In the midst of getting ready for the trip up north for a week, I had been researching the building of a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This is basically a computer system that runs gaming emulators to simulate the operating system of arcade games, home gaming consoles, pinball machines, etc. With much of the gameroom complete, I started considering the idea of building one more and more and started scanning Craig's list for some cheap arcade cabinets so I could get some ideas.
On a whim, I searched for the term 'MAME' and found an ad listed. By pure chance I was able to find something that nearly matched my dream machine almost identically. Luck was quite with me as I it seems the owner was just about to have the birth of his third child within the next few days and was in need of a bit of money and the space. So, on Friday morning I started driving at 6AM the 45 minutes to his place to pick up the machine. Sure, I could spend just about the same amount of money plus a few months of work to make my own, but I really don't think that I could do any better of a job that this, so I am quite happy with it.
The owner was an electrical engineer who had built it (and another couple previously) himself and had it quite well designed. The computer itself was a WinXP machine with 2500+ processor, and had the graphical frontend, emulators, and a few thousand games aready set up. It has a blue-lit trackball, 4 player controls, and even side buttons in place for virtual pinball to 
simulate flipper positions and shot plunger. It is fairly complex and it will take me quite a while to figure it out through a lot of trial and error. Even the 4 coin slots work!Dad came over to give me a hand in loading and as soon as that was done I had to get back to packing for the trip since I needed to head to the airport with Kristen by 3 o'clock. It was hard not to get a chance to play, but I'm sure there will be time later. I took a few pictures of the rest of the nearly completed room and took off to meet with Kristen at work. I think the place is finally starting to show some promise and come closer to what we've had in mind. there is still a lot of work to do from adding the chair molding to building the shelves behind the bar, but it is all getting closer.
The flights were fairly uneventful even though we almost got bumped in Denver on the way to Rapid City. We picked up the rental car and headed towards Deadwood/Lead and Terry Peak where Kristen's parents had rented a large place for a few days. The GPS worked perfectly in getting us exactly where we needed to be and it was quite nice to be able to drive in and finally get a chance to rest after having been up and constantly moving for the past 20 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment