SoftwareThis is not necessarily the best software for
you, but this is everything I used and have had wonderful help and am very impressed with the results. It works for me, and looks and plays damn good.
Mala (http://malafe.net/)Ever since I was a wee lad I knew I’d be using MaLa. Its not the flashiest or the quickest, but its customization is what won me over. Plus, its free so there’s no nag screens as you’re messing with your first layout for a decade.
I wanted themes to categorize my gamelist browsing. So I created a layout (using MaLaLayout) that had different “pages” for fighters, shooters, maze, etc. You can see my results here:
http://malafe.net/index.php?page=layouts&subpage=generic_cocktail and a youtube here:
The video was made to show a lag in list changing, but has now been fixed.
MaLa U360 plugin (http://malafe.net/index.php?page=plugins#ultrastik)This MaLa plugin allows your u360s to be programmed on the fly inside MaLa. The plugin sees the game started, compares it to a list of u360 maps, and instantly sets you up.
Mame Compiler 64 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=71845.0)headkaze created this little beauty to ease your compiling woes. In a few clicks you can disable nags, add hiscore, change CPU optimization, whatever you need.
Romlister (http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/)This little app will sort almost any roms you need. It lets you pick monitor orientation, genre, # of buttons, etc, and create a batch file you can use to pick certain roms from your bloated .127 romset and move them to the location of your choice. It even makes gamelists for MaLa, Hyperspin, Maximus, etc.
CPWizard (http://members.iinet.net.au/~freeaxs/cpwizard/)Another nice program from headkaze. I cant get into all the details of this thing as it does so much. The way I set it up is it starts on the startup of MaLa. When I hit “pause” it pauses the game and brings up a CP image (see attach) with which buttons are used and what directions the joystick uses, all with labels if available. Hit pause again and the CP window disappears but the game stays paused. This allows me to change dip switches and other admin stuff with the game paused. Really slick and very powerful.
CPWizard also has a batch-image-creator feature. I was having the issue of people sitting down at the cab wanting to play 2-player, but not knowing which games were alternating or even 2 player. So I used the batch utility to create images with the same name as the rom that showed joystick, buttons, player number, and simultaneous or alternating. I created a definable in the MaLa layout to show these images as you scroll through the list (see attached).
Instant Sheller (http://www.gameex.net/Community/InstantSheller/tabid/73/Default.aspx)This little guy was written by Tom Speirs. I automatically shells to the program you want th shell to. It also hides the taskbar, hides the desktop, hides the cursor, turns off any sounds, and even changes the “Windows is now starting” logo. If you honk something up you can simply click “Undo Changes” and Windows is back in its previous glory.
Asus MyLogo (on the support CD for certain Asus boards)All this simply does is change the BIOS full-screen logo to something Mame-ish. Its pretty self explanatory. Just make sure youre not using MyLogo 2.0 on a MyLogo 1.0 BIOS.
TinyXP (Youll have to do your own searching for this one)I used eXPerience TinyXP rev9. TinyXP is built basically for gamers, so all of the Windows overhead is gone, but still retains the basics for media and basic networking. Very small and runs very fast. Before adding codecs, drivers, and .NET and all that, I was having startup times (power button to hour-glass gone) of 19 seconds on my old Athlon 1800+. Some people have problems with TinyXP, but if youre not doing anything too extravagant, I would suggest trying it out.
I also have the basic networking turned on and shared the C:\ drive. Most of the stuff on an arcade machine doesn’t use the registry, which makes it really easy to edit INI files, change gamelists, change images, make repairs, and add roms. You can run some of the apps from a different machine without any errors and edit things on the fly. Just recently I had family over for Thanksgiving and my brother-in-law got the gamelists messed up (shooter turned into sports, sports turned into driving, etc). I went to my regular PC and renamed them back. Next time he exited a game to the list, it was already fixed. I would recommend this if it's feasible.