Preserve the Classics OR It's Just Particle Board

[ChadTower]

i agree, however mameing classics now even with what i know isnt necessarily a "moral issue" for me.  its more of a financial decision.  if i got a free pacman cab with original art, and just needed new paint.  i would preserve and sell it to make some good money.  if i could not sell and make enough money however, i would mame it, but keep the original art, cp, etc....but just take out the circuitry.  but id sell the circuitry to people like you 

Then in your eyes it is actually never wrong.  It is only a question of convenience and profit.

[hulkster]

for beginners, i would say its just fine to mame a classic.

 

then what do you suggest for someone just getting into the habit? 

scenario:  free original pacman was just given to someone who is starting out with this arcade stuff.  they dont have a whole lot of room in their house, and the enjoy pacman, although they would love to have other games to play as well.  their options are:  restore the original cab and have only pacman, restore then sell even when they dont know anything about it, or mame it and play 10k games. 

morality and ethics and whatever you want to call dont really come into play here.  it really just depends on your point of view.

[hulkster]

i agree, however mameing classics now even with what i know isnt necessarily a "moral issue" for me.  its more of a financial decision.  if i got a free pacman cab with original art, and just needed new paint.  i would preserve and sell it to make some good money.  if i could not sell and make enough money however, i would mame it, but keep the original art, cp, etc....but just take out the circuitry.  but id sell the circuitry to people like you 

Then in your eyes it is actually never wrong.  It is only a question of convenience and profit.

pretty much yeah.  the classics can be recreated and remade...at least the cab and controls.  the circuitry and boards and all that, well i dont know if they are still being made or not, but i would at least sell those if they arent going to be used.  cabs can be recreated with a trip to home depot.  now for instance, if i came across a brand new mint condition..um....Atari console or something....and i wanted to turn it into a bookshelf or something....well then you cant really go to home depot or any local store to recreate the materials to make another atari. 

certain things cannot be easily reproduced, but cabs can.  it is just particle board like the thread says.  EVERYTHING can be easily reproduced (albeit the circuitry) by reasonable means, so i dont know everyone throws a hissy when someone tears one up.  yes its dumb to trash a mint condition DK cab.  could i make one myself now if i really wanted to?  yeah.  would be expensive?  maybe, but its feasible.

[ChadTower]

morality and ethics and whatever you want to call dont really come into play here.  it really just depends on your point of view.

Morality and ethics are your point of view.

For your scenario:  sell it and get a more appropriate cab if they don't want Pacman.  I don't buy the "I don't understand what a classic is" argument.  If a person knows videogames they know Pacman is a classic and will know many of the other classics.  I could see someone not knowing something like Red Baron.  Battlezone?  Robotron?  Frogger?  Anyone that wants a MAME cab knows those games.

[shardian]

for beginners, i would say its just fine to mame a classic.

 

then what do you suggest for someone just getting into the habit? 

scenario:  free original pacman was just given to someone who is starting out with this arcade stuff.  they dont have a whole lot of room in their house, and the enjoy pacman, although they would love to have other games to play as well.  their options are:  restore the original cab and have only pacman, restore then sell even when they dont know anything about it, or mame it and play 10k games. 

morality and ethics and whatever you want to call dont really come into play here.  it really just depends on your point of view.

When I first started, I was looking for a GUTTED cab to MAME. If a real honest to goodness fully stocked and working classic fell into my lap, I would not have stripped it out to MAME it. I would have said "Sweet! A real honest to goodness working Pacman. That is awesome!" The last thing on my mind would have been to say "Sweet, a Pacman cabinet! I can't wait to play Street Fighter on this bad boy."

Coincidentally, I still have my first ever gutted cabinet. It was a Taito Alpine Ski with a Jungle king CP hacked for 2 extra buttons. I originally planned a frankenpanel modeled after Rampy's Taito cab, then I planned a switchable CP Mame cab, and finally, it is now going to be a replica Jungle king cab w/ MAME. That one cabinet best represents my evolving code of ethics in arcade gaming.

[ChadTower]

I originally planned a frankenpanel modeled after Rampy's Taito cab, then I planned a switchable CP Mame cab, and finally, it is now going to be a replica Jungle king cab w/ MAME. That one cabinet best represents my evolving code of ethics in arcade gaming.

You're still going with 4 cupholders though, right?

[shardian]

You're still going with 4 cupholders though, right?

6, plus matching ashtrays and a bottle opener.

[ChadTower]

Awesome.  Replace the coinbox with a urinal drain and you're good to go.

[hulkster]

You're still going with 4 cupholders though, right?

