Jump to content
IGNORED

Jaguar Arcade Cabinet


Papa

Recommended Posts

It helps to have a wife/partner that works with you! A lot of thought and drafting went into this first. I have a stack of paper behind the creation of these cabinets. They were all conceived beforehand! My wife is very good at math and that is a necessity!! I taught her to solder and handle a saw and quite a few other things that she has since perfected. Thank you, Lost Dragon!

 

This work was all based on a design I drew out back in the early nineties when I wanted my own cabinet. It was going to use an old RGB monitor and have a Sega joystick, but I have since learned so much about arcade parts that I wanted to go that way with it. The need to cut the cost of producing them down also weighed heavily on the design. The total parts cost, not including the game systems or TV/Monitors, is somewhere around $250 to $300.

Edited by Papa
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

By nature i'm not one to 'blow smoke up anyones backside' and as my friends will tell you, by god am i hard to 'impress/please'...so when something does take my fancy/impress me, praise is justly given.

Projects like your Jaguar cabinet, daft as it may sound, really make me sit up and take notice.I just love seeing projects like this detailed way you've done it, step by step photo's, no arrogance, just that sense of pride and achivement, kinda 'we made this' kinda warm glow feeling.
It's very much appreciated that you were kind enough to share it with the community.
And yes, part of me is bloody envious :-)
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going to order some these and see how they work. Totally enclosed leaf switches! No getting dirty and not working!

 

Wish they were around back in the 80's when I repaired video games for a living.

 

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221620433367?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

 

 

Gold-plated contacts. No tarnishing nor degradation results in no deterioration in response. The contact leaves and the external connections are fully gold plated.

  • Low inertia The moving part of the button is ultra-light and only 10mm deep, unlike other types where the plunger extends the full depth of the button.
  • No Click Leaf switch means no clicking micro-switch.
  • No Plunger Spring The body of the button contains no large spring. This results in a uniquely low actuation force of 45 grams for the entire button.
  • No Hysteresis. This is the difference in button depression for the contact close and open points. On these buttons the position is the same, resulting in maximum repeated actuation performance. On micro-switch buttons this "dead" distance can be up to 1.5 mm.
  • Concave top. Most serious gamers prefer the classic concave tops over the convex which are commonly used on Japanese low-inertia buttons.
  • Robust. The limit stop of the button is supported by the button body not the switch so no chance of switch damage owing to over-enthusiastic play!
  • Compact integral design. No fiddly assembly after fitting through the panel. Totally enclosed leaf-switch contacts.
  • Economic Despite their performance these are similar in price to standard arcade buttons and the price is all-inclusive, nothing extra to pay for add-on switch options.
  • Nut & Thread Fixing. We have retained the traditional threaded fixing rather than the push-in design of certain other low-inertia buttons as we believe this gives the most effective permanent mounting in all types of panel up to 19mm (3/4 in).

post-7077-0-45620800-1425323749_thumb.jpg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At one time I had my Jaguar wired into a Space Duel cabinet complete with flipper buttons on the sides!

 

Now I'm putting it into a Rampage cabinet with a 25" RGB monitor along with a PS2, XBOX and a DREAMCAST.

 

Picked up a video switcher that will let me select the games using the component for the RGB and the yellow composite for the sync line and the red/black for the audio.

 

Got a PS2 adaptor to XBOX & DREAMCAST but need to figure something out for the JAGUAR....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I LOVE clicking buttons.

 

My favorite arcade time was the nineties, when Street Fighter 2 cabinets were everywhere and you could really feel that arcades were bigger than ever. I was an awesome child of the eighties and played arcade games throughout, although I really was just being babysat while my mom shopped or groceries got bagged. We sometimes got to be fully deflected by being handed a five apiece (WOAH!) and told to stay in the arcade until the parents got done.

