Has anyone put a 60-1 in an original Donkey Kong

[+Yurkie]

I scored a pretty nice Donkey Kong Arcade game. I have no desire to remove the orignal boards or alter the cabint...I love DK. I was just wondering it I could place a 60-1 board inside the cabinet and hook it up easily.

[number six]

Donkey Kong cabs are nowhere near Jamma so it would require some wiring. There's also the issue of older Nintendo games and the way their Monitors process video (color) which is different than most standard games and requires modification to make them compatible.

 

Anything is possible but it would be harder than converting many other games from that era. Its possible than an adapter could be built with the inversion adapter included but its nowhere near an easy plug and play situation.

 

Also, Keep in mind the xx-in-1 multi games PCBs aren't very good. The emulation is nowhere near accurate on most of the games leaving you with funky sounds and game play that seems 'off'.

[+Yurkie]

Thanks number six. I got the impression that it would be pretty easy with a Pac-Man and the DK was a long shot.

[+save2600]

The 60-in-1's are excellent for what they are. Never had a problem with 'em. Sound may be off in a couple of games, but to say that the emulation of most games is "nowhere near accurate" is a gross exaggeration and departure from reality.

 

I have one in my Pac-Man cab and installation was a breeze as there are Midway to Jamma adapters. Start buttons perform double duty as they're wired as the fire buttons too and work great. Love the leaf-switch feel of the joystick and buttons as well. Much better than micro-switches. Oh and the 4-way joystick works better than 8 for most of the games as well.

 

Overall, I like the elegant simplicity of the 48/60-in-1's in vintage cabinets vs. the average homemade MAME cab.

 

BTW: I've put MAME machines in Nintendo cabs before and they've worked out pretty well. Last one I did was to a Mario Bros. cab and left the CRT in its original horizontal position. Not aware of a Jamma to Nintendo harness or adapter, but the wiring's never so difficult.

[racerx]

Oh and the 4-way joystick works better than 8 for most of the games as well.

 

Not much use for Centipede, Gyruss, Time Pilot, Xevious, 1942, and the like.

 

Don't get me wrong, I have a 4-way in my 60-1 as well, but it's close to worthless for half of the games.

[+save2600]

Nah - don't have a problem playing most of the games listed above. Not exactly my favorites per se either though.

 

Gyruss gets a lot of play come to think of it and is perfectly fine with the 4-way. Guess I just deal with the others and enjoy as-is, as part of the challenge. When it comes to compromising, I'd rather play the games that truly benefit from a 4-way joy, using a 4-way joy than playing them with an 8-way joy.

[number six]

The 60-in-1's are excellent for what they are. Never had a problem with 'em. Sound may be off in a couple of games, but to say that the emulation of most games is "nowhere near accurate" is a gross exaggeration and departure from reality.

 

 

I'm nowhere near a game master but I've played enough Galaga for instance to be able to tell that the way the XX-in-1s play is not accurate. The formations and behavior is not exactly right.

 

The 60-in-1s are good (And cheap) if you just want to play old games and absolutely don't care how you play them or if they are accurate. IMHO if you are going to bother having a full-sized stand-up arcade machine aren't you trying to recreate the arcade experience? If you are then you owe it to yourself to do something better than these cheap XX-in-1 boards. If you want the convenience of multiple games there are a number of other routes like the ArcadeSD or a full on MAME which is going to be a lot more accurate.

[+save2600]

Well I'll be dipped. Never heard of the arcadeSD. Looks like a really nice piece of kit! A quick search reveals they're around $325 though and only support a certain number of vertical and horizontal games? A lot of firmware talk, so more will be added as time marches on obviously. And looks like you need a PC (no Mac support) to run the executable that configures the ROM's for use with the board.

 

I have no interest in mounting the monitor horizontally in my Pac-Man cab, so I'd just set it up to play vertical only games. Still, looks like a nice option for those of us that don't want to deal with full blown MAME setups.

