Launchbox is great. If you're willing to drop a few dollars, the bigbox mode is awesome. Check out videos of it on youtube. Totally worth the money. Setting everything is is super simple, unlike with Hyperspin, where it takes a lot of research and time to get everything setup nicely.

Launchbox is also under active development, and gets improved all the time.

I use Hyperspin + Rocket Launcher, but like someone said, it takes a bit longer to set up and fine tune.

I agree 100%. I've never liked Hyperspin. Total PITA to set up and I never got it right. My time is more valuable, buy Launchbox Bigbox.

everything i read about hyperspin has been quite negative from a setup/keep it working perspective...

i wish bigbox had a trial of sorts. i contacted the company a month ago asking for specs and they never got back to me... i really like how quick it is supposed to be to setup but fear it would run poorly on my i3.

Made this few years back and was watching a lot of car shows where everything was a theme build. Rotating monitor is the way to go, so glad I put in the effort.

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This is truly a work of art! It belongs in a VW showroom man!

went a little mental with building mine. the spinners are mounted in bushings to take weight of adding a steering wheel off bearings so you can use them like spinners or then add the steering wheel and you can drive. the spinners are located in such a position that thewy can easily be used as a spinner or a steering wheel. the front folds open with pedals for driving games which makes demo derby work great for two people. light guns are hung underneath. there is a trackball for games like marble madness or missile command. the four joystick are analog 360 joysticks so they can all be used as analog sticks which works good for escape from the planet of the robot monsters or tail gunner or return of the empire. mame can electronically map the joysticks so they can be 4 way 8 way or diagonal depending on the electronic mapping... the big knob in the center is my version of a taito twist fire control that I designed and built. the only drawback is I had to add a switch that disables all the grounds to it before the game starts because the control always is choosing a direction and will keep games from playing unless disabled when not in use.. the stick placement is for playing single or dual player tank games depending on choice, also works good for robotron. also there is an usb plug in 270 degree steering wheel or xbox 360 control plug in for console games. the 5th stick was a diagonal left over from an earlier version that had ultimarc sticks. as you can see all the sticks have thumb triggers.

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If you are trying to do more complicated things, the Hyperspin can be challenging. But, honestly, you can set it up in seconds: set a path to roms, do some basic config via the UI and you are done.

That is if they’re rom collections are all named properly

Thanks, it was a group effort, I did the did the design and and electronics, it has an amp and down firing sub to match the headlight speakers. My brother is the carpenter in the family he built the cabinet. Its actually painted with automotive paint in the official VW colors from the early 60's. I think its Sea Blue and Arctic White.

On the Hyperspin topic I found it very easy to configure. The initial set up took a little tinkering but no real issues. The trick is just only listing the titles you want and not all the clones and bootlegs.

Dumb question because I don't know much about mame... If you stick a raspberry pi + retropie into one of these arcade1up cabinets, how the the volume control work? Is there a menu option that you can hot key and adjust it or do you need physical access to some some volume control pot?

I have had several over the years but this is my current arcade cab. Love the Japanese candy cabs. Currently just running a Pandora's Box jamma board in it, but plan to go the Arcadepie route in the future.

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Anyone have an extreme home arcade machine? They’re pricey, but I’m considering one over JAMMA or building my own. I could only find one YouTube video review of their mega cabinet.

I run it on a $50 Pentium and it seems to work fine. As was noted LB is undergoing development and they have revamped it at least once for speed improvements of the interface. I wanted a game front end on that computer and I started out with Hyperspin. That was some of the most convoluted software I have ever worked with and after spending hours trying to get it to work I found Launchbox. Launchbox was up and running in minutes and seems much easier to configure and customize. I haven’t put it into full Bigbox mode yet but I have played with it and it seems to run fine, no slowdowns.

