New Acquisitions for RGP

Quick shot of two new machines for the RGP collection; Pole Position and Super Hang On.

Both immediately attracting a crowd at the JAMMA+ stand at Replay 2011.

Thanks to the play-testers!

Mini Star Wars Anyone

Very impressed with this little star wars machine. Makes me want a proper one even more!

Jamma+ 8th Birthday Party Video

On 1st October 2011, the Arcade Video Game Collectors forum, JAMMA+ (http://www.jammaplus.co.uk) celebrated their 8th birthday, thanks to the organisational skills of one member, bensonrad, a group of specially selected members congregated at the UK’s premier place for retro arcade gaming, Arcade Barn in Exeter.
Some 30 members and 20 on the sunday, ate dots, battled the invaders, drove down roads, threw discs, drank coffee, digged and blew up things in a gaming marathon.
One member, rogueio (Martin), gave the high score tables some serious punishment as well as claiming bragging rights by showing us proof on some of his major, and well deserved achievements from back in the day.
I was lucky enough to be a part of that group and as well as thrashing Pac-Man and Mr Do, I shot some film of the weekend.

Hope you enjoy.

Arcade Barn Video Imminent

Been franticly trying to edit together all the footage from the JAMMA+ 8th Birthday party at Arcade Barn on 1st/2nd October but been having some major headaches with Final Cut Pro 10 – it keeps crashing.

You zoom in, cut a piece, zoom out, click something else and the program freezes about 1 in 4 times and as it is progressively saved, it sometimes doesn’t remember where you were upto when you reopen.

Hoping to do the last few tweaks tonight then watch my MacBook Pro crawl to a halt while it renders the 10 minute piece.

Fingers Crossed!

Hardcore Gamers Till The Power Switch Gets Thrown

The birthday bash was going well all day and we were strong in numbers but around 5pm many took to the dark side and were seduced by the pub. A select few remained true to the rebellion and returned to the barn for more night time gaming.

The atmosphere changed, the lights came down, 80′s music projected from the speakers and a disco ball lit up – we had recreated arcade nirvana.

The Streetfighter machine got the board ripped out and R-Type made a momentus appearance and once again we set to war with the invaders.

Above are the survivors of the night, there till the end, until the power switch was thrown and abruptly, the sounds ceased!

Arcade Personal Hi Score Update - Part 2

Managed to upgrade a couple of my live personal bests over the weekend, Managed to get 128,350 on Mr. Do! and 139,590 on Pac-Man.   The Pac-Man score certainly isn’t the world record, but it’s my personal best on an arcade machine in public.  It’s also one of the higher “non-stoodley” scores at the barn.

Arcade Barn Personal Hi Score Update

Just got my own personal best on an arcade machine playing Pac-Man, exactly 100,000 points.

Mostly freehand play but it won’t be my last score on this game this weekend

MAME delights - driving cab version

Following on from the outrun cab arriving, a bunch of work was done to make it usable which amongst a lot of different things, included wiring up the Ultimarc A-PAC board to the existing cabinet loom and squeezing a PC neatly into the back so it could easily be removed.  It had always been my intention to make it into a MAME driving cabinet until the official PCB works again.

This prevented us with two problems which i’m sure some other people have come up against.  Firstly, MAME emulates games very well but isn’t initially designed around real-world controls like steering wheels and pedals, it implements them as analogue joysticks just fine but the developers put in a toggle switch for Hi/Lo gear shifter.

OutRun’s gear shift is built almost identically to Pole Position’s in that a microswitch is open for Lo gear and closed for Hi gear.

Second, I wanted rid of the awful hi/lo indicator from the screen, the developers of MAME put this in a while back – again, I guess it makes it easier to see what gear you’re in on a screen with just a keyboard to play with but in my case, i’ve got a nice big cabinet with a proper gear shifter so I can tell when i’m in Hi or Lo gear – I don’t need an onscreen display to tell me that.

There was one other problem, albeit minor, if this is going to have a front end on it, I didn’t want to have to include a bunch of buttons just for the sake of being able to bypass the game info screens and so on.  This would have made the machine into somewhat of a frankencab monstrosity – something I want to avoid at all costs.

So I set about figuring out how to compile my own version of MAME to patch the code to my evil and dastardly needs.

This wasn’t particularly difficult to achieve, the developers have packaged all the tools you need and the instructions are reasonably easy to get to grips with, it’s just the way they’ve laid the code out that made what I wanted to achieve a little more difficult but we got around it in the end.

I found a patch to get rid of the ‘nag screen’ as it’s known and the bonus side of that was a hi-score save routine which means my top scores on the machine will be nicely recorded.

Patching the drivers took a little time as I wanted to be able to pass a flag to the compiler so I could build a ‘driving cab’ version or a standard version with the no-nag and hi-score save.

So, I present the first working compile of MAME 0.143u5 and MAMEUI which has the following games patched to start with:

• OutRun
• Turbo OutRun
• Pole Position (overlay still present)
• Pole Position 2 (overlay still present)
• Chase HQ
• Continental Circus
• WEC LeMans

It can be downloaded from the two links below.  If other game drivers need patching, just let us know and we’ll do our best to update the build.

