G'day everyone

Hi guys,

Im really new to the arcade scene Ive been a PC gamer for bloody years and years, and have only just quit my last job where I was a games programmer with Jumbuck Entertainment, mobile games and the like, fun fun fun... no really :P

But enough about me and a little about the thing my wife is hating more and more every day, my ambition to build a mame tall boy. Lol, oh man she hates it soooo bad! lol

Ive ordered a 2 player set of controlls off ebay, and have made many a cardboard / paper cab 1:16 scale models to get my design just right. Now Im kind of looking for the next step. What would you guys recommend? get the puter and get the contols working or get stuck into the cab and kinda work backwards?

The games im interested are the TMNT / Simpsons 4 player style games, maybe a little golden axe / double dragon and the like, and the street fighters and metal slugs are great. But with such a diverse range of games on my want list is there a minumum spec I should aim to build the pc to? Ive been running them all on my AMD64 lappy for a while but dont know what the real minimum specs would be for these sorta things.

My stab in the dark was a p4 2.4ghz 512mb ram and 40 odd gig of hard drive space, reckon its on the mark or waaayyyy off?

Well I'll be floating round the forums reading what I can, so any help, tips, links to articles and whot not would be sweet.

Cheers,

Mik.

Hi MikGan,

Welcome to Aussie Arcade mate. :)

By the sounds of it, you already have an idea of what type of cabinet you want, (big bloody 4 player sucker), so you can start finding cabs based on that for starters.

PC wise, the rule for mame is bigger the better, but what you described is enough. You have to start working out what will be your Front End (software) and what type of monitor you would like to run, (Arcade, med res, TV, PC monitor).

For interfacing your controllers (joysticks, buttons etc) with the PC, the IPAC sounds like the perfect marriage. http://www.ozstick.com.au Chris has heaps of parts to get you going.

There will be plenty to chime n and mention specific names for software etc.

Enjoy!

Ian

Thanks Ian,

Yeah a 4 player cab is the one I want to get into, at the moment Ive got a spare 19" an a coupla 21" monitors about so will probbly just throw one of them in but will look at getting a mid sized tv in in the future.

The IPAC does seem the goods, I was looking at the keywiz(?) but they are only 2 player compatible, but I heard u can daisy chain them or something to get 4 players outta them. Does that sound about right?

Haha Im hearing ya there DKong, lol, that is one real fear! I didnt mention it before but I was actually trying to put off the cab making untill after we moving into the house we just bought, thats only 3 weeks away now, but we'll see ;)

Ive kinda made the plan to go like this now:

Set up mame environment on the laptop

(Put up with the wifes crap)

Order and construct the buttons on a template

(Put up with the wifes crap)

Build a suitable pc

(Put up with the wifes crap)

build the cab

(Put up with the wifes crap)

(Put up with the wifes crap)

(Put up with the wifes crap)

seems like a good plan to me.

Lol actually shes warming to the idea, thats one of the reasons for the 4 player cab, she can play to!

Well moving house certinly put a dint on the time I'd have for this, but Im still moving along, at the moment Im pulling down the 14gb torrent from pleasuredome. Ive got a horendiously slow connection so only 5 days to go! yay! *ughhhh*

So Ive got the new mame distro, Im getting the rom torrent, what else am I likely to need? My buttons have apparently been shipped and are on their way, so time to order an interface card.