machine.

List everything it would take to put it all together.(hardware, monitor, cabinet, controls, emu front end, computer OS... everything!!)

[tom61]

If I had unlimited time and funds, I wouldn't use MAME, I'd buy the real thing.  

[Wackychimp]

Har, har!!  

I'm trying to get an idea of what to put in my machine.  I figure if I can et an idea of what would go into a dream machine then I can look at it, decide what I can afford, and go from there.

All "dream machine" layouts accepted.

[Mameham]

 I wouldn't buy the real thing... it would take up too much room... this is what I would do if I had an over abundance of money to dump into this hobby ( though some would think we have already done that! )

1) Send money to Nicola. I know he's not doing it for the money, but hell, if I had that much I'd give him some.

2) Build multiple Mame cabinets... I never liked the franken cabinets... too many controls take away from the "real" feel of the cabinets...

Cabinet 1 - Street Fighter style. 2 joysticks. 6 buttons each player. 25" monitor.

Cabinet 2 - Neo Geo style. 2 joysticks. 4 buttons each player. 25" monitor. Should also take care of all the other 2 player 8 way joystick games.

Cabinet 3 - Trackball, Spinner, 8 way joystick with trigger, 3-4 fire buttons. To make up for all the combo games... Discs of Tron, etc, as well as for Arknoid, Centipede, etc.

Cabinet 4 - Sitdown driving cabinet

Cabinet 5 - Offroad or Sprint cabinet with 3 wheels. For... well, Offroad... and Sprint. And Demolition Derby.

Cabinet 5 - Two 4 way joysticks, one in Q-Bert mode. 2-4 buttons. For Pacman, QBert, the rest...

Cabinet 6 - Dual Gun game cabinet if we can ever support 2 guns at the same time...

And of course Cabinet 7 - Yoke Style with 4-6 buttons, shifter. For Star Wars and Spy Hunter...

Yeah... that'd about do it...

[jerryjanis]

You might have to nearly double that amount (the 6 cabinets)...  I would think that you'd want the vertical and horizontal games to have the appropriate monitors...  (Or, the monitors could rotate).

[SNAAAKE]

MAN YOU YOU WANNA STOP DREAMING.we all make real stuff here

but if i had UNLIMITED funds then i would buy from hanaho games.i wont try and build it myself.thats only with unlimited funds.with that i would have someone build the thing for me.

here are the list of stuff i would use.

show case style cabinet

33" svga monitor

street fighter layout with atleast one trackball

JAMMA harness,dreamcast and, mame interface installed alltoghter.

some light guns to play actual gun games.

any game thats not emulated yet.

a dreamcast with everysingle arcade based games.(I ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING WITHOUT UNLIMITED FUNDS).

pc specs are not really a dream.but if i had unlimited funds then,   p4 with fastest cpu out there...2.5 GHz,2 gig ddr ram,ge force max 4(THE ONE FOR $400,just wanna see how the card look),and the alienware case.and i'm good with this.

[SirPoonga]

Simply, the cabinet I'm building.  I have unlimited funds, though it will take several years to collect those funds:)

[tom61]

I wouldn't buy the real thing... it would take up too much room...

Thats what the unlimited time is for, house extensions.  

I'm trying to get an idea of what to put in my machine.  I figure if I can et an idea of what would go into a dream machine then I can look at it, decide what I can afford, and go from there.

Look at the Roswell 8802 and Mr. Salty examples, these two are good examples of the accuracy and number controls attainable.

[hyiu]

if unlimited fund and time....

I would like a BRAND NEW... precisely like original... TRON cab.... haaa haaa haaa.....          

well... somehow... I just like that very much... heee hee....

and then... a 2 player machine.... standard fighting configuration....

a machine with all the special componments... spinners, trackball, rotating stick... etc.

and a 4 player cab.....

that should be all.... haaa haaa haaa.....      

hmmm... somehow... talking about it makes me feel pretty good..... too bad, in real life I don't have enough space.....

yeah... like snaaake said... unlimited fund means I can hire some professional to do good woodwork for me so that I can concentrate on just playing, right ??  that sounds fine to me... haaa haa haa....    

[1UP]

I'm actually building my ultimate machine!    One machine, but with a 3-sided rotating control panel: 1) Two 8-way sticks with 6 buttons each, an Ultimarc 4-way with 45 degree twist for Pac-Man or Q*bert, illuminated player start buttons.  2) Two illuminated Tron repro sticks, Oscar Pro, 3" illuminated trackball for all dual stick/optical games.  3) A modular CP that hosts a Star Wars yoke and two T2 guns with recoil.  Expandable to support steering wheels or any type of USB controllers.  Top it off with a 27" Wells Gardner monitor, all in a custom built cabinet covered tastefully with a collage of classic side/CP art.

