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Post by blucey on Aug 9, 2022 9:26:12 GMT
For all of the shiny retro gaming temptations out there, the only thing that I keep thinking about is getting a MAME cabinet. Thing is, I'm so tweaked out when it comes to gadgets and tech, I absolutely have to research the topic to death. That's good though as it stops me making frivolous purchases.
The idea of having a fully-loaded cabinet is definitely appealing but also feels like one of those things I wouldn't regularly use.
So who has a cab on here? How much do you use it? Has it been worth it overall?
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Post by necronom on Aug 9, 2022 15:35:26 GMT
I've been tempted to made a MAME cab for about 15 years. I have a motherboard in a box that I thought I could use for it if I ever did it, though I have nowhere to put one, and I don't want a half size or top-half of one. I'd love to see pics of any that people here have made.
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Post by kerr9000 on Aug 9, 2022 16:13:01 GMT
For all of the shiny retro gaming temptations out there, the only thing that I keep thinking about is getting a MAME cabinet. Thing is, I'm so tweaked out when it comes to gadgets and tech, I absolutely have to research the topic to death. That's good though as it stops me making frivolous purchases. The idea of having a fully-loaded cabinet is definitely appealing but also feels like one of those things I wouldn't regularly use. So who has a cab on here? How much do you use it? Has it been worth it overall? I owned a Jamma Cab for about 5 years, I made alterations to it and changed it to a Neo Geo MVS one slot cab..... I did lots of work on it rewiring it, cleaning it, painting it fitting new locks, it was perfect apart from it needed a new coin mech. My at the time Wife became abusive and assaulted me and threatened me and my daughter, so I just picked my daughter up and left, moved back in with my mum and dad and went down the legal root for full custardy. I eventually got 90% of my gaming stuff back but I had to leave the cab as I didn't have room for it, I did take all the Neo Geo MVS carts (about 8 of them I think) and the Neo Geo MVS one slot board and the Capcom CPS1 board and a counterfeit football Jamma board I had but there all sat in Plastic boxes with no way to use them. I loved it and I miss it, but it was just something I had to sacrifice to take care of my daughter and give her the best life possible and to make my future better. I don't really have the room for one now so I kind of fill the void with those Pandora's box style Arcade Sticks, I have 2 of those, I did have the idea that one day I would build one of those and a Nice LCD screen and speakers into a sort of make shift arcade unit. |
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Post by dbloke on Aug 9, 2022 16:16:01 GMT
So who has a cab on here? How much do you use it? Has it been worth it overall? Yes(ish) Rarely The Arcade 1up? No, im going to be selling it when I can be bothered. They are ok, but no good for heavy duty use. Its modded and can take anything that can use USB joysticks Also a MUGEN bartop and a MAME one im working on |
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Post by Markopoloman on Aug 10, 2022 0:57:30 GMT
I've got Darran Jones' old cab. It's falling apart now and is buried in my big shed  I'm very close to letting it (and all my old computers and consoles) go. I just don't have time or space any more and they've not been used for years now. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2022 7:27:39 GMT
I have a MAME cab. It too started life under a different owner - a friend of mine built it, then he got a girlfriend, at which point he had a decision to make ... They're now married so I guess you can say that worked out.
Anyway, I bought it from him and it went through various stages of internal hardware. At first I was quite keen on putting in a compact PC of some kind. I tried a Raspberry Pi 2 but it was too slow for the more challenging arcade games. Same with the Atomic Pi (which was quite a nice x86 Raspberry Pi competitor). I decided to go a bit bigger and bought a "retired" small form-factor Dell office PC from eBay (something from the Optiplex range) which ran almost everything, but it still struggled with games of the complexity of Radiant Silvergun and the Cave shooters.
But as I upgraded my gaming PC to something newer, I ended up with a spare motherboard with an i7-3700k in it. That's more than capable of ploughing through pretty much everything you can throw at it.