[racerx]

The 60-in-1s are good (And cheap) if you just want to play old games and absolutely don't care how you play them or if they are accurate. IMHO if you are going to bother having a full-sized stand-up arcade machine aren't you trying to recreate the arcade experience? If you are then you owe it to yourself to do something better than these cheap XX-in-1 boards

 

I have 14 other dedicated cabs, but it was obvious I wasn't going to have everything every time for everyone. The 60-1 scratches most of that itch for them (and me, tbh) for a $70 board instead of an ArcadeSD or MAME setup.

[retroillucid]

Would be easy actually to have a XXXin1 board in there...well kind of...

 

Make yourself another control panel , wired it to the multi-board , use brand new power supply

This way you will only have to switch your control panel if you want to use your multi-board or your original DK

Well, also plug the power cord acording to the board you want to play

 

Or, lay down your cabinet on the side, make yourself a template out of it, and make another cab

 

 

[boog]

 

I'm nowhere near a game master but I've played enough Galaga for instance to be able to tell that the way the XX-in-1s play is not accurate. The formations and behavior is not exactly right.

 

The 60-in-1s are good (And cheap) if you just want to play old games and absolutely don't care how you play them or if they are accurate. IMHO if you are going to bother having a full-sized stand-up arcade machine aren't you trying to recreate the arcade experience? If you are then you owe it to yourself to do something better than these cheap XX-in-1 boards. If you want the convenience of multiple games there are a number of other routes like the ArcadeSD or a full on MAME which is going to be a lot more accurate.

 

 

I have a 60-in-1 also and have noticed issues on many of the games. Odd changes in enemy patterns/timing, strange color palettes on later levels, horrible audio in games like Gyruss and Time Pilot, stuttering gameplay in BurgerTime, some invisible enemies in Xevious, etc. I've considered removing the inaccurate games from the selection menu but if I did that there wouldn't be many games left to play.

 

Definitely agree with number six that if you're going to the trouble of owning/maintaining a multigame emulator cab it's worth buying an Arcade SD, Arcade Legends PCB, or MAME setup to play the classics more accurately.

[Crazy Climber]

I swear mikesarcade.com made an adapter so you can do this but on his site all he has is Nintendo to jamma and not vice versa....

[number six]

 

 

I have a 60-in-1 also and have noticed issues on many of the games. Odd changes in enemy patterns/timing, strange color palettes on later levels, horrible audio in games like Gyruss and Time Pilot, stuttering gameplay in BurgerTime, some invisible enemies in Xevious, etc. I've considered removing the inaccurate games from the selection menu but if I did that there wouldn't be many games left to play.

 

Definitely agree with number six that if you're going to the trouble of owning/maintaining a multigame emulator cab it's worth buying an Arcade SD, Arcade Legends PCB, or MAME setup to play the classics more accurately.

 

Yeah that's exactly the problem. I could live with the funky sounds (except on something like Gyruss where the music is so important) but the game play being goofy is what turned me off the XX-in-1s. Once again I'm under no delusion that I'll ever be a top scorer in any of these games, but if I'm sitting at home playing them I want to get better. If you are getting better at a Multicade you aren't really getting better at the real game since the play is different. It may only be subtle differences but on the classic games subtle differences are huge. You are also going for scores on the classic games so once again saying you got whatever score on a multi isn't like getting it on a real machine. Even if you aren't cracking the Twin Galaxies board its still nice to be able to say 'oh i can do X points on this game.. or this was my best' and not have to asterisk the comment.

 

That said the 60-in-1s do serve a purpose. I had one in a bar for a few years.. it was very popular. The bar people just wanted to play Donkey Kong, they didn't really care how they played it. They also tried to beat each others scores but since they were all playing on the same funky game it was even. It's just if you know better its hard to accept the limitations of these things even though they are cheap and easy.

 

I'm more OK with the later game ones like the Game Elf or whichever 500-in-1 variant is calling itself. Once again the games are off but the goal of TMNT is not to get a high score or learn the subtle interactions of the game, its basically to run through all of the stages.

[Cynicaster]

Assuming you have meager-to-moderate computer know-how, there is absolutely no good reason to go with a crappy China-cade board when MAME is so widely available and capable of running thousands of games extremely accurately on a decade-old garage sale P4.

