how many buttons do i need?

[severdhed]

hey guys, i'm really itching to build something..i'm pretty happy with my upright cabinet right now, and the wife is saying NO to a lightgun cabinet (i'll keep working on that one). i have really been getting into Donkey Kong lately, so i was thinking  I should build a small cabinet of some kind, either a bar top or a wall mount unit...single player, 4 way stick and 1 button only, with a vertical monitor.

i already have a PC pretty much ready to go, i have a 17" LCD monitor that i got for free that is just asking to be put to good use.  i also have a 4 button gamepad that i hacked that i can use for the control interface, or i also have a 2 player x-arcade that i can cannibalize if i need to.  i have a 4 way joystick (i'm not in love with this stick, but it would do until i could get a better one, and i have plenty of extra buttons.  so, the only cost i would have into this is building supplies...and a bartop/wall unit shouldn't require that much wood. 

i'm not exactly sure where i am going to put this thing, so i guess i need to decide that before i choose between bar top or wall mount unit....although i am leaning towards bartop for portability.   I have seen some amazing examples on these forums, but i am having a hard time finding examples of bartops that are dedicated to vertical classics.   i did some searching through MAWS the other day (i think my 2 year old was coloring on my list though this afternoon, and now i cannot find it, so i may need to make a new one)  i came up with a nice list of about 20 or so games that i actually like and would be playable on this type of setup.  I don't need this thing to play every game..that's what my upright cabinet is for (it has u360 sticks).  i just want to be able to play good vertical games that use a 4 way stick.  from the list i was looking at, i dont see a real need for any more than 1 action button...are there any good 4way vertical games that i would be missing out on if i only had 1 button?  I can easily make it have 2 or 3, but i see no point in it if they are never going to be used.

also, i have two options for computers to use...
i have a desktop PC that i am planning on using...it was in my upright before i upgraded it..  it is an athlon xp 2500+, 1gb of ram, geforce 4 mx440, 80gb HD.   i know it will have no problem running any of the classic mame games.

i also have an old Pentium 2 laptop that has very 128mb of ram.  i thought about using an older version of mame (i'm currently running .124 on my upright), which should run better on old hardware..and since i am only emulating the 4way classics, i shouldn't need alot of horsepower.   is this even worth looking into? the only reason i am considering it is because the laptop would take up much less space in the cabinet.  but i am just afraid that it will suck too much and not be worth putting the time into.

Is this a stupid Idea?  i dont really have a bar, or a good place to put this thing..but i really want to build another cabinet.  I dont realy have a need for it, but i think it would be a fun project.  In the summer, i like to take my old DLP projector outside and we watch movies or play video games in the back yard, projected onto a bed sheet hung from the side of the house.  i figure, if i had a bartop, i could easily take it out there and get some donkey kong going on a 10foot screen on the side of the house, which could be fun.  and i could always just keep it in the basement in my workshop area to play around with when i am hiding downstairs.   

also, i named my first cabinet ZakMan, after our first son, Zakary.  i'd like to name a cabinet after our other son, Xander...

so, what do you guys think?

do i need more than 1 button?
should i even bother doing this?
what can i name this thing?

[Jack Burton]

There's something about having just one button.  There's an  air of simplicity, of elegance of game design.

Is it going to have 1p and 2p buttons?  Cause you could always remap those if you really really wanted to get down on some vertical shooter.

[Turnarcades]

Is it going to have 1p and 2p buttons?  Cause you could always remap those if you really really wanted to get down on some vertical shooter.

Aaah yes on a keyboard encoder, but this would prove more difficult if he's using a gamepad hack as mentioned.

I would say not to sell yourself short - unless you're going with a repro of an original cabinet/panel, adding one or two extra buttons could be advisable, particularly if there was ever the possibility or need for it to be used for some other gaming need in the future. Get MAME32/UI and use the 'vertical' folder filter to see what you really want to play and how many buttons you need. I can't see many needing a lot of buttons, but you never know. Be creative with your layout and you could have admin buttons within easy reach thatcould be used as fire buttons if called for. If only using MAME this should be easy as you can re-configure on the fly in the menu, rather than having to re-map key assignments manually outside of the game environment.

[NOP]

here's what romlister pulled up for vertical, 4-way, 2 buttons: (trimmed for viewing ease)

Alpha Fighter / Head On
Armored Car (set 1)
Beastie Feastie
Cook Race
Crazy Kong (bootleg on Galaxian hardware, set 1)
Dig Dug II (Old Ver.)
Digger
Dorodon (set 1)
Eight Ball Action (Pac-Man conversion)
Evil Stone
Gun Dealer (Tecmo)
Heiankyo Alien
Hunchback (Galaxian hardware)
Invinco / Head On 2
Jumping Jack
Kicker
Lady Bug
Lady Master of Kungfu
Lasso
Mahjong Satsujin Jiken (Japan 881017)
Mikie
Mr. Do vs. Unicorns
Mr. Do's Castle (older)
Mysterious Stones - Dr. John's Adventure
Mysterious Stones - Dr. Kick in Adventure
Nunchackun
Pro Baseball Skill Tryout (Japan)
Qix (set 1)
Qix II (Tournament)
Samurai Nihon-ichi (set 1)
Shao-lin's Road
Shinnyuushain Tooru-kun
Space Attack / Head On
Space Panic (version E)
Super Glob (Pac-Man hardware)
SWAT (315-5048)
Tactician (set 1)
Taxi Driver
Telephone Mahjong (Japan 890111)
The Glob (Pac-Man hardware)

Use a grain of salt here, some of  those classics (lady bug, mr do) are here due to MAME xml errors describing the number of buttons.
There are some interesting games, but probably not enough to really seal it that you need a 2nd button.
I played a lot of space panic back in the day. 