Note that on Pole Position, Pole Position 2, Top Racer etc, the hi/lo gear shift patch is working but for some reason the compiler refuses to accept my command to not use the overlay, this will be investigated and fixed shortly.

Download MAME-0.143u5 For Driving Cabinets (MameUI Version)
Download MAME-0.143u5 For Driving Cabinets (Windows Command Line Version)

Another Friday, Another Cabinet

Well, it's Friday and in the last few weeks that can usually only mean one thing - another arcade cabinet is coming - or at least it feels that way.  Last week it was my Hyper Sports which got the fastest work-over and clean-up in the history of arcade machine collecting. Just before we reveal all though, yesterday I got one of these in the post....

It's an Ultimarc A-Pac adaptor which will be making its way into this.....

   

Well, it was going to happen sometime, it's one of my holy-grail machines - sadly at the moment, it doesn't have a working arcade board so i'm going to adapt it to work with MAME for now.  I've had the spare PC bits sitting around for months and they were destined for one of my other machines but when I heard this cabinet might be available I was uber excited. 

It'll be arriving at RGP towers sometime today and will get the treatment over the next week or so, it's a fairly simple conversion but we'll do it in a way that we could stick an original PCB in there without too much fuss and it can become a dedicated machine again.  One thing it is missing if you look closely is the silver cover that goes behind the steering wheel (the actual wheel is inside at the moment), my friend who is donating this cab to me sent his away to somebody who said they could make a mould and copy it but sadly it never got returned. 

We will start our search for a part but for now it will get a temporary cover - watch this space for further updates.

Parts Suppliers - Way Too Slow For Today's Marketplace

I thought i'd take a step aside from talking about what's arrived as there's nothing coming for a little while. I wanted to tell you all about the frustration of getting things delivered - not specially couriers but the suppliers themselves. I ordered some basic parts to do a few repairs from a company called Ultimarc who are no stranger to the arcade community.  Nothing fancy, some buttons, connectors, a small interface board. While ordering I checked that they were all ex-stock parts, nothing was saying out of stock on their site, I placed my order on Monday, it's now Wednesday and i've only just received the notification that DHL are collecting it today - what's going on? 2 days to pick and pack something? I'm sorry but in our world of high-speed internet, HD channels and bad sleep patterns this isn't good enough as I well know from my own business. Outside of my arcade collecting I work in the IT field and have a sideline business that sells off-the-shelf PC components and VoIP hardware.  I have to ship within 1 business day to remain market competitive.  If I don't meet the 1 day target, many of my customers literally scream at me and a lot of the time will return the goods and claim a refund on their card. So, why is the rule different for other suppliers.  There is an expectation on me so why do parts suppliers like Ultimarc and Swallow Amusements take 2-3 days to ship?  Is there an internal packing department apathy of "it's only a bunch of arcade collectors.... it doesn't matter!" I'm totally happy with the products, the pricing is definitely right but why the delay in despatch?  If your site says its in stock and I order by 12pm why can't I have it within 2 days - not 5? Although i'm annoyed by the delay in despatch, my frustration comes mainly though from the fact that couriers only deliver in regular business hours - to domestic addresses this means normally nobody will be around - so they card you, come back the next day, card you again and then you spend Saturday morning trying to get down some dismal industrial estate to pick up your parcel to be told it's been returned to the sender. This might have flown in the less-rush 1970's and 1980's when there wasn't as much general stress but in 2011 - we want it NOW! What's the answer?  Better communication and less expectation?  Couriers delivering in evenings to domestic addresses? Sadly, though, I think we will do what we do best in Britain - put up with it, not make a complaint to the company, accept it's what happens when you deal with bigger companies and moan about it on a blog post or twitter!

Hyper Sports - Cleaned Up

Well, here we are, less than 24 hours later, a little bit of TLC and some elbow grease and we have a fully working 2 player Hyper Sports machine.

There is no earthly reason why someone had hacked it down to one player. Can't wait to get a working Track & Field board for this as well.

Hyper Sports has landed

It's here!!

Just arrived, time for the usual pre-flight checks before plugging in. But first......... A brew!

Holy Grail Cab On Its Way - Hyper Sports

Its confirmed, its being picked up tomorrow. I'm quite excited about this..... A Hyper Sports cab is coming to RGP Towers. Not an original one, but at least a working PCB and Monitor. Its been butchered a bit and only has controls for one player but we'll soon sort that out. My expert cab removal team, paid in chocolate hob-nobs and pepperami is collecting it around 11:30 tomorrow morning so should be at its new home by tea time. Plans for this one include adding second player controls, a switching system ready for a Track & Field PCB, new custom marquee with both game designs and a good clean up. Expect pics when it arrives - watch this space!

Welcome

Just writing a quick first post to say hello to everyone and to say thanks to Julian for the invite and Luke for setting it up.