BLAST FROM THE PAST!!! :)

Okay, this is AWESOME... I was finally able to retrieve a LOT of artwork that I had originally created for the SGM project. There's a lot of graphics, so bear with me, but if you want to take a trip down memory lane with me and see what the project might have looked like had I been able to finish it 10 years ago, read on.

First, there's the boot screen. Most early video games booted up with a kind of self-test, and the results and other specs about the game were often displayed on the screen. After this was a monitor alignment grid, so operators could tell at a glance that the monitor was adjusted properly. I kind of got this backward, mostly because of the way Windows works and what could be customized. Since the resolution of the boot screen is only 320x400, it's difficult to put readable text on the screen using small "arcade" fonts. I decided to make the boot screen the alignment grid, and save the "specs" for the wallpaper.

Here's a sequence of images that represent what you'd see as the computer was first booting up. I've adjusted the size and orientation of these images... they're not actual screen grabs, just simulations from the actual source images I created.

First, the replacement for the Windows boot screen. Unlike the original Windows 98 boot screen, there's no animation to this one... it just sits there until Windows boots.


Next, there's the "specs", which lists the type and speed of the processor, RAM, and software used to run the Graphical User Interface and the games. This is where I created animation where there wasn't really the capability for it. The first image was set as my standard Windows wallpaper, and the second was an "Active Desktop" item that appeared shortly after the first one. It takes a split second or so for Windows to engage Active Desktop (a feature introduced in Win98 that allowed users to embed things like websites, etc. into their desktop), so the first image appears, and then "GUI READY!" appears at the bottom just before the interface actually loads.


Then comes the fun part... the actual user interface (aka menu). The following image is a still that represents the final appearance of an animation I created with a multimedia authoring program called Formula Graphics. I don't think I'll be able to use Formula Graphics in the new version of the cabinet, but I'm still hoping to have some kind of intro. The way the original animation worked is that the logo would float down from the top, then the Japanese text underneath would appear simultaneously with the "planet dust" logo at the bottom. For this early version, the Japanese text actually said something like "arcade classics" because it came from a listing on klov.com for the arcade game Arcade Classics, which was a multi-game prototype that contained both Missile Command and Centipede, as well as updated versions of those games. Ironically, neither of those games are planned for inclusion in the SGM project.

The very last thing that happens is that the "crowd" of video game characters fades in somewhat slowly. I'd really like to post a video of it, but for now a still will have to do.


Pretty neat, huh? Anyway, this animation was actually intended to repeat every few minutes, with "intermission" animations playing if there were no buttons pressed for a set period of time. As a kid, I had LOTS of ideas I could never really bring to fruition because I hadn't the money and resources, and let's face it... I was just a kid. Two ideas that I remember quite well were "Kartoon Kapers" and "Arcade Antics" (I don't think I ever spelled it Arkade Antiks, but I could be wrong). I'm sure at some point someone has used the name Kartoon Kapers for something, but Arcade Antics is still floating around in my head, and seemed like a good idea for the intermission animations. Basically, it would be some kind of scene involving two or more video game characters from different games interacting in some humorous way. I'm still thinking of doing something like that for the new SGM project, so that's all I'll say about it for now.

I did actually have the GUI programmed to launch a separate "screensaver" animation every so often, and then loop back to start the title animation again. However, as of the time I had to abandon the project, I had only set up a "dummy" animation that was simply the letters "AA" (for Arcade Antics) appearing on the screen, rotating 180 degrees, and then disappearing.

If you did actually press a button or move a joystick at the title screen, this is what you would see:


Now, to illustrate exactly how this would work, let me explain that I didn't really plan to waste a whole screen for just five games. The SGM Top 10 (soon to be called "SGM All-Stars" because it's likely to be LOTS more than just ten titles) was actually just supposed to be the top ten video game franchises, so if you were to move the joystick to the right while highlighting "PAC-MAN", this is what would happen:


See? PAC-MAN changed to Ms. PAC-MAN. I actually had all the games shown on the screen programmed to show at least one sequel, except FROGGER I think, because I'm not sure that had a sequel in the arcades. Anyway, I had lots of problems getting the games to actually launch, but if you were to select PAC-MAN, this is what you would see before the game would launch:


This screen gives you a short blurb about the history of the game, and a choice to view some "exhibits", which would have been things like the sales brochure (Japanese version of course), and other merchandise related to the game. I'm thinking at this point that there won't be any multimedia content at all in the new version of SUPER GAMES MUSEUM, except perhaps some music. The main reason for this is that the analog CRT is really not the best for showing that kind of thing, and now that I have Protovision, which can connect to large hi-def televisions, I might as well use that for all the multimedia stuff.

