What Frontend will support this first? ;-) little /.ed at the moment.

[sWampy]

http://artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus-mini/answers/ 

One of these could be wicked on a mamecabinet.   Could be swapped on the fly to show what the 3 main buttons did.

[Flinkly]

woah

[youki]

Very insterresting. 

Is there an interrest to have that in a MameCab?

How a Front End could use that?  Need some idea! 

[Flinkly]

you could use it like pixelhugger is using those large clear buttons, to switch between emulators, or even gamelists for a single emulator

[BobbyG66]

That would be sweet to have your buttons labeled!

FIRE
SHOOT
BOMB

Etc...

[Buddabing]

This was on the BYOAC front page a while back. (January 8, 2006)

We'll see if this keyboard actually is produced. Those larger 3-button ones look very interesting.

[Lilwolf]

I see it this way...

have your cabinet ALWAYS running a game...

Then the frontend will show a game screenshot in the middle, and the next / previous in the other two...

then you go next/previous until you get the game you want... and press the middle button...

Then it would kill the current process and launch the new game.

That would be cool... especially if you had a few extra buttons that would convert the meaning of the buttons...   A tab... hit it and it would change to instead some other options (sorting, filtering, favorite setting maybe??)

[sWampy]

This was on the BYOAC front page a while back. (January 8, 2006)

We'll see if this keyboard actually is produced. Those larger 3-button ones look very interesting.

The full keyboard didn't look very interesting to me, but this one could rock, even though 5K hours doesn't seem like a lot for $100 bucks, but I guess you could keep it off when not using it.   

I could see a ton of uses, being able to have the buttons change completely when in menu mode, game mode, jukebox mode, etc would rock.   I don't think I would want them to be my main button 1/2/3.  But it would be cool if during game play, they changed to the color of your first 3 buttons with labels on them that told you red was fire, blue kick, green punch or whatever.  With 96/96 resolution, you could most likely divide them in half, and label 6 buttons.

[Howard_Casto]

I see no use for this product.  The price point is simply too high.  For 100 bucks you could get a decent lcd screen and for a few bucks more you could get a touch screen kit for it.  Also, as stated, 5000 hours is horrible considering the price.  Finally the screens are encased in polycarbinate, so don't expect to be able to hack the tiny screens into something else. 

I expected the full keyboard to be a couple hundred bucks, but considering a device with just 3 buttons is 100 i'd say we are all screwed. 

[kelemvor]

I don't wnt the keyboard...  But I think it'd be great if someone started making arcade buttons that could work like this.  Could label the buttons per the game just like Johnny5 and cpviewer do.  That would be really cool.

[youki]

see it this way...

have your cabinet ALWAYS running a game...

Then the frontend will show a game screenshot in the middle, and the next / previous in the other two...

then you go next/previous until you get the game you want... and press the middle button...

Then it would kill the current process and launch the new game.

In fact, you want replace the Front End Interface!    No more Front End on your screen!  That's an idea!