I still love Hyperspin. People say there are other front ends that are easier frontends that look just as good. They might be easier, but I haven't found a frontends that looks just as good.

My advice is to keep it simple. Do you really need 1000s of games for a bunch of systems. On my personal system I have about 500 games total. Same thing for controllers. When I started I wanted it all...trackballs, spinners, 4-way joystick, 8-way joysticks, and buttons, buttons, buttons. Now, I have a two player system with 8-way joystick, six buttons, start, coin, and escape. I find it's much more accessible for visitors.

I feel the 8-way works fine, but I'm sure a purist will tell you it's not perfect. I guess for me it's emulation. You're never going to have one machine that plays everything perfectly. I don't notice a huge change in my scores when playing on a 4-way vs 8-way, but I'm also not a top tier players. If Q-Bert or Defender are your all time favorite game, maybe it's worth it to you to install a setup specifically for those games. I value simplicity over that, but it's a choice. Plus now when I'm playing games in the wild, I seek out games with those unique controller layouts.

I used to use Mala in my previous builds. It's fine, but once it's setup the game specific themes and video snaps on Hyperspin is my favorite. It's just so pretty.

PS: This thread inspired me to work on Daphne again. I can get Dragon's Lair working on my laptop, but when I transfer it to my PC (running Hyperspin) it has to reload things from the internet. Because that PC isn't connected to the internet that prevents me from loading the game. I may pull it out and get it working eventually, but I'm afraid when I connect the PC to the internet it's going to mess something else up. Old technology seems to work perfectly well, until it is forced to "update".

Do you remember if you had to mount the iso image? I downloaded the image, but never mounted it and somehow it just started working on my laptop. I was hoping perhaps the settings would save when I transfered it over to my arcade, but it went though the first run startup sequence again, which was stopped due to a lack of internet connectivity. It just seems like the iso file wasn't actually needed, but given the timing of how I was running things it's hard to tell.

As I was starting typing I was simply going to say "that's a great solution", but I'm wondering if that really makes any difference. I don't even think you need to remove the unnecessarily inputs from the individual games. When you setup your global inputs you enter everything. Only those inputs that are used in an individual game are activated. So in Ms. Pacman, an input of Up/Right should automatically be treated as Up and Right. Unless I'm not remembering correctly, you shouldn't have to change anything. The custom inputs are more for games where the preset order of buttons isn't correct. An example I can think of is Mortal Kombat. It's a 5-button game, but I wanted Low Kick to be button 6, since that is my button below High Kick (which is button 3). If that's not correct, please explain, because I would be interested in using this as a solution on my games.

I installed a subwoofer in my cabinet this past weekend. I kept things low so that it's pretty subtle, but it certainly sounds better then the original at this point. Certainly not a high priority, but I've been picking up cheap powered subs when I find them at thrift stores. This put it to a good use. I also got Dragon's Lair working, but not though Hyperspin. I actually set mine up without RocketLauncher and I think I need that for the non-MAME systems.

I'll have to look into it. I though MAME automatically only utilized inputs that were originally a part of the game. So when I hit tab, in a game like Donkey Kong, it will actually show Up/Right as an input?

Okay, so what do I need to change from the default setup?

I do also have a question about Daphne. So I know you are supposed to own the DVD for games like Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2, Space Ace, and Thayer's Quest. Fisrt, can I still buy those? If so where? Second, as an ISO those seem to be about 8gb each. I'm working with an older PC, so that's a decent amount of space. Do I need to keep those on my system for each run, or can they be deleted after the first run?

Is this the correct DVD to run with the emulator? Worried it won't work on my XP system?
https://www.gog.com/game/dragons_lair_trilogy

Interesting. I wish I knew what each of those was actually doing. I also read a double tap creates a "not" in the tab settings. So, you can program up to be up, not right, not left. I wonder if this is what that is doing in text format.

Did a bit of testing at lunch. What this seems to do is enter in the "not" controls for each game. This can also be accomplished though the tab settings by first entering the direction you want and then double tapping directions you want to exclude. So for a game like Donkey Kong to map Up you enter Up, Left, Left, Right, Right. This then reads out as Up not Left not Right. Do this for each direction and the diagonals should all be ignored.