Ultimate Console Arcade, How Bout some Comments!

[the3eyedblindman]

Ok, Im looking for help and comments here...

I have purchased a sega genesis, and a ps one, in the hopes and dreams of building an arcade out of those two.
I chose the sega for classic games such as nba jam, moonwalker, street fighters, mortal kombats, paperboy, pacman, t2 arcade, and many others.
The psone is for newer games such as namco museum, mortal kombat trilogy, capcom vs. marvel, and so on.

The arcade will be the design of the arcade called "Ultra quad" from dreamauthentics.com, and have a 27 inch tv. It will look like it has a four player control panel, but really it will be controls made from 2 sega controllers and 2 ps one controllers.

1. I am looking for peoples views on this, do you think it is a good idea, waste of time, ect. Give me comments.

2. Few questions about control hacking. I have heard to purchase 2 off brand controllers for the ps one because they are easier to work with... true? and 2nd, on the original sega 6 button and 3 button controllers, the soldering points have some black stuff over them, do I solder to these or scrape it off, does anyone know how to do this.

3. Is there any way of hooking up pc speakers to the tv or consoles to give this good sound, what should i do for my speakers.

Im really looking forward to this and want to start soon, so please write back one here with comments ( please ) and questions answered (please) thanks people, The3eyedblindman.

[Rawker]

seems pointless to me i mean swapping carts or cds is kinda lame. might as well just build a control pannel that hooks up to the console instead of the whole arcade machine. makes no sense to me to spend money on a tv, wood, etc and not a computer which can run genesis, psx, snes, nes, and mame all off a hard drive. i'm sure you can find one for around the same price as the 27" tv. so ...

1. waste of time
2. not sure, there are walk through's out there if you search www.google.com
3. pc speakers to a tv is possible if there is audio out, you'll need one of those female rca audio to female phone plug.

[the3eyedblindman]

I dont think it is pointless, anyone can hook a control panel to a computer and not waste the money of building a cabinet too. I tried mame, and i couldnt find any roms, and the ones i found online didnt work, I dont know where to find them, and you are not allowed to request them, so  I figured I would take the easy way out using a ps one and  a genesis. There are mannnyyy arcade games you can get combined on these systems, mentioned some above. And about switching cartriges and cd's, i was planning on making what on a mame machine is the "keyboard drawer" into a drawer that holds the psx and genesis, then you just slide it out when you wanna change games, and right above that is the control panel that is easily attached to the systems under it, hoped that helped, please, more comments and help wanted!

[DeathDealer]

if you have problems runing mame, use the mame32 wich is for windows and comes with a front-end, its very easy to use.

[bishmasterb]

the3eyedblindman,

Actually, you raise some good points.

There are some serious barriers for beginners to this hobby, especially if said beginner doesn't necessarily share an interest in computers (aside from gaming).

As far as some of your ROMs not working, MAME is infamous for its different versions requiring different dumps of certain ROMs.

To obtain copies of ROMs (to games which you own the original ROMs of course! ) you will simply need to put in some time with Google and be patient, and endure many pop-up windows trying to distract you with tales of large breasted women or .... well, mostly just tales of large breasted women.

The best thing to do is find someone local to you that already uses MAME to get you started.

Oh, and like the previous poster said, definitely start with MAME32 which is a full Windows GUI app (unlike MAME, which is a command line program).

[DaveMMR]

As for connecting PC speakers to the Genesis and PS1: the original Genesis (not the rereleases) had a headphone jack which will accomodate PC speakers easily.  Otherwise your local Radio Shack will have the proper adapters for connecting the headphone jack to an RCA input (which the PS1 has or better yet, the TV -- so you don't have to keep switching connections).  

Probably the best thing to do is look through the website and get some ideas (spend a good amout of time looking through the examples page).  It's interesting to see how people overcame problems and there are some ingenious designs out there.

And maybe you may want to acquaint yourself with MAME.  Yes, it's not the most intuitive program out there (even MAME32) but it's also not hard to get up and running once you read through the help files.  There are also free, legal ROMS on mame.net, so start with those (their appeal is a different story).  

Finally, plan plan plan plan plan.  I wasted a lot of money on lumber trying to forge ahead with a lackluster plan only to find out it wasn't turning out good at all.  

Good luck.