What’s with the gaming panels?

Today I took a long overdue opportunity to update the section of our website that shows off my arcade machine. A lot of changes have happened since I first took some pictures and did a little write-up — BACK IN 2004!

So I decided that a simple way to organize writing about the different swappable panels was just to give each one a blog post. That will also make it simple to update a single one later should the need arise.

Don’t know anything about my arcade machine? Do you care? You can click on the “frinkiac 7″ tab above to get more info.

Yes! A Star Wars yoke!

I found this yoke a couple of years ago on ebay. It was actually from an Apache 3 arcade machine. I cleaned it up, painted it, built a “steering column” of sorts for it and got it working with my cabinet. I used the “Dual Strike hack” (which at the time of writing this post can be found here) to wire the yoke to the computer. As such, this is the first panel I’ve built that doesn’t rely solely on my custom plug architecture. This panel requires a second USB plug-in.

It turns out that a yoke is also the right control for Spy Hunter. Obviously, the buttons to fire weapons and such are a direct mapping, but Spy Hunter apparently used this kind of electronics for its steering yoke as well. What I mean is that it needs potentiometers to register the turning, which is what is on the inside of a Star Wars yoke control. Trying to play Spy Hunter using my Driving panel was just a disaster — which is because of this difference in the control schemes on the two games. Spy Hunter explains the gear shifter on the right (again ebay!).

This panel is the product of a good 2 years’ planning, purchasing, and work. I’m very proud of how it turned out.

Obviously, this is for driving games. Pole Position is the one that I play most often with this panel.

The steering wheel and the gear-shifter came from a Badlands cabinet (ebay!). It feels very natural when playing Pole Position. The shifter is really a 4-gear shifter, so games that have more gears still work (like Badlands, obviously).

This panel is really about playing Defender. I loved that game as a pre-teen and spent a lot of quarters on it. Having a panel that lets me recreate that experience is very cool. I found a website (maybe a posting on a news group) that had the dimensions of the original Defender panel. So I’ve reproduced those measurements on this panel. It definitely “feels right”.

So this panel works well for both Defender and Stargate. The joystick on the left is actually a 2-way joystick from an arcade cabinet (ebay!). The layout of the Defender/Stargate panel leaves a hollow gap above the main buttons. I decided that that was a good spot to put in a 4-way joystick that has been turned 45 degrees. Obviously that works for Q*Bert. But it also works for Congo Bongo.

This panel is for games like Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, and Marble Madness. It’s pretty much a generic trackball panel.

I had to abandon my traditional button layout on this one. Basically, in order to let players decide which hand they like to use for the ball and which for the buttons (think Missile Command), I needed to have three on the left that were different than the three on the right. That way I can map them appropriately and independently in the games.

As can be derived from its name, this panel is mainly used for Tron. But it is also a functioning Discs of Tron panel as well. The spinner on the left is actually an original spinner from a Discs of Tron machine (ebay!). That was a semi-expensive purchase, actually. It cost me over $100 for that spinner. This panel also works well for games that had a flight-stick kind of control — like Zaxxon.

The trigger stick is actually a cheap PC joystick that I hacked the bottom off of and mounted onto an arcade joystick base. A big debt of thanks goes to my friend Bob who hollowed out a solid metal shaft from an arcade joystick in order to fish the wires for the switches down through the stick.

The button array in the middle is intended to allow playing of other spinner games like Tempest, Arkanoid, Star Trek, etc. But it turns out that a Discs of Tron spinner is just a bit too weighty for quick action games like Tempest. I hope to be able to build a dedicated spinner panel at some point in the future for games like Tempest.

The 2-player panel is for games where two people play at the same time (duh). Games like Rampage, any of the scrolling fighter games (Simpsons, TMNT, etc.), as well as the other 2-player fighters (Mortal Kombat and descendants). It also is for games that had two joysticks as their control scheme. Games like Battlezone and Robotron.

It gives each player a set of six buttons with the joystick on the left. That seems to be the pattern that most of the 2-player beat-em-ups used, so that seemed like the natural way to arrange it. My choice of button arranging doesn’t quite match the two-rows-of-three layout that a lot of the fighter games used, but I hope it is more or less easily adaptable. Honestly, I don’t play those games.

This is really the work-horse panel of my machine. Most of the games that I really enjoy were of the style where 1 player plays at a time and then the second player (in 2-player games) takes a turn when the first player’s turn ends (from dying, crashing, etc.). Games like Pacman (and all the maze-game spinoffs), Donkey Kong (and other platformers), Space Invaders (and all the 2-D kinds of shooters), and even games like Qix, Berzerk, etc.

It has two joysticks, but they’re both wired up as the “player 1 control”. In other words, it doesn’t matter which one you use, the game will still respond. The black joystick is an 8-way digital stick, while the one with the red ball on top is an original arcade 4-way stick from an old Pacman cabinet (thank you ebay!). Some games play a lot better with a true 4-way stick (Pacman, Donkey Kong, etc.) than if you attempt to play them with an 8-way stick.

The button layout is one that I spent a long time planning and thinking about. I wanted a layout that lends itself to as many games as possible. While a lot of games just require a button or two, some games require more. And I wanted the button arrangement to be somewhat natural for as much of a cross-section of gaming as I could make it. There are six buttons, four of which lay out naturally around where you might lay your hand on the control panel. The other two buttons (purple and white) are there really to provide a diamond layout of buttons for games like Vanguard.

Perhaps it is just my little boy, but maybe there are others out there. You see today is Monday. Monday is the day that our trash is set out to be picked up by the folks who have the joy of taking it all away. Today also happens to be our recycle day as well (the pickup schedule is every other week for us). For some reason when Quin is waking up in his crib, he usually hears the first recycle truck come by. This prompts him to begin saying, “trash, trash” when I first go in to get him ready for the day. This is followed by his asking to see outside. Of course, by this time, the recycle truck is long gone, but Quin never gives up hope.

I’m not sure what is so appealing about watching a garbage truck drive down the road. But I will tell you that Quin has refused to eat breakfast until he sees the trash truck. As I type, he is hunched in front of the window peering out and waiting. (I slid the ottoman over in front of the window just so he could watch and wait.) I wonder if our trash guy knows how exciting his job is to my two-year old boy? The highlight is when the front loader gets full and the driver hits the button to lift it all and dump it into the back. Quin goes absolutely nuts about that.

Since we are expecting a second boy, I guess Quin will have to make some room on that ottoman for his brother to watch this exciting event.

The start of year two! This month I picked some games that I remembered very fondly, but apparently weren’t particular favorites of the group… Oh well, it’s my machine!

• Discs of Tron
• Star Wars
• Spy Hunter
• Make Trax

Finally! The yoke control panel is finished!! I’ve been planning that panel for 2 years or so, and even had parts for it for over a year before it finally got finished today. It seemed to perform very well, most everyone who played with it thought it was smooth and natural to use.

Here are the scores:

Highest score: Me! And as usual, I don’t like to keep my own prizes, so the first place prize of a pack of “gold digger” gum went to Bill since he was all “golden” tonight.

Lowest score: Domenica. She got the orange scented (orange powered?) anti-bacterial wipes to help clean up the wounds she must have received from the beating she took in the games.

It seems that no one but me really enjoyed Discs of Tron. Too bad, really. I find it a very fun game. Spy Hunter was kind of popular. It definitely plays nicely with the flight yoke as a steering wheel (that game is just about unplayable with my Pole Position steering wheel).

It was a fun night. I’m glad to be hosting the arcade nights again. I’m planning on polling the group for a list of “best-of” kinds of games - next time we’ll play some games that have been favorites for people other than me!