Personally I prefer a minimalist interface that simply shows the games then lets you select one and launch it. So I don’t have the full-on interface that has all the fan art, music, game play videos, etc. Also I only load it with a somewhat curated list of games so that might make a speed difference. I think I have about 300 total games in there right now. Some people like to load the entire packs with thousands of games, but I’d rather keep it simpler and just show stuff I want to play.

I used Maximus Arcade as my front end. Made it very easy to have only the games you wanted in the menu.

https://www.maximus-arcade.com/

Arcade Shop always has great parts to build MAME cabinets and have clean looking machines.
I've always had great customer service there.

http://www.arcadeshop.com/

To bad Mala isn't updated anymore. It was far easier. Don't see an option in Launchbox to check off like in Mala to make it simple for the PC to launch it at startup if you want to use it in a dedicated arcade cabinet. Also, Mala let you check off a box to boot up to a specific game. If you had it in a Pacman cab, you could hit the power button and the pc would boot up straight into Mala and run Pacman. It was awesome and simple.

MALA was great. I don't recall if I added it to the startup menu, or if it was an option, but you can definitely set up Launchbox to run at startup, mine does. Keep searching in the menu, I swear I saw an option to boot to a specific game.

I'm using an old version of MALA that I was able to download recently. This is my 3rd install, somehow my kids have wrecked my menus in a way that I couldn't fix previously (via button mashing?) so reinstalled. Only frontend I've spent any time on and can get games working without much issue. But also, I haven't updated MAME or my ROMS in quite some time, so likely this is the reason I've had trouble with newer setups?

A few questions for you mamesters. I am in the process of trading around a few pins, and may have enough left over for a mame setup. I am looking into getting a used MAME setup off of Craigslist, so I'm looking for something lower end that still looks like an arcade machine. My questions are:

1. Where are you guys getting the Mame roms? It seems like a great way to get your PC full of viruses.

2. In addition to playing the classics, there are 2 mid 90s games I am really interested in playing... NFL Blitz and Gauntlet legends. Would something like this work on a retropie setup or is that a bridge to far.

3. I see deals for 4 and 8 TB HDs with pretty much every rom ever on facebook... good idea or bad idea?

If you guys have preferred sites or could point me towards good sources for Mame stuff? I see tons of sites but don't really know where to start.

Thanks.

I think the bigger question is do you like to tinker with things. Personally I would much rather just do a little research online and do it myself. The HDs that are all set up just seem like a scam to me. Someone charging to download something that is free on the internet, it just rubs me the wrong way. A quick google search will provide several options for roms, I use a french one that seems to have everything and I have never had any issue with viruses. That being said if the rom comes in a exe don't use that site. I do remember Gauntlet Legends being a finicky game to get working, it may take some extra effort. There are a lot of great resources out there, personally the DIY route is the way to go. Also spend money on controls, I used UltiMarc and love them, they do cost more.

I've got a couple sets of MAME roms 'round here somewhere that came on CDs. If anyone's interested.

One set is a set of 10 CDs.
The other is a very nice Mame 32 0.111 set of 19 discs. Damn near everything I believe!!

Opinion:
You don't use your main PC with your finances and family pictures as your MAME PC. You use an old PC that a friend/relative doesn't need that's just collecting dust somewhere. You wipe it, install Windows (I use XP) and set it up just to run MAME and a frontend. If it crashes, gets a virus, etc., no biggie.

I downloaded some ROMS I found wanted, but paid a couple bucks to have a guy ship me preloaded CDs. No I don't have his name anywhere, but probably similar to the TB drives you're talking about.

If you want to see everything (literally thousands of games) you can go that route. If you only plan to play a handful, you can probably locate by hand.

It does take tinkering though, enjoy!

1. See #3 or from archive.org
2. NFL Blitz and Gauntlet legends won't work well on a retropie setup - but you MIGHT be able to play the Dreamcast versions
3. I've bought these. It's soooo much better than setting up Hyperspin from scratch or downloading all the files. Anyone who says different (got scammed perhaps?) has infinite time.