 

I've noticed that most of the guys I see advocating multicades over MAME are, somewhat counter-intuitively, arcade collectors. Best I can tell, having glitchy hit detection and games that sound like hammered ass is a worthwhile sacrifice to make in the name of having the system be an integrated "board" rather than a PC. I guess this better suits some arbitrary notion of "arcade authenticity".

 

Of course, the presence of a Dell machine inside the wooden box and even the Windows splash screen that comes up for 5-10 seconds when you turn the thing on do not matter in the least if your only priority is to get your game on in the next best way to playing original cabinets.

 

Besides, there is nothing truly authentic about a 60-in-1 anyway. If real cabinets and real dedicated boards are not practical or possible, you might as well at least go the route that provides the most faithful emulation of the games themselves, which is MAME, hands down.

[VectorGamer]

Besides, there is nothing truly authentic about a 60-in-1 anyway. If real cabinets and real dedicated boards are not practical or possible, you might as well at least go the route that provides the most faithful emulation of the games themselves, which is MAME, hands down.

 

If it's for personal use then MAME is fine. But you can't sell MAME legally. You can sell an arcade cabinet with a 60-in-1 board (which, unfortunately, so many people are doing).

 

I put a 60-in-1 in my Congorilla cabinet (which you may know, is a bootleg Donkey Kong). It was pretty easy splicing it together with the arcade controls and to the monitor.

 

Take a look at this walkthrough vid I did at a local arcade show in the spring and how many 60-in-1 cabinets were for sale. It was ridiculous:

http://youtu.be/xWzqCvGM7Us

[+save2600]

I remember when I was buying 60 and 48-in-1's in the mid 2000's and at the time there were complaints such as those mentioned above. There was a seller (or two) that had higher quality boards than others. I don't remember the specifics (other than sound quality and screen colors maybe) but I always bought from the most reputable guy selling the things - think he was in IL?

 

Really do not have most of the probs some are detailing above. Sound might be a little distorted in Gyruss and maybe one other, but that's about it. Or all I've cared to notice.

 

Anyway, as for shoving PC boxes inside of cabinets, yeah - screw that. Loud, noisy, resonant cases stuffed with the cheapest wattage wasting components and running Windows, blech. Not appealing to me in the least. Now a good used Mac Mini bolted up along the side of the cab - maybe. But then may as well just keep it hooked to the large screen monitor and break out the X-Arcade when you want.

[racerx]

Assuming you have meager-to-moderate computer know-how, there is absolutely no good reason to go with a crappy China-cade board when MAME is so widely available and capable of running thousands of games extremely accurately on a decade-old garage sale P4.

 

I've noticed that most of the guys I see advocating multicades over MAME are, somewhat counter-intuitively, arcade collectors. Best I can tell, having glitchy hit detection and games that sound like hammered ass is a worthwhile sacrifice to make in the name of having the system be an integrated "board" rather than a PC. I guess this better suits some arbitrary notion of "arcade authenticity".

Besides, there is nothing truly authentic about a 60-in-1 anyway. If real cabinets and real dedicated boards are not practical or possible, you might as well at least go the route that provides the most faithful emulation of the games themselves, which is MAME, hands down.

 

Nothing to do with authenticity, and everything do do with convenience.

 

I'll grant you that the sound is complete ass in a few of the games, but the gameplay isn't off nearly as much as you make it sound. The one guy I know that can kill screen Donkey Kong can also marathon my 60-1. I just had this conversation with a MAME proponent last week. Hit detection? He said he didn't need a spinner or a trackball, he enjoyed playing Tempest and Centipede just fine with a mouse. Really, at that point what does it matter how closely the hit detection is emulated?

 

I've got the dedicated cabs I really want. I didn't need some 20,000 game MAME monstrosity with a flight deck-sized CP to take up the slack. I'd never have any interest in 95% of those games anyway. The multi-boards are a cheap no-brainer to throw into a spare cab for company to play when they come over. The guys I know with MAME cabs (and they have some very nice setups) typically have to hold a guest's hands through the daunting game selection and setup just to play a game. No thanks.

[Cynicaster]

Nothing to do with authenticity, and everything do do with convenience.

