 Over the years I've dabbled on and off with emulation of one sort or another, but I've always found it a bit unsatisfying, I much prefer the real thing. With this in mind I decided that I'd like to try my hand at a MAME cabinet. The first obstacle I had to overcome was my better half. I though about sounding her out about it, getting her playing some of the games and seeing how it went, but I decided that the direct approach was best so I just blurted it out one night. The reception I got was a bit lukewarm, so I thought I'd leave it for a while and try again in a few weeks. The next day I was working at home and I got a call from my wife - the local Stock & Cheques store had a cheap 17 inch LCD monitor in, and was it what I wanted? Bargain! So off I went and brought it home. With that blessing I was able to formulate some kind of a plan for what I wanted. A full upright cabinet was way too much to go for, we simply don't have space, but a cocktail style one could replace the table in the games room.
Initial Construction
The first thing to do was decide how big I wanted the cabinet to be. I knew where it needed to fit within the games room, so that gave me the maximum width, the depth came from the height of the monitor plus a bit to make the proportions of the top look decent. The basic cutting and screwing took me about 4 hours. It's built from 12mm MDF in a bid to keep costs and weight down. |
 | Monitor Mount
The plan was to have the top rest on the sides of the cabinet, so it could be simply lifted off for access to the monitor and other electronics within the cabinet. I built a frame to hold the monitor which could be slid around on the X & Y axes to allow me to position the monitor correctly within its window. |
 | Games - in action!
With all the basic connected up it was time for a first test. All worked well, although the lack of a proper control panel was quite a disappointment. This is it playing Space Invaders, which seemed fitting for a first game. |
 | Top Cover
At this point I added a nice trim to the inner and outer edges of the top, and fitted a plastic top. The lack of the latter was beginning to worry me as it left the monitor face up and exposed. |
 | Parts
I ordered all the control parts from the nice people at Gremlin Solutions. They had an eBay shop, and good photos and descriptions of all the things I needed, which made the whole ordering a breeze. I'd love to order some of their arcade cabs too, they look soooo nice, alas the money they want is out of my league. And I'd have to explain to the wife where we're going to put them, because just one would look stupid wouldn't it? |
 | Control Panel
The width of the cabinet determined the size of the control panel I'd be able to have. I didn't want controls at each end because it's much more fun actually being side by side with your opponent. The basic framework and installation of the buttons was pretty straightforward; unfortunately I made a mistake with the P2 Start button and I couldn't fit it where I'd originally planned as it's blocked by the P2 joystick, so I needed to cut a new front section and re-drill it. That problem aside the controls looked and felt great. |
 | Control Electronics
I'd got no end of PSX-USB adaptors kicking around, and with the extreme cheapness of third party PS1 controllers I thought they'd be ideal to use as the basis for each of the controller boards that I needed to build. The first thing that I had to do was lightly remove some of the protective cover from each of the PCBs, which was easily done with a small file. Each of the buttons would require 2 wires, so these were soldered directly to the exposed copper. |
 | Wiring
The other end I crimped spade connector fittings to, which makes for a good fit to the controls without being permanent. It also allows me to unclip everything from the controls later, to make painting an easier task. |
 | Assembly
At this point I decided to make some modifications to the top. I wasn't happy about the viewable angle of the LCD screen I was using, so I fitted some mounting brackets to the underside of the top, added hinges and props, and now the whole thing is angled so that it's much easier to see what's on screen. Lowering the props allows me to level the top and use it as a table again when I'm not playing games on it |
 | Paint
I'd decided some months ago about the colour scheme I was going to use, and I'd settled on gloss black with pale blue trim. It needed to be easy on the eye, and as the games room isn't huge, not too garish. It took 3 coats of the black to get it to the level of finish that I wanted, but the end result was certainly worth it. The picture here shows it with the top folded flat. |
 | Ready to Play
And here it is with the top in position and ready to go. |
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To get to this stage took me a little under 10 months, which is way too long, and I could have cut the time down tremendously if I'd not lost motivation part way through the project. It took a pending visit from one of my friends to actually get me to get my ass in gear, and since then I've cracked on a-pace.