 

When I worked at Loony T-Birds In the nineties I remember dumping quarters in a SFII cab and playing a lot of League Bowling and Magician Lord. The clicks gotta be there for me. The concave buttons and switch driven sticks are just a necessity. I can replace a switch easily and I know all my own hardware, so that's another must. I've built a JAMMA-DRIVE for my Street Fighter Alpha cabinet and also wired in MultiCarts, etc.. The competition pro feel that is clicky micro-switches is where I come from as a gamer and not just a kid having fun at the check out line. I've always been nuts about JAMMA and JAMMA+, Neo-Geo and Candy Cabinets.

 

I can see where these buttons would have a place, but once their dead what do you do with them? I can easily replace switches and have a giant bag of back ups ready for all the cabinets. Of course, I've never played an arcade game and been like, "Man these deterioration factors are too much.." or "If only there was no clicking then this game would be better.", or "If only there was a fixed, gold contact fused into this button, it would be better!". I was more like "AWESOME, ARCADE PARTS! LET'S BUILD!" I love HAPP, ZIPPYY, Cherry and those products that kept things great then and now.

 

To each his own, though, and to hear that another enthused arcade hacker is working the Jaguar into the scheme is music to my ears (or is that the Guardians of the Galaxy sountrack.. :-D )! I really love working consoles into the cabinets. Rampage was made to be played standing up and banging on buttons! Then it was ported all over the place with little cross pads and tiny buttons everywhere, and to put it back upright and infuse it with arcade controls is a GREAT feeling for me! It's also a great way to protect the systems, screens, and controllers from grubby fingers! I have six kids, so they may inherit and near-mint condition system one day! I also think that fastening the butt to the sofa is all the norm today. People look like The Borg, or little Star Pilots, with portable urinals and 12 year olds smack talking in kill-fest Call of Duty games throwing controllers and all Cheetoh faced! I like being able to play a game and then walk away from it when I'm done (sometimes fifteen minutes later), no subscriptions required! No headset, portable urinal, anime chick avatar, thirty something technophile!

 

I listen to RECORDS and CASSETTES! I watch VHS and VCS almost as much as DVD. I don't watch TV! I listen to the radio ON THE TOILET, if I'm not READING PHILO or LATIN! I like COMIC BOOKS! I write books and poetry..

 

..anywho.

 

GAME ON!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was working on video games before HAPP was even around...in the 90's arcades became kiddy lands where it was no longer fun to go. Hard to get into a game when there's a bunch of 5 year olds running around and screaming getting sticky ice cream all over the joysticks and buttons...never playing the games...they couldn't after sticking everything they could find in the quarter slots..."Mothers...TAKE YOUR RUG-RATS HOME!" Don't know how many times I wanted to scream that out!

 

I have about 15 turntables for my vinyl collection, boxes of cassettes that I re-master with DBX and blowing away the cds that I used to re-master them!

 

DBX- No hiss or noise, less distortion and about 40db increase in dynamic range! And when I use it with my Reel to Reels...WOW!

 

Got some nice 3-head cassette decks and a cassette deck in my old 1978 GMC "Hippy-VAN"!

 

There's a turntable on E-Bay that costs $108,000.00! You read that right! Doesn't include the cartridge!

 

There's also a turntable that uses lasers to play vinyl...cheaper, $8,000 to $16,000...got to win the lotto I guess...

Edited by SoundGammon
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, but the seventies and eighties were full of the ease of use tactics, like hitting the cabinet just right to get a free game, tying line to a quarter shaped disk and pulling the yank and drop. I was actually born in the seventies and saw a lot of this first hand.

I remember being totally beaten down in Street Fighter II by some twelve year old once at Kings Island (I can beat the game, too.). He's mad because I'm actually getting hits on this obviously programmed arcade shark child, yelping over and over again "You ruined my perfect..you ruined my perfect.."!

 

Nothing beats the corruption of the Billy Mitchell years of arcade gaming when Twin Galaxies got its steam, though. In the modern we see those people eeking up the ladder to redefine the scores and then crappy dubbed and obviously edited 'proof' of Billy beating anyones score before they could ever even give it a try! When his wife is asked if he still plays those old arcade games, she kindly answers from his salsa plant "In the eighteen years I've been married to Billy, I've never seen him play one single game." :-o

 

I use a linear turn table that only skips or wows if the vinyl is truly wretched. I contest that modern technology really isn't an upgrade at all.

 

CDs= Built for portabilty but skip whenever you hit a bump in your car. Scratched once and they never work right again (unless you can afford a real resurfacer), they warp and degrade at an alarming rate. You scan skip songs..wooptey doo.. Cassettes don't skip EVER and, if taken care of, still sound great today! (I have an awesome open face player that just never sounds bad unless the tape is wretched.)

 

LCD and Plasma screens= One is just waiting for the backlight bulb to crap out and the other uses as much power as a refrigerator. They look blurry when you play games or they have gross color seperation that wreaks havock on the eyes. I still use tube tvs and crt monitors that can be easily recapped and retubed and look great today. I watch movies on a Sony Videoscope projector from 81 that looks like an old school movie screen. It still works great and I can tweak, adjust, and recap if I need to.

 

MP3 players= Sure they're little! Once the little tiny itty bitty battery decides not to charge they usually get trashed. The earbud earphones are so easy to break I bought a big pack of five (having already had five or more sets) for my kids and now they fight over the one set that barely still works. You can still use a walkman cassette player and the batteries can be replaced easily. I have big, cushy headphones from a school that sold them to 'upgrade' to smaller more modern headsets. They still sound great today and were used by monsters! My wife works in the school system and has detailed the adventures of finding a working headset in todays classroom. :rolling:

 

Modern Cars= The baby of industry. In the eighties a honda got 35 miles to the gallon and came with a cassette player! Today every industry has something plugged into that terrible thing you had to get a loan to even get near! They talk, tell you where to go, lock their own doors if your naughty and stop working if a cop hit's a button! They have an lcd tv, a built in game system, an internet connection, a yelping security system that barely lets YOU IN! They are made to wear out in four years or less and you're still paying for them ten years later! They get 20 miles to the gallon if you're lucky! I quit driving (having been one of the fastest private couriers around for some time)!!

 

My experience in the nineties was, more often than not, at bowling alley mini arcades, college pizza joints, closely monitored mall arcades, etc.. I only saw the kid wave at places like Chuck E Cheeze or Kings Island. I just love that era of 16-bit, 68000 and Z80 boards mixed with Neo-Geo MVS that really connected to all the things I loved. The comics, martial arts, bit graphics and the party atmosphere of my mid to late teens and early twenties, that I still vibrate with today, come from then. :dunce:

Edited by Papa
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi again!

I also have about 3 linear turntables...2 Technics SL-5 that I got for $10.00 each, love those thrift stores, and a nice Realistic one, made by Technics.

 

Anyway, you gave me a great idea! You mentioned that you got into gaming around the Genesis Super Nintendo era and I got started around when Pong first hit the streets. Working on them when they had a b&w tv in them.

 

So my idea is this, we can say or tell other gamers what "generation" we're from! Me: 8-Bit, you: 16-bit and so forth. Others could be 32-bit: Sega 32 or the 3DO, 64-bit:Jaguar, Nintendo 64 and so on.

 

Maybe we could start something like Elite clubs or something...also some could say they're multi-bit-generational! lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's also a great way to protect the systems, screens, and controllers from grubby fingers! I have six kids, so they may inherit and near-mint condition system one day!

 

To be honest with you, after seeing pics of your kids playing the cabs, I felt that THIS was the sole underlying factor of all this tbh:

 

Being able to have your more valued games and systems openly available without the risk of kids causing them damage...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

..after seeing pics of your kids playing the cabs..

 

:D That's my wife..she's had seven kids and is 36!! Ill be sure to tell her though! Thanks!!

