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So I want to build an arcade game

A

anonmouseuser

Senior member
I have looked around and it seems that the there is a lot of talk about building coin-op like arcade machines by using MAME. Has anyone done this and if so, how close to the real thing does MAME get?

I am specifically interested in building games from the mid 90s. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, NBA Jam etc. and I was looking around on eBay and see a ton of PCBs for sale. How can I go about buying the PCBs and converting it to a playable game?

 
i got a mame cabinet in my living room.. it was made by some pros though.. some games have emulation problems. most of the old school one/two button games have no problems.. but games like nba jam require a couple sessions of assign the right buttons before you can get a good game going. but they perform exactly like they would in an arcade. alot of the newer games will require more processor/video/ram to run right.. the boards you mentioned would not qualify a MAME box, they'd be stand alone arcade games.. and would be much harder to put together because they require more hardware than the PCB if i'm imagining it right. Much easier to make a MAME cabinet and emulate the game than to buy the board and find the hardware.
 
If I were you, I would just build the cabinet and controls and hook it up to an old ps2 or xbox instead of trying to find emulators and configure an old computer to run those games. Looking at the games that you want to play, it sounds like a headache to find emulators to run, those new school games.

I bought a dual arcade stick for the PS2 and I'm just gonna build the arcade cabinet around it.
 
build a box
throw in a modded xbox and a cheap flat crt
paint box,mount crt,mount controllers, plug into wall.
 
, my guess is a modded xbox would be the easiest way to go and by far the most bang for your buck..tho an arguement could be made for just housing a pc in there..if you spent some time on the cabinet it would probably come out awesome.
 
Thanks for all the different ideas.

There is an appeal in building a MAME cabinet which cannot be replicated in slapping together a modded xbox I guess. There is a lot of documentation on the topic as well. asm0deus, its nice to hear that the older games look and feel like the real thing into which I have poured $1000s in $0.25. Can you post some specs on the box you have in your cabinet as well as the games you have?

 
long time off from this one, but I am just about finished with this one....

I built my box using a modified version of lucid's arcade cabinet. The thing was too narrow, so I had to widen the control panel, so there would be plenty of room for everything, including wide players like me. I did have to buy four panels, instead of lucid's 3 particle board, and now have quite a bit left over. I could easily try to play some tetris and figure out the most efficient way to lay them out so I can just get back to three, but at 12 bucks a sheet, who cares?

Inside, I have a p 1.6 p4 with 256 megs of ram. I bought a 32 meg geforce2 with 64 megs and svideo out, that is connected to a standard 26" panasonic television. The controls are from x-arcade. But in retrospec, I would probably buy from slikstik so I can get their multi colored buttons, instead of just black. Price wise, they are about the same, with the x-arcade a little easier to setup, and modify, but the harnesses they gave me were way to short to fit the setup i had, so I had to splice wire to make them longer, not too complicated, but a hassle.

The coin box I haven't installed yet, though I have one bought. I will eventually wire up the coin mech to also hit the switch, but for now it is just a regular button for inserted coins. All in all, pretty decent results!
 
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