6, plus matching ashtrays and a bottle opener.

 

[CheffoJeffo]

for beginners, i would say its just fine to mame a classic.

then what do you suggest for someone just getting into the habit? 

Same thing I suggest for anybody in this hobby ... read a bit before you do something stupid.

Let's take a quote from someone you may recognize and whose opinion you hopefully respect:

Actually, it's appendix B of the current book

Preserving Versus MAME’ing the Past
v
The problem is that classic arcade cabinets represent a finite resource. The arcades of yesterday are just that -- a thing of the past. Barring a scattering of reproduction projects, these classic cabinets cannot be replaced. As if these problems were not bad enough for classic arcade cabinet fans and collectors, suddenly home arcade cabinets (often referred to as MAME cabinets for the emulator most often used on them) started popping up. No one begrudges someone building a personal cabinet from scratch. However, every time a classic arcade cabinet is converted to a home arcade machine, somewhere someone cringes now there’s one fewer cabinet available to collectors.

To an arcade collector, modifying a classic arcade cabinet is akin to chopping down old growth redwood forests. The person doing so may have the legal right to their actions, but they are doing a disservice to humanity. Granted, the degree of the problem is certainly different. Hacking apart an old Robotron cabinet won’t cause environmental problems or displace animals (except, perhaps, a family of mice). It will mean, however, that there’s one less Robotron cabinet in the world. That same cabinet could be some collector’s “holy grail” -- the one item they’re looking for to complete their collection. Even if the cabinet is in bad shape, someone probably has the parts and desire to rebuild it and restore it, if only they had the cabinet.
...snip...

The material in this post is copyrighted and may not be reproduced without permission

Edit - couldn't stand posting only part of it. That's the entire appendix B. It's only 1 or so pages so I don't think anyone will mind my posting it. (I wrote it but don't own the copyright, the publisher does)

I dunno if I can say it any better than that.

scenario:  free original pacman was just given to someone who is starting out with this arcade stuff.  they dont have a whole lot of room in their house, and the enjoy pacman, although they would love to have other games to play as well.  their options are:  restore the original cab and have only pacman, restore then sell even when they dont know anything about it, or mame it and play 10k games.

Read the eleventy other threads on the topic ... there is an obvious option that you missed ...

morality and ethics and whatever you want to call dont really come into play here.  it really just depends on your point of view.

You don't actually understand what morality and ethics are, do you ?

EDIT: Quoted section snipped to reasonable use length to avoid getting saint into copyright trouble

[hulkster]

meh.  i was just saying that i dont think its fair to get all up in someones face that just wants to create a mame cab.  they may just want something ghetto, and free is free, even if its worth a lot more to someone else. 

point is....if they want to play NOW, then they mame the classic cab.  play now or play later. 

bottom line though, do whatever.  i dont really care that much (other than enough to post a few times in this thread).  rest assured though if someone asks me if i want a free original pacman cab....you guys will be the first i ask for bids from 

[CheffoJeffo]

meh.  i was just saying that i dont think its fair to get all up in someones face that just wants to create a mame cab.  they may just want something ghetto, and free is free, even if its worth a lot more to someone else. 

point is....if they want to play NOW, then they mame the classic cab.  play now or play later. 

Interesting, so it's OK to destroy a classic cabinet, but it isn't OK to complain about somebody destroying a classic cabinet ?

 

Again.

[ChadTower]

i dont really care that much

Cut the whole thing down to the point.

[Jdurg]

Honestly, I think the person who said that we should document the build of these classic cabs so that they can be 100% accurately built from scratch is a VERY good idea.  Over time, fire, natural disasters, etc. will destroy these cabs regardless of how carefully we preserve them.  The goal of MAME was to preserve the electronics of these cabinets by documenting how they work.  I don't understand why we can't do the same for the non-electrical part of a cabinet?  This way, if someone goes and mutilates a Frogger cab, someone who is upset by it can just go out there and re-build a cab from scratch.  Not a problem anymore since the cab that was "destroyed" is now reborn.

[ChadTower]

I don't understand why we can't do the same for the non-electrical part of a cabinet? 

We could.  I don't know how to properly document cabinet construction, but if I did, I would probably do it while restoring a game.  I have a Tank II taken apart right now that I could document.

[patrickl]

I was impressed how Burt Rutan set out to design a racing plane because people were using (and destroying) loads of World War II  P-51 Mustangs for these races.

Jakobuds plans are a step in the right direction, but something like the Ms Pacman Cocktail Plans By Kyle Lindstrom are amazing. And again the kits you can buy from MikesArcade are a pretty good starting point too.

:edit: The url from the BYOAC wiki page doesn't work. It's on theBYOAC arcade plans page though. Thought there was a newer PDF version of it though.

[ChadTower]

I went to a county fair race/demo derby once and out of the 20 or so cars at least half of them were Plymouth Reliants.  One of the guys with me used to own one and was pissed.  After 6-7 beers we almost had to restrain him from going down there.

[hulkster]

Honestly, I think the person who said that we should document the build of these classic cabs so that they can be 100% accurately built from scratch is a VERY good idea.  Over time, fire, natural disasters, etc. will destroy these cabs regardless of how carefully we preserve them.  The goal of MAME was to preserve the electronics of these cabinets by documenting how they work.  I don't understand why we can't do the same for the non-electrical part of a cabinet?  This way, if someone goes and mutilates a Frogger cab, someone who is upset by it can just go out there and re-build a cab from scratch.  Not a problem anymore since the cab that was "destroyed" is now reborn.

there you go.  that would solve all problems so byoac purists or whatever wouldnt barf every time a noob shows a frogger cab frankenpanel.

[ChadTower]

there you go.  that would solve all problems so byoac purists or whatever wouldnt barf every time a noob shows a frogger cab frankenpanel.

They still would.  They would just tell them "here are the dimensions build your own, n00bhead".

[hulkster]

there you go.  that would solve all problems so byoac purists or whatever wouldnt barf every time a noob shows a frogger cab frankenpanel.

They still would.  They would just tell them "here are the dimensions build your own, n00bhead".

 

[shardian]

100% detailed dimensions have been done for  a few cabinets. It is a VERY involved procedure. Spriggy has been modeling a 100% accurate T&F cocktail.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=24005.msg195812#msg195812

It would be neat if every, or at least the top 100 or so, machines could be thoroughly documented to the point you could hand the plans to a carpenter and he could build the whole thing, including a metal CP.

I have the Mikes Arcade Midway cocktail plans and they are done in that way, including assembly instructions.

[ChadTower]

It would be very involved if you needed every joint and miter to be an accurate reproduction... but if you wanted it to look accurate, but the joinery and such could be different, would it really be that hard?  I guess the cabinet with curves would but but there are plenty of them that don't have curves.


EDIT:  jesus, that's what I get for posting while on the phone.  So many buts in that post.   

[paigeoliver]

I wasn't suggesting earlier that you should just mame every classic cabinet in site. I was more talking about a few realities that arcade games face right now.

#1. The guys who were kids during the classic era are starting to age past being interested in this stuff. This is just now starting but will be a bigger issue in the future.

#2. All those mame cabs that we all built and the even larger number of uber-in-1 jamma boards floating around has killed most of the home market for the single dedicated machine.

#3. The electronics are now failing and the industry is nearly dead. Almost no new arcade games are made now. Dynamo wasn't even making cabinets anymore last I checked. We get a lot of our parts through the distributors that sell to commercial game operators. The death of commercial game operation will mean that eventually there aren't going to be all those easy parts flopping around for us to order.

This is the long decline. There will always be some games around, but most of them are going to die in the next 20 years, regardless of any individual efforts on our parts. Of course there is also a huge upside to this, and that is that no one is making YOU lose interest and thus you can get all the games you want, and cheap too.

[SithMaster]

It would be very involved if you needed every joint and miter to be an accurate reproduction... but if you wanted it to look accurate, but the joinery and such could be different, would it really be that hard?  I guess the cabinet with curves would but but there are plenty of them that don't have curves.


EDIT:  jesus, that's what I get for posting while on the phone.  So many buts in that post.   

So what if its involved.  People have been scratch building cabs for a while and they dont seem to mind.  As long as the outside is the same it shouldnt matter.  You dont see people commenting on how sweet a joint is on the inside of a cab.

[CheffoJeffo]

So what if its involved.  People have been scratch building cabs for a while and they dont seem to mind.  As long as the outside is the same it shouldnt matter.  You dont see people commenting on how sweet a joint is on the inside of a cab.

I dunno ... Knievel has some sweet joints ...

 

[ChadTower]

So what if its involved.  People have been scratch building cabs for a while and they dont seem to mind.  As long as the outside is the same it shouldnt matter.  You dont see people commenting on how sweet a joint is on the inside of a cab.

You're riding in the wrong cabs, bro.  I've had many a sweet joint in the back of a cab.

[Howard_Casto]

And the award for most inappropriate flamebait post goes to SithMaster!  Way to reply to a psuedo-controversal thread that's been dead for over 5 YEARS!!!