building dedicated game using mame

[heinekenlvr]

Hi,

I am sure that this topic has been discussed (may be not by the arcade purists in our midst)... I am sure that it is common place for a dedicated arcade machine to give up the ghost (let's say the boards are fried). I think we can all agree replacing 30 year old components with 30 year components is probably not the best solution from a reliability point of view. In this case, would it not make sense to replace the 'old' boards with a newer computer and run an up to date mame romset instead? I mean really, the only one who would know it is not an original boardset would be me and may be one those purists who could sniff out a pixel that is out of place .
I rebuilt a Pole Position game a couple of years ago and it plays only Pole Position and Pole Position 2. I use Atomic Fe to toggle between the two. I use all of the original controls. I don't want it to play any other games. It works great.
Now I am thinking that I want to try something a little different and rebuild a TRON cocktail. I would only want it to play TRON. It would look like a standard TRON on the outside...no problematic boards on the inside.
Has anyone here done something like this: use MAME to play one game only? and put it back into an old dedicated cabinet(ie Dragon's Lair mame in a Dragon's Lair cabinet)? I would love to see some examples.

[yotsuya]

Hi,

I am sure that this topic has been discussed (may be not by the arcade purists in our midst)... I am sure that it is common place for a dedicated arcade machine to give up the ghost (let's say the boards are fried). I think we can all agree replacing 30 year old components with 30 year components is probably not the best solution from a reliability point of view. In this case, would it not make sense to replace the 'old' boards with a newer computer and run an up to date mame romset instead? I mean really, the only one who would know it is not an original boardset would be me and may be one those purists who could sniff out a pixel that is out of place .
I rebuilt a Pole Position game a couple of years ago and it plays only Pole Position and Pole Position 2. I use Atomic Fe to toggle between the two. I use all of the original controls. I don't want it to play any other games. It works great.
Now I am thinking that I want to try something a little different and rebuild a TRON cocktail. I would only want it to play TRON. It would look like a standard TRON on the outside...no problematic boards on the inside.
Has anyone here done something like this: use MAME to play one game only? and put it back into an old dedicated cabinet(ie Dragon's Lair mame in a Dragon's Lair cabinet)? I would love to see some examples.

I've done it with my Star Wars and my Tempest. There's no way I could get the vector monitors and working game boards for anywhere  near a reasonable price. No one other than me really knows they're not natural vectors.

[JDFan]

I'm sure its been done but would think in most cases if going MAME I can't see any reason to keep it restricted to just the one game (figure if you're spending the $ installing MAME and a PC then why not add a few other games that use the same controller setup rather than have it remain a single game system when it would probably get more use if it had a few games instead.)

[yotsuya]

I'm sure its been done but would think in most cases if going MAME I can't see any reason to keep it restricted to just the one game (figure if you're spending the $ installing MAME and a PC then why not add a few other games that use the same controller setup rather than have it remain a single game system when it would probably get more use if it had a few games instead.)

To be fair, those games boot into Tempest and Star Wars respectively, but they ARE capable of being flipped to run other games that use the unique controls. I just don't publicize that to others. When most people see them, they know SW and Tempest and want to play those.

And I HAD the parts for the computers already, so in both cases, I literally just bought the cabs and threw in the PCs, so no $ was spent on MAME.

[nitrogen_widget]

I'm fixing up an old Berzerk cabinet this winter.
It was gutted and had a different game inside it according to the current marquee.

i'm not going to buy boards and an arcade monitor to play berzerk on it.
I will just use mame & have it boot to berzerk.

you do not need a whole lot of horsepower to play berzerk and i'm the type of person who likes to see how low he can go when it comes to making old hardware useful with linux.