Multi-arcade cabinets??

[Hockeyboy]

So I went to this new store in town to look at their arcade & pinball games, and to look at billiard tables (ended up buying a brand-new one for the basement - woot!) and starting talking to the owner about arcade cabinets. He had several there for sale - a Ms. Pacman cabinet with all the Pacman games loaded, a cabinet with over 40 games loaded and an interesting front-end - the game titles kind of rotated in a circle with a big blue pointer and when you paused on a title the screen for that game would show up in the background...he also had a Williams cabinet that had Stargate, Defender, Robotron2084, and some other Williams games.

...anyway, got to talking about cabinets and he mentioned MAME and asked if I knew anything about it. Well, I haven't built a cabinet yet but I do have MAME on my PC and have lurked these boards for some time now. He showed me this cabinet that had a USB cable just inside the coin door and then showed me a little USB thing that looked just like a flash drive. He said you plug this thing into the USB cable, the computer inside automatically downloads all the games off the chip and then somehow sends a signal to destroy or erase the chip so you can only do this one time to one machine. The software then automatically resorts the titles and you now have 'extra' games available. The USB flash drive thing goes for about $30 cost, and he sells them for a slight mark-up. The cabinet itself was retailing for $2798 and had two tall joysticks, two 6-button setups and a trackball.

Does anyone here know what kind of setup allows for this? Why can't MAME(rs) do an instant upload off a chip to their computers that are running MAME and a front end? What front end (since I haven't built a cabinet yet, I don't know which one does this) has the game titles on the right side with a big blue pointer and they 'rotate' in a circle by use of the trackball or the joysticks?

Obviously, I don't want to spend $2800 on a pre-built cabinet, I just was wondering what the rest of you know about this type of cabinet and it's expandability by use of the USB cable and flash drive chip thing.  Thanks.

[CheffoJeffo]

Was it something like this ?

http://www.globalvr.com/products_ultracade_intro.html

Cheers

[Hockeyboy]

Can't tell - didn't really get to see the sides of the cabinet so I don't recall. Went to the website you linked but I couldn't find anything that showed the screen in 'action.'

Still wondering two things: what front-end was this cabinet using (hopefully my description is good enough to jar someone's memory) and can MAME builders use the same USB cable connection to instantly download extra games to their machine and have their machine automatically load them?

[CheffoJeffo]

Sounds like it was an Ultracade, which has its' own proprietary front-end.

There is a freeware clone:

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Ultrastyle

If it is an Ultracade, chances are almost 100% that the game update technology has been patented (search on 'Ultracade' or 'Dave Foley' for some light background reading ... neither are popular in MAME-related circles).

Cheers

[GoPodular.com]

I'd be willing to bet it was an Ultracade.  They have some USB game packs.  The game pack has to be registered to the individual UC machine.  IIRC, the way it used to work (and still does?) is you call them with the # of the machine and the # of the game pack.  They put it in their database and give you an activation code.  If the game pack was registered previously, you won't get the activation code.

You can see a USB game pack in this ebay auction.

*note: technically this is an illegal gamepack.  IIRC, Ultracade never had proper licensing for these games/artwork and they were all supposed to be returned to UC for destruction or something.  I don't know if they can give an activation code for it or not.  They shouldn't... but who knows.  It also includes Jungle King which was pulled from the arcades in 1982 because of IP infringement, so buyer beware.

[Hockeyboy]

That front-end does look very much like the one I saw.

I do appreciate the responses - I really don't want to go this way at all, but this guy was talking about how I could easily add MAME stuff to his existing cabinet if I bought it for $2800. Thing is, I'd much rather build my own cabinet, with my own parts, and put the game *I* want vs. what some yahoo thinks I would like. I think I actually get to start building this weekend - the guy who is giving me a TMNT cab says to come over after work to pick it up.

Just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing out on sme great new MAME advances, i.e. being able to plug in a USB flash drive and automatically loading new games, especially since we're not supposed to ask about how to get games on this forum.

Thanks all.

[twitami]

As far as I know, MAME will not work on an Ultracade cabinet. You can ONLY add the game packs from Ultracade (now Global VR) to the unit, not MAME roms. That was the thing that always bummed me out about them...$2800 for the unit wouldn't be that bad if you could add all the ROMS you wanted to it whenever you wanted too.

However, the advantage of course of an Ultracade is that it is a completely legal, warranteed, backed by a real company, product. There is no "grey area" about the games that you have installed on it, and if you have the rights to play them or not. If you look at Ultracade in comparison to buying all the games, it is great. The problem, for everyone in this hobby of course, is that we are looking at it in camparison to free ROMS.

Ultracade (especially the newest ones) do have a VERY slick menu system. The most recent one I saw, it actually plays videos of the games as you go through the menus, and then when you pick a game, it actually shows you EXACTLY which controls to use, and even uses the sound effects from the game as it displays the controls. I was VERY impressed by this. If this Front End was available to purchase for home MAME machines, I would be willing to pay a pretty large amount for it myself.

Anyway, just my 2 cents...

Brian