Thought I'd share my Gauntlet Legends cabinet :)

[Andyman]

After all these years, I still think HyperSpin is the ultimate in an arcade cabinet. Here's my latest project. I managed to find this gem for a mere $250 - working even! Don't worry, preservationists - my conversion is 100% reversible back to stock. I've even stashed the original CRT monitor away somewhere safe and dry for safekeeping.

A few fun parts of the project to note:

• The CRT in it is actually a 27" Toshiba TV I got for free off Craigslist. Fun fact: the tube and mounting points are identical to the arcade original monitor. It slotted right into the frame and slid right into the cabinet. Also, the Toshiba has power-on sensing, so when I turn the cabinet on, the monitor turns itself on too!
• The video connection from the PC is VGA-to-Svideo, via this great adapter board, at 640x480. I was concerned about lag, but I haven't noticed any at all. Score!
• The stealth button bar above the control panel is actually a table leg cut to length and sprayed black! I needed a place to put the insert-coin buttons, and the little ledge below the monitor was the perfect spot. I picked up some tiny pushbuttons to match each player's color, and added a black button in the middle to escape back to the HyperSpin menu. The 25c slots in the coin door work for player 1 and 2 also.
• The marquee light didn't work no matter what I tried, so I set it aside and put this LED fixture in its place. I still can't believe how perfectly it fits and looks.
• I haven't gotten around to replacing the damaged yellow T-molding yet. It'll happen soon... if I can pull myself away from playing long enough to do it!
• And yeah, I made sure I can play Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy on it. The monitor is also big enough to play 4-player Tournament Cyberball 2072 with both screens displayed on the one monitor!

MAME recommendation for other cabinet enthusiasts: Get familiar with the control bindings in the Tab menu! I was able to configure nearly every game in my setup in one shot, even the dual-stick games like Robotron and Karate Champ. It's super easy, once you get your brain around the way MAME does things.

Feel free to ask any questions you have!

[Andyman]

Well, it's been awhile since my last post about this cabinet...

After playing on it for about a year, I decided I needed to go a different route with it. Having thousands of arcade games on it just isn't user-friendly enough for me or any casual players - and I rarely/never played about 90% of them - so I curated it down to 300 great games that I love and that will work very well with Gauntlet Legends' control setup.

Then, I set about manually configuring each game's controls in MAME, and tweaking their DIP settings and built-in settings for maximum home enjoyment (see also: not having to pump in a credit every minute). One by one - yeah, it's taking awhile. Starting at the beginning of the alphabet, I've done from 1941 through Rygar as of last night.

I'm becoming a huge fan of the Analog Controls settings in MAME for each game. You can really dial in the responsiveness of a joystick acting like a trackball or spinner with that. Normally awkward-with-a-joystick analog games like Arkanoid and Quantum are actually very playable when dialed in!

Likewise, the slick little app that was included with the four GPWiz49 interface boards I'm using really makes the controls shine. I modified the stock MAME HyperLaunch module to feed the app the proper mode parameter:

Mode:
1 - Raw 49 (Gauntlet Legends)
2 - Progressive 49 (Food Fight)
3 - 8-Way (most arcade games, I have this mode set as the default)
4 - 4-Way (Pac-Man)
5 - Diagonals (Q*bert)
6 - 2-Way Horiz (Galaga)
7 - 2-Way Vert (Defender)
8 - 16-Way (some consoles, which aren't on this cabinet)

It works exceptionally well. Even better, the app pops up a neat little graphic to confirm the sticks are in the selected mode. I added a routine to switch the sticks back to 4-Way on game exit, so HyperSpin works correctly to select the next game.

I also finally got around to installing the new yellow T-molding around the control panel. It was much easier than expected and it looks terrific - far better than the original molding that was split in multiple places.