I've still got more to do; I want to build some add-on controls for games that don't support a joystick directly, such as Temptest which needs a spinner, and Marble Madness which uses a trackball. Both of these have arcade parts that are readily available, but they're very expensive, so I've built prototypes from mice and pc trackballs that I've got in the spares bin. Next up is to get them into matching boxes and add paint.
 Xenon 2 was one of my staples back in the University days, although then I played it on a pc. Now I've got the Mega Drive version I find it's almost identical, from the pounding Bomb the Bass track Megablast to the Super Nashwan firepower upgrade that's totally useless.
The game is a vertically scrolling shooter, with just about everything including the scenery being an enemy. Find yourself trapped in a cave and as the screen scrolls to the bottom and no way to back out and you've lost a life. As is common with most of these shooters the enemies arrive in predetermined waves and always fly the same pattern, which means that to extract the best out of the level you have to play it and play it and play it so that the patterns become second nature.
Each swarm of enemies destroyed creates bubbles on screen that when collected translate into money that you can then use for upgrades, some of which can be found floating around various levels anyway.
 There's a real knack to getting the best firepower for each level and the game restricts you to what you can carry, for example you can't have both side and rear guns, but you can have an insane amount of front facing weaponry. Some of the levels have a plethora of side attacking enemies, some come from the rear.
Each level ends with a boss fight, and it's really only here that the game shows any break from swooping attack patterns as the bosses, whilst usually stationary, can actually aim and take proper shots at you. Each one has it's own weakness to be discovered, and once you do it's pretty straightforward to repeatedly exploit this until it explodes into a mass of bubble coins.
 During each level and again at the end you're able to visit the shop to buy and sell upgrades and it's vital that you make the right choice here - buy a side shot on a level where everything happens behind you and it makes for a very frustrating experience indeed.
The game is quite short, taking about and hour to play to the end, but the memorization required to achieve anything like a decent high score is phenomenal and will take many more hours.
I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to play a simple shooter that doesn't require the reflexes of todays shmups, and fancies a bit of 80s electronica as background. A word of warning though, the only music track is Megablast, and after about 30 minutes of playing it my kids told me to 'turn that damn noise off'. I expect they'll be shouting at me to get off their lawns next.
The Guardian reports that there's a documentary in the offing from the BBC about the rivalry between the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro and the rise of home computers during this period. Now some of you know that I have a particular passion obsession for stuff from this era, so needless to say I'll be keeping a close eye out for it. Probably not of much interest if you don't live in the UK though.
DISCLAIMER: I've already published this on my personal blog, but I thought it might find an interested audience here.
Some time ago I had the notion of hacking a PS1 joypad and a Dragon 32 joystick into some sort of hybrid that might work for an emulator. I love playing games on the Dragon, but it's a bit of a bind loading tapes all the time and I'm not sure how long the hardware will last if I keep using it.
This is the results of that idea.
(And when I can figure out the difference between Blogger's html and RFGen's I'll get rid of the space below this paragraph)
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Removed the circuit boards from the PSX pad, a Woolworths branded knock off. Using a Dremmel I cut out the section of the pad that holds the right nubbin. |
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Removed the potentiometer from the Dragon joystick, and unsoldered the connections to the fire button. This button will directly activate the PSX pad circuit board. No damage to the controller, so I can always return the controller to it's pre-modded state. These things may not have a soul, but I do. |
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I tidied up the nubbin casing, and glued it into the Dragon joystick case. This will give me a secure mounting point for the actual analog control later. Sawed the nubbin circuit board in two, one to fit inside0 the Dragon joystick, the other to be hidden away in a project box. |
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I've got tons of old pc cables lying around, so I cut up an old RS232 cable, and salvaged a com port from my parts bin. I soldered the cable to the joystick end, and the com port to the main PSX circuit board. After testing all the connections for continuity I plugged it all together, retested and found that I'd swapped the connections between the plug and the socket, so I had to redo the socket end. Once I'd done that and retested it everything looked ok, so it was time for a test on the emulator.
