Build an arcade machine at home | Hacker News Reader

Build an arcade machine at home

lokalise.com

62 pointsemilsw45 comments

I just want to share my Pi mini arcade machine because I'm very proud of how it turned out: https://imgur.com/a/ujelaO1

Really nice work. The detail cutting around the hearts at the top is incredible. How did you do the imagery on the side of the cabinet?

Thank you! It's just acrylics: https://imgur.com/a/dByhxV9 One of the reasons I did this project was to try out my new axidraw pen plotter so I drew the lines on an iPad and had my plotter draw it on the sides for me: https://imgur.com/a/FKcGV2g . Definitely unnecessary though and could have just been done by hand, but was fun.

Beautiful. Any chance you could share details/plans of this little machine? I'd love to build the same thing!

I didn't document the process unfortunately, but if you search for 'mini arcade pi' on instructables there's many great guides.

Hey - very cool. Great creative!

Just wondering if you'd kept the original iON joystick. When I did my conversion I tried a few different joysticks and found the Sanwa was perfect drop in replacement. I also dampened the acoustics of the plastic enclosure using foam.

Thanks for sharing! Awesome :-)

I replaced it with a cheap Reyann stick just based on reading price/reviews but it works well. I never thought to dampen the enclosure, that's a good idea!

It's worth pointing out that if you want to run MAME, specifically, RetroPie is a bad choice, as is using the Raspberry Pi in general.

MAME's architecture does not lend well to it being converted into a core. Several features get weakened, disabled, or broken, and they generally don't function the way they're supposed to, especially with respect to controller input.

The version of MAME available for RetroPie is considerably older and outdated. Many of the features have been altered or disabled in order to make MAME work on less powerful hardware.

Even a low end PC running the latest version of MAME (222, at the time of writing) is going to give you a much better experience.

It all depends on the era of game you want to play though. At least for me, I can't imagine a retro game I would want to play that a Pi couldn't easily handle, given that my idea of a retro game is Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and the like. Granted, if your idea of a retro game is a PS2 game from 2001, your mileage might vary.

It's not necessarily about the experience of the specific game. (Although many of the games you name do in fact emulate badly on RetroPie. Galaga, for example, has a glitchy starfield and incorrect sounds.)

It's also that the versions of MAMEs shipped are simply buggy, and have some features disabled. If you go digging around in the MAME menus, lots of things are not going to work properly.

What kind of stuff is disabled?

I've built my own cabinet (using 3/4" plywood, not cardboard :) initially powered by a RPi2B+, and later upgraded to a used PC but still RetroPie.

I don't think the power of MAME is much of a concern here. RetroPie doesn't just have a single version of MAME, it support several of them, including some relatively newer ones. And while it is true that I've found a few games (Star Wars comes to mind) that wouldn't run on the default MAME, they do work on one of the alternates.

For the games MAME is trying to address, I haven't found anything for which the computational power of my RPi 2B+ was insufficient. I wound up replacing the RPi with a PC not because of MAME, but because I wanted better emulation of other systems like Dreamcast. And even there, with the used PC off ebay, it's running well.

You can do quite a bit with a ~$150 9in band saw. Here's mine [1]

[1] - https://i.imgur.com/pJOzxcp.jpg

pet cat to insert coin

Looks like a biter

That just means "I love you" in tooth.

I can't see that cardboard lasting more than a month of regular use. Arcade buttons are hit hard, and the substrate needs to be able to withstand those forces.

Given that you can source basic hand tools (which can do almost everything power tools can do) for a low price, this particular cost saving measure doesn't have a great ROI.

I thought it was a prototype until I got to the end of the article, I was looking for the finished version in something more permanent.

Yes there's no requirement to own a circular saw etc.- as well as hand tools the hardware store will accurately cut wood to sizes you specify for a small fee.

> the hardware store will accurately cut wood to sizes you specify for a small fee.

Home Depot and, I think, Lowes will cut for free here in the US. But I wouldn't rely on that for any kind of precision sizing. If you need tolerances within, say, 1/4", you're rolling the dice if you rely on a near-minimum wage employee who couldn't care less doing the cutting for you.