Well, there you have it... what's left of the original SUPER GAMES MUSEUM intro and GUI. We're not quite done yet, though... there's another image I'm quite proud of, and of all the stuff above, it's the most likely to actually survive into the next incarnation of SGM.

One of the first things I ever collected from actual arcade machines was the manual. I found several at a local amusement company, and the owner sold them to me very cheap. I've since found a few more, and I definitely plan to keep buying them, not so much for the service information inside, but just as small, affordable arcade collectibles. Since I enjoy these manuals so much, I wanted to create one for my MAME cabinets as well. Since I often like to base my designs on existing items, I decided that the manual for the Donkey Kong Jr. cocktail table would be a good choice. The DK Jr. cocktail is nearly identical to the Popeye cocktail, except that it has a vertically-oriented monitor. That would have been useful for this project, but I didn't necessarily have a wide selection of cabinets when I bought mine (and virtually no budget whatsoever), and I think the DK Jr. cabinet had a white top, but I much prefer the black top mine has.

Anyway, here's a mock-up of what the front of the manual is supposed to look like. I may not use the full-color "crowd" graphic in the new SGM user interface, but it's quite likely that the monochrome version will still grace the front cover of the manual, even if the logo changes (which it most likely will).


I have to say I just LOVE that image... I definitely tried to make sure all the characters were proportional to one another when putting together the full-color version, but they look so much more cohesive as a unit in monochrome. Even if I completely redo the "crowd" from scratch, it is VERY nice to have this original artwork to use as a reference, especially in terms of the relative sizes and positioning of the characters.

By the way, here's the short version of what went on behind the scenes to get this stuff off the original hard drive. I bought a device that was supposed to allow me to connect any IDE or SATA hard drive via USB, and it actually did work on one drive. Problem is, I have close to a dozen different drives I'd like to get data off of, and none of the others worked with the device. I finally opened up an old COMPAQ Presario we had in the garage, and disconnected the Zip and CD-ROM drives to connect both the hard drive that actually worked with the USB device, as well as a source drive. I can copy all the data from the source drive to the one drive that seems to play nice with the device, then plug it in and dump all the data into my iBook. I plan to repeat this process for my other drives, providing it works with them as well, and hopefully I can finally get rid of my collection of bare hard drives.

Well, I'm done for now... I am SO FREAKIN' HAPPY that I could finally get that data off the hard drive. I'll go and do a little happy dance, and I'll see you back here for the next blog post.

Bye!

Panel discussion...

Well, it looks like I might be getting my custom joystick mounting brackets made for free, so that is certainly a big help. I need to move on to the monitor while that happens, but tonight I couldn't resist spending a bit more time thinking about the control panel. What you see below is a rough mock-up of the control panel layout. There will be some kind of control panel overlay, which will probably be a thick vinyl of some type (and most likely black), but all I really wanted to do was get an idea of button placement and how all the colors would look together. The colors aren't 100% accurate of course, so my concern about the joystick and third fire button being two slightly different colors might end up being well-founded. I'll just have to order the red buttons (and about $25 worth of other stuff to meet the minimum order amount) and see what happens.



From left to right, here's what everything is...

orange - start button (as mentioned in the last post, each player's panel is the same)
yellow - exit button (to quit the current game and go back to the menu)
red - joystick
green - button A
blue - button B
red - button C

There is at least one game where a fourth button is required, and in that case, the orange start button will also serve as an action button. I'm not really in love with the somewhat sloppy button placement, but I'm just dealing with the holes that were already there, so it'll have to do.

There are other functions that need to be available, like the credit switch I mentioned before, a reset button of some sort, and some controls to adjust speaker volume and other basic settings. The more I think about it, the credit switch really should be accessible with the coin box in place, because I really wouldn't want to leave it out all the time. As I had intended originally, it looks like the credit switch will have to be underneath the machine, behind a "bulge" in the bottom of the cabinet where the coin meter (digital counter showing how many coins had been inserted) was originally mounted. I'll definitely have to look into getting a new coin meter for the machine, but since I'd say 99% of the time it's going to be the credit switch rather than coins being inserted, a coin meter would just be a novelty.