Mine is a hyperspin. I think it has over 15k games on it. Sometimes I don't play, I just scroll through shit.
What are some good/maybe obscure games you guys enjoy that I could check out?

Parents ran an arcade when I was a kid. The ones I really want to play again are the Gauntlent Legends and Blitz games... As far as games I wouldn't mind spinning up, Rampart, Rampage, 1942 (and many sequels), Die Hard, NBA Jam.

Mame 0.207 is out. Doesn't add much interesting stuff, a lot of plug-n-plays from the mid 2000s.

They've added Tiger LCD handhelds in the past year, those are pretty cool to check out if you had any of them.

Maybe one day they'll get Emergency Call Ambulance straightened out. At least they fixed the audio driver for Batman Forever.

Yikes I'm still running 0.170 Roms from 2016!
In my defence, 2016 was when I started really getting into Pinball

Some games that I enjoy:

The Glob
Anteater
Bomb Jack & Bomb Jack twin
Burgertime
Robotron
MANY different shmups (Dodopachi, ESP Ra.De., Guwange, Armed Police Batrider, Progear, etc)
League Bowling
Gunbarich
Jungle King
Flicky
Pang (few versions)
Puyo Puyo 2
Tetris Grand Master 1/2
Track & Field
Baseball Stars 2
2020 superbaseball
Timber
Viewpoint
NBA Jam
Zookeeper
Many more, but there's some off the top of my head

I also have 2 custom Hori Pro N fight sticks, they are awesome if you don't have a fullsize cab. In one of them I have a Sanwa 4/8 way that works perfect for 4 way games like Pacman, Burgertime, etc.

Double post -- delete me

Triple post

I don’t think the rom version really makes that bigga’ deal. Most of the games I care for are 35-40 years old anyway. (:
Get them working with whatever interface you use and enjoy.

welcome to the (oldman) club lol

MAME newbie...

I gutted one of my arcade1ups and put in a Retropie set up and a arcade1up Street Fighter control panel. MAME is working fine using lr-mame2003... control buttons A-B-X-Y-start-select-hotkey all work fine.

However, I also installed advmame. For those games, my buttons connected to my USB controller are not working. I've tried to 'tab' via keyboard into a particular game's setting but the buttons still don't register. I think I read somewhere advmame doesn't use retroarch so my lr-mame2003 settings won't apply. Maybe some manual configuration file edits are necessary... but I just don't know what.

TIA for any help!

I know I've added a few dozen games, since typing up this list, but if you are looking for a build this is a good start. I used to have a build with thousands of games, but selection paralysis is a real thing, so I've been trying to keep my new list under 500. Having said that, if you have any favorites not on the list please post them. If you just want a few suggestions, I'd go with DoDonPachi and Progear. Both well known in the "bullet hell" genre, but if you haven't played them they are my favorite vertical shooter and horizontal shooter. If you want something super obscure try out Speed Coin. It's a prototype game from Stern. I set up the controls to play with two joysticks.

EDIT: Also if there is a way of hiding the huge list unless click on, it let me know the format...{spoiler} and {/spoiler} is common, but did not work.