I just got some wood cut for another project last night. They're usually pretty good about accuracy, in my experience. I think it all depends on the HD or Lowes employee you get. But I was very happy with the 48" and 66" cuts the gentleman I worked with last night made. Choosing between minimum wage or my novice, unpracticed hands, I think I'll take their hands when I can. As fun as it is to cut wood. :D

Yeah it's worked out fine for me too, those awesome wall mounted panel saws are more accurate than any table saw- but our experiences are both imagined apparently ;)

Big box stores are NOT going to cut with the precision and fiddly shaped pieces you need to make this worthwhile though. Even using a circular saw is going to result in something that looks, well, home made. Using hand tools for symetrical cuts would be a nightmare. You really need a table saw and if you want to do t-molding, a router. I've built a couple and and as I quickly found out on my first one, this is more a wood-working project than anything else. I used ikea cupboard doors as base material and the finish is excellent, but very hard to work with (chipping) and you need to plan your cuts to avoid exposed edges.

http://dochstader.com/arcade/

You don't just need hand tools, but also materials, space to work and the wherewithal to do some woodwork. I agree, it's better to do something right the first time, but I don't think it's wise to let constraints like this get in the way of starting & finishing an exciting project for fun.

At the end of the day, even with cardboard, you'll still have a working videogame setup, as well as some new, transferable skills (even if woodworking isn't one of them).

I guess what I'm saying is, it doesn't have to be about the thing lasting longer than a month, it's about the process, what you learned along the way, getting something completed and the feelings of accomplishment that go with them.

If you're already putting €250 and a fair bit of effort into the project, another €50 of wood isn't exactly going to go amiss. I've also worked with wood and hand tools indoors, it just requires a good vacuuming to clean up. That's one of the nice things about hand tools, they're less prone to throwing a lot of dust up into the air.

Personally, I'd be pretty honked off to be €250 into a project that breaks down into un-usability in such a short period of time.

It's particularly hard to justify the spend when premade sticks and front panels are cheap and highly available - see the numerous "Pandora's Box" cabinets, which come ready for plug-and-play use(including dodgy software), but still have room for modding and upgrades.

I'll join in on the show-and-tell portion of this discussion ;)

I built a MAME machine for a group summer house about 6 years ago and probably went WAY overboard, but man was it fun. My favorite piece was the cabinet, which I ordered from someone in North Carolina who builds these for a living. IIRC it was about $500, but wow - was it high quality (and it had to be delivered via freight - it was probably 200lbs):

https://imgur.com/a/IHKnJeo

There are a few old games like "Midnight Resistance" that are much more enjoyable when the joystick can rotate.... but I've never seen a single home built arcade machine that had any of those.

I'll likely buy a cabinet some day rather than make it, because I'm not so good with my hands; I hope by then I could find one that does have a rotary joystick.

Have you played the Ikari Warriors games in SNK 40th Anniversary Collection? I liked how they updated the emulator inputs to accommodate for the original rotary joystick setting. Frank Cifaldi went in-depth about addressing it at GDC last year. [1]

It's certainly not a drop-in replacement, but you're right that those kinds of games need a certain feeling.

[1] https://youtu.be/dp-DRU24J18?t=1810

If this gets people making and playing with Raspberry Pi's — awesome.

Over 15 years or so I've built perhaps 9 or 10 MAME (later Retropie) cabinets because I enjoy iterating. Often I begin the cabinet in cardboard. Perfect way to prototype.

If you get people to that stage, the cardboard-aided-design stage, the next step (replacing with wood) is easy.

I think people who have never built anything of significance often find the very thought of it daunting and so never begin.

In fact, skip the cardboard, I would try to get people just to install RetroPie and play emulated games with just their USB keyboard.

Then you can move up to cardboard + arcade controls.

I agree with your progression, with a little more detail:

* emulators on your desktop * harware like a RPi and maybe add dedicated USB controllers * cardboard mock-ups (I use particle or panelboard for mounting the controls) * permanent version in wood, metal, plastic, etc.

FWIW, I find the screen bezels and access points (doors, etc) the trickest parts. Mock-ups let you experiment with the dimensions and size easily.

This is one of the coolest uses for a Raspberry Pi for those who just being introduced to them. I made something similar with them way back in high school and it really started to give me an appreciation for it.

As soon as the Raspberry Pi can run N64 (I believe they're a bit sluggish at the moment) and GameCube/PS2/Xbox (might take a while, but Dolphin is incredibly optimized at least) games well, that will be incredible. If you wanted something like that now, I think a cheap ebay pc would be the route to take, but I'm looking forward to the Pi's future.

I have a crappy model-or-two-old Asus Chromebox that runs Retroarch well and cost about as much as a Pi with trimmings back when I bought it new. Runs N64 just fine. 2GB RAM and a low-clocked dual-core Celeron. Actually with a RAM upgrade (doable) it’d make an Ok dev workstation if you avoid “webapps” and Electron and are comfortable with lighter editors rather than e.g. heavy Java IDEs, and can run your VMs and Dockers somewhere else. Admittedly a lot of caveats but would work for some people.