Rather than having a single "reset" button on the cabinet that might be accidentally pressed during gameplay, I'm probably going to configure the controls so that holding down "START" and then pressing "EXIT" will reset the current game. There will also be a button to reset the internal PC mounted next to the power switch at one end of the cabinet. Inside the cabinet will be an assortment of buttons to control the built-in "service mode" of each game. Some games have only a single service switch, whereas others have a more sophisticated system of menus that require different buttons to put the game into service mode as well as moving through the various menus. I will also include the capability to change basic MAME settings. What form this array of switches will take hasn't been decided yet, but I'm going to do some thinking about what the best approach might be. A lot of people simply have a standard PC keyboard hidden away inside their MAME cabinet (sometimes not so well hidden), but to me that really ruins the appearance of this kind of project. With that said, I probably will give in to temptation and buy one of those cute little "mini-keyboards" for calibration and testing purposes.

The major question mark at this point is the sound system. I have the speakers, I just need to figure out how to power them. I don't think the motherboard I plan to use has the "speaker out" port that older sound cards used to have, although I guess "headphone out" would do if it's available. The speakers shouldn't need a lot of power, but as reluctant as I am to "crack" parts for this project out of existing devices, I just might have to use the amplifier from a set of old PC speakers I have. The biggest issue is going to be finding a discreet place to mount a volume control. I could just use any old switches as up/down volume buttons controlling the output from MAME, but I'm really thinking that a knob would be the most intuitive way to turn the sound up during the day and turn it down at night, or even to balance out the sound between louder games and quieter ones. It's details like this that just aren't an issue in a real arcade... most operators set each game and forget it, and each machine usually just plays a single game at a set volume level. I really want to add a headphone jack as well, if only on a cable that can hang out from inside the cabinet and be hidden away when it's not needed.

Another issue dealing with the speakers is that the actual mounting points for the speakers are MUCH smaller than the holes in the speakers I ordered. I don't recall exactly what the original mounting hardware was, or even where it is anymore, but as long as the speakers don't move, I'll be happy. They're certainly not high fidelity, but that's just the point. A lot of cabinet projects I've seen use car stereo speakers or desktop PC speaker systems complete with subwoofers, but to me that just wouldn't sound authentic. Granted, the speakers I chose probably sound better than any of the speakers in the original cabinets of the games emulated, but they should still have the utilitarian "full-range" sound of those old arcade cabinet speakers. They also have paper cones, which should give them just the right sound. Normally I'd prefer polypropylene speaker cones because I like the way they sound, but for the sake of authenticity, paper is best for this project.

The next big hurdle will be getting the monitor mounted. I've purchased a monitor bezel that should be perfect, but obviously it's designed to go right up against the CRT tube rather than in front of a monitor that's already inside a plastic housing. As much as I'd like to get the monitor's innards out and mounted in the cabinet like they were built for it, the best option for many reasons is going to be keeping it intact. I'll just have to figure out a way to immobilize it inside the cabinet and hide the "double bezel" as much as possible. Once the monitor is mounted, the rest should all fall into place. I still haven't bought a single PC component for this project, and that needs to be done soon, but I really want to make sure the cabinet is ready for use by the time I put together the "brain" of the machine.

Thanks for reading, and perhaps next time I'll have some real progress to report.

HAPPy days are here again...

Well, at the moment I'm anything but happy... just stressed out from all this damn snow. That'll pass, though.

This post is a bit overdue, as a lot has happened since the last one. The most significant development has been that I've been unable to reclaim any data from the PC that had originally been in the cabinet. There's one more thing I can try, but it's possible that the original artwork is lost forever. I don't really need it, but it would really be nice to have as a reference.

The other major development inspired the title of this post. As it turns out, a major source for parts when building MAME cabinets is quite naturally a supplier to professional arcade operators and amusement companies... Suzo-HAPP (formerly HAPP Controls). I started getting their catalog several years ago, ever since I first began planning to build a MAME cabinet. I had never ordered anything until recently, and the parts arrived last week. Here's what I have so far:

(4) leg levelers (these are basically the "feet" of the cabinet)
(4) black rubber cup for leg leveler (to protect our floor)
(2) plastic mounting feet for P.C. board (4 per set)
(2) 4" shielded speaker
(2) Super Joystick w/red ball knob
(2) Competition Pushbutton, blue
(2) Competition Pushbutton, green
(2) small pushbutton, orange
(2) small pushbutton, yellow
(3) "Quarters Only, 25 cents per play" label
(1) 7-pin tumbler lock

The only reason I had to buy the leg levelers was because one was missing from the original cabinet (or I lost one somehow, perhaps while moving). The ones I ended up with are completely different, so I'm not sure if they'll work at all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though. In the description of the mounting feet, "P.C. board" actually means the printed circuit board of an arcade machine, but in this case it's actually a PC motherboard that will be mounted. I still have the custom bracket I built (well, the bracket was original, I just screwed a piece of wood into it to mount the motherboard), and this time I'm using a better mounting scheme. I'm also going to try and include some shock resistance in this setup, since I don't want to crack the motherboard if the cabinet falls over or something.

I bought "shielded" speakers to prevent any magnetic interference with the monitor. As it is, the metal construction of the cabinet can mess with the picture, and speaker magnets could make that worse. The monitor I plan to use, and old Commodore 1084S-D2 (originally made for the Amiga 600/1200/4000 series of computers), did just fine, but who knows what's in store for me next time I try to power one up. Luckily I have two of them, plus an older Commodore monitor I can use if necessary. CRT monitors usually don't do well sitting on their backs facing upward, let alone doing so inside a big metal box, but that's what this project requires. I can only hope at least one of the ones I have can still deal with it, and will continue to do so for many years.

The joysticks were a no-brainer... the classic red-ball joystick is an arcade staple, and the ones I bought (a direct replacement for the "Ms. PAC-MAN/Galaga - 20th Anniversary" machines that were produced in 2000) should be perfect for the project. As can be seen in a previous post, the joysticks aren't vertical as on an upright or American cocktail table, so a round ball was the best choice in terms of handle design. The only issue at this point is mounting, since the original joystick was built into an assembly that was mounted to the control panel from inside. I could simply drill holes in the control panel, but my plan at this point is to have custom mounting brackets made to adapt the joysticks to the original mounting bolts. It's gonna cost me, but in the end I think it'll be worth it.

My favorite part of the project seems to be the buttons. I wasn't really sure what kind I wanted to use, but while doing some research for a part of the Protovision project, I saw a YouTube video where someone was describing their cabinet as having "Japanese-style" buttons. I had always seen that HAPP Controls had both standard arcade-style concave buttons, and also ones they called "Competition Pushbuttons" that were convex (i.e., they were more rounded rather than bowl-like at the top), but I had no idea that there was any kind of association with Japan. I looked into it a bit further, and it does seem that Japanese arcade cabinets tend to have convex buttons, so the decision was made. With only two buttons, these panels wouldn't have the familiar "diamond" button pattern, but I wanted to use colors from the Super Famicom gamepad.

Super Famicom is simply the original name of what was released as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and it's one of my all-time favorite video game consoles. Even though the U.S. version only had light and dark purple buttons on the controller, the Super Famicom controllers in Japan featured four different colored buttons. My original idea for an upright MAME cabinet (where I thought I could get every possible controller, monitor and game type into one cabinet) was to use the same four colors in the same pattern as the Super Famicom controller. I may still do that for the mini-cab, but in this case there were only two standard-sized buttons. The way the holes were drilled (remember that there was only one smaller button on the original control panel) did somewhat correspond to part of the "Super Famicom" pattern, and following the color scheme, the buttons would have been either red and blue or green and yellow. (In fact, it's better to illustrate this... here's a picture of the Super Famicom.):


The button holes on my control panels have the left button slightly higher than the right, so I could go with a blue/red combination or green/yellow if I wanted to use the same color scheme. Given only two buttons, neither choice really seemed to work. I kept thinking of two rugby shirts I used to wear as a kid... one was blue and red, the other was green and yellow. Somehow that seemed too obvious. Recently, I remembered that the first PC gamepad I owned had a similar color scheme to the Super Famicom, but with two of the colors reversed. Here's a picture of the Gravis Gamepad, which I used in my early experiments with MAME.:

...well, it's not the actual one I used, just someone else's picture of one. That does look like our flooring, though. Anyway, with the red and green reversed, I could use blue and green or red and yellow. Red and yellow might have worked if the theme of the project was McDonald's, but blue and green seemed much better. I know at this point anyone reading this is thinking that I spent WAY too much time thinking about the color of the buttons, but hey, I'm into Graphic Design and I pay attention to colors.

I ordered two each of HAPP's green and blue Competition Pushbuttons, plus two orange small pushbuttons to use as start buttons. If you go back and look at the picture of the Popeye cocktail table, you'll see that the 1-player and 2-player start buttons are much smaller than standard arcade buttons (and, funnily enough, they are blue and green). I took a shot in the dark that the .94" diameter was close enough to the diameter of the holes for the original start buttons. I also uncovered a third hole the same size as the start buttons when I removed the metal control panel overlay. Thinking I might be able to make use of that extra hole, I ordered two small yellow buttons as well.

The plan was to keep both 1-player and 2-player start buttons on the Player 1 control panel as it had originally been, but since the panels were mass-produced, the Player 2 panel also had holes for start buttons. The metal overlay covered them well, but I doubt I'll be using metal for the new overlay (especially given how much custom-machined metal parts seem to cost), so there's the problem of people being able to feel those holes through whatever covering I use for the panels. I could potentially have used "button plugs" for those two holes, but a long-forgotten plan occurred to me just recently. I really should have ordered more buttons, because being a multi-game machine, I not only needed start buttons for each player, I needed at least one EXIT button. I had figured this out long ago, but forgot when it came time to order from HAPP.

Since it does seem that with a little filing to make the holes slightly larger (I'm hoping to buy a Dremel tool or something similar), the mini-pushbuttons will fit into the smaller holes, I need to buy two more of them. The plan now is to give each player individual start and exit buttons, mainly just because the holes are there. Each control panel will now be identical, with the start button at the top left (orange), an exit button below it (yellow), and the larger "fire" buttons (blue and green). The only dilemma now is what color to use for the third fire button. The obvious choice is red, and I love the combination of red, green and blue, but I've been hesitant to use a red button because the joystick is red. Granted, an arcade control panel isn't high-fashion clothing, but I wanted to avoid having two slightly different reds on the machine, especially since they'd be so close together. Unfortunately, the smaller buttons only come in red, blue, green, yellow and orange. Since I've already got orange and yellow ones, and the larger buttons are green and blue, that only leaves red unless I want to change the colors of the large buttons, which I'd rather not.

One option I did think about was having all three fire buttons be the same color, but I don't think that would look very good. The reason I thought about it was that in looking at some Japanese "upright" cabinets (I LOVE these cabinets, and they're the ones I noticed having convex buttons), the joystick and buttons were all the same color for each player (see picture below).

The only problem with that idea is that I didn't have a choice when it came to the color of joysticks, so I couldn't do a different color for each player, as it is on these cabinets. That's completely fine though, since I'm not really going for the "candy cabinet" look (even though I LOVE these cabinets... have I mentioned that?) and I'd really rather have different colors of buttons so it's very clear which button does what. I hope to have some kind of instruction screen for each game before it loads to show what function different buttons have, but I'm not sure if I can get it to work. If nothing else, I'll just have a diagram of the controls on the top of the cabinet. The cabinet artwork and user interface are going to be saved for last, so I won't need to figure all that out until the cabinet itself is assembled and working.

Speaking of labels on top of the cabinet, I bought three labels that read "Quarters only, 25 cents per play" so I could put one on the cabinet and have a couple backups in case one rips while applying it, I put it on wrong, etc. I'm not 100% sure I'm going to use them for the cocktail table, but it did have something similar originally, and I like the look of the HAPP labels. Here's a picture:
Anyway, I know it's odd that the machine only accepts quarters when it's supposed to seem like a Japanese machine, but I certainly don't have an abundance of Japanese coins, and the coin mechanisms that came with the machine only accept quarters, so tokens are out as well. I'm thinking that once I finally get it all up and running, I'll go to the bank and get a roll of quarters to keep in the coin box. There will definitely be a "credit switch" where you can add credits without putting in a coin, but I want to be able to show people that it actually will sense a coin drop and start the game. The only problem with that is I don't want people dropping coins at the menu screen or while the game is booting up, so I'll have to have some kind of message saying "do not insert coins until instructed" or something like that. The plan at this point is to install the credit switch so that it's only accessible if the coin box is removed. That may be kind of awkward, but otherwise I'd have to put a switch inside the cabinet to turn off the external credit switch if I ever wanted to make it coin-only.

Speaking of the coin box, it didn't come with a lock, so that was a last-minute addition to my HAPP order. I actually have to put the lock together, but once I do the cabinet will be secure, and one step closer to being operable.

Well, I've used up my morning on this blog post when I had really hoped to get a plan drawn up for those custom joystick mounting brackets I mentioned, but oh well. Snow's on the ground, so it wasn't like I wanted to go anywhere earlier anyway. I definitely needed to get another post done, as you can probably tell by how incredibly long it is. Hope you enjoyed it!