Setting Up The Software For Your MAME Cab

Here's a breakdown of what we're gonna do:

• Installing an OS
• Installing/ configuring a frontend
• Setting up your control panel

*Reasoning behind the software I use*

 For an OS we'll be using the now very outdated Windows XP, because it takes little space, boots fast, runs on basically anything with a x86 or x64 architecture and is dirt cheap these days. We will also be using MaLa as our frontend because it also runs on almost anything, is free and very customizable. 

    1. Installing the OS

 First, get yourself a copy of windows XP and burn it to a cd or a USB drive (which I prefer). If you're going to use a USB drive, download Rufus, select NTFS as your file system, make sure your partition system is MBR and then click on the little disk icon and select your windows xp iso.

 Now that you have a bootable windows xp device, insert it into your computer and go into the BIOS(it's different for every pc/motherboard, check your manual) and in there select boot device/boot order or however it appears in your BIOS and put your USB drive or CD in the first place. Remember to put this setting the way it was after you installed Windows XP(put your Hard Drive in the top of the list)

 Get out of the BIOS and your pc should boot into the windows xp instalation screen. Press enter to install, read the licensing agreement, select your C:/ drive and press D to delete the current partition (warning, if you have anything on your hard drive, it will be erased)- Now you'll need to press L to confirm the deletion of the partition. Select the now empty partition and then select the option to format it in NTFS, press enter and then windows will install. It'll reboot your pc a few times and then it'll take to a few menus to choose your language, keyboard, user definitions etc. Windows is now installed.

If you have any trouble installing windows, try this guide.

    2.Installing and configuring the front end

 The frontend is the program which will lauch all your emulators and ROMs using your control panel, think of it as an OS whose only purpose is launching games

 Start by downloading MaLa and then extract them  Mala174 folder into your desktop or wherever you want it. Now you'll want to download and install MAME, which is the program that runs the arcade games.

 After you've installed MAME, run MaLa and a windows should pop up asking for some basic configuration. On the field that says MAME executable, click the three dots and then find the mame.exe file which will be in the folder where you installed MAME. A window will then pop up asking you to create an .ini file and then a .xml file, say yes to both.
 Now is a good time to get a few ROMs which are the actual arcade games. Go on emuparadise, and download a couple of them. After you've downloaded a ROM, take the zip file and put it in the folder called roms which will be inside the folder where you installed MAME. Remember, never unzip the ROMs.
 Now that you have a couple of games, you can now set a ROM path in MaLa. To do this, Click on the three dots next to the ROM Path field in the MaLa configuration window and select the roms folder where you put your previously downloaded ROMs. Press ok at the bottom of the page and then yes on the windows that pops up. Wait a bit and MaLa will open, displaying all your games. If any windows pop up, just press ok, as they are not essential.
 MaLa is now set up, and will launch your games. It looks ugly, so you'll probably want to download a few layouts and set thing up a little better, but for that you'll have to consult the MaLa wiki over at BYOAC

    3. Setting up your control panel

Assuming you've already wired everything and have it connected to your computer open up MaLa, right click anywhere and then select the controller and then joystick tab. On the joystick tab go to the check tab and make sure every button and joystick direction is working. Go back to the basic tab and configure your controls however you like. Remember to check the "check" tab to check your button numbers. After that's done, load a game and then press tab on your keyboard. Using your keyboard select Input(general) and from here configure your controls. Remember to set a coin and start button, which are in the the "Other Controls" menu. 

If you've done everything right you should now have a very basic MAME cabinet running 

My MaLa Layout

Over the past months I've tried several front ends, but have always found myself returning to MaLa because it's light, fast, functional and very customizable.
 MaLa lets you create your own look with a lot of freedom so that you can make your arcade trly yours. I created this layout a few months ago and so far has been my favorite, but you might want to change a few thing to make it suit your arcade, which is why I also included the original photoshop project, even if it is a little outdated.
 The layout is in portuguese, because that is my native tongue and I want everyone to be able to play the arcade without having me explain all the controls.

 When setting up the paths for the images in MaLa, make sure you set the top image as marquee and the bottom image snap. If you want to get the titles and snaps for your arcade games I suggest using  the Emumovies Download Service

Download(MEGA)

Tetris The Grandmaster 3, Download & Guide

*Downloads are at the bottom of the page

Intro

A few months ago I was watching the Awesome Games Done Quick stream, which if you're not familiar with it, is a week long event that happens twice per year were people speedrun different games 24/7 non stop. It was on that stream, on the Tetris panel that I saw the best Tetris player I'd ever seen, and was absolutely floored, that guy was amazing at Tetris. That guy, KevinDDR which a few months later became the first Grandmaster outside of Japan, was the one who made me want to play Tetris the Grandmaster 3. Turns out, TGM3 is not available on MAME (1 and 2 are though), but luckily there is a PC "version" which is essentially a self contained emulator for the arcade machines that run Type X boards.

Game Description

TGM3 is probably the most competitive tetris game yet and is super hard but also super amazing. It has a couple of different modes but the "real" game happens in the "Master" mode which features a fully fledged rank system. 

 If you want to learn more about the game, check the Tetris Wiki

Getting Things Running

 Start by downloading and extracting the zipped folder. Once you've done that, go ahead and open the .exe called typex_config. Once that is open it'll ask you a few questions.

• Use Mahjong Panel-  No
• Four Way Joystick-   If yours is four ways yes, otherwise no
• Low-Res Monitor-    Yes, unless using a monitor with a resolution>720
• Scratch Drive Remap- Just hit Enter

It will then ask you to map a few keys for both players. You can play the game with only button 1 and button 4, but I suggest mapping buttons 1,2,3 and 4, because buttons 5 and 6 do nothing.

You can also ignore the buttons for service and test

 Once you're done with mapping open the "Launch Game" file. The game will open. Now you'll have to insert a coin and afterwards will be given 3 options:

• Data not used, which will just let you play the game without keeping any scores.
• New Player, which will ask you for a name and then for a "password" consisting of a combination of button presses. This is basically creating a new account
• Player Loading, which is essentially logging into a created account, just enter your the name and "password" of your account and you'll have access to your medals, scores and rankings.

Download (I hosted it on Mega because I'm not a monster. It has no viruses, but your anti virus might freak out because of the .bat files.)

I originally found this on another blog, just giving credit where it's due, but the downloads are not exactly the same.

My M.A.M.E Cabinet

Since this a blog about MAME arcade cabinets I thought it'd be fitting that my first post was about mine.
 Over the past few months I've been working on and off in my cabinet and I have to say that it's an amazing hobby.
 So, the cab itself is from a multi game machine that used to be in a bar but because it had no use was given to me for free as long as I gave the coin mech and the board to the owner. I didn't need any of those, so it was a great deal.
 Since the original screen was dead and I had no money for a converter, I just trashed it and instead installed a regular Samtron CRT pc monitor which I spray painted black. It works well and has a reasonable size.
 Inside it I have a pc which I built from old parts, it's very old but runs MAME and a few other emulators without any problem, the specs are as follows:

• Windows XP 32-bit
• Intel Celeron 320 @ 2.4MHz
• 512MB of RAM
• Nvidia GeForce 2 MX (basically useless)
• Random creative sound card
• 40GB Hard Drive

So as you can see, it's a very moddest pc, but it runs most MAME games, except of course for 3D games, but what pc can run those on MAME flawlessly?

 The control panel has evolved a bit over time, originally it had those pear shaped american style joysticks, but since they were mostly dead I replaced them with some Chinese ball top joysticks which I ordered from ali-express and they work great. The control panel also used to have only two regular arcade buttons and one big round button which was split in half, the kind you usually see on those children rides inside shops. I replaced those odd buttons with a couple of blue chinese buttons which I also ordered from ali-express. I used one of the buttons I ordered to make a power button for the pc, it looks really cool and it's a great way to not have to dig inside the cabinet every time I want to turn it on.

On the software side, the cabinet is Windows XP based, because it's light, boots fast and has everything I need. It runs MAME version 0.149 along with a couple other emulators which are wrapped neatly in a frontend called MaLa, which I like a lot.

Sound wise, it uses a 2.1 speaker system from Thrust, which gets the job done.

The cabinet is always evolving and there is always something I want to add. I'm thinking the next step is buying some vinyls to hide that weird branding and making a decent cover for the hole where the coin mech used to be.

These pictures show the state of the cabinet the day this was written.

  



If you're wondering what Jacinto&Martins is, I think they're a company which makes entertainment stuff for bars.