 

..also..I've been playing my whole life! I've played Pac-Man pinball and used to play Tapper in a bar my mom worked days at when she couldn't afford a babysitter. I used to get babysat by games when I was little, like most late seventies and early eighties kids. Atari had a big part in my growing up when I wasn't out in the woods hunting crayfish and snakes. I've been paying Atari since I was five and got a NES the year it came out. I LOVE 16-bit, though..and would probably have to say that most of my favorite games are from that era. Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Bare Knuckle II, Shinobi III, Flashback, Dragons Revenge, Super Street Fighter II, etc..too many to name, really! I love 8-bit, too! I really like conversions like Joe & Mac Caveman Ninja for the famicom (the scrolling is enticing), Earthworm Jim (an excellent port), and Final Fight III. Contra was great on the NES (funner than the arcade in my opinion.). I've been gaming ever since I can remember, and played Asteroids in the old arcades before everything went 16-bit or higher. It's totally true, though, that if I had to choose an era, it would probably have to be 16-bit. I've often said that my favorite games were by Sega, but my favorite system is the VCS. Hence my new game.. Titan Axe (shameless self promotion..) Beta stage downloadable now RIGHT HERE, on AtariAge!!

 

I was an awesome child of the eighties, which meant..

 

BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL, I DID HAVE THE POWER!!

Edited by Papa
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I LOVE clicking buttons.

 

My favorite arcade time was the nineties, when Street Fighter 2 cabinets were everywhere and you could really feel that arcades were bigger than ever.

 

You had me up to here. ;)

 

Peak of the arcades was '83/'84. The 90s renaissance was cool, but no where near the golden age.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wiki..

 

"The golden age of arcade video games lasted from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. While arcade games were still relatively popular during the late 1990s, the entertainment medium saw a continuous decline in popularity.."

 

There were all of about fifty popular cabinets that were spread all over the place in the early eighties, mixed in with pinball and pizza parlors. Competition was usually one person versus the existing score of another with very little versus hardware. By the time SFII was out there were a metric crap ton of stand alone arcades (sans pizza rat) and hundreds of cabinets all over the place. I understand that monetarily the field may have been in decline, but you were just as able to find an Altered Beast machine a couple of cabs down from a Paperboy and a Joust all in the same place! The original titles helped to spawn the first console wars that then helped to create the 82 dark spell! By the mid eighties most companies were all about separating console from coin muncher and the crash brought out the need for a big shot in the arm from any manufacturer that had consolized versions of arcade hits. I think that sheer number of available titles to play in an arcade made the early to mid nineties the time to enjoy the maximum efforts of the industry. Neo-Geo, Sega in full effect, and Capcom all over the place kept me coming back! I enjoyed games like Asteroids and Pacman, but Street Fighter II was so good that it kept me coming back time and time again. Just my opinion, of course.. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wiki..

 

"The golden age of arcade video games lasted from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. While arcade games were still relatively popular during the late 1990s, the entertainment medium saw a continuous decline in popularity.."

 

You cherry picked. :)

 

 

Although there is no consensus as to its exact time period, most sources place it as starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and lasting to the mid-1980s.

 

 

Former Pro Video Game Referee/Scorekeeper Walter Day places it as lasting from January 18, 1982 to January 5, 1986

 

 

 

Video game journalist Steven L. Kent, in his book The Ultimate History of Video Games, places it at 1979 to 1983

 

 

 

The History of Computing Project places the golden age of video games between 1971 and 1983

 

 

 

Other opinions place this period's beginning in the late 1970s, when color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside of their traditional bowling alley and bar locales, through to its ending in the mid-1980s.

 

 

 

The golden age cooled around the mid-1980s as copies of popular games began to saturate the arcades.

 

 

Although there was a late 80s early 90s resurgence with the beat 'em ups and fighters, there would never again be the sheer number of arcade game releases seen in the period from 1978-1983.

 

All this aside, cool build! :thumbsup:

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neo Geo, Saturn (titan V), System 16, Capcom (CPS2 and earlier), Taito, Konami, Nintendo..etc..

 

There were over 130 releases in the arcades for the Neo Geo ALONE!

 

There were MORE games out in the late eighties and early nineties than were even conceived in a programmers wet dreams in the late seventies. Take Kings Island, for instance. In the late seventies (right before The