AtGames Legends Mini

[pbj]

Currently selling for about $45 on the eBay right now.  Might be worth a look.  I ordered one.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133762469392

 

[Howard_Casto]

pbj and I have been shopping buddies lately.   We'll let you know if they suck when they come in.   

[pbj]

It arrived today.  Chrome tmolding is all screwed up along the back but whatever.



It arrived with a very old firmware and constantly dropped connection to my wifi.  I had to waddle across the compound to hook it up via Ethernet to my gateway.  Performance improves a lot on all fronts with the newest firmware.

Arcadenet performance is terrible, which is a shame.  Looked forward to begging BYoAC bros to play games and constantly get turned down.

There are actually some very solid games built into the thing.  Yes, you can hack it, and CoinOpsX is hilariously in the official App Store, but you’ll get $50 out of what’s pre packaged.  As an angry nut mentioned elsewhere, I did notice some lag on Nastar Warrior.  Karnovs Revenge, Growl, Joe and Mac, and a couple random other ones were fine.  Zombies Ate My Neighbors appears to be the Genesis version but uses four buttons.  The default neo geo mapping is horrible.  It comes with Water Margin which surprised me.  Plays great, though.

Arcade roms are using some weird version of MAME.  All the games have bezels you can’t get rid of with factory software.

You’re not going to beat this for $50.  I’m actually impressed with it.  Original plan had been to strip it out and turn it into a Neo Geo joystick for player 2 on my AES but I think I’ll leave it alone.

No off button on the console, though… wtf?

[Howard_Casto]

I echo a lot of pbj's sentiments.  As is, it is surprisingly good.   You can even customize the menu to a certain extent as the background image can be changed, background music can be added, and I believe menu artwork for custom games can be added.   I didn't have the same issues he did updating the firmware, but I believe mine had a higher revision installed out of the box so ymmv.   Online leaderboards are included for many of the classic games.  I cracked it open, and it appears to use the same pcb as the ultimate 2p version with the trackball and spinner.   I haven't tested to see if the additional controls can simply be connected as-is but I don't see anything missing on the pcb that would make me think otherwise.   There are unpopulated screw holes on the sides of the control panel top which would make it easy to mount this to a pedestal or something more permanent.    As a matter of fact, there are several mounting solutions on etsy.   What surprised me was how competent and customizable the OS is.   There are several options to "legally" get more games on the machine and nearly everything you can change in mame you can change here with the strange exception of those bezels.  Also having to unplug the thing to turn it off is beyond stupid.   I mean I doubt it draws much power so I suppose you could leave it on all the time, but it has this neon green light that would getting annoying while watching tv and ect.   

The controls themselves are surprisingly good.    The buttons are pretty convincing happ clones and the joystick is a nice clone of the sanwa sticks that are popular these days.  For purists I think there is enough vertical space to add a happ or wico stick in there instead.   So, I mean even if you hate everything else about it, those buttons would run 2-3 bucks a pop and the stick would be 20-30.   The housing would be at least 20 so for $50 you are getting well beyond value with just the controls alone.   

If you are a beginner in the hobby buy one as it'll give you a good feel of the arcade at home experience before you go too deep. If you are grizzled old man children who have been at this for 20 years you should STILL buy one as it's a fun toy and a good source for cheap spare parts.   

[Howard_Casto]

So I guess there isn't a lot of interest in this product, but I find it's open nature rather refreshing.   You can put pretty much what you want on it without hacking, though it is a bit involved to compile packages.   I'm working on software to make that a bit easier but in the meantime, here are my findings, thus far:

Packaged up UCE files are how you add your own games and they pretty much act just like the included games and show up in the menu in the "addonx" section, which you can configure to be the start up folder.   You can make folders on you usb stick to organize your games and they expand and collapse just like the filters for the included games.   

USB hubs work fine so you can plug in controllers and usb sticks at the same time.

There are two types of hardware marquees, one lcd and one DMD, that work with the unit and are sent info from the puck via wifi.   If the protocol can be worked out, then an open-sourced marquee solution could be built.   

The axis of mice are detected out of the box and work in game without configuring anything, so usb spinners, trackballs and mice should work out of the box.   This is probably due to the built in aimtrack support.  The mice buttons, on the other hand, don't work.  If you are adding a trackball or spinner to one of their existing panels this shouldn't be a problem as you can use the joystick buttons, but it does complicate stand-alone controllers.

Plugging in a keyboard exposes all inputs as keyboard keys.  They are mapped as follows:

Home Button = M
Rewind Button = R

P1 Start = Enter
P1 Directions = Arrow Keys
P1 A = A
P1 B = B
P1 X = X
P1 Y = Y
P1 LB = T or V
P1 LT = F
P1 RB = H or Z
P1 RT = C or N

P2 Start = Spacebar
P2 Directions = Numpad Arrow Keys
P2 A = F1
P2 B = F8
P2 X = F4
P2 Y = F5
P2 LB = U
P2 LT = J
P2 RB = F6
P2 RT = F3

ESC also seems to work as a back button though it behaves slightly different. 

You can navigate the menus and play the games with only a keyboard just fine; the only problem is the system needs to detect one of its supported controllers upon the start of the first game.   That's not a big deal if you are trying to make a 2p controller but sucks if you are trying to do something stand alone.   My guess is it just needs to detect a usb device with the correct HID and PID which could be easily faked with an arduino but I haven't confirmed that yet.

As I said, more news as it develops. 

[Howard_Casto]

Oh I forgot to mention that there appear to be jumper resistors installed on the 2 player inputs on the joystick pcb that ground them out, making them inert.  These could be desoldered and re-soldered in the correct position but the components are super tiny so it probably isn't worth it.  The components to get the trackball and spinners working are missing as well... again, it could be fixed but probably not worth it.   

[Howard_Casto]

Been playing with this some more.   Joysticks, or at least xbox joysticks show up just fine in the os and work without any remapping.   You also do NOT get the warning message about the joystick being connected when playing a game.   I'll do more testing to see how it handles non-xbox stuff... I'll have to fish out some gamepads, but in general this means it is possible to build/bring your own control panels, just not with keyboard inputs unfortuantely.

[Howard_Casto]

Just another test with a stadia controller (RIP).   You'll have to remap the buttons in the settings menu, but it works just fine without warnings as well.  So yeah, any joystick-based controller should work, including the dirt cheap zero delays.