More Vertical Madness !

Managed to paint the bezel the other night. Need to fill some counter sunk screw holes, print the instruction cards and finally come up with some handles or something for rotating the bezel and screen.

First up is a very blurry photo of Frogger in all its vertical glory.



Attempting to show off the full cab with failing light and an flashless camera.


And another similar shot.


Coolio.

Vertical Madness !

After a loooooong gap from Arcade Machines I finally decided to dump the TV screen with its handmade VGA-SCART cable and plumped for a 23" widescreen monitor. All with then intention of being able to rotate the monitor for vertical games in MAME plus I thought Future Pinball would look rather nice. And I was right.....

So the screen in its horizontal position with a carboard bezel acting as a template.


Then some Future Pinball love action.


Ahhh once my favourite all time arcade machine.... Bridlington '84....


Phoenix. 'Nuff said.


All in all its looking good. Just need to slightly modify the bezel as you end up switching the monitor off every time you so much as breath on it. Plus it needs painting and instruction cards need doing....

Really bad wiring pictures

Its not just the wiring thats bad - the pictures are pretty terrible too :)

A fellow arcade constructor was asking me about wiring up the controls so I said I'd post some piccies of my wiring. I knew it was bad but bjeezuz its worse than I thought. My only defense is that the original wiring was much neater - I've took it all apart and put it back together a fair few times as well as adding the ledwiz wiring later on. ~Okay okay, enough with the excuses already.

As usual, click on the pictures for a larger view.






And heres an excellent link that explains how it all works :

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_wiring.shtml

And heres another link on wiring the micro switches :

http://www.darkravenwind.com/cdvision/madcatz2.htm

Tournament Nite 23

"Bend over, spread your cheeks and give me two good coughs"
- Ice Cube

Tourney nite 23 happened sometime last week but these write-ups take time you know ?

1UP - Flicky. quite possibly the best platfrom game ever. Really simple but brilliant. And Buks was brilliant and Balki was errr simple. Buks' first game was supposed to showcase the tallent he'd picked up over the previous couple of weeks practice (and Buks had practiced nearly every night). But unfortunately neither of his games of Flicky came any where near his best. Still, practice makes perfect and Balki was sadly lacking in the practice department. Buks leads 2-0.

2UP - Pipi & Bibis. A *mature* game this one (Balki -you dirty little b*stard). Quite a good game once you get into it. The graphics kind of remind me of the old SpyVSpy cartoon strip (but not to anyone else). Balki was good at this one - but a fatal flaw in his tactics proved his undoing. You see, Balki was just pressing the fire button - not keeping it pressed. Read the instructions boy ! A fairly good brace of scores all round but Buks proved to be the master once more - Buks leads 4-0.

3UP - Go Go ! Mile Smile. Now this is a pretty good game despite it being a bit odd. Sort of like Qix in that you make long lines and have to avoid the baddies touching any part of the line. Cross that with Pacman and you've got it. Now, Balki needed to win this 2-0 otherwise Buks walks away with the trophy (again). Not to be - Buks wins and Balki declared. Buks wins 5-0.

4UP - Pandoras Palace. A consolation game of this. Buks didnt' have it in him to totally trounce Balki and let him win :)

Buks wins 5-1. Nice

Some more pictures

Been messing about as usual and thought I'd take some photos of the cab.

Heres the marquee again. The lights on this time but not sure if it shows through.


Mmmmmm - new frontend. MaLa in all its glory. Nice theme too (from the MaLa site)


Opening credits of "Dragons Lair" - nice, really nice.


Ahh - the age old question - "what buttons do I use ?". Why just the ones that are lit of course ! This piccy is showing the button config for Dragons Lair - but you knew that already.


Lightgun mounting, hole where wires are stuffed and pinball flipper button. The hole is covered using those office desk cable tidy cover things. Found in a skip ! Excellent !


In her throbbing glory. In Technicolor.

Video of flashing buttons !!!!!

STOP PRESS !!!!

I've uploaded a very low-res video of the buttons in all their "attract mode" glory.


NOTE : Taken on a mobile phone so the res is crap. Not recommended at full screen.