I'll add current photos of the cabinet once I've finished configuring the games. With any luck, that'll happen in the next week or so. In the meantime, here's the curated MAME database I'm using. You'll notice there's some games in there that don't seem to fit the cabinet's controls - I've mapped buttons to the sticks and done other things like that to make them play well. I'm super happy with the game selection, but if you spot something essential that I missed, please let me know!

mame.xml

[jesfknkrys]

Nice work.  Thank you for sharing @Andyman!

[Andyman]

After a day-long marathon of configuring the remaining games yesterday, the Gauntlet Legends cabinet is DONE! Here are some highlights:

1) It starts up on Gauntlet Legends, because of course. I set its attract mode to sit on each game for a minute, then randomly spin to another one.
2) Games that have backgrounds and/or overlays and other unique features (like Gorf's ranking lights) are displayed as they were in the arcade. I especially love Asteroids Deluxe's blacklight-illuminated background.
3) Here's the little joystick-mode popup I was talking about earlier.
4) Here's a close-up shot of the slim coin button bar that rests just above the control panel. The game-exit button is black and barely visible in the middle of the bar (intentionally).

Not pictured: a whole lot of creative control configuration. Some examples: Toobin' uses the buttons from P1/P3 and P2/P4. Quiz & Dragons uses the 4 stick directions for its 4 answer buttons. Trackball and spinner games are set to 49-way in the app and have their MAME settings tweaked to replicate analog controls as closely as a stick can.

It's been a fun build process, but I'm very glad it's finally finished. Now I can actually PLAY the thing instead of spending my free time working on it. 😁

[brudibru]

Great work !

You have done well by priorizing playability to quantity. You must feel satisfied and elated. It requires a lot of self-discipline to keep it to reasonable number of perfectly playable games.

I wish I could say the same, I have been working on my cabinet setup for the last 16 years and it is still pretty much a work in progress, because I keep adding games and systems instead of playing and configuring them...and I suspect I may not be the only one like that in this forum.

Now you can go back to your racing cabinet and work on configuring the games for the months/years to come  😅

[Andyman]

Thanks! I'm hoping the racing game configuration goes much faster than I'm thinking it will. Haha.

[gigapig]

Lovely well-made machine Andyman and I love the discipline. 

Personally I haven't updated MAME since before PD shutdown and I now only add games to the Sinden gun game wheel. So I just play mine, maybe I need a new reason to fiddle and tweak it.

With just 300 games, what's everyone's top 3 arcade games?

For me it has to be...

1. Defender

2. Pandora's Palace

3. Mr. Do

[brudibru]

1. Donkey kong

2. Outrun

3. Star Wars

[Andyman]

5 hours ago, gigapig said:

Lovely well-made machine Andyman and I love the discipline. 

Personally I haven't updated MAME since before PD shutdown and I now only add games to the Sinden gun game wheel. So I just play mine, maybe I need a new reason to fiddle and tweak it.

With just 300 games, what's everyone's top 3 arcade games?

For me it has to be...

1. Defender

2. Pandora's Palace

3. Mr. Do

Thank you! Here's my top 3:

1. (by a mile) Cyberball 2072

2. Super Sprint (not on my cabinet because it just doesn't play well enough with sticks for my liking)

3. Toobin'

... I guess that makes me an Atari kinda guy? Haha.

Also, PD isn't gone. They just scaled way back and moved to Discord.

[brudibru]

wow Cyberball ! you are so right, it should be in my top 3 too.

I should have put sprint also (not supersprint) or one of its clones as I remember playing it so much during summer vacations in the late 70's.

[Andyman]

4 hours ago, brudibru said:

wow Cyberball ! you are so right, it should be in my top 3 too.

I should have put sprint also (not supersprint) or one of its clones as I remember playing it so much during summer vacations in the late 70's.

I need to try those games again on my cabinet - Super Sprint, Sprint 4, Badlands, Super Off-Road and Indy Heat. I was able to make Hot Rod and Stocker play well, so maybe I just didn't find the right settings the first time around. If I can make those work well enough, the question then becomes... what games do I take out? 🤔

[brudibru]

On which cabinet do you want to play them ? The gauntlet one or the racing one ?