005
720
1941
1942
1943
1944
10 Yard Fight
1943 Kai
19XX
64th Street: A Detective Story
88 Games
A.B. Cop
Act=Cancer: Cybernetic Hyper Weapon
Action Fighter
Aero Fighters
Aero Fighters 2
Aero Fighters 3
After Burner
After Burner 2
Aggressors of Dark Kombat
Air Buster
Airwolf
Ajax
Alex Kidd
Alien Syndrome
Alien vs. Predator
Aliens
Aligator
Alpha Mission 2
Alpine Ski
Altered Beast
American Speedway
Amidar
Andro Dunos
Andro Dunos
Angel Eyes
Ant Eater
Apache 3
Arcana Heart
Arkanoid
Arkanoid 2
Armed Police Batrider
Armored Warriors
Art of Fighting 3
Asterix
Asteroids
Asteroids: Deluxe
Astra Superstars
Astro Blaster
Asura Blade: Sword of Dynasty
Back Street Soccer
Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja
Bang Bread
Baseball Stars
Baseball Stars 2
Batsugen
Battle Bakraid
Battle Circuit
Battle Garegga
Battle Toads
Bells & Whistles
Berzerk
Black Tiger
Black Widow
Blazing Star
Blood Brothers
Blue's Journey
Bomb Jack
Boogie Wings
Bosconian
Breakers Revenge
Bubble Bobble
Bubble Bobble 2
Bucky O'Hare
Burger Time
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
Captain America and the Avengers
Captain Commando
Caveman Ninja
Centiped
Choplifter
Circus Charlie
Combat School
Combatribes
Commando
Contra
Crazy Climber
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters 2: Vandetta
Crystal of Kings
Cyberbots: Full Madness
Cyber-Lip
Darius Gaiden
Darkstalkers 3: Vampire Savior
Defender
Demon Front
Denjin Makai
Denjin Makai 2: Guardians
Dig Dug
Dimahoo
DoDonPachi
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong 2
Donkey Kong 3
Donkey Kong Jr.
Donpachi
Double Dragon
Doungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom
Dragon Ball Z 2: Supper Battle
Dragon Blaze
Dragon Breed
Dragon Master
Dragon Spirit 2: Dragon Saber
Dragoon Might
Drift Out '94
Duck Hunt
Dungeon Magic
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara
Dynasty Wars
Dynasty Wars 2: Warriors of Fate
Eagle
Eight Man
Elevator Action
Elevator Action Returns
ESP Ra.De.
Espgal
F-1 Grand Prix Part 2
Fast Lane
Fatal Fury 3
Fatal Fury Special
Fever SOS
Final Fight
Food Fight
Frogger
Funky Jet
Galaga
Galaga '88
Galaxian
Galaxy Fight
Gaplus
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Gauntlet
Gauntlet 2
Ghost Pilots
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Ghouls 'n Bhosts
Go! Go! Mile Smile
Golden Axe
Golden Axe: Revenge of the Death Adder
Gorf
G-Stream G2020
Gun Bird 2
Gunbarich
Gunwange
Hammerin' Harry
Hang-On
Hat Trick
Hokuto No Ken
Hyper Sports
Hyper Street Fighter II
Ibara Kuro: Black Label
Ikari Warriors
In The Hunt
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Journey
Joust
Jr. Pac-Man
Kaiser Knuckle
Kangaroo
Karnov's Revenge
Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi
Killer Instinct
Killer Instinct 2
Killing Blade
King of Fighters '94
King of Fighters '97
King of Fighters '98
King of Fighters '99
King of Fighters '00
King of Fighters '02
King of Monsters
King of Monsters 2
Kingdom Grandprix
Kizuna Encounter
Klax
Knights of the Round
Knights of Valour
Krul
Kung Fu
Land Sea Air Squad
Last Blade
Last Blade 2
Last Hope
Last Resort
League Bowling
Legend of Valkyrie
Lode Runner
Magical Drop 3
Magician Lord
Marble Madness
Mars Matrix
Martial Masters
Marvel Super Heroes
Marvel vs. Capcom
Marvel vs. Street Fighter
Melty Blood: Act Cadenza
Mercs
Metal Slug
Metal Slug 2
Metal Slug 3
Metal Slug 4
Metal Slug 5
Metal Slug X
Metamongester
Metamorphic Force
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
Moon Patrol
Monster Farm Jump
Monster Maulers
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat 2
Mortal Kombat 3
Ms. Pac-Man
Muchi Muchi Pork!
Mushihimesama
Mutation Nation
Mystic Warriors
NBA Hangtime
NBA Jam
NBA Jam T.E.
Neo Bomberman
Neo Turf Masters
Neo XYX
New Zealand Story
NFL Blitz (Not Working)
Nibbler
Nightmare in the Dark
Night Slasher
Ninja Baseball Batman
Ninja Master's
Operation Wolf
Oriental Legend
Outfoxies
Outlaws of the Lost Dynasty
Out Run
Over Top
Pac-Man
Pac-Mania
Pac-Plus
Pang! 3
Paperboy
Penguin-Kun Wars
Ping Pong
Pipe Dream
Pocket Gal
Pole Position
Popeye
Power Instinct
Power Instinct 2
Power Instinct 3: Groove on Fight
Power Instinct 4: Matrimelle
Prehistoric Isle
Prehistoric Isle 2
Progear
Puchi Carat
Pulstar
Punch-Out!!
Punisher
Punk Shot
Puyo Puy SUN
Puzzle Bobble
Puzzle Bobble 4
Puzzle Uo Poko
Q*bert
Qix
Rabbit
Rage of the Dragons
Raiden
Raiden Fighters 2
Raiden Fighters Jet
Rally Bike
Rally X
Rampage
Ranbo III
Rastan
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2
Real Bout Fatal Fury: Special
Robo Army
Robotron
R-Type
R-Type 2
R-Type Leo
Salamander
Samurai Aces
Samurai Shodown
Samurai Showdown 2
Samurai Showdown IV
Samurai Showdown V Special
Saturday Night Slam Masters
Savage Reign
Sengoku 2
Sengoku 3
Shadow Dancer
Shadow Force (Japan)
Shock Trooper
Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad
Simpsons
Sinistar
Smash TV
SNK vs. Capcom
Snow Bros.
Space Invaders
Speed Coin
Spinmaster
Splash!
Street Fighter Alpha
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Street Fighter II: Champion Edition
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
Street Fighter: The Movie
Street Hoop
Strider
Strikers 1945
Strikers 1945 II
Strikers 1945 III
Strikers 1945 Plus
Sunset Riders
Super Baseball 2020
Super Off Road
Super Pac-Man
Super Pang
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Super Sidekicks 3: The Next Glory
Super Spy
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Super Volleyball
Tantra
Tapper
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
Tehkan World Cup
Tetris
Three Stooges
Three Wonders
Timber
Toki
Toobin
Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy
Track & Field
Traverse USA
Trog
Tron
Tumble Pop
Twin Cobra
Twinkle Star Sprites
Ultra Mortal Kombat 3
Waku Waku 7
Warlords
Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa
Willow
Wind Jammers
Wizard of Wor
Wonderboy
World Heroes Perfect
WWF Wrestlefest
WWR Wrestlemania
Xain'd Sleena
X-Men
X-Men vs. Street Fighter
Zaxxon
Zed Blade
Zero Team
Zoo Keeper
Zupapa

