Please help me 'fix' my MAME Arcade Cabinet (front end software needed)

NF7-S · 25 May 2018 at 12:06

Ok, so long story short (a bit of history often helps)...

I used to have a bar-top arcade and found a full-size cabinet for sale in eBay (with a proper CRT monitor and 2 player setup)...so I bought that with the idea of transplanting the innards across.

Just so happened I had a spare PC knocking about that wasn't anything special but was more powerful than the laptop which was an old Pentium. I thought it'd be great to play newer games as well and emulate some consoles (up to N64 level) to make it more of a 'all in one' cabinet.

So I bought all the bit's and bobs and did a 'copy' of the old machine (as it worked) - I was using Maximus arcade on the old laptop so I bought another license to make things easier for me...and that was the mistake!

Onto the issue...

I've never been able to quite get to grips with the software (not helped by the fact I paid for unsupported software!), setting the thing up (etc). I had issues with the video previous taking a few seconds to load (on the laptop it was instant) so I installed an SSD for the OS and front-end and that's helped but it's a bit of a mess and so I'm thinking I may just wipe the thing and start again.

So, I guess the question is this;

"if you wanted an arcade cabinet that played MAME and a selection of consoles and all the hardware was in place but you wanted software that was easy to configure - what would you use?"

Please bear in mind I must be able to setup a trackball and properly configure it. I managed this on the old bartop with the x-arcade trackball and have invested in a proper arcade trackball because there are certain games I will be playing and want to re-create the controls as best as possible.

Any advice is greatly appreciated

ZXSpectrum · 25 May 2018 at 14:26

Retropie…

(well I mean Emulation Station which is the backend for Retropie)

Retroarch is also very very good...

Chaos · 25 May 2018 at 20:20

I haven't tried it personally but arpicade and a rasp pi jamma adapter might be worth a look.

https://arpicade.com/

Deleted member 77746 · 26 May 2018 at 17:55

Hyperspin without a doubt.

Mr Plow · 27 May 2018 at 01:36

Personally I'd use LaunchBox, it's free but you'd have to pay for it to use the 'Big Box' mode (you'll want to do this for a MAME cab I expect). For the emulator itself I recommend RetroArch.

https://www.launchbox-app.com/

NF7-S · 28 May 2018 at 19:57

Thanks for the input guys, will have to have a read up

GSXRMovistar · 29 May 2018 at 10:15

Retropie for simple/cheap solution
Hyperspin & RockerLauncher for bells and whistles but takes a lot of config

Haven't used LaunchBox but hearing good things about it.

NF7-S · 29 May 2018 at 13:34

GSXRMovistar said:
Retropie for simple/cheap solution
Hyperspin & RockerLauncher for bells and whistles but takes a lot of config

Haven't used LaunchBox but hearing good things about it.

Cheers, whilst not wishing to spend money for the sake of it, my main priority is ease of setting up - I just have so little time these days I don't want to spend it all faffing! That was why I tried to 'ghost' the old bar-top originally...to save me hassle!

Be nice if it looked good - I think hyperspin (from what I remember) looked great...but if it's a lifetime of setting up

So long story short - I just would like the easiest solution that won't break the bank (let's say £50 tops for clarity). Shame there's not a service that can set it all up as an image with no roms...pretty sure I used to see something similar on eBay but it was likely illegal

picnic · 29 May 2018 at 18:16

I found RetroPie easy enough to setup using one of their prebuilt images. I copied a MAME ROM to it but for the life of me I can't quit the game without rebooting the Pi

GSXRMovistar · 29 May 2018 at 20:37

NF7-S said:
So long story short - I just would like the easiest solution that won't break the bank (let's say £50 tops for clarity).

Pi and RetroPie it is then.

NF7-S said:
Shame there's not a service that can set it all up as an image with no roms

Surely that is RetroPie, takes minimal config and there are plenty of builds available were people have pre-loaded content (game videos/images etc)

NF7-S · 31 May 2018 at 16:24

GSXRMovistar said:
Pi and RetroPie it is then.
Surely that is RetroPie, takes minimal config and there are plenty of builds available were people have pre-loaded content (game videos/images etc)

I assume you're suggesting Pi due to my budget? I mean, I already have the hardware so could I not 'just' put my funds into better PC software? Would retropie not work on PC?

If I do go for Pi what level of emulation (power-wise) can I go up to? N64? Dreamcast?

Sorry if I'm sounding too noob...it's just been so long and I felt quite close and it seems quite a hassle to literally rip out the guts and start again

GSXRMovistar · 31 May 2018 at 16:43

If you have a PC available then yes more options software wise but I'm not sure there are any preconfigured images for those.

There is a RetroPie build for the PC that runs on Ubuntu however no idea how complete that is. The beauty of the Pi version is it's developed for a single standard platform so everything is preconfigured. I have this running on my daughters mini bartop build and other than configuring the input buttons I works straight out of the box.

Regarding the level of Pi emulation it will do some of the more common N64 games (Mario64, Mario Kart) however I'm not too sure about Dreamcast stuff.

NF7-S · 31 May 2018 at 17:36

GSXRMovistar said:
If you have a PC available then yes more options software wise but I'm not sure there are any preconfigured images for those.

There is a RetroPie build for the PC that runs on Ubuntu however no idea how complete that is. The beauty of the Pi version is it's developed for a single standard platform so everything is preconfigured. I have this running on my daughters mini bartop build and other than configuring the input buttons I works straight out of the box.

Regarding the level of Pi emulation it will do some of the more common N64 games (Mario64, Mario Kart) however I'm not too sure about Dreamcast stuff.

cheers, looks like more digging to do

essentially my cabinet is about 95% there - I'm just struggling with the finer setup details...I might have to just dedicate some time and give it one last try and failing that I may give the Pi a go.

Mr Plow · 3 Jun 2018 at 01:32

Did you give LaunchBox a try yet? It's dead easy to setup and you can test the free version to see if it suits your setup. To be fair they put a lot of work into developing it and it's pretty cheap for the premium version - https://www.launchbox-app.com/premium

I've setup about three HyperSpin+RocketLauncher systems before and they are a ton of work to get all setup correctly and after all that time spent on them I found I just wasn't using them compared to my LaunchBox setup.

NF7-S · 3 Jun 2018 at 12:43

Mr Plow said:
Did you give LaunchBox a try yet? It's dead easy to setup and you can test the free version to see if it suits your setup. To be fair they put a lot of work into developing it and it's pretty cheap for the premium version - https://www.launchbox-app.com/premium

I've setup about three HyperSpin+RocketLauncher systems before and they are a ton of work to get all setup correctly and after all that time spent on them I found I just wasn't using them compared to my LaunchBox setup.

I will give it a try thanks. I've just had a shed-load of stuff come up and the arcade has yet again found itself down the pecking order of priority