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Bugger me, it all worked! Ok, so it wasn't rocket science, but this is my first project in about 20 years, and I did expect some major problems along the way. I've still to add a proper joystick to the controller instead of the nubbin, but this is how it looks so far |
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I've managed to get my boards into a project box now, and wire up the analogue on/off switch. This was all built from parts I had lying around, and whilst the box is a bit on the big side it does mean that I can add another board and sockets and have 2 joysticks. Or add an interface for something else.
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Not much else done, but I've cleaned up the box and added some authentic early 80's style labels
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Review: Mined Out, Dragon 32
I know that the older tape based systems don't seem to get much love or attention, but I really enjoy revisiting some of these games. Mined Out is one of the gems from my childhood, I originally played a friends copy - the same friend who donated his Dragon 32 to my collection last year in fact - and I loved the game even then. I don't think I ever really understood it though. The mechanics are pretty straightforward, you have to manoeuvre your character from the bottom of the screen to the top, avoiding the hidden mines along the way. After each move a little message tells you how many mines are adjacent to you, similar to Minesweeper in windows. From there you have to make informed decisions about how to progress, risk it and push forwards, or back track and look for a safer route, with the added danger that you might be caught by the chasing bug which appears after a length of time. Step on a mine at any point and it's instant game over, and you're given the option of starting again from the previous level, although the layout of the mines will have changed. After almost 25 years I finally feel able to tackle the perils of rescuing Bill the Worm.
 Progression through the game was fairly easy, reaching level 3 presented no difficulties. There are seven levels to the game in all, of progressing difficulty, usually adding more mines to avoid. Level 4 included a wall with a moving gap half way up the screen which you must pass through, and other levels included 4 question mark boxes which contain bonus points, and sometimes mines. The choice here then is ignore the potential bonuses, or risk it all for higher score? The bonuses do nothing for later levels, they simply add to the final score. On level 7 I got sight of Bill the Worm - he's imprisoned in a walled enclosure in the centre of the screen, and again there's a minefield to navigate to reach him.
I didn't really have any problems with the game now, and I can't say the challenge is that great, it's amazing what the addition of 25 years experience makes to playing a game. The only times I really had difficulties were getting over-confident with my mine-logic, hitting a mine when I was sure there wasn't one. Back-tracking to the previous level and re-doing it presented no further problems. When the bug appeared for the first time I got myself into a bit of a tangle and managed to head straight for it, instead of away, but that was the last time I made that mistake. All in all the game took me about an hour to complete, which is not exactly great by today's standards, and for something that cost GBP8.00 in 1983 that was a lot of cash, for not much return. I can understand why dad was always so reluctant fund a regular supply of games now, it would have cost him a small fortune.
It's a great little game to while away an hour or so, especially if you try and beat your score. Attempting to shave a couple of moves off levels is good fun, but it doesn't have long term appeal and the sound effects will probably get to you before long.
It's been over a month since my last Treasure Hunt post, though not for lack of searching. It has been the least successful month I've ever had, so bad that I've had to resort to eBay for most of my gaming goodies, although to be fair there has been quite a lot of Dragon 32 software kicking around, so my collection has grown to 78 CIB titles, only another 1100 to go.
I even used the first camping trip of the season to do a little hunting, but again totally failed to find anything.
(Note for non-Europeans: Camping in England doesn't involve campfires, woods, bears or rifles and is normally done in the equivalent of a farmers field, generally including toilet and shower blocks of varying cleanliness, and close to some tourist attraction)
Anyway, this month has netted me the following items:
PS1
Disney's Jungle Book Groove Party, which replaces my Platinum version
Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness
Machine Hunter
Starsweep
Midway Arcade Party Pak
for a total of GBP4.40
Complete in box: G-Con 45 and Multi-tap, for GBP4.99 each
PS2/Xbox
Pitfall: The Lost Expedition
Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon
Galleon
The Simpsons: Hit & Run
A Train 6
for GBP1.29 each
I don't have any idea of the years total to date, look for that in the next update.
I thought it was time I gave Burn:Cycle a try as I'd heard good things about it, and whilst I've had the CDi for quite a while it's never had much love. I'd picked it up as part of a deal with a boxed Sega Saturn and a handful of games.Burn:Cycle was released in 1994, and it shows it's age, coupling FMV sequences with VR imagery that could have come straight from Lawnmower Man, albeit with fewer chrome reflection effects. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly easy on the eyes either, favouring reds and blues, and not much else.
