I also got to spend time with Brian and Bill at CAEX and was given a fairly complete hands-on preview of Hyperspin. Let me first say that both Bill and Brian were really great guys and are just full of passion for the project and it shows. Also I am a fan of all FE's (That support video at least
) and each one somwhat serves a slightly different niche and feature set. Now I havent followed this thread too closely as I stay pretty much slammed with my day job and website so I apologize if any of this is old news but I felt that I should put my own two cents in. Ok let's get down to business......
I have seen the you tube videos and even reported on it early on, but I really wasn't prepared for what I saw. I must say that when I first saw it fired up on that little laptop I was just floored, it was beautiful. First it booted up very fast, just about 10 seconds from executing the program. Suprising for a front end that is this graphics rich. The first thing to hit the screen was the system selection, which started with an amazing MAME animated theme. This was not enough however, as we then cycled through many of the major consoles and other emulated game systems, each one had an equally impressive animated theme. Everything was just so incredibly smooth, I really couldn't believe it. Then we browsed through a couple of game lists, first we looked at the MAME game lists. I was really impressed by the individual game themes and I had the impression that this was the first time I felt that an FE gave me the feeling that it was a commercial product. What I mean is that when navigating the very simple interface with its very glamorous presentation, it was what I would expect from a machine that I would find at Dave & Busters or another modern arcade. Mind you as I am watching this, it occurs to me that while it looked so great, the vast amount of time and expertise it must take to create these these might be a bit more than any team could pull off. But my fears were soon put to rest when I was shown the back end programs that come with hyperspin. Let's just say that it was all very professional and simple to use, now I can't imagine that most will have any difficulty creating themes or animations in a very short amount of time.
My next thought was that while great for individual game themes, it was probably going to be a long time if ever before an individual theme was created for every game. Then we fired up a system that didnt have any individual themes for the games but it did use video and artwork in such a way to still be just as impressive. Realize they are also supplying all of the artwork, which takes much of the guesswork out of thing and should make for a fairly quick and painless install and for the casual user would be satisfied. But it is open enough, and has the right tools available for even the most anal of us
.
All in all while not as feature rich (at least to begin with) as GameEx or Mala for example, it is just one of the slickest presentations for an arcade cab that I have ever seen. And finally it seems that there is now a solution to getting that commercial product feel out of your arcade cabinet. If I had any cons it would be that there is no LCD or LED support built in, as I use a Beta Brite, LED Wiz, and 4x40 LCD Display on my cab, but I am fairly sure that I will be able to use a third party app to get my desired results.
It is obvious that Bill, Brian and the rest of the team are putting a lot of work into this new FE and I encourage folks who were looking for something like this to help and support this project. There is no reason that this product should be free, yet it is and that is really generous of these guys.
- Tip of the hat to the Hyperspin team, it's going to be a zoo in the next couple of weeks when this beast comes out of private beta!
- Wave of the Finger to any haters out there on this project, it's looks like it's going to be an amazing package of software!
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Topic: New Frontend (Coming Soon) (Read 49848 times)
