Computers OverClocked

[stupidd]

I've recently completed my greatest creation, and I thought I'd share it with you guys. (Yes, the name has been pulled from one of my favorite movies: Fight Club)

Background:
There's a restaurant behind my house called The Waffle King. It's a smaller family owned business that is most similar to Waffle House, except they're not open 24/7. They've got a jukebox, a cigarette machine, some weird pinball machine and an original Ms Pacman/Galaga machine. Galaga is by far my favorite arcade game of all time. I always try and play whenever I go eat there. While sitting down to eat one day, my roommate and I were discussing how we needed an arcade machine in our house. Cole said to me "Why don't you just make one?" That's how it all started.

I started doing my research on all the hardware and software that would go into it. Those old arcade games don't really require too much power to run, lucky for me I had an Intel Core 2 Duo machine lying around. (e6300, 2gb ram, 160gb hdd). That was a start.

I knew without a doubt it would do what I wanted, but how would I make it do this?

This is where I stumbled across Maximus Arcade (among other frontends). Maximus Arcade is a Flash-based frontend for selecting and loading emulators, flash files, and even WMP.

Who wants to play on an arcade using a keyboard? Nobody. Enter: www.groovygamingear.com . They've got all the buttons, joysticks, and other such items you'd need for such a project.

What next? Wood! This sort of project has been done many times, so I did a little reading on some of the dimensions and came to the conclusion that I didn't need them. I came up with my own.

I even got my hands on a coin door with a dollar bill acceptor, and it works.

Most importantly I had to come up with some sort of theme for this. Most everything had been done before. I didn't feel that copying an original arcade would be unique enough, and I certainly didn't want to call it the "Chris Machine" or "Gancos: The Game" (my last name). I'm a big fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and they often have 8-bit video games during their show. The most memorable for me was Moon Master. I highly recommend watching this particular episode. I found a company online that specializes in printing arcade graphics and even had a custom marquee made!

For the games I've got the MAME emulator with tons of games, NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced, Atari, and a few others. Tons and tons of games.

Enough of the chatter... pictures!

I've got a few pictures posted here, but for the rest: http://flickr.com/photos/cgancos/sets/72157607222183752/

[stupidd]

I've recently completed my greatest creation, and I thought I'd share it with you guys. (Yes, the name has been pulled from one of my favorite movies: Fight Club)

Background:
There's a restaurant behind my house called The Waffle King. It's a smaller family owned business that is most similar to Waffle House, except they're not open 24/7. They've got a jukebox, a cigarette machine, some weird pinball machine and an original Ms Pacman/Galaga machine. Galaga is by far my favorite arcade game of all time. I always try and play whenever I go eat there. While sitting down to eat one day, my roommate and I were discussing how we needed an arcade machine in our house. Cole said to me "Why don't you just make one?" That's how it all started.

I started doing my research on all the hardware and software that would go into it. Those old arcade games don't really require too much power to run, lucky for me I had an Intel Core 2 Duo machine lying around. (e6300, 2gb ram, 160gb hdd). That was a start.

I knew without a doubt it would do what I wanted, but how would I make it do this?

This is where I stumbled across Maximus Arcade (among other frontends). Maximus Arcade is a Flash-based frontend for selecting and loading emulators, flash files, and even WMP.

Who wants to play on an arcade using a keyboard? Nobody. Enter: www.groovygamingear.com . They've got all the buttons, joysticks, and other such items you'd need for such a project.

What next? Wood! This sort of project has been done many times, so I did a little reading on some of the dimensions and came to the conclusion that I didn't need them. I came up with my own.

I even got my hands on a coin door with a dollar bill acceptor, and it works.

Most importantly I had to come up with some sort of theme for this. Most everything had been done before. I didn't feel that copying an original arcade would be unique enough, and I certainly didn't want to call it the "Chris Machine" or "Gancos: The Game" (my last name). I'm a big fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and they often have 8-bit video games during their show. The most memorable for me was Moon Master. I highly recommend watching this particular episode. I found a company online that specializes in printing arcade graphics and even had a custom marquee made!

For the games I've got the MAME emulator with tons of games, NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced, Atari, and a few others. Tons and tons of games.

Enough of the chatter... pictures!

I've got a few pictures posted here, but for the rest: http://flickr.com/photos/cgancos/sets/72157607222183752/

[BobbyG2]

Looking good!

Great idea!

[BobbyG2]

Looking good!

Great idea!