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 The monitor I plan to use, and old Commodore 1084S-D2 (originally made for the Amiga 600/1200/4000 series of computers), did just fine, but who knows what's in store for me next time I try to power one up.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!