In team 1418’s never ending quest to part the masses from their money, I mean uh, garner the support of numerous benefactors, we’ve decided to build an arcade machine. To my suprise the administration thinks its a fantastic idea, so long as we empty the coinbox frequently and it can’t be played during class hours (Apparently the choice between IBH US History and Missile Command cannot be trusted to the student body). The general idea is to set up a linux box (Debian!) in a custom made plywood arcade cabinet and interface nifty japanese arcade joysticks and buttons to it, and of course hook up the all important coin acceptor (We plan to get all this stuff from the incredibly cool Happ Controls website). I’ll post a big writeup and lots of pictures when we actually build this, but until then I should get to the real motivation for this thread.
What games/features would you want to see on a multi-game arcade machine? Please keep in mind the following rules:
Copyright - Need I say more?
Middle School Parent Friendly - No matter how “wicked awesome” it would be, we can’t have “Blood and Stuff: Gory Homicidal Rampage XVIII”
That’s pretty much it. I’ll get the list started with:
Dig Dug is awesome, theres a website out there that has the top 100 arcade games of all time, you could probably find it and get like the top 15 or something.
Interesting thread. Just for the fun of it I built myself an arcade machine last summer. It was a lot of work but I really enjoy that kind of stuff. Conveniently Happ Controls is just a few miles from Motorola so I was able to place orders and pick the stuff up on my lunch hour. The people there are really nice, and their warehouse is pretty awesome.
Some good info: get to know http://www.arcadecontrols.com well. They have a good forum there with lots of helpful people, as well as links to design plans, control wiring information, etc. When creating your control panel, don’t try to hack a keyboard - it just won’t cut it. Save yourself the time and trouble and get a keyboard encoder from http://www.ultimarc.com/. Nice & easy.
Make sure you do your research on the legal issues. The general consensus seems to be that operating a emulator-based arcade cabinet for profit is tough to do legally. I don’t think the above comment about abandonware is correct. Unless I’m mistaken, even if a game seems to be abandoned, you do not necessarily have any right to use or copy it.
Finally, have you considered the cost? It’s not cheap to build one of these. When you add up the control pieces from Happ, plus the cost of the computer, plus a TV or monitor, plus either the wood to construct the cabinet or the cost of an old cabinet for retrofitting, plus a whole bunch of “miscellaneous” expenses that will pop up, it gets to be a little much. I didn’t add up exactly what I spent (I really didn’t want to know…), but most other projects who did add it up claim about $600 minimum, more commonly $1000 and up.
Attached is a picture of my nearly complete cabinet. Let me know if you decide to do it and have questions and I’ll see if I can help.
{edit} No list of awesome video games is complete without Galaga. {/edit}
In almost all cases, abandonware is still copyrighted. In fact, every piece of computer software ever written in the US is still copyrighted, unless the author has expressly put the software in the public domain. There are a few abandonware sites that only list public domain software, but most of them just list old software that is still copyrighted.
StarROMs will sell you roms licensed from atari. However, those are licensed for private, noncommercial use, so you couldn’t use them in your fundraiser either.
What if rather then using an emulator, you buy an atari system and a bunch of games, and use your robotics expertise to create a game selection/cartridge loading mechanism.
Dig Dug is awesome, theres a website out there that has the top 100 arcade games of all time, you could probably find it and get like the top 15 or something.
Ummm… I don’t think you can use that. In fact a lot of the games the games that you guys think are abandoned aren’t. They have either been put into compilation form for the game boy advance or they are coming out with a television version of them. Dig Dug and Pole Position I know have been resseurected.
i take my previous comment about abandonware back…
can you get around it by making it for personal use and to use it you have to join a club for a fee or something?
