So I moved the arcade over to Carleton today. Everything went well, and it booted up perfectly on the first try. Played a lot of games, had others play, etc. Everyone seemed to love it, and I think it'll look awesome when it's in the show.
I am however a little sad that it's there and not here. I know I'll get it back in 3 weeks, but there is this disconnect I'm having from it, especially with the amount of time I've put into it. I've put so much time into it infact that I don't even know what to do w/ the freetime I have now. I feel like I should still be working on it.
I do have plenty of other things to do with my time, but of course now that this project is done, I want to do another one. Not another MAME cab per se, but at least another gaming project. I really need more space though. In due time, I guess. I feel like a broken record.
The arcade cabinet is finally done. You can see the rest of the pictures here. Anyone wanna come over and play? :)
Quick update. Things are going well, still real busy, both at work and on the cabinet. I'm almost done, I can feel it. Though i know there will still be many hours put into this thing. There are several things about the cabinet I'm not happy about, partially because this is the first time I've done it and you make some mistakes, and partially because those are the breaks when making something that tries to play every game ever made. Still, I would say it is over 90% of what I wanted, so I am happy.
Next I would like to get into the restoration business. Well, not a business per se, but just for myself. Two problems with that. One, I need more room, which means Annette and I would need to buy a house so I could have a room in the basement to act as the arcade. That won't happen for a while. And two, I need to find somewhere around here that sells old gutted arcade cabinets cheap. That usually doesn't happen. Luckly there seems to be arcade auctions in Milwaukee about every year, which is a good place to pick up stuff for cheap. I really really love playing on my cabinet now that it's hooked up, but it's even more fun to put it together.
On the same topic, I see one of the new versions of MAME adds a ton of games. They finally decided to add games that may not be working, but are in the program (until this point they only added games that had at least some semblance of working). This is cool, because now i know what games are in the source, and looking through the list I noticed that Radient Silvergun is in there. I had no intention of upgrading the CPU in my MAME cabinet, but if/when this game is actually emulated, and if I would need a faster CPU to play it, damn if I ain't getting one. Until then, I have Mars Matrix to play on my cab right now, which, while taking a while to figure out, is one hell of a shooter. What's funny is all these shooters, including Ikaruga, were on the Dreamcast, and I never knew about it until recently. Of course this just cements in my mind that the DC was the best gaming system ever made.
Went to see Kill Bill last night. Very good movie, I'd reccommend it. There are so many different styles in this film and winks to other movies, it was really cool just from that standpoint. There's a couple fight things towards the end I would have changed, but all in all it was really good. Tarrentino is definitely not subtle when it comes to fight scenes. I also liked the fact that all the main characters in the film (save for Bill) were women, especially w/ the amout of violence involved. You just don't see that often and they definitely all held their own.
Eagerly anticipating Volume 2 in Feb.
Skies of Arcadia for GC is $10 at Best Buy. Just ordered a copy. Hopefully I get it. Bestbuy.com is one of the worst sites I've ever used. Anyway, if you want a kick ass RPG, go get it.
I'll be speaking at Carleton College on Nov 2nd about my arcade cabinet. Here's the event detail if anyone is interested.
Also, talked to Rob last night, and looks like I'll be going to the Packer/Broncos game w/ him on Dec 28th. I'm psyched!
This weekend went well. The cabinet is great, though there are a few things I'd do differently but I don't think anyone would notice except me. The pictures of this weekend are here. I will probably stop with these updates for now since I have a lot to do before the show. I will put up a final page describing the process afterwards.
Packed up all the stuff for my trip tomorrow. The monitor barely fits in the front seat of my car. I'm hoping it doesn't get damaged in travel. I also hope I don't forget anything.
Got my speakers today, along w/ my marquee retainer and speaker grills. The speaker grills rock, they're exactly what I wanted. The speakers themselves however, not so much. First of all one of them was totally mangled and bent to hell. Of course that one is going back. The other looked fine, but when I hooked it up the bass was all distorted when I turned up the volume, so I'm thinking the speaker is blown. I'm going to call them and see if I can get new ones, hopefully those are better, but I'm a bit disappointed at this point. Worst case scenario is that I have to use PC speakers, which wouldn't be horrible I guess. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of the stuff yet, I'll have to do that soon.