I bought one of those SF2 Arcade1Up Walmart cabinets. Gutted everything except the monitor and threw a raspberrypi in it.

Pretty much recommended as the roms they use are broken/limited when compaired to the real roms. As well as the controls. Cheap as fuck, get rid of them or use them till they break (which wont take long) and throw in something better.

Paintjob is shit on them but if you complain to the company they'll send out repair overlays. So atleast they have good customer service which is rare these days.

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I built mine about 13 years ago. Been used endlessly ever since. Ditched the CRT TV i used originally and when we moved 5 years ago and installed a LED. Fairly recently I changed over to Launch Box / Big box from Game EX for my front end. The plan was to also play pinball on it as you can see the buttons on the sides but I never even attempted it after the build.

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I like Launchbox for a front end. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere on their site that they are working on something improved for pinball. That's the only thing I haven't gotten running clean yet. I haven't put too much effort into though, been distracted playing other stuff. Like, Doom.

I built a quick hanging cab as a winter project. It's a prototype for what I'd like to do. Turned out OK for a starter. Running pi3 with 32 led tv.

0413191603_HDR (resized).jpg

I'm currently in the process of rebuilding my MAME cab. I originally made it from an old PC and a free cabinet (bootleg MKII?) I got from a friend. I slapped an X-Arcade Tankstick on there and called it a day. After a couple of years, I sold it to my old boss for his kids.