So let me get this straight: you're willing to search far and wide for original arcade machines, pay at least moderate sums for them, drive across the state, load the big 300lb. cabinets up onto a truck, drive them back, offload them, restore them, lug them down the stairs, set them up into their allocated 80 cubic feet of basement volume, and maintain them, all for the sake of being able to play a single game from the 1980s, and you're citing "convenience" as the deciding factor in selecting a multigame system? The worst part of this logic is that MAME isn't really all that inconvenient, if you have the slightest idea how to use a computer.

 

I didn't need some 20,000 game MAME monstrosity with a flight deck-sized CP to take up the slack.

The guys I know with MAME cabs (and they have some very nice setups) typically have to hold a guest's hands through the daunting game selection and setup just to play a game. No thanks.

These are completely imaginary drawbacks of MAME. At least, in the sense that they're only factors to contend with if you want them to be. There are plenty of ways one could implement a simple and clean 1- or 2-player joystick layout with a few buttons each, and still have any flavor of game selection they desire, from "just the classics" to all manner of obscure gems, all emulated near-perfectly, and presented through freely-available, personalizable, and simple-to-navigate front-end software.

 

If you'd prefer a 60-in-1 in your arcade alongside your classic cabinets, well, great. At least you know exactly what you're sacrificing in doing so, and you're OK with it. Where I kind of have trouble, though, is when a relative newbie comes to a forum asking for advice on setting up a multi-game rig and people jump in to recommend some Chinese multi-junk for reasons that might make some modicum of sense to a niche collector with a basement full of authentic cabinets, but are spurious at best for Joe Blow who just wants a general purpose retro-emulation rig that can play a nice selection of old games faithfully and for little money.

 

Anyway, as for shoving PC boxes inside of cabinets, yeah - screw that. Loud, noisy, resonant cases stuffed with the cheapest wattage wasting components and running Windows, blech. Not appealing to me in the least. Now a good used Mac Mini bolted up along the side of the cab - maybe. But then may as well just keep it hooked to the large screen monitor and break out the X-Arcade when you want.

Again, imaginary problems. I've got a dirt cheap WinXP machine in my cabinet. It boots up in about 30 seconds, runs completely trouble-free, and the only "noise" I hear is the accurately emulated game sound emanating from the speakers.

 

Despite what snobby KLOV-types like to think, having a MAME system built into a cabinet isn't just about being a poseur saying "hey look at me, I haz an arcade like the 80s, LOL". There is a practical aspect as well; namely, the fact that the archetypal arcade cabinet form factor is the best way to experience the games, period. An X-arcade and laptop is an OK quick-and-dirty way to go I suppose, but I have an X-Arcade, and I had to mount it on a pedestal in my garage to have any fun using it. Those controllers-and most like them-are big and unwieldy, they slide around when you play twitchy games, and you're going to be hunching over a coffee table or desk in an uncomfortable position and tripping over tangled cables if you're not careful. For all of its purported poseurness, a MAME cabinet addresses all of those problems. The controls are rigidly mounted, you can sit or stand comfortably for marathon sessions, the display is at a good angle, the speakers are at ear level, the cables are all tucked away out of sight, etc. I know, I know.. "just get real cabinets, then". Well, there are all kinds of obvious reasons why somebody might not want to do that, which I'm sure I don't need to list.

[racerx]

So let me get this straight: you're willing to search far and wide for original arcade machines, pay at least moderate sums for them, drive across the state, load the big 300lb. cabinets up onto a truck, drive them back, offload them, restore them, lug them down the stairs, set them up into their allocated 80 cubic feet of basement volume, and maintain them, all for the sake of being able to play a single game from the 1980s, and you're citing "convenience" as the deciding factor in selecting a multigame system?

 

Not sure why that's difficult to fathom. Where I value authenticity, I own a dedicated cabinet. On the games that where "close enough" is okay for guests and the kids, the 60-1 is fine. It's also the cheapest to obtain, and the easiest to get up and running.

 

If you'd prefer a 60-in-1 in your arcade alongside your classic cabinets, well, great. At least you know exactly what you're sacrificing in doing so, and you're OK with it. Where I kind of have trouble, though, is when a relative newbie comes to a forum asking for advice on setting up a multi-game rig and people jump in to recommend some Chinese multi-junk for reasons that might make some modicum of sense to a niche collector with a basement full of authentic cabinets, but are spurious at best for Joe Blow who just wants a general purpose retro-emulation rig that can play a nice selection of old games faithfully and for little money.

