John A. said:
I am curious how you build your own system, and even more curious where you get the old games.
How about games from even farther back? Pac Man, Pong, Megamania, pitfall, asteroids, donkey kong, pole position
It is a pretty easy process if you are competent with computers. The most basic ways I have seen people do it, they just take a computer and build a control panel to play the games. I am a sucker for the real arcade feel so I did mine in a way that it looks just like an arcade machine you would expect to see in an old school arcade. There are a lot of ways to build them.
The way I did mine, I bought a broken Tekken Tag Tournament machine for $100. It had a working monitor and game board, but the controls were screwed up. I removed the game board and sold it for $75. I could have sold the monitor, or used it and hooked a computer up to it, but instead I traded it in exchange for the help of a guy mounting a CRT TV in the machine for a simpler hook up to the computer. I connected the TV to the computer using the component ports.
The games themselves are ran through MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator). The games are available for download (If you start to get into this, PM me and I can tell you a few sites to get them from). You can actually use a keyboard to play the games if you just wanted to play them on your computer.
The computer does not need to be a super fast computer. Most of the old arcade games don't even need 1 ghz of processor speed and the video card makes almost no difference for MAME. For the other emulators for newer systems though, you would want a mid range graphics card (Mine cost $30). My computer was just one that I found on Craigslist for $100. It has a 2.7 ghz dual core processor which allows me to play almost every arcade game (Not Blitz or Gauntlet Legends) So for those games I use the Dreamcast emulator.
I bought some joysticks and buttons from
http://www.ultimarc.com. I bought sticks that are actually Analog sticks, and the buttons connect to the joysticks themselves so I didn't need an encoder for the computer to recognize inputs. The computer recognizes the joysticks as gamepads. I also bought two Aim-Trak guns for lightgun games. So really the only thing I built was the control panel and I just put that in place of the old control panel on the arcade machine. The rest of the process was just taking out the old parts and putting in the computer and TV. It is still a work in progress for me, but it is playable and very fun.
I have thousands of arcade games on it and I also have every NES, SNES, and N64 game as well as many Atari, and Dreamcast games. When the computer powers on, it goes straight to a list of games to choose from, so you never see Windows desktop. I will also put artwork for the games so when they are highlighted, you will see a screenshot or a preview of the game.
I still need to put a bezel around the monitor and put a shelf inside the cabinet. I will also put a coin door on it so that you can use the option of using quarters, for a more authentic feel.
Here is the control panel I built...
Arcadecontrols.com has a great forum for people looking to get into it. I nearly went with a cocktail table machine, but I wanted the light gun games. I still may build one eventually... but I have another project in mind at the moment...
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=98252.0
.......one of my favorite games was Toy Commander