Slashdot Mirror
Play Classic Video Games In NY, At Home
Iphtashu Fitz writes "If you'd like to play classic arcade games from the 1980s, then it might be time for you to take a trip to New York, according to Wired News, since the American Museum of the Moving Image is holding an exhibition called Blip! where you can play a selection of the classics, including some of those referenced in an earlier exhibition. Also mentioned on their site is the X-Arcade cabinet for playing arcade-style classics at home through emulation." Much easier than building your own cabinet.
I read in Wired that the Pac Man people wouldn't agree to being in it.
As part of my Ghosts of Slashdot project, I grabbed a copy of this article before it went "live". There was a Slashdot outage at about that time, so I don't know if CmdrTaco & co. decided to change the text, or if it was lost and had to be re-created.
Same submitter, same "dept."... just the title and story text has changed.
Play Those Classic Video Games Virtually Anywhere
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the emulating-the-classics dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "If you're like me your introduction to video games decades ago was something like the Atari 2600, and you also pumped untold hundreds of quarters into arcade games like Space Invaders, Defender, and Asteroids. Well according to a Wired News article you can now play these and many more of those classic games in their original format on your PC, Mac, Playstation, XBox, or Gamecube. X-Arcade has an emulator & arcade-style interface that they claim will let you play over 4000 of the classic games on any of these modern gaming systems. Or if you'd prefer to play the actual arcade games from the 1980's then it might be time for you to take a trip to New York where the American Museum of the Moving Image is holding an exhibition where you can play these classics. Game emulators can be found linked from the museums website as well as through Retrogames." Much easier than building your own Cabinet.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
you mean cocktail cabinets
TIAEAE!
From the X-Arcade site:
Want to download Mame Rom games directly?
Easiest = Using Kazaa, or P2P engine
Type MAME in a software search.
Download Any MAME Related Searches
Encouraging people to pirate roms. That can't be good for business (well, good for business until the government comes knocking).
Or am I out of the loop and its all alright now?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Rescue an unloved genuine arcade cabinet, pop in a PC made out of all those bits and pieces you have lying around your house and join them together with bits from http://www.ultimarc.com/
Appreciate that special aroma in your home and the genuine cigartte burns around the joysticks.
Ten games? Come to the yearly California Extreme and see all those plus another 190 vids and pins.
For people not far from the MA/NH border where it meets the Pond, Hampton Beach and Salisbury Beach have large numbers of old arcade machines ripe for the playing. They've got the standards (Pac Man, Centipede, Galaga, Pole Position, Asteroid, etc) as well as some more obscure titles like Subroc 3D.
It's worth the trip, as long as white trash doesn't bother you.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
The X-Arcade cab is basically just a big wooden box, plus a nastily looking inserted X-Arcade double stick. (You can see the outlines of the arcade-shaped panel in the giant blocky panel. Ugh.) No PC or monitor are included. All that for 1000 bucks.
You might be better off buying an ancient cab and gutting it, or building your own. I built a wooden cab right to my size (I have a physical disability, dwarfism) and it kicks much booty as a result. Having a customized cab, or an authentic cab with new guts, seems a better way to go than a generic black cab branded with X-Arcade logos and a somewhat questionable price tag.
They are NOT the same. There are subtle differences in every game I've played. Noone notices since they dont have the original to compare too.
If you really love arcade games, collect and restore the machines. I only have room for 3 or 4 upright cabinets, but I pick up old ones, restore them, play them till I'm bored of it, then sell them and start over.
I usually turn enough profit to buy everyone I know a gummi bear.
But, there are tons of subtle differences. Midi tempos are usually off, colors are off. The games dont look the same emulated, even through a real arcade monitor..
Emulation is really neat, technically.. But if you truly love the old classics, keep the old classics around. Rescue that beat up SFII cabinet from the pizza shop, clean it up, repair/replace the controls.. Give it a little elbow grease..
MAME cabinets are just so... ghetto.. Especially when people try and cram every possible control into them.. Two sticks, 12 buttons each, trackballs, spinners, meh.. They look retarded. Many real cabinets were works of functional art.. Look at an old defender control panel.. Designed to function for only one game..
Or vindicators, a cabinet shaped like a giant tank with two crazy throttle levers for control.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This sounds like the traveling Videotopia exhibit.
It's quite a hoot to play games you used to rock at. I think they had Pac Man (not a fave of mine), although it's been a year or two since they came to my town.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Well, playing them was cool, but I always looked for ways to find hidden possiblities. Not only hidden treasures and easter eggs, but authentic bugs.
:)
Some way to squeeze through the wall outside the play area, walking endless desert then, or in a space shooter I found a position where I can kill all newly appearing enemies easily and managed to kill them all (yeah, just flew through empty skies without anything to shoot at, until I reset the machine with power switch), or climbing a ladder and shooting some object till I filled my score counter, or trying to earn enough extra lifes that they would overflow the screen...
It's always fun to (purposedly) crash an "embedded device"
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
hah you can buy an arcade with a MUCH bigger screen for half the price at www.arcade-infinity.com. Looks like the site is down at the moment - if it doesn't return you can google for "Japanese JAMMA cabinet" and that should find you something useful.
the guy that runs http://arcade.madsmurf.com/ can probably point you towards a cabinet vendor.
I'm not an owner of that company or investor or anything other than a very happy customer.
shipping is kind of expensive but the arcade cabs are very cheap in my experience. slap a windows PC in there and a couple bits from www.ultimarc.com (arcadeVGA adapter and the J-PAC) and you have every thing you need but the roms to play thousands of arcade games on this arcade.
and there are a lot more than one type of cabinet - there are stand-up cabs, sit down cabs, two seater sega cabs, cabinets with dual monitors, cabinets with giant projection screen monitors, all kinds of stuff.
have a look. they're good stuff.
ArcadeControls.com (BYOAC site) for shame!
And man is the x-arcade "cabinet" just an ugly expensive bookshelf for a TV and PC with a shelf for one of their undersized controllers, or what?
E.
PS I of course like my cabinet better: UberCade =P
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
You know your old when people start putting your old toys in a museum.
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
That I know of is at Weirs Beach at FunSpot You name a game, they have it there most likely. From old school Asteroids to new games that you actually have to move your body to play. Anytime I go there it's a blast!
You can buy a scrapped cabinet for less than $100, or free if you know where to look. They typically include a coin door which is a real eye catcher, and just need a washing up. Attach a pre-made control panel ($100?) or make your own, drop in a TV + PC and Bob's your uncle.
Save your link-whoring, Commander. Build Your Own Arcade Controls lists hundreds of documentary pages written by people who've built their own acrade machines or controls.
I finished my own professional-looking arcade control panel with real arcade machine parts just last week, but I haven't had time to post the info to my website just yet. For those looking for the ultimate arcade experience, you can't beat the feel of the real thing.
I just picked up Midway Arcade Treasures for the PS2, and it rocks! It has support for the multitap, and comes with great games like:
Gauntlet
Joust
Defender
Spy Hunter
Smash TV
Rampage
in all, something like 25 titles. It's only $19.95. You can build a cabinet and stick the PS2 in it, and then you can have all these classics for super cheap!
I went there not too long ago, though the subway ride was a pain in the arse from borklyn, er um brooklyn, and flat out broken on the way back (fire someplace nearby in the subway). A lot of interactive stuff, and good for kids and the young at heart. There was (maybe still is) an exhibit of Tim Burton's paintings. Fun stuff too, like making flipbooks of yourself goofing off in front of a camera, making little stop motion animations on computers with little plastic "actors", dubbing your voice over real movie scenes, fiddling with soundtracks, etc. Lots of fun stuff. They also had, for all you trekkies, an exhibit of hundreds of star trek action figures (and other movie/tv action figures).
For a $1000 cabinet, you'd be better off buying the Slikstik cabinet, though, keep in mind that the wood and other materials needed to build only the cabinet cost about $150 or perhaps far less if you use a painted cabinet rather than using laminates or melamines and take off the coin door.
I spent a total of about $1600 building my cabinet from scratch, but that includes all hardwareincluding the new 27" arcade monitor, computer hardware, and controls.
Just set a budget (both for your money and your time) and buy the best stuff you can. The cabinet takes the most time to build, followed by the control panel; however building vs buying a cabinet is where you will save the most money. The other good option is to buy (or often times get for free) non working machines from a local amusement vendor and restore them, then fit your own cpanel to them. This has the greatest cost/time benefit for you; plus you can recycle. The drawback is that you don't get the flexibility that building whatever you want brings you.
The maintainer of the BYOAC website is putting out a 500+ page book on the cabinet building subject, so it might be worth getting one of those when it comes out before you make any decisions..
~GoRK
Actually, a better place is FunSpot in Weirs Beach, NH. Something like 180 classic arcade games, in one room. I'm really looking forward to my next trip there.
.08 a play, instead of a quarter
You can get discount coupons on their tokens, so games cost something like
Making your own cabinet at home really isn't all that hard. I set out to do this about a year ago and accomlished the goal rather nicely + cheaply. All together the physical building costs only ran about 200 dollars (wood, paint, bits, blades, brushes, etc). The arcade controls, all purchased from Happ, are entirely authentic. It was nice to know I could purchase the same controls that are used in the arcades today. They have a minimum order of $50, so make sure you order all of your items at once. 2 dozen buttons, 2 ultimate joysticks, marquee holder + 25" screen bezel only ran about 85$. I got some of the items on sale, but they always seem to have a sale running so finding a good deal usually isn't a problem. Getting the dual mechanism coin door wasn't as much fun, but after some hunting i found a used one for 20$ and did a little refurbishing to get rid of the knicks and scratches. I managed to get a 25" TV set on sale for $112, so that was a rather good buy. I wouldn't suggest spending the 700$ for a 25" arcade monitor + harness kit. If you put a half decent machine in you can emulate most of the feature of the arcade monitor. I already had a half-decent machine laying around doing nothing, but i needed something to hook the controls upto the PC with. At first i tried to go cheap and create my own controller via hardwiring the controls to a hacked keyboard controller, but due to size restrictions that didn't go so well. I wasn't too excited about paying $100 for a commercial keyboard controller, so i opted for the iPac controller for $50 built especially for those who want to make their own cabinets. I'm not sure if they sell them anymore, but they can usually be found on ebay. All said and done the final cost was probably about $450 for some more finishing items and a one or two mess-ups for my own "authentic" black 6'2" 25" arcade cabinet. I'd like to eventually get some artwork made up and printed out, but the cost of getting them printed on vinyl is a bit too steep for my tastes. For the serious arcade emulation enthusiast with a bit of pocket change to spare this is a really good alternative than spending $2000-$3000 dollars on a manufactured cabinet. It might not be computer cut, but there is always that wonderful feeling of "yah, not only that, but i built the thing" afterwards. Something to cherish for years to come.
Steal This Sig
As mentioned BYOAC(Build Your Own Arcade Controls) Is a great site for MAME cabinet related information.
Classic 80's games can be played here too:
http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/games.html
-Valiss
Big whoop, one weekend? If you want to really play some agmes, go to FunSpot in Laconia NH any time of year.
You can buy one if you want to. Have a look at Arcade Clearance and at Arcade Depot
If I had a good salary and owned my own space, I'd probably buy one of these for a conversation piece.
Well it all depends on what games you want to be able to play, and how many parts you already have. I got my cab from a local retro arcade for $50. It still had the coin door, the neon light, the speaker, and all the buttons and such. It used to be a Street Fighter II cab so it has 2 players with 6 buttons each. Then I took an old 166 mhz Pentium and put that inside running Wind98. That cost me zero. Instead of investing in a TV I used a 17' monitor that someone had given to me. At first I did my own keyboard hack for the controls, but after having troubles I bought an ipac from ultimarc for $50 (that includes shipping from the UK to USA). Add on another $50 for random hardware parts that I didn't think I would need and I invested a whopping $150 in my arcade machine. It will play all the '80s classics like Pac-Man, Frogger, Galaga, Donky Kong, etc just fine. If that is all you want to play, then that is all you need to invest. However, I really wanted to play Street Fighter II since that was "my game" back in the day. I found that it (and all the other similar fighter games of that time period) runs great on a Pentium II 350 mhz with 128 megs of ram. If you want to play more modern arcade games, I suggest you get something like a 1 ghz Athlon. People are practically tossing them away these days and it will play any Mame game that I have tried. Any game that bogs down a ghz box is new enough that there isn't going to be any nestalgia with it, and you might as well be playing it on your Playstation or whatever. In a $1000 premade arcade cab, half the price is the computer in it, and they give you WAY more than you need.
SCO.com uses Linux
Its a great place to start and an almost bottomless supply of links to vendors and parts sources. There are about a dozen or more arcade cabinet plans out there on the net and at least as many companies offering a far better product than the X-Arcade stuff.
Gratuitous links:
Lusid's arcade flashback
Cocktail Cab Plans
Happy Slashdotting!