But really, my ultimate would come after I get a house with a basement or rec-room.  I would have 10-20 of my favorite original upright and cockpit machines, a pinball table or two, and a mp3 hacked jukebox.    Then the Mame cab would go upstairs in my office!  Maybe in a few more years... (we did say unlimited time, right?)

[Trenchbroom]

My lottery dream is as follows (some of you have my ideal setup already you dirty dogs!):

My existing upright will be converted to the "unusual" controlled games:  Spinner, Tron stick, trackball, yoke.

Cocktail cabinet for all 4 way vertical games.

Big behemoth new cabinet for everything else.

[Lilwolf]

There would be  a few..

1) Cocktail table... for older games.  On the two long ends would be super joysticks with oscar plates... then on one horizontal side, it would have two joysticks for horizontal games/fighting games...

2) A supersprint cabinet.  3players, 3 wheels, standup driving games.

3) a pedestal cabinet (whatever their called).  With a 50" Arcade montior with a great scan converter (the few thousand dollar ones)... this would have hotswappable control panels for each type game (starwars/2playerfighting/4player4button/classic 4way/qbert/asteroids/others)

A hottub and some hot chicks to hang out in it.  I would upgrade my pooltable to a nice lion leg hardwood one.  I bar that has a pinball game built in the end (saw a picture of one and it was sweeeet!) and maybe a few dartboards

And we aren't even talking about the pinball machines I would get.

[Sasquatch!]

Two words: A HUGE MONITOR.

Okay, so that's three words.  You know what I mean.

[Bob Sanders]

Megalo versus cabinet

two giant screens 60" back to back with naomi 2 board and pc

naomi 2 can play both naomi and naomi 2 games

swappable pedestals with either guns 4 player gauntlet style, flight yoke, steering wheels with seats, and neo geo/ capcom layout 1 player on each side

why 1 on each side who cares they do it in japan with 29 inch cabs

[CthulhuLuke]

Well when MameGtx used to be up, because I can't get the link to work anymore, he had a link to a picture of my absolute dream arcade, I posted it up at my geocities site, so here, take a look:
http://www.geocities.com/cthulhuluke/dreamarcade.jpg
and if you don't know how to get around Geocities anti-linking thing, do this, open up that image, then when geocities says it can't find it, put a ? at the end of the image, so it reads http://www.geocities.com/cthulhuluke/dreamarcade.jpg?  and press enter, and it will load.
I've emailed the guy who made this, and he said that he was moving, so he couldn't work on it at the time, but that was a few monthes ago, so hopefully he worked on it some more, but if he sees this post, email me man. cthulhu32@hotmail.com
    The only thing I'd probably change on that cabinet to make it my absolute dream cabinet is first of all install some really nice tweeters, mids, and 2 10" subwoofers with a 1000-watt amp, put a 40 to 50" flat screen with svideo, make the 4 joysticks swappable with another panel of 2 trackballs and 2 spinners (if I could ever got the wiring to work), and another swappable panel with 3 to 4 racing wheels for all that Off-road, Bad Lands, and Super Sprint mad action.  I'd also have the freakin monster 2 ghz processor, 512mb of DDR ram, two 80gb hard drives with 7200rpm, a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum, Liquid Cooling, and an ATI Radeon All in Wonder 8500.  Also, the 4 joysticks control panel would be wired up so it will be accepted by a playstation (the 4 controller extension things), and a Dreamcast, with all the latest games.  The paint on the cabinet would be black glossy with that sparkle that they put on cars.
    Yeah, my other mame dream would be to have a car adapter for a very very high quality projector, and shine it on a dam or waterfall and plug MAME into the projector, and play mame there. That would be so awesome...... ahhh, nerd time over, back to real world.
    -CthulhuLuke

[Bob Sanders]

those lcd/plasma screens suck for emu so do projectors unless you run 3d games on it or something there just big computer monitors very sharp

tvs work better

nice picture though id like the plans to that is he done moving yet

[CthulhuLuke]

I bet he has finished, cause it's been hella long since I last talked to him.  He only sent me a picture that was just a basic design, with no feet or measurements or anything, and he said he wanted to paint it now.
email me and I'll give you his email so you can contact him.
 -CthulhuLuke