Old laptops are great for things that the RPi gets attention for. With a bit of hunting, you can get them dirt cheap, and the integrated monitor is a huge bonus.

The one thing I really miss using x86 boxes rather than Raspberries Pi is the dd-to-sdcard-and-boot workflow. Makes recovery easy, trivial to back up the exact software you’re running on one. If the whole thing goes up in a fire, buy another identical Pi, write a new sdcard, and you’re back in business.

But yeah, otherwise if you’re not using the io features you get a lot more bang-for-the-buck buying used low-end x86 gear.

Since this turned into a show and tell https://imgur.com/a/kNWxg

You can also get the actual arcade boards and cartridges relatively easily. LGR posted a video on his NeoGeo setup a little while back if anybody's interested in going that route.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eqi30EJi3U&feature=emb_titl...

i built a mame machine in college and we loved that thing. it was just an ikea cabinet with an xarcade stick and a computer monitor hung on the wall with an old computer inside but man did we play that thing. I even remember ordering the MAME roms on a DVD set online and having them shipping.

i always dream of building a new one but its not like i live in a house with 5 other dudes have parties every night of the week like in college. would I play it? would my three kids (6, 3, 1) play it in a few years? just a pipe dream i guess. just for kicks i just loaded up golden tee fore 06 on my thinkpad and the sound still stutters, guess you still need a lot of oomph for the newer stuff

The design proposed by the article is very interesting - it's cheap and compact (in an amusingly humorous way, I find).

Considering it's not demanding in terms of space, it can be built and used as "filler activity" with children. While the geek's dream is certainly playing arcade games on a real-world cabinet for hours, with a child, it can be an activity to do more or less frequently on small sessions (e.g. half hour).

My very wild guess is that children should be able to enjoy arcade games when they're around 7+ years old - arcade games are on one designed to be quickly challenging, on the other, at home, they have virtually infinite lives; every child is different, of course.

On the other hand, a real PC with a couple of arcade joysticks, and maybe Wii remote controllers, is considerably more flexible, and can be a good test drive to see if the activity works :-)

very true. my six year old is way more into her tablet and the games there in than normal controller video games. she does enjoy a bit of sonic 2 but that's because she can race me on the screen and it doesn't involve much more than "go forward and jump over stuff."

as for the activity, i think much older than 6. my daughter would get very frustrated wiring the controller and all of the computer stuff would be way over her head. but i remember being 12-13 and installing Linux in the mid 90s so somehwere between 6 and 12 i guess kids get the patience to sit down and tinker!

MAME has become more demanding over time as its accuracy has increased, rather than less so.

Fairly accurate USB clones of NES/SNES/Sega/etc controllers were about $20 on Amazon last time I checked. I have some for my Raspberry Pi.

They’re great.

The NES and SNES classics come with excellent controllers (side-by-side then with the originals and it’s hard to tell the difference) and aren’t hard to “hack” to run an expanded library. Disk space is limited but you can fit about as many games as a person’s realistically likely to ever play on them.

There are adapters for the controllers but I’ve owned a couple over the years (to use the Wii Classic Controller over USB) and they barely work to begin with, then break after a bit, it seems. Dunno why.

Switch Pro Controllers are a bit spendy, but once you tape mod them to reduce D-pad mishits, they're as good as (first-party, non-counterfeit) Wii Classic Controllers ever were - I always favored those for Super Metroid speedrunning, and happily used their newer counterparts for the same purpose until my arthritis got to the point where it's no longer comfortable to speedrun with any controller. In particular, I've found Switch Pro Controllers to work well with the Raspberry Pi 4's onboard Bluetooth. So that might be a workable option, if you don't mind spending a little more - that said, I've had the older of mine for something like five years now, and it's stood up very nicely so far.

You can get unfinished cabinets of furniture grade plywood. I wanted mine to look like a nice piece of furniture (wife approved for living room), and it does, after much sanding, staining, and sealing. Extra modifications too, replacing plastic with glass and aluminum.

https://youtu.be/rl0-a76yN0M

I don’t see how a RPi is going to work that well. I’m running a 4k monitor at over 60 Hz (freesync) with CRT emulation, and it looks gorgeous. The bezel artwork looks like it was painted.

> You can get unfinished cabinets of furniture grade plywood.

Mind sharing sources you'd recommend?

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