 

Er, because he specifically asked about putting a 60-1 into a Nintendo cab. Not a MAME rig, and not an ArcadeSD.

 

Despite what snobby KLOV-types like to think, having a MAME system built into a cabinet isn't just about being a poseur saying "hey look at me, I haz an arcade like the 80s, LOL". There is a practical aspect as well; namely, the fact that the archetypal arcade cabinet form factor is the best way to experience the games, period.

 

No, a dedicated cabinet is [/snobby KLOV-type]. As you've pointed out though, that obviously isn't an option for everyone. What I struggle to understand is why you're sold on the closest possible emulation of a game when a large chunk of them won't control properly anyway with a 4-way, and some won't control properly with an 8-way, and some need a wheel, and some need a trackball, or a spinner, or a roller, or whathaveyou. What you're saying is, it doesn't matter if the game can be played properly, only that it looks right. Or it has the potential to be played properly. Or something. I really don't know. I wouldn't care how exact a replica my Ferrari 250 GTO was if I was steering it with Schwinn handlebars.

 

MAME is great to arse around with for obscure rarities that I'd never be able to mess with otherwise, and it was invaluable when I needed to reflash a Xevious EPROM. But unless you build a semi-dedicated cabinet for a select set of ROMs, it involves its own compromises and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to a newbie that was specifically asking for 60-1 advice.

 

 

tl:dr...if the controls aren't exactly right (8-way Happ Competition for Pac?), I've already made a compromise. If I've already made a compromise, I'm going the cheapest way out.

Edited August 24, 2014 by racerx

[onemoretime]

Ultimarc makes a dedicated 4/8 magnetically centered joystick that converts from 4 to 8 way by pulling up and turning the handle. I've used them, and they're pretty slick. Called the Mag Stik Plus. http://www.ultimarc.com/controls.html

[number six]

I think we'll all just have to agree to disagree here.

 

I totally understand convenience, and certainly the multicades offer that. However they offer it at a very high price. I'd say the games are so inaccurate you aren't really playing the same games anymore.. its almost like playing a port instead. That may not bother some people, just seeing the familiar characters (albiet, not the sounds!) on the screen may be enough. In that case OK that's fine.. everyone is different. However I think its definitely something people need to be aware of so if someone asks about a Multicade I definitely give them the low-down on the issues inherit in that.

 

I will say that MAME is not the PITA that it once was. Sure 10 years ago it was a major pain to get one running as there were few parts and you had to do a lot of fiddling. Now you can get parts to adapt almost anything so as long as you can come up with a Pentium 4 and a copy of MAME itself its not that big of a stretch. You don't have to sit and setup command line strings or endless configuration files.. its pretty easy. You also don't need a crazy control panel setup. Sure lots of people throw the entire HAPP controller line on a panel and it looks silly, but that's their choice. You can setup a mame with one joystick and 2 buttons (just like a multicade) and play it just as easy. Setup a simple button combo to get back to the menu or add a 'change game' button and that takes the complexity out for guests.

 

But it all depends on what you want and what your goal is. If its just to see something like looks like Pac-Man on a CRT then yes, its going to be hard to beat a multicade.

[Cynicaster]

I totally understand convenience, and certainly the multicades offer that. However they offer it at a very high price. I'd say the games are so inaccurate you aren't really playing the same games anymore.. its almost like playing a port instead.

Yes, exactly. At least, the multicade I played was that bad; not sure if they're all created equal. The games I tried were so bad that I'd sooner write down the titles in the 60-in-1 and make a mame rig with just those titles than use a 60-in-1.

 

Another aspect that hasn't really been talked about is the wealth of hidden gems just waiting to be discovered in the MAME catalog. Unless you've played every game and therefore know for a fact that the 60-in-1 covers most of what you want to play, then I'd say that as a gamer, you're doing yourself a disservice by blindly assuming that to be the case. Not all popular games are great and not all great games are popular. Why is Galaga more popular than Bosconian? Freakin' blasphemy, IMO.