Then I had the OS to consider. What I really wanted was for something like Lakka to work. However, I just couldn't find a way to get the version of MAME I wanted - i.e. a modern one. Modern versions of MAME are available on Linux as well as Windows, but I ended up with the latter, for some reason. It currently has version 0.225 on it, which runs the games I want. Shame, really. Don't really like it loading a desktop environment that's only going to get in the way.
In the end, tinkering around was probably more interesting than actually using it. I do occasionally fire it up to play a Cave shooter, but the fact is that these days old games are widely available on modern platforms. Yes, it's nice to have a cab with decent joysticks, the type that were originally designed for games like these. But is it worth the space? It is perhaps a bit of a luxury I can't quite accommodate.
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Post by blucey on Aug 10, 2022 9:44:10 GMT
In the end, tinkering around was probably more interesting than actually using it. Always the case. Setting up RetroPie is more interesting than firing up Bomb Jack for the millionth time. |
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Post by phillv85 on Aug 16, 2022 9:17:45 GMT
Until a few months back I had 5 cabinets and around 280 games (mix of MVS, PCB's, carts and disks for various other systems like STV, 246, NAOMI, G-Net etc.)
It was a collection I started in 2012 and enjoyed thoroughly until around 2017 when the money really started flowing into the arcade hobby and the price of games started climbing rapidly. It wasn't just the money that spoiled it, I'd hunted down almost every game I ever wanted and those I didn't have became too expensive for me to want to bother with. From 2017 to this year I probably turned a cabinet on less than once a week.
This year I've sold 3 cabinets and around 150 games. For now I'm keeping my MVS wooden cab and my Blast City, but to be honest I think they'll get sold as well eventually. Console games just resonate better with me and these cabs and arcade games take up loads of space.
If you can get something smaller than a Blast City and are happy with just a MAME setup then yeah maybe go for it, but original cabs are getting expensive, as are spares and they're getting more unreliable.
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Post by englishinvader on Aug 16, 2022 10:09:35 GMT
I recently discovered that a waffle bar in my local area set up an upstairs arcade in their premises. Whole fleet of 30 cabinets with Pandora installed. I don't know if the guy who runs the place set up the machines himself or rents the machines from another company but it was a lovely old-fashioned environment with the added bonuses of much more games to choose from and everything being on freeplay. I went there on the opening week promotion when it was £5 a pop for 2 hours play but they've since changed it to pre-bookings with a minimum of 16 people at £10 a head. Can't see it lasting long like that:
In the end, I decided not to cab. I've got a Raspberry Pi 400 with RetroPie that runs MAME and I find a gamepad a lot more comfortable to use than arcade cabinet controls.
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Post by sega2006 on Aug 16, 2022 14:01:21 GMT
Those 1ups are nice but they aren't a patch on proper build Cab kits and they aren't ideal for adults either as even on the riser you're really stooping if you're over 5'5".
With a kit too you can make it switchable, swapping between real arcade stuff and the Mame machine, it'll also be viable years down the line for upgrade parts where the 1ups may get replaced or phased out for a newer model leaving you without support.
I can't myself fit a cab yet (I've got viable parts just no frame and stick gear) but if I was doing it 100% Mame kit is the way.
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Post by dbloke on Aug 19, 2022 9:22:30 GMT
 Something ive been working on, got it cheap and it looked like vomit. |
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Post by kerr9000 on Aug 19, 2022 9:46:00 GMT
Something ive been working on, got it cheap and it looked like vomit. Looks nice chap, I thought about adding a screen and a bit of woodwork to one of my Pandora's box knock offs but never followed it through. |
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Post by dbloke on Aug 19, 2022 12:14:40 GMT
This is how it looked  I got it for £50, the CP didnt work and it had some awful Mario stickers on the side |
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Post by dbloke on Aug 19, 2022 12:27:57 GMT
It was probably a problem with that POS Hyperspin
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Post by sega2006 on Aug 19, 2022 12:42:21 GMT
I think I remember seeing you post that
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Its just some interesting potential opportunities for AI and automation to help and free humans in the future, rather than enslave us. We need General Zod to implement it.