[Paul Olson]

also, i have two options for computers to use...
i have a desktop PC that i am planning on using...it was in my upright before i upgraded it..  it is an athlon xp 2500+, 1gb of ram, geforce 4 mx440, 80gb HD.   i know it will have no problem running any of the classic mame games.

That machine will choke on Donkey Kong in version .124. The sound emulation added a huge amount to the horsepower requirement. I think .120 was the last version that would run it on my 2500+. That is actually the main reason I upgraded the PC in my cab; Blitz was a nice side effect though  .

I don't think there is much to warrant a second button with a 4-way, but check for 2-way games that might use it.

BTW, we will be having another DK contest at http://www.coinopspace.com/group/donkeykongfans next month if you want to try to improve your scores. I will post the details there when everything is finalized.

[massive88]

Two buttons opens you up to the entire NES library as well.

Just a thought.

If you already have a cab though, I agree theres some nice simplicity about just being able to use only one button and as you say, if you want to play more, you have the full cab.

The some games, like Donkey Kong for example, you may want to run an ooooolder version of mame to get back to where it was using samples.  When they started emulating the sound, the requirements for some of the simple looking games went really high.

[leapinlew]

You will not need more than 25 buttons per player.

[massive88]

You will not need more than 25 buttons per player.

LIAR!

[severdhed]

here's what romlister pulled up for vertical, 4-way, 2 buttons: (trimmed for viewing ease)

Alpha Fighter / Head On
Armored Car (set 1)
Beastie Feastie
Cook Race
Crazy Kong (bootleg on Galaxian hardware, set 1)
Dig Dug II (Old Ver.)
Digger
Dorodon (set 1)
Eight Ball Action (Pac-Man conversion)
Evil Stone
Gun Dealer (Tecmo)
Heiankyo Alien
Hunchback (Galaxian hardware)
Invinco / Head On 2
Jumping Jack
Kicker
Lady Bug
Lady Master of Kungfu
Lasso
Mahjong Satsujin Jiken (Japan 881017)
Mikie
Mr. Do vs. Unicorns
Mr. Do's Castle (older)
Mysterious Stones - Dr. John's Adventure
Mysterious Stones - Dr. Kick in Adventure
Nunchackun
Pro Baseball Skill Tryout (Japan)
Qix (set 1)
Qix II (Tournament)
Samurai Nihon-ichi (set 1)
Shao-lin's Road
Shinnyuushain Tooru-kun
Space Attack / Head On
Space Panic (version E)
Super Glob (Pac-Man hardware)
SWAT (315-5048)
Tactician (set 1)
Taxi Driver
Telephone Mahjong (Japan 890111)
The Glob (Pac-Man hardware)

Use a grain of salt here, some of  those classics (lady bug, mr do) are here due to MAME xml errors describing the number of buttons.
There are some interesting games, but probably not enough to really seal it that you need a 2nd button.
I played a lot of space panic back in the day. 

looking at that list, i'm not going to miss any of those games. 

as for the 2500+ not being able to handle donkey kong..that kinda sucks.  i never really played it much on my cabinet before the upgrade.  it seems to run OK on my P4 3.0ghz with 2gb of ram.

i'm not really interested in emulating NES games...alot of them would require an 8way stick anyway...i do all of my console emulation on my modded xbox, not my cabinet.

i'm not going to be able to use my gamepad hack, since it just won't have enough inputs...so it looks like i'll use the x-arcade interface, and just have alot of unused inputs.  i figured at the very least i'll need 4 inputs for the joystick, 1 action button, two start buttons, at least 1 coin button, plus, preferably pause and exit.  i'm sure there are more games i could play if i had 2 action buttons instead of 1..but i'm not too conerned, as long as i can play the good classics that i remember.

i may end up looking for an older version of mame and older roms, but since i already have mame 124 with a full set, i'd like to just use that.

[massive88]

In that case go for one button and never look back!

[missioncontrol]

You will not need more than 25 buttons per player.

I thought the answer was always 42

[Turnarcades]

As for the spec, the P2 should be fine if you grab a very old version of MAME. I use pre-0.106 builds (before the graphics re-write) on P3 spec and I think it was around the 0.35 mark that there was the first re-write for 'high-spec' machines (probably P3 at the time).

Try getting your hands on the Game Park 32 MAME set, as I'm sure that version was based on this older core, and finding these should be easier than any version between then and now.