1/5/2024 0 Comments Time pilot cabinetI was concerned that the games wouldn’t feel “authentic” – are they just clones of the original titles, knocked-out by some Chinese sweatshop? If they are, then I’m not going to get the “authentic” gameplay experience: little niggles in the AI, or bugs that expert players turn to their advantage.īut it transpires (from conversations in forums) that the firmware on this board is actually an elderly version of MAME, running genuine ROM images downloaded from T’internet. It also supports image-flipping if you’re going to use it in a cocktail table. Something to keep in mind if you’re building a cab. The board is intended to be used with vertically-oriented monitors, whether you choose to use the RGB output on the JAMMA connector or the VGA connector. It is a single-board computer, driven by an ARM chip and flash memory. The two boards for WC-90 / PAC-90, compared with the 60-in-1. I found comparing the size of this board to my old WorldCup90/PAC90 board to be laughable. There’s a potentiometer on board if you want to adjust the volume. Audio is also supplied amplified for a speaker, through the JAMMA connector. In addition to the standard JAMMA connector it also sports one of those 4-pin CD-drive power connectors (in case you want to drive it from a PC PSU), extra Molex connectors for trackballs, a VGA output for those of us using monitors, and line-out audio via a 3.5mm audio jack. The board is rather cute! It’s small, but has quite a lot crammed on to it. I figured I’d have to just buy one and find out for myself. In practice, I have read mixed reviews: some people love them, but some people decry them as the work of satan. For someone like me – who wants a choice of games in a single cab – it seems ideal. A whole load of classic titles, plus a simple menu system to allow you to choose what you want to play. In theory, these boards are a great solution. I didn’t immediately need the buttons and joysticks (my cab is already working) but I felt it was nice to have them as spares, or for a test rig. So after a lot of looking on eBay, I’ve bough a 60-in-1 board and a collection of buttons and joysticks, all for 70 quid.īoard, buttons, joysticks and a wiring loom However, that feels more like a longer-term project, and I want something to play with now. I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities: buying a multi-board, or building a MAME system on a Raspberry Pi.Ī Rasberry Pi would give me lots of flexibility, give me the advantages of the latest version of MAME, scratch the “geek” itch and address my complaints about using a Windows PC. It made me feel dirty, and not in the good way – I know it’s trivial, but the thought of wanting a quick game of Frogger, turning on the cabinet and having to watch Windows boot just seems wrong.It felt like more maintenance – CPU fans, cooling fans, a hard-disc to remember to backup … nah.It felt wasteful – a complete Windows install, which you’d then never see? And the power requirements of a modern PC?. It felt like cheating – a Windows box would just be too easy.However, I felt against doing that in this case, for a number of reasons. For the majority of people it is the most convenient way of getting access to a massive collection of games. It is common in the home-arcade scene to use a Windows PC with MAME. My taste in games tends to be the older, 8-bit titles (I’m an old duffer, really) with a touch of Neo-Geo on occasion. It made sense to start by thinking about what sort of games I wanted to play. I had been unsure about what sort of hardware should drive my new arcade.
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