Main > Main Forum
What have I gotten myself into?
(1/5) > >>
JonnyBoy:
Well, I was browsing ebay the other day and came across...THE TIME MACHINE! It was an arcade style machine, claiming to have over 10,000 games. It also included Dance Dance Revolution pads and had plenty of games from NES to N64. Well, after looking at it for several minutes I realized that it was basically a PC running a bunch of ROMs with a cute interface. The thought came across my mind...why don't I build one of these for myself?

I checked out ebay and found some cheap barebones PCs. I figured, heck...mount a PC with a monitor and some speakers in a cabinet. Attach all the controllers through the USB ports and create some sort of interface to browse through all the ROMs loaded on the PC.

Could this basic concept be done? Considering I'm a video game junkie and have tons and tons of roms for most all systems...could I possibly create an arcade machine that would be functional with a PC and all these USB based controllers?

Is there anything serious concerns thusfar? Anything I should watch out for? What would be the easiest path? I read the Newbie guide and still am not sure if the interface would even work, considering the vast amount of games and emulators. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you all very much.

PS, if you want to see the time machine...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4315&item=6138171729&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
TOK:
Arcade games at home? A computer inside an arcade game?!? An interface to browse them? Pure crazy talk, that'll NEVER happen!





Really, I suggest you take a look at the newbie sticky posts at the top of the forums.
Good luck with the project.  ;D
LordDamo:
Ummm, thats what this forum is for -welcome BTW. Check out the stick post for Newbie's at the top of the main forum.

Go here first
http://www.mame.net/

Heres some pages to get you started
http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/
http://spystyle.arcadecontrols.com/

How to interface controls and where to get them from:

http://www.groovygamegear.com
http://www.ultimarc.com/
http://www.therealbobroberts.com/
And right here at this forum + plus its main page http://www.arcadecontrols.com

Hope this helps, happy mame'ing
JonnyBoy:
Yeah, but there is one thing. I can't seem to find anybody who has made a controller for n64 games. For shooting games wouldn't you need 2 joysticks? I was really hoping on not having to make my own control board but it looks like I may have no other choice. Would you recommend the I-Pac? Is it pretty easy to use for my type of application?
Oddfeld:
The IPAC is perfect for this sort of thing (it is, after all, what it was designed for). It's basically a keyboard encoder that you wire your arcade button or joystick microswitch or whatever to instead of keyboard keys. So when you hit a pushbutton, the computer sees it as a particular keyboard keypress.

As for N64 games, I'm guessing you'd run these on a PC emulator, so you can just use the same controller (pretty much all emulators can be configured for keyboard input to simulate a console gamepad). Games that rely on the analog controls may be more problematic (you'd have to hook up an analog joystick or something to mimic those controls).

Another option would be to use something like an adaptoid to let you plug N64 controllers into your PC. So you could have an arcade cabinet with arcade controls for playing MAME, and plug an N64 controller in underneath the control panel to play N64 games.

If you're sticking a real N64 inside a cabinet and want to wire it up to some arcade controls, you'd need to hack a pad (basically gut a gamepad and wire the buttons to the contacts on the PCB inside the gamepad that the original buttons were hitting).

There are commercial arcade controllers available with console adapters too (X-arcade etc), I'm not sure if any support the N64 though.

Navigation
Message Index
Next page

Go to full version