is It Impossible To Get Arcade-Quality Guns For A Mame Cabinet?

[Nation]

I have really searched everywhere and it seems that there is no way to get arcade quality guns for my mame cabinet. I'm using an arcade monitor in my cab.  It seems the only options out there are the Top Gun which seems like the recoil is rather cheesy and requires led stands.  I've seen the recoil guns at happcontrols but from what I can tell they are not mame compatible. They are also quite expensive however considering how much it has cost to put together this cab I'm willing to spend the extra cash for the real deal if it is out there.  The only other guns I've found are lacking recoil which is really important to me.  I used to love playing point blank in the arcade.  Someone please tell me there is a solution out there!  I thought I ran into a mention of an adapter for the happ guns but I never found any details. 

[Hoopz]

Try this:

http://www.nanotechent.com/opti-gun.php

[smalltownguy]

I have a buddy who's a mechanical engineer, and the 2 of us are scheming on building our own recoil shotguns this winter. Once the project gets underway, I'll start a thread on it.

As far as the light gun goes, you can pick up just about any gun body you want from eBay, and retro-fit it with the AimTrak hardware.

My experience with the AimTrak has been nothing but positive. It helps when you've got someone like Andy Warne behind it.

[Nation]

Hoopz, thanks for the link! Damn, that is expensive though... looks like to get happ recoil guns + the adapter is going to be over  $500. Ouch. That is really pushing the limits of my budget but its good to know that it is a possibility.

smalltownguy, I've looked at the aimTrak but I'm not aware of any guns that i could retrofit and still have recoil.  Do you know of any?

[smalltownguy]

Ah...the recoil. Precisely why my buddy and I are going to build our own. Shouldn't be too hard to rig together some kind of solenoid, switch, etc etc to get the desired effect.

I'll let you know what I come up with.

[RandyT]

I have really searched everywhere and it seems that there is no way to get arcade quality guns for my mame cabinet. I'm using an arcade monitor in my cab.  It seems the only options out there are the Top Gun which seems like the recoil is rather cheesy and requires led stands.  I've seen the recoil guns at happcontrols but from what I can tell they are not mame compatible. They are also quite expensive however considering how much it has cost to put together this cab I'm willing to spend the extra cash for the real deal if it is out there.  The only other guns I've found are lacking recoil which is really important to me.  I used to love playing point blank in the arcade.  Someone please tell me there is a solution out there!  I thought I ran into a mention of an adapter for the happ guns but I never found any details.  

It's really going to boil down to your definition of "arcade quality".  If you mean something that is "plug and play" and gives you all of the same benefits and accuracy of the Namco guns, then I would have to say no.  Nowadays, the arcades are using the IR LED / camera solutions.  The latest Time Crisis and HOTD games have their screens ringed with IR LED's.  The arcade implementations are very accurate, track quickly, allow you to be close to the screen, don't get negatively affected by not holding the guns vertical, and are forgiving with different shooter heights.  While IR solutions are available (you mentioned one) none of the ones available for a MAME cab will be able to give you that same level of performance.

I have no experience with the Opti-gun interface, so that may be something of interest.  But don't expect to use anything but a CRT, even if it works well.

So, in short, the best you can do is define what it is you expect from a solution, consider what is available for the type of screen in your cabinet and be willing to make a few sacrifices to get something that will get the job done for you in your particular setup.

RandyT

[Hoopz]

Nation,

Don't go off the prices on Happ's website.  Contact one of the resellers here for better pricing.  Divemaster127 is a great guy to deal with and his prices are lower than Happ's website. 

That board also offers several advantages and may be used instead of an encoder depending on your setup.  That could save some money.  YMMV though.

Just buy the damn thing and tell us if it works or not.      And be aware that Nanotech has some issues regarding their service and leadership. 

[DashRendar]

Anyone remember the gun that came with the original NES?  Is that something that could be modified to work with MAME?

[smalltownguy]

No, the zapper's technology won't work with LCD screens, nor CRTs, without the NES. The zapper used a similar approach to the original light guns, but it was MUCH less accurate. It could be fooled by pointing it at a flashlight and pulling the trigger.

[Dazz]

Anyone remember the gun that came with the original NES?  Is that something that could be modified to work with MAME?

Sure it can be modified to work with MAME...  Just replace the insides with an AimTrack and there ya go.

[DashRendar]

Heh, well...I was thinking more of connecting it via USB and creating drivers for it.   

[northerngames]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=96369.520

check the link toward the bottom and check out my real lethal enforcer 2 arcade guns.

those and the happ 45's are the closest your going to get to the real thing but they dont come painted to look real of coarse.

throw an aimtrak in there and your pretty much running the real deal.

[Nation]

I'm tempted to give the optigun + happ recoil guns a shot.  I saw a thread from a while back where there were a couple of people wanting to give it a try but nanotech was apparently out of stock at the time.  It appears they are in stock now however as I was able to add one a paypal cart. A little risky since it appears nobody in the community has tried it yet but it sounds like it has the best chance of giving as close to an authentic arcade gun experience as possible and should work fine with my arcade monitor. i'm going to have to think about it but if I do I'll definitely post a detailed review of the setup.

[TPB]

If you're considering a purchase from David R. Foley's Nanotech, then you'd be wise to familiarise yourself with the following information :

Nanotech, DIY Kits... Stay away, and be Afraid!!

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=97845.0

Two indicted over theft of arcade software

http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-07-10/bay-area/17216613_1_game-packs-global-vr-jury-indicts

Orange man indicted in video game fraud

http://www.allbusiness.com/crime-law-enforcement-corrections/criminal-offenses/12570451-1.html

The best options :

*  The AimTrak, from Ultimarc,

*  The TopGun 2, from HK-EMS.

[Hoopz]

If you're considering a purchase from David R. Foley's Nanotech, then you'd be wise to familiarise yourself with the following information :

Nanotech, DIY Kits... Stay away, and be Afraid!!

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=97845.0

Two indicted over theft of arcade software

http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-07-10/bay-area/17216613_1_game-packs-global-vr-jury-indicts

Orange man indicted in video game fraud

http://www.allbusiness.com/crime-law-enforcement-corrections/criminal-offenses/12570451-1.html

To be fair, it's not just his company.  That doesn't justify the problems that H4CK3R had though.  This is a different product that the pinball stuff too.  I've yet to find a review or post from anyone anywhere who has bought this. 

Charging it would be the best idea because of the protection that credit cards give to the consumer.

[northerngames]

If you're considering a purchase from David R. Foley's Nanotech, then you'd be wise to familiarise yourself with the following information :

Nanotech, DIY Kits... Stay away, and be Afraid!!

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=97845.0

Two indicted over theft of arcade software

http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-07-10/bay-area/17216613_1_game-packs-global-vr-jury-indicts

Orange man indicted in video game fraud

http://www.allbusiness.com/crime-law-enforcement-corrections/criminal-offenses/12570451-1.html

The best options :

*  The AimTrak, from Ultimarc,

*  The TopGun 2, from HK-EMS.

seeing that I would not even bother with that guy.

 if he stole from his employers what makes you think he would not hesitate to steal from a stranger/you?

[Nation]

Yeah the whole Foley situation is definitely sketchy although nanotech does seem to create and sell hardware but seemingly is uninterested in the mame community (not surprisingly considering what i've read).  The top gun 2 does not seem like a good solution if you're going for the real arcade experience.  Aimtrak also seems to fail for this because unless I'm wrong, you can't hook up the aimtrak to the happ recoil guns can you? If so has anyone actually done this?

  It's too bad that the investment is so high to find out what is up with the optigun. If I already had the happ guns I'd probably go ahead and order it but the problem is that if I order the whole setup and the optigun fails to work than I'm stuck with a happ gun set which I can't use either.  Someone in another thread threw out an idea for having 20 people donate $10 to send one of the optiguns to one of the forum members who already had a set of happ recoil guns laying around (there were a couple of people who said they had the recoil kit on a shelf).  I'd be more than willing to donate $10 for this cause. Probably would be difficult to round up 19 other people willing to do the same but I thought it was a cool idea.

[AndyWarne]

Sometime I will get hold of a recoil gun and see if it can be hooked up. I can think of several ways in which recoil could work, the simplest being a large capacitor discharging through a solenoid in the gun when the trigger is pulled. This method would be posible to connect completely separately from the AimTrak provided a secondary trigger switch could be fitted.
Other connection methods would require some kind of interface which I could look into producing once we have the complete gun assembly finished.

[TheShanMan]

Looking forward to the complete gun assembly, Andy! Recoil would be icing on the cake.

[sarge]

Here's yet another disappointing post about nanotech's optigun:

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=5720&pid=40245&st=0&#entry40245

I was hoping this product would work out but it's really looking doubtful.

[Nation]

Yeah this is a bummer.  Happ recoil setup + optigun is both expensive and stupidly risky it seems.  For me having industrial-grade recoil makes a huge difference.  It is one of the things I remember setting apart the quality of the arcade experience versus the nintendo zapper at home or what have you. This seems to be the one big area, control-wise at least, where the BYO mame community does not have a really good solution.  The aim-trak seems pretty cool but I've not seen anyone use it with a high quality recoil setup and it sounds like you'd need to do some additional modification to the triggering mechanism. 

I'm really impressed by Ultimarc and their products. We are all really lucky to have them around to provide such high-quality gear.  Hopefully they can offer an out of the box solution for this at some point.  I know Andy has said that they will not be doing anything with the old-school optical gun technologies (like the optigun was/is supposedly using) which is understandable although for me I wouldn't really mind b/c I'm using an arcade monitor but I know a lot of people are using LCDs.  I'm not really that fired up about using any of the LED solutions which require mounting a couple of sensors and having to calibrate the guns frequently.  The lack of needing to that seems like a real advantage of the old-school technique although I may not understand that correctly.