The look and feel is total cyberpunk, exactly right for the era; 80s 'what the hell are you wearing?' fashions; Hollywood style technobabble; a fairly predictable plot - data thief infected with a computer virus that's set to kill him must find out why before the 'cure' can be found.
The opening of the game sets you up for exactly how the rest of it will play out - make a few random clicks around the screen, interact with a couple of objects, turn around and get instantly killed.
GAME OVER
Get used to the sight of that, you'll be seeing it a lot. The 2 hour real time dead line for the game means that it's artificially lengthened by a punishing difficulty and frequent insta-death(tm) I'd forgotten just how annoying games can be when they get the basics wrong.
The save/restore mechanism is absolutely dire, using the point and click system like it does you can lose precious seconds just navigating around the menus, and the lack of 'snap to' on the default options is a serious omission.
The scenery makes navigating extremely difficult, amd the point and click interface means that you don't always head off where you think you're going, nor is it easy to see entrances to new areas. I've frequently had to resort to a walkthrough to find where I need to be going, but once there the puzzles are reasonably entertaining.
The game is frequently let down by 'Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins' accents, I just can't abide them, and find them incredibly jarring. What is it about games designers that think they can get away using a friend of a friend for a voice over? And why is it that the only English accents that exist outside the real world are either Queen's english, or Cockney?
The sad thing is I really wanted to like this game, I'm a huge fan of cyberpunk. I grew up reading William Gibson novels, I played Cyberpunk and Shadowrun RPGs on paper, my first email address alias was 'thecount@someuniversity.ac.uk' and no end of home electronics projects ended up in matt black boxes with an Ono Sendai brand label applied somewhere discrete
End Result
Total play time: 9 hours
Bad English accents: 3
Deaths by meteor: Millions
'Screw you!s' shouted at the screen in frustration: Too many to remember
Final Verdict
It's a passable game spoiled by a poor interface and an incredibly frustrating level of difficulty. In it's day it was probably incredible, but is now over shadowed by current gen cgi and an audience expecting much more in the way of interactivity.
This week's treasure hunting wasn't particularly successful. I did the rounds of all the usual shops, but I only managed to pick up a couple of PS1 games.
PS1
Trash It
Resident Evil
I only paid GBP1 for each of them, so that was good.
Spurred on by the lack of success I had a look through the cheap end of the games that CeX had in stock, and I picked up this lot for GBP15
XBox
Unreal II: The Awakening
Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon
Black
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
I already had a copy of Broken Sword, but sans manual, so this was a good opportunity to replace it. I'm making good progress on the incompletes, 56 remaining out of a total of 969 games.
PS2
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Getaway
Red Faction II
007 Nightfire
Half-life
Headhunter
There's nothing especially amazing amongst the PS2 stuff, but it was time just to pick up some of the cheap stuff while it's still easily available. On another note I did fantastically well with records, but that's not the point of this post.
Spend for the week: GBP17.00
Month: GBP17.00
Year: GBP295.36
 Chuckie Egg was released by A&F software on many platforms, but originally for the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Dragon 32 in the first flush of the home computer era, way back in 1983. I first played this in my youth on the Dragon 32 and consequently I consider it the definitive version. Others may disagree, but to them I say 'tough!'. It's nothing amazing nowadays, just another platformer, but back in 1983 it was considered something special. From that damned Birdie Song theme tune, to the mad duck which pursued you in later levels, it was the home computer Donkey Kong of it's day.