You may remember that the sprint/sprint 4 kind of games were played with a wheel you had to turn endlessly on one side or an other much like maneuvering a boat with a rudder (at least that's how I remember it), so it is difficult to have the same feeling with a traditionnal steering wheel.

I have a spintrak spinner on my cab on which I can adapt a small wheel. The sensations are closer from the original but it is still too sensitive, mostly because the steering wheel is too small. I should try to adapt a bigger wheel (but I probably would have to build it myself) or try again to find the right sensibility settings in MAME.

This guy was able to adapt a steering wheel though, and it looks pretty awesome  !

 

[Andyman]

1 hour ago, brudibru said:

On which cabinet do you want to play them ? The gauntlet one or the racing one ?

On the Gauntlet Legends cabinet. The Cruis'n World cabinet is limited to racing games that are chase or in-car view, no overhead games, to keep the theme consistent and because the wheel has hard stops.

Cool setup you have there!

[brudibru]

It's not mine, just a video I found on youtube but I sure wish it would be !!

I am really wondering if it's a "real" steering wheel or just a wheel mounted on a spinner.

Searching the net, I have found the following wheel which can be mounted on a spinner and is quite bigger than the spintrak one. Could do a good job with the sprint games maybe: https://thunderstickstudio.com/products/grs-arcade-steering-wheel

[Andyman]

OK, I had some time this afternoon, so I (re)added Bad Lands, Indy Heat, Super Off-Road Track Pak, and Super Sprint and fiddled with their control settings. On a whim, I cranked the analog increment and sensitivity settings way down, and wonder of wonders! They all work pretty well now!

I decided to leave Sprint 4 off. I just don't like how it handles the gear shift.

You might wonder why I didn't include Championship Sprint. It's because it's a 2-player Super Sprint with a few different tracks.

Same thing with the original Super Off-Road. The Track Pak expansion has everything the original has, plus dune buggies and more tracks.

Here are the 4 games I removed:

Anteater (it's only 1-player, and I have plenty of maze games already)
Ikari Warriors (loads of run-n-gun games already)
John Elway's Team Quarterback (lots of American football already)
Kangaroo (tons of platformers already)

Here's the updated 300-game MAME database I'm using. I forgot to mention earlier that I hand-picked the games to be USA-region wherever possible, so the folks in other regions will want to go with the roms from where they are. Game on!

mame.xml

[gigapig]

Here's my shonky effort, an old Wii wheel with a bicycle clamp siliconed to it. It fits nicely on the spinner but I never got it working in Mame very well. Time to try again.

Now that cab in the video is very clever, he said it's USB but I saw no cable. The four holes must be the USB connections and the wheel must have pins to make the connection. The locking mounting bolts are clever too.

[brudibru]

the wii wheel may be large enough to get a decent result with a spinner and your solution is clever too. The difficulty is to set the right analog sensibility in MAME.

Concerning the guy in the video I also thought he had designed a clever connection but in other videos you can see him clearly plugging in a usb cable, so I don't know. It seems that he had explained everything in a forum but ,sadly, it doesn't exists anymore. 

[Andyman]

I came up with a cool way to make HyperSpin in my Gauntlet Legends cabinet behave like the other 2 cabinets in my game room, Cruis'n World and Mortal Kombat II. Since this cabinet has a variety of classic arcade games that have different monitor orientations, I'm using a theme for each game. My Pure theme won't work without stretching all the vertical games and making them look ugly in attract mode.

My solution was to relocate the wheel to the center of the screen and enlarge the wheel images so they fill the screen nicely. In attract mode, it displays and spins horizontally like the other 2 cabinets, fading to the game theme when the spin stops. The purple background is from the Gauntlet Legends theme, tying it all together. I also removed the game description text, so HyperSpin displays only the game theme. It's a really clean look on the CRT.

[brudibru]

A pretty nice solution again Andyman !

It really shows the flexibility of Hyperspin.There has not been any updates in ages but the software was so powerful right from the start !