About 2 months ago he called me and asked if I knew who would want to buy it. I told him I would give him what he paid me - $300. It was overpriced, but whatever. He's a good friend.

Anyway, this time around I'm going to be doing some upgrades and likely getting rid of the Tankstick (now that I know what I'm doing).

Started with uprading the rig to this:

ebay.com link: Dell Optiplex 7010 DT I7 3770 4GB RAM 500GB HDD Windows 10 Pro 4

What a deal! Had a spare SSD for a boot drive.

I also seriously plan on limiting the number of games this time around. I found that having thousands of games results in having no idea what to play and is overwhelming in terms of setup. Right now I have 159 games that I started configuring last night. The eventual plan is to upgrade to RGB LED buttons and have per-game button configs. That seems manageable with 200 games or less. I will add more games as I discover them along the way.

Here are a few *really* ancient pictures to give you an idea of the aesthetics.

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Lots of work ahead of me on this bad boy.

So I'm taking the plunge into the big boy Mame world. I'm really digging my Arcade1up Pi conversion, but am taking the plunge into a full Mame setup. I just ordered an 8TB fully spec'd hard drive off of Etsy with every Mame and game system released up to PS3 with a hyperspin front end. Assuming I can get everything working, I'm going to convert my GoldenTee Fore complete cabinet over to a Mame Setup. I've fiddled on and off with emulation for years, and am thrilled with the idea of getting all the roms in a complete package. The first step is getting everything working on my old PC with just an XBOX controller. Once that works, it's going into the big system. This will be fun!

I got rid of all my MAME upright cabinets in favor of sitting my ass on the couch playing MAME on a RetroPie hooked up to my 4K TV. Can't afford to burn calories anymore standing to play video games.

Same here, but I am still working through the controller issue. How are you handling that?

I have found that some arcade games play pretty well with a wireless Xbox 360 controller. A few examples: Asteroids, Space Invaders, Galaga. However, others don't work well at all with it. A few examples, PacMan or anything similar, forget it - needs a real joystick, Centipede and others need a real trackball, and Breakout and others need a real spinner. There is no ready-made portable arcade control panel for connecting to TV/Couch setup that I know of, so I am trying to figure out how to make one.

There are a ton of custom solutions on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/search?q=arcade%20controller for sale/inspiration that should be exactly what you need. What I'm learning is that you can basically build any controller you want in any size you want and hook it up through an IPAC controller like this one. https://www.amazon.com/I-PAC-Arcade-Controller-Interface-Cable/dp/B01N6TKDDH/ref=asc_df_B01N6TKDDH/ I've never done it, but will be going through the process with my first Arcade Mame conversion.

Yeah I'm using an Xbox 360 controller as well. I have two different MAME emulators running...one is the MAME4ALL and I forget the name of the other one I only remember it was newer. Anyway, with MAME4ALL it allowed me to use the left thumb for Pac-Man which made a huge difference. For some reason I cannot use the thumb in the other emulator - it just won't register.

So my 8Tb hard drive full of emulators came in last night. After following the detailed instructions for about an hour I have literally every game made for every system and the arcade before PS3. Controls work natively out of the box with my USB XBOX controller. Hyperspin is amazing. I could literally play a new game every hour of every day for the rest of my life... a good one every day. I am totally going to go forward with converting my Golden Tee now. I am looking to add a couple of 4/8 way servo sticks to my cabinet, 7 button fighting game layouts, and a small spinner on the side.

I've gotten some favorites I couldn't run on my Pi to run like San Francisco Rush, NFL Blitz, Gauntlet Legends and more.

I have a GoldenTee Fore Complete conversion with a huge CRT that is going to be undergoing some surgery. Depending on how this goes and how much I use it I may look into building my own cabinet down the line. Super fun.

Long story short, if you've done the emulator thing in the past and been frustrated by mapping controls for each game individually, there are solutions that get past that now.