 The platforming gameplay still holds up well, it's a frantic run around the screen avoiding the chickens which follow preset pathways, leaping on and off lifts, jumping gaps, seeking out the piles of birdseed that temporarily pause the ever present timer, all so that you can collect your dozen eggs. In the early stages the duck sits harmlessly in it's cage, waiting for the timer to run down to a preset value before it springs free, to chase you around the screen at it's leisure. You can move significantly faster than it, but it's all too easy to find yourself cornered between chickens and the duck and nowhere to go. In later levels it doesn't have the decency to wait for the timer, and it's chasing you from the off, not following pre-programmed paths, but actively seeking you out, like a duck with radar - a smart duck, the sort that would be deployed in wars, with trained commandos pointing laser guiders at your egg stealing ass in a bid to end your omelette making ideas prematurely,
There's not much more to be said of it, it has no aspirations over and above being a collecting platformer - get the eggs before the time runs out and you're gold, hesitate and there's a duck raping your face. I've wasted hours of my life playing this damned game, and I've still never finished it. I'm determined though, maybe in another 25 years I'll have honed my ninja egg stealing skills to the point where my arthritic hands can frantically navigate the fat collector around with enough agility to collect the eggs in time, and then it'll be time to learn how to make fritatta
I've not managed to pick up tons of stuff again this week, encountering a total failure to find anything worth buying in my hometown. Work was a different matter, I hit paydirt in one of the Charity shops, scoring 14 Master System games, complete for 99p each.
Golvellius: Valley of Doom
Sagaia
Black Belt
Pac-Mania
The Jungle Book
Castle of Illusion
Desert Speedtrap
Alien Storm
Submarine Attack
Ace of Aces
Terminator 2: Judgement day
Robocopy Vs The Terminator
Gain Ground
Captain Silver
Oh, and a MB Pac-Man boardgame (1982) for 1.99
Week: 15.85
Months total: 143.81
Year to date: 278.36
The quest for goodies this week met with a bit of a failure in the quantity department, but a huge success in the quality stakes. I did my normal weekly trawl of the charity shops, coming up trumps at the start of the week, but a BFZ (that's a big fat zero for you DOOM fans) today.
Game Boy
Burai fighter Deluxe
Ghostbusters II
Pac-Man
Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear
Double Dragon
Golf
Solar Striker
The Amazing Spider-Man
Now not only are these boxed, but they also have the little plastic bag for the cartridge, the Nintendo poster, the manual and the registration card, and I paid GBP 3 for each of them.
Playstation
Final Fantasy VIII
Not particularly impressive, but it's in better condition than the one I currently own, and it was GBP 3.
Playstation 2
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
This one is a bit of a cheat actually as my friend Data picked it up for me when it became available in his hometown. This week was the first time we'd been able to co-ordinate the handover of game and money, so a big thanks to him for that. GBP 35
Grand total: GBP 62.00
Months total: GBP 127.96
Year to date: GBP 262.51
I received a copy of LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on the PS3 for Christmas. it's been on my wishlist in various incarnations on the previous generation for some time, I'd just never gotten around to buying it. Oddly enough my daughter's boyfriend bought it for me, which made me immediately suspicious, but so far there appear to be no strings attached. Or engagement rings.
One of the things that has really irritated me this generation is not just being able to stick a game in the machine and start playing, far too often they're plagued by a huge update before I can even begin, pleasingly LSW:TCS had none of this, nor did it require any installation. Travellers Tales have earned my respect immediately.
The music, as is to be expected, is excellent. For me the sound of the theme music is enough to make the hairs on my neck stand up, it takes me back to the day when my parents took me to see Star Wars (none of this 'A New Hope' rubbish, it was just 'Star Wars') and even hearing it play at the start of every level and chapter it still has that effect. It's just that good.
The sound effects are straight from the movies and I have absolutely no complaints about them; lightsabers hum, blasters shriek, tie fighters squeal, Jawas do whatever Jawas do, Tusken Raiders wave their arms about and do that funny laugh thing, droids say 'Oh no' in a robotic voice just before you shoot them.
Unlockables are present by the ton. For a collector it's a dream, and even after about 30 hours of game time I'm still only just over half way through. Some of them are the usual useless filler, a la big head mode in beat 'em ups, but then there's some genuinely useful stuff that helps, improving fighting abilities, and guiding you to locations of hidden items. I won't spoil the game by revealing what they are, but suffice it to say one of them makes you feel like a real jedi when you use it, none of this Luke Skywalker learning stuff either, proper Yoda in full battle mode.
The levels are big enough to provide a challenge, but not so big that they feel overwhelming, although the ones involving vehicles can be somewhat frustrating as the control scheme is a little odd, I found it far to easy to flip whatever ship I was flying in a 180 and suddenly I was heading heading in a direction contrary to the one I intended. That aside these levels are few and far between, and the pod race in Episode 1 is a heap of fun, I just wish that blasters were enabled in subsequent playthroughs, then Sebulba wouldn't have it so easy.
The fighting aspect leaves me feeling a little disappointed. It's not a massive problem, it's just that I can't aim where I want with a blaster, it's taken care of by the game, frequently shooting harmless bits of scenery when I could really be doing with blowing the crap out of the fully shielded Droideka that's hammering away with it's blasters right next to me. The Jedi and Sith are also pretty ineffectual in large scale battles as they tend to flail around waving their lightsabres as they please and deflecting blaster bolts anywhere but back at the enemy who fired them. As I mentioned one of the unlockables addresses this, and from then on playing one of these is pure awesome.
Each character type has a small range of different abilities; Jedi & Sith can move objects using the force; Gungans can leap really high; Jawas can enter small tunnels; droids can unlock doors. After completeing story mode for a chapter the ability to switch between these types at will makes figuring some of the extras out in the level quite a challenge.
Hidden within each level are 10 minikit cannisters, which you must collect to increase your stash of studs (the LSW:TCS equivalent of money) which you can use to buy extra characters, ships etc, and these contribute towards your brick count for the game. There are 160 bricks to earn in total, earned by collecting minikits, acheiving a certain number of studs in a level, completing the level, and the most onerous: a timed challenge mode where you have to locate 10 cannisters in a different location to the minikit ones. It takes long enough to find all of the minikit cannisters, without dragging it out by timing you to find another 10. I've only attempted a couple of these, and failed on both count., I loathe timed sections in adventure games, they seem such a forced (no pun intended) way of extending what is otherwise a great game. Because of this simple fact I'll probably never complete the game 100%, fortunately as it's the PS3 version and it was released before trophies became mandatory there's no huge incentive to do so, unless of course they release an update that enables them, and then? Well, we'll just have to see.
I love the game. It's LEGO, it's Star Wars, it's a video game. I really don't need much else.
This week has brought me some good stuff. At the beginning of the week I trawled though the shops where I work, and I finished up today doing the rounds of my home town.
PS1
Time Crisis,
TOCA Touring Cars, GBP 1.99 each
Warcraft II, GBP 2.50
Colin McRae Rally, GBP 1.79
PS2
Final Fantasy X guide, GBP 3.99
Rune Viking Warlord,
Chaos Legion,
Maximo vs Army of Zin, GBP 1.99 each
XBox
Unreal Championship, GBP 1.99
Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer, 99p
PSP
Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops,
Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus, GBP 10 each
A couple of the games (Unreal Championship & Rune Viking Warlord) I already had, but they were missing the manuals. These were complete, so I was more than happy to pick them up at these prices. The deal on the PSP games wasn't that good, the normal Gamestation offer of 2 for 20 quid, but I've been holding off buying these for too long, and I am a huge Metal Gear Solid fan.
That brings the total for this week to GBP 41.21
and the total for this year to GBP 180.51, but that also includes eBay purchases and the like.
Inspired by NES_Rules posts I'd like to document my hunts too. Whilst I don't spend quite as long at it as NES_Rules appears to, I've been blogging these on my own site, but I think including them here is also appropriate. I'm not proposing to copy all the previous entries over, so I'll start here with my latest one.
Playstation
Blaze Rave Station, with Dancing Stage EuroMix and Dancing Stage Party Edition, GBP 5
Wip3Out and TOCA 2 Touring Cars. No covers or manuals, but the cases are in good condition and I've got some that are broken, 50p each
Game Boy Color
2x Body Boy silicon skins, 1 clear, 1 yellow, GBP 1
Pong and Megaman Xtreme, GBP 4 each
Master System
Sonic the Hedgehog 2, no instructions, but includes the SEGA poster that's missing from my other copy, GBP 1
Game Boy Advance SP
Carry case complete with car adapter and 7 cartridge protectors, GBP 2
Commodore 64
GFL Championship Football (not shown) GBP 1
Grand total of GBP 19
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