Interesting discovery in Mexico yesterday

[Disturbed013]

Anyone know anything about King of Fighters 2002 cabs?

Went to Mexico yesterday and the line to come back into US at the port of entry was too long so we decided to find a bar to hole up in and wait it out a bit.

We discovered a nice little off the beaten path kind of place and enjoyed a few cool ones.  Nice.  Three pool tables, a foosball table, Rockola, 2 arcade cabs in a corner turned off, a nice bartender and friendly folks, with the exception of 3 US citizens acting like complete asses on the other side of the bar.  The bartender thanked me for providing her translations, and they soon left, fortuneately.  Embarrasing to say the least...

Anyway as we were going to leave, I decided I just had to check out those two cabs whispering to me in the corner.  At first glance, both were in very good shape, especially considering the rest of the bar   One was a Virtua Fighter cab, pretty clean, CP scratched up pretty bad, and player1 stick had obviously been subject to a repair attempt, while I believe it may have worked, it surely would have played like shifting gears on a lawn tractor.  On to  the other one.  The bar owner ran over and asked if we wanted to play the machines since they were off.  We said no thank you, but he switched them on anyway.  I didn't see what passed on the other cab at boot but don't think I missed anything obvious.  It was a green/yellow King of Fighters 2002 cab, but looked like a NeoGeo, and listed like 4 other games on the marquee and CP too, I'm saying KOF02 only because that was the center logo.

Mostly I was wondering about what coins they would use in arcade machines, because the only mexican coins close in size to a quarter are worth quite a bit more than that.  Well, that question remains unanswered because these machines both took "coras", which is a local translation for quarter.  Okay, origin in US then.  When the KOF machine loaded up, the picture on the screen was not any of the games listed on the marq/CP.  I had expected a standard NeoGeo cab, but then noticed an extra red pushbutton mounted up near the speaker overhang on the left side, and a rocker switch on the right side.  Then I started reading what was on the screen.  Yep, a scrolling list of about 300 games, I'm guessing.  What was interesting was how the whole screen background changed for each game when highlighted.  I'm trying to decide on a FE myself and that was a nice touch.

Have I missed somethine obvious here?  Can one machine have that many games and be legit (loosely speaking, obviously US law does not apply).  I selected a few games, Mario Bros, Pac-Man, Defender, and as expected, the red button up on the topside goes back to the menu.  The only information I could glean from that menu was just above the games list.  It stated:  "Greeslee 1.69 L PUBLICA"    I tried hitting a few button combos to see if I could get anything else, but no luck.  Google didn't turn up anything, so I'm really hoping you guys can shed some light on this thing for me.

I wish I had had my camera, the whole thing seemed really odd to me.

D13

[TOK]

There are a few commercially legal multi-game machines out there. This one isn't exact, but definitely along the same lines.

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

[Q*Bert_OP]

that sounds like one of those xxxx-in 1 boards from taiwan that holds up to 1 thousand or so games on it

[AwesomeAlbert]

what part of mexico was this at?

[fjl]

I was in Tijuana last month and found a small restaurant that had arcade machines in it. Apparently they looked like MAME'd cabinets since the control panels where obvious fix ups to better fit the Street Fighter layout and such. They also had frontends and endless lists of games.

Surprised I had forgotten about this and never mentioned it on this site. But yeah, I think some of the cabinets they have there are mame cabinets. I didn't check to see what kind of currency they take since I was more interested in the cab itself. Apparently they're rebuilt cabs since most of them still had the original marquees and side art of the games they contained before being MAME'd.

This also reminds me that the reason I wanted to start my own cabinet, not just because it's something I've wanted to do since I first got mame to run Ms. Pac-Man but because I witnessed a custom built cabinet at a Buster Douglas(arcade/restaurant) in Orange county. They where using MameWah. It was then and there where I finally decided I should create my own cab.

Also the other day, I went to a restaurant called Mick And Macks in Long Beach. They originally had what looked like an original Galaga arcade machine all the way in the back near the restrooms. I had played it in the past. But this last time I went, I noticed the cabinet looked different. So when I took a closer inspection, they had changed it to a MAME'd cabinet. Or perhaps one of those boards that holds a lot of games.

I found This kind of dumb because they had games in the list that where 4 way and 8 way plus trackball games, two players games and others but the control panel only had one joystick and one button. I had no idea how they expected the other games to be played with only one button and one 8 way joystick. 
  

Like an idiot I tried Galaga but the screen would flicker like old tv's with a v-hold problem. Sad to say, I quickly died and walked away mad.

[Disturbed013]

This was in Agua Prieta, Sonora where I had seen the machine.

I checked on the globalvr, but no, not an aftermarket machine at all.  Exactly like efjayel describes, an older commercial cab that's been mame'd.  Same also that they had 4-way and 8-way games in the list.

I just couldn't discover what it was running, with the only clue at the top of the menu being that Greeslee 1.69 L PUBLICA     Actually, aside from the hideous appendage of attaching the ESC button to the cab overhang and not considering the controls at all, the front-end itself was kind of nice.  The whole screen background changed with each game selected in the list, not in a window.  The background changed while you moved up/down the list.

[gonzo90017]

GameLauncher ? http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/screen_shots.shtml

[Disturbed013]

No, but thats the right idea except the list was offset to the left side of screen and in a really small font.  Also had that Greeslee 1.69 at the top of the list no matter how far I scrolled.

[RayB]

No, but thats the right idea except the list was offset to the left side of screen and in a really small font.  Also had that Greeslee 1.69 at the top of the list no matter how far I scrolled.

Yeah, GameLauncher can be configured to be like that.

[jlfreund]

I would wager The Santa Cruz beach boardwalk probably has one of the biggest retro gaming arcades in the US right now.  Lots of sweet classics like Marble, Arkanoid, Gorf, Robotron, Star Wars, X-Men 6 player, etc..

I went there a couple times this year and they had this one large cabinet that had a pretty fancy custom front end with ~100 games in it.  A lot of them were ones I never heard of, but the one I remember (because I played it several times) was Side Arms.  It seemed pretty legit, but I'd be curious to know how they accomplish emulating 100+ games (and not just the license gamepack with Robotron, Joust, Sinistar, Frogger, etc) without using MAME.

Jason