MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)
The Story: Lets time travel back to the 80's. You are at the local arcade and feeding quarters into some of your favorite games. Would you have guessed back then that, 15 years later, home computers and the internet would offer you the option of playing your favorite arcade games, at home? Today, MAME, which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, is everywhere, and theres mixed feelings. Some say they discovered some of their new favorites while playing MAME (myself included). Some say its a great way to play games that are otherwise impossible to find. Others cry foul and blame it as yet another reason why arcades are just about extinct. Then you have the anti-piracy advocates. Despite all the up & down opinions, just about every arcade collector has a custom MAME cabinet in their lineup, even if they won't fess up to it.
I first discovered MAME in 2000, entirely by mistake. Back then, computers were slower, more expensive, there were no "front ends" to run it, and in many cases the emulation just wasn't up to par. All of that didnt stop me from building my first MAME cabinet out of a gutted Pole Position cab and an X-Arcade control panel back in 2002. I spent lots of time and money on that project, only to sell it a short time later. That was when I found a converted and broken game in a Williams cabinet. For that one, I fabricated my own control panel using an I-Pac interface and a trackball. It was my pride and joy for a year or so until I had moved and priorities had taken a u-turn.
The collection I have today started in 2008. In just 3 years, it has grown to about 15 arcade games and a couple of pinball games as well. I had never even heard of a few of them until I discovered them in MAME, which I still played from time to time on my computer. Even though MAME has become more sophisticated and user-friendly today with all kinds of front ends to choose from, building a third MAME cabinet wasnt really in my plans. That is, until this nice Taito cabinet made its way into the cave. Let me explain...
The Score: Last year I attended an arcade auction (as I used to on a regular basis) in Kansas City. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, and was getting outbid on pretty much everything I had my eye on. As usual, they auctioned off all the goodies first. At the end of the day, they finally made it to what's affectionately known as "dead row". These are games that dont work, and, in most cases, are trashed and missing parts. In this row was a complete and nice (but dead) game called "Alpine Ski". I never heard of the game and never played it, nor did I know it's value. Regardless, it was in a nice blue Taito cabinet with little wear, and it looked complete inside and out. Bottom line, I picked it up for a mere $20 and brought it home, not knowing anything about the game or what I had planned for it.
When I got it home, the first thing I noticed was a burned up fuse & holder on the power supply. A quick and easy fix was all it took to bring this game back to life, and I'm enjoying a few rounds of Alpine Ski. Ok, it's not a bad game, but it's nothing special. In any case, whether I planned to keep it or sell it was irrelivant, because it only lived for about an hour. The PCB had crashed. Well, I guess it really was on life support even though it had sat dead for who knows how long. I spent a few hours trying to revive it, reseating chips, touching up solder joints, looking for bad connections and what not. In the end, it just refused to work. I had researched the game's value at that point and discovered it really wasn't worth much, so I wasnt going to invest much more time in it. I offered it up "parts or whole" and everyone was in line to buy bits and pieces from this game. One guy in particular bought half the parts. In the end, I pocketed about $200 parting it out. It got gutted right down to the coin door. A classic Taito died, so others may live on.
This still left me with one dilemma. I was left with a nice looking but empty Taito cabinet, it was just to good to trash. I knew I had to do something with it, but what? I thought about MAME, and then I discovered my friend Jeremy (The Basement Arcade) acually has a similar Taito cabinet that he converted to MAME (click here to see it). When I saw it in person my mind was made up, I was going to do the same to my cabinet.
The Service: Would you believe it cost me virtually nothing to build this? True, I bought some parts, but remember, I made around $200 during the part out. My wife scored a free P4 tower from her job. it needed a hard drive (which I had), a video card (which Jeremy graciously donated) and a ram upgrade (which cost me a whopping $11 on eBay). I bought a 21" computer monitor off CL for $10. From there, I had to buy another control panel & coin door. I decided to buy a "blank door" since I wouldnt need coin mechanisms for this project, plus they would just be in the way anyway. Then I found a converted & populated control panel for $25. I later sold the joysticks from it for the same amount, so I basically got the blank panel for free. I had plans to buy new hardware anyway, with a blue color scheme to match the cabinet. My next purchase was plexiglass. I go to Lowes often and look for bargains on scrap plexiglass. Turns out I went on a good day, I came home with enough plexiglass for this game and then some, only $8 this time around, the same amount I spent on a light fixture for the marquee. I also bought some lumber & paint to build a new base with, as the existing base had some swelling. I already had an old keyboard, trackball & set of computer speakers laying around, so all that was left was a marquee, joysticks, buttons and an interface. I went with the new Mini-Pac which proved to be a great choice. It comes with an easy to install wire harness and the interface itself is about the size of baseball card folded in half, perfect for smaller panels like this one. I was acually able to mount it right to a joystick without any interference. With everything mounted to the CP, it makes it easy to remove, just simply disconnect the USB cable.
So after profiting approx. $200 from parts, I basically spent approx. $200 in parts and supplies to convert this into a MAME machine. From there, all it cost me was time. After playing around with the computer on my test bench and trying several emulators and front ends, I decided to keep it simple. I am currently running just under 300 arcade games and nothing else. I may change this in the future if time & money permits. I am running a MALA front end with a custom skin that I added my own touches to. It's simple and very user friendly. My daughter had no problems volunteering as a game tester. I asked her to play every game I had loaded in a few days time and alert me of any issues so I could iron the bugs out. Once I had a complete & running setup, it was time to throw it all together and add the pieces to the empty cabinet. With some free time, labor & supplies, the Taito MAME cabinet is now complete & running.
Specs: Dell Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, 64MB Geforce 2 video card, 30 GB HD, DVD Rom/CDRW, Windows XP Pro, Dell Trinitron 21" monitor (not bad for $21, eh?)
MAME32 .085 running on MALA front end with custom skin. CP layout is 2 8-way HAPP Ultimate joysticks with 8 fire buttons for each player. Ultimarc Mini-Pac interface.
I first discovered MAME in 2000, entirely by mistake. Back then, computers were slower, more expensive, there were no "front ends" to run it, and in many cases the emulation just wasn't up to par. All of that didnt stop me from building my first MAME cabinet out of a gutted Pole Position cab and an X-Arcade control panel back in 2002. I spent lots of time and money on that project, only to sell it a short time later. That was when I found a converted and broken game in a Williams cabinet. For that one, I fabricated my own control panel using an I-Pac interface and a trackball. It was my pride and joy for a year or so until I had moved and priorities had taken a u-turn.
The collection I have today started in 2008. In just 3 years, it has grown to about 15 arcade games and a couple of pinball games as well. I had never even heard of a few of them until I discovered them in MAME, which I still played from time to time on my computer. Even though MAME has become more sophisticated and user-friendly today with all kinds of front ends to choose from, building a third MAME cabinet wasnt really in my plans. That is, until this nice Taito cabinet made its way into the cave. Let me explain...
The Score: Last year I attended an arcade auction (as I used to on a regular basis) in Kansas City. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, and was getting outbid on pretty much everything I had my eye on. As usual, they auctioned off all the goodies first. At the end of the day, they finally made it to what's affectionately known as "dead row". These are games that dont work, and, in most cases, are trashed and missing parts. In this row was a complete and nice (but dead) game called "Alpine Ski". I never heard of the game and never played it, nor did I know it's value. Regardless, it was in a nice blue Taito cabinet with little wear, and it looked complete inside and out. Bottom line, I picked it up for a mere $20 and brought it home, not knowing anything about the game or what I had planned for it.
When I got it home, the first thing I noticed was a burned up fuse & holder on the power supply. A quick and easy fix was all it took to bring this game back to life, and I'm enjoying a few rounds of Alpine Ski. Ok, it's not a bad game, but it's nothing special. In any case, whether I planned to keep it or sell it was irrelivant, because it only lived for about an hour. The PCB had crashed. Well, I guess it really was on life support even though it had sat dead for who knows how long. I spent a few hours trying to revive it, reseating chips, touching up solder joints, looking for bad connections and what not. In the end, it just refused to work. I had researched the game's value at that point and discovered it really wasn't worth much, so I wasnt going to invest much more time in it. I offered it up "parts or whole" and everyone was in line to buy bits and pieces from this game. One guy in particular bought half the parts. In the end, I pocketed about $200 parting it out. It got gutted right down to the coin door. A classic Taito died, so others may live on.
This still left me with one dilemma. I was left with a nice looking but empty Taito cabinet, it was just to good to trash. I knew I had to do something with it, but what? I thought about MAME, and then I discovered my friend Jeremy (The Basement Arcade) acually has a similar Taito cabinet that he converted to MAME (click here to see it). When I saw it in person my mind was made up, I was going to do the same to my cabinet.
The Service: Would you believe it cost me virtually nothing to build this? True, I bought some parts, but remember, I made around $200 during the part out. My wife scored a free P4 tower from her job. it needed a hard drive (which I had), a video card (which Jeremy graciously donated) and a ram upgrade (which cost me a whopping $11 on eBay). I bought a 21" computer monitor off CL for $10. From there, I had to buy another control panel & coin door. I decided to buy a "blank door" since I wouldnt need coin mechanisms for this project, plus they would just be in the way anyway. Then I found a converted & populated control panel for $25. I later sold the joysticks from it for the same amount, so I basically got the blank panel for free. I had plans to buy new hardware anyway, with a blue color scheme to match the cabinet. My next purchase was plexiglass. I go to Lowes often and look for bargains on scrap plexiglass. Turns out I went on a good day, I came home with enough plexiglass for this game and then some, only $8 this time around, the same amount I spent on a light fixture for the marquee. I also bought some lumber & paint to build a new base with, as the existing base had some swelling. I already had an old keyboard, trackball & set of computer speakers laying around, so all that was left was a marquee, joysticks, buttons and an interface. I went with the new Mini-Pac which proved to be a great choice. It comes with an easy to install wire harness and the interface itself is about the size of baseball card folded in half, perfect for smaller panels like this one. I was acually able to mount it right to a joystick without any interference. With everything mounted to the CP, it makes it easy to remove, just simply disconnect the USB cable.
So after profiting approx. $200 from parts, I basically spent approx. $200 in parts and supplies to convert this into a MAME machine. From there, all it cost me was time. After playing around with the computer on my test bench and trying several emulators and front ends, I decided to keep it simple. I am currently running just under 300 arcade games and nothing else. I may change this in the future if time & money permits. I am running a MALA front end with a custom skin that I added my own touches to. It's simple and very user friendly. My daughter had no problems volunteering as a game tester. I asked her to play every game I had loaded in a few days time and alert me of any issues so I could iron the bugs out. Once I had a complete & running setup, it was time to throw it all together and add the pieces to the empty cabinet. With some free time, labor & supplies, the Taito MAME cabinet is now complete & running.
Specs: Dell Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, 64MB Geforce 2 video card, 30 GB HD, DVD Rom/CDRW, Windows XP Pro, Dell Trinitron 21" monitor (not bad for $21, eh?)
MAME32 .085 running on MALA front end with custom skin. CP layout is 2 8-way HAPP Ultimate joysticks with 8 fire buttons for each player. Ultimarc Mini-Pac interface.
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