Embedded video here :

Tournament Nite 22

"When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue."
- Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse-tung)

So tourney 22 has come around - some classic games too. Read on......

1UP - Qix
Buks hates this game. Its just one of those really annoying games - rubbish at it too. But so is Balki which is probably why, despite it being Balkis game, Buks won 2-1. Chortle.

2UP - Vs. Excite Bike
Oh the joy. This is a great game. Its got all the elements of a classic game - nice simple graphics, lots of tunes etc etc. And Buks was pretty damnded good at it too - especially against Balki who had never played it before in his life. Oh dear. So quite how Balki managed to wipe the floor with Buks and win 2-1 is still being debated. Even stevens now at 3-3.

3UP - Jackal
Great choice by Balki. Sort of like Commando but a lot better. Balki went first and posted a reasonable score, only to be beaten by Buks who posted a personal best. Then Balki lost all 3 lives of his second game within a minute of starting. His score was so low I'm not sure he logged it. Anyway, to save Balki the embarrasment, Buks won 2-0. Score now 5-3 to Buks.

4UP - Elevator Action Returns
Never really got into the first game in this series but EA Returns is a great looking game. Plays pretty good too. Balki needed to win this game 2-0 to force a tiebreaker but......... it wasn't to be. Balki lost the first game then declared.

Victory to Buks - the trophy is now back in its rightful place.

Thanks to Balki for the catering.

Introducing MaLa

I've been nusing the MAMEWah frontend for a couple of years now. Its great - seems to work with all the emulators I want. But, theres a few issues :

• my installation is a bit messed up and any changes seem to break it
• MW hasn't been updated in a long while
• MW doesn't directly support the LedWiz so have to rely on 3rd party software

The LedWiz "addons" I've been using are okay but theres a 30 second pause from exiting a game and going back to MW - which is too long.

So I started looking around and found a fair few posts from people on BYOAC singing the praises of MaLA.

So to cut a long story short - MaLA is ace ! All the functionality of MW but with built in support of the LedWiz (via a plugin). The buttons for each game light up as you scroll through the list, you can light buttons for a specific game or emulator - so I get lit buttons on Daphne games (game specific) and also on Megadrive and SNES games (emulator specific).

The attract mode animations are excellent too.

So, its goodbye to MAMEWah for now but I will continue to run WAHCade! in Linux (Balki - add LedWiz support please - ta.)

Tournament Night 21

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."
- Gore Vidal (1925-)

The following (somewhat biased) write-up was penned by non other that Balki "Scoop" Schmalki....

1UP - Manic Miner (1983: Spectrum 48k)
First up was Matthew Smith's seminal platformer Manic Miner. Buks steps up to the plate and virtually completes the game. Balki sits down manages to lose a life on the first level, something which never happened in practice sessions.

Oh Dear. An all too predictable 2-0 to Buks.


2UP - Blue Max (1984: Atari 800)
Next was the lost gem Blue Max - This early example of an isometric shooter has the player piloting a Sopwith Camel, shooting & bombing various targets.
Manfred von Balki dons the scarf & goggles and achieves a respectful, if not unbeatable score. Buks opts for the "I'm a passenger, not the pilot" style of playing and loses 0-2.


3UP - Sensible Soccer (1992: Sega Megadrive) Time for 90's cult football game Sensible Soccer. Two player was the only logical choice here, which was unfortunate for Balki as Buks knows the funny old game only too well. Result: a 2-0 drubbing for sick-as-a-parrot Balki.


4UP - Frak! (1984: BBC Micro Model B)
Possibly the best platformer ever witnessed on the Beeb. A purple caveman, his purple yo-yo, purple balloons and some monsters (also purple) - What more do you need in a game? Balki (ex BBC owner) hammers Buks (ex Spectrum) into the ground with this one: Result 0-2.


Scores on the doors: It's a tie 4-4, so...


Tie Break: Peggle (2007: Windows)
"A modern classic". Perhaps. This "skilled" game of firing a ball at some pegs and hoping for the best went right down to the wire, but Balki pulls out all the stops and comes out the clear, undisputed championship winner 1-2.

Final Score: Buks 5 - Balki 6

Balki wins ! (finally).......