Any tips on building a bartop arcade ?

[robertlucas1970]

After looking at these they seem to of come a long way and I thought I would have to run Mame from a PC, but I see they now do a small Jamma board which has 60 games on and another called Pandora which has 600 games.
Just wondered if anybody had done this ?
Many Thanks

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

You won't fit an arcade on your bar top, sorry. You need a room for that.

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

But seriously, look into RetroPi.

 

[Wiredworm]

You can get the PiCade kit from here.

https://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/arcade/arcade-kits/picade

I'm also looking at building one but i'd prefer to do mine based of some old laptops i've got lying around. In that case you can get buttons, sticks, iPac and the cabinet itself from this place: http://www.arcadeworlduk.com/

I've just ordered a kit which consists of 2 x sticks, a load of buttons and an iPac. I'm going to get some MDF and knock up a control panel to start with just so I can get to grips with the software and how it all works. Then at a later date I might grab a bartop cabinet and migrate things over into that.

 

[robertlucas1970]

Thanks for the tops, I like the look of the arcadeworld site so going to order the 2 player cab with full switch kit.
The retro Pi sounds a bit complicated, I like the look of the Jamma 60 in 1 which from what I have read its ready to go as soon as you turn it on with very simple menu to select the game, I only want to place a few classics like Pacman and Phoenix.
Just looking for some nice artwork now, would like to do it the orignal Space Invaders theme.

 

[BigIan]

I have the Pandoras box thing with 645 games on it. You can plug it into a pc monitor or an arcade machine. I have it in an arcade machine and it seems pretty decent although the monitor needs a bit of adjusting as the horizontal hold is off. worls fine on the pc monitor

 

[robertlucas1970]

I was just about to order some bits and then found a guy that has been making them for years and the price for a bartop is £500 with artwork which is not far off what the bits will cost, they look great, so going to order one, but still not decided on StarWars theme or the Space Invaders.

 

[Pharo]

If you have the space I would get a full size cabinet I started off with a bartop arcade but after a couple of months I decided to go for a candy cab which is slightly smaller and a hell of a lot lighter than a full size upright,the bartop got sold about a month later as it didn't compare to standing in front of a full size for some strange reason.

Cheers brian.

 

[JT.]

MAME is a right pita compared to a jamma multi cart - I've got one of the latter, 600ish games on one card. It just works. Turn it on, menu pops up, choose your game and away you go, no messing around downloading loads of stuff, and the horrible configuration interfaces in mame.

 

[kevlar]

MAME is a right pita compared to a jamma multi cart - I've got one of the latter, 600ish games on one card. It just works. Turn it on, menu pops up, choose your game and away you go, no messing around downloading loads of stuff, and the horrible configuration interfaces in mame.

I was thinking of trying to add retropie (mame?) to my panoras box 4 cab to play all the console games but if its not very user friendly maybe I won't bother.

 

[Pharo]

Hi
I've got mame and loads of emulators ie sega m2,dream cast,mega drive,snes,Amiga,n64,daphne and loads more all running through hyperspin without a problem everything configured plug a joy pad in the USB and it recognises it to play the console games also plug an amtrak light gun in and you can play games like Area 51,carnevil,point blanc,hod without problem.
I didn't set it up but I have got a friend who is the dogs bollock at it he probably spent a couple of years getting a 1tb hardrive full with games that play without fault without having to configure anything just jump between games and emulators

Cheers brian.