Help with a MAME cabinet

[jessejames2089]

I'm going to be building a MAME cabinet and i need to know how many push buttons i need for it. Cause right now i really don't know how many i need so if anybody can help me i would appreciate it. And what would be the best joy stick

[XYXZYZ]

Uhh, how many do you want?

As far as joysticks it depends on what kind of stick you like. (American or Japanese style, leaf switch, etc.) All of these choices depend on what kind of games you want to play.

Oh, and make sure you read this forum-
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php

[Flack]

If you're only going to play Frogger and Ms. Pac-Man, you don't need any (other than start buttons). If you're going to play some of the later fighter games, you'll need six per player. If you're a first time MAME builder, you'll probably want about 480.

[Kid Ice]

7 per player is about right. This way you can do a 6-button street fighter configuration, with an extra button on the bottom row for neo geo style.

[InsaneDavid]

Read and learn.

[jb143]

As long as the underside of your control panel looks like this, you'll be fine...



Seriously though, it depends on what kind of games you want. Just don't go crazy trying to make it able to play anything and everything with all the buttons and joysticks you'd ever need.

[InsaneDavid]

For an example, this is the control panel on my 3/5th size Galaga cabinet...



Game controls...
1P Start
1P Joystick
1P Button 1
1P Button 2
1P Credit

1P Start is also the shift button...
1P Start + 1P Credit = Esc (exit)
1P Start + 1P Joystick Down = Pause

Functions for the front end...
1P Joystick Up / Down = Game list up / down
1P Joystick Left / Right - Game list one page up / down
1P Start = Start game
1P Start + 1P Credit = Exit MAME

Need to mount the monitor this coming weekend and then she'll be done. I was planing on using an LCD panel for mounting ease and to reduce weight but they just don't look good with the older MAME I'm running so I'm going to bite the bullet and mount a CRT in there.

Think about what you want to play, how your cabinet is set up, and then build your controls from there.

[bradd]

get at least 20 of them right away and joysticks from happ

[jessejames2089]

If you're only going to play Frogger and Ms. Pac-Man, you don't need any (other than start buttons). If you're going to play some of the later fighter games, you'll need six per player. If you're a first time MAME builder, you'll probably want about 480.

I'm going to play all the arcade games from pac man all the way to games like nfl blitz,street fighter, and metal slug

[Flack]

Then I would do what Kid Ice suggested and add 7 buttons per player to cover pretty much every game -- plus you'll need a start button and a coin-up button for each person as well.

[Sniderman]

I'm going to play all the arcade games from pac man all the way to games like nfl blitz,street fighter, and metal slug

All of 'em huh? Be sure to add a tracball and a spinner and a trigger joy and - hell - just toss in a bunch more buttons just to be safe.

Not to be a dick, but do you have the guts of your MAME system running yet? It seems like we get folks asking about button number and configuration when they don't even have a working MAME system yet, yet alone a cabinet on-hand. The buttons are cheap and yummy candy colored, but get your computer working and MAME stable first if you haven't already.

[Compute]

Make sure to add a tap handle so you can play Tapper accurately..

[jb143]

I'm going to play all the arcade games from pac man all the way to games like nfl blitz,street fighter, and metal slug

I think the question is...what type of games are you planning on playing the most. You probally need just a 2 player 6 button per player setup(though 3 buttons each will let you play most games). Don't add a spinner, don't add a trackball, don't add a Tron joystick, don't add a steering wheel. Keep it simple and keep it classy. Configure the games to play with the controls you have. You may not end up being able to play everything exactly the same as it was in the arcades, but you can't do that anyways if you have too many other controls in the way.

The reason people get so worked up over stuff like this is because we've all seen too many Mame cabinet newbies comming in and wanting their system to play absolutely everything and end up build some horrible monstrosity that features every controller from every game out there. Then the sound of facepalms is heard around the globe. So don't take it personally.

[jessejames2089]

I think the question is...what type of games are you planning on playing the most. You probally need just a 2 player 6 button per player setup(though 3 buttons each will let you play most games). Don't add a spinner, don't add a trackball, don't add a Tron joystick, don't add a steering wheel. Keep it simple and keep it classy. Configure the games to play with the controls you have. You may not end up being able to play everything exactly the same as it was in the arcades, but you can't do that anyways if you have too many other controls in the way.

The reason people get so worked up over stuff like this is because we've all seen too many Mame cabinet newbies comming in and wanting their system to play absolutely everything and end up build some horrible monstrosity that features every controller from every game out there. Then the sound of facepalms is heard around the globe. So don't take it personally.

The games im going to be playing the most is game like pac man,metal slug,nfl blitz, basically games like that and i got a mother board,cpu,memory already all i need is a hdd and what would be a big enough hdd for a mame cabinet


Edit: And what graphics card would be good for a mame cabinet cause the motherboard i got is a pentium 4

[Ed Oscuro]

Keep in mind that an eight-way joystick will be absolutely horrible for Pac-Man and a four-way joystick will not be good for many newer games.

Basically, you have to make some painful decisions, or suffer with a far-crappier-than-arcade-spec experience.

I'm all for the Tapper handle though.

[jb143]

The graphics card really makes no difference since Mame doesn't make use of it's features. The choice will mainly depend on what your using for a monitor. For example, if you're using a TV you probably want a card with S-Video output.

[Ed Oscuro]

If you have a real arcade monitor (such as found in an old cabinet) to plug this into, the ArcadeVGA will give accurate output for a number of arcade hardware types (an old post at Shmups by member Elvis says about ~20 different types).

Otherwise I would have to agree with jb143; S-Video output will give you an easy way to take care of sound and still give more or less acceptable video quality, for not much hassle.

[jessejames2089]

The graphics card really makes no difference since Mame doesn't make use of it's features. The choice will mainly depend on what your using for a monitor. For example, if you're using a TV you probably want a card with S-Video output.

I'm using 2 17" crt monitors for the cabinet.


And to Ed Oscuro.... Could i just add another joystick and two or 3 buttons for games like pac man ect...

[jb143]

If you're using a regular computer monitor then just use whatever card is in the computer already. If you are going to use other emulators than Mame for newer 3D games then you might get use out of a more expensive 3D accelerated card but Mame's philosophy is to emulate everything in software so the card makes no difference.

As far as the control pannel, that is completely up to you. You can do whatever you want. My main suggestion was to keep it classy. Otherwise people might make fun of it for going overboard. See the site that stonic mentioned for examples of that.

[jessejames2089]

If you're using a regular computer monitor then just use whatever card is in the computer already. If you are going to use other emulators than Mame for newer 3D games then you might get use out of a more expensive 3D accelerated card but Mame's philosophy is to emulate everything in software so the card makes no difference.

As far as the control pannel, that is completely up to you. You can do whatever you want. My main suggestion was to keep it classy. Otherwise people might make fun of it for going overboard. See the site that stonic mentioned for examples of that.

Ok thank you for the info and the site. I was mainly going to just have 7 buttons on the cabinet but have dual monitors back to back but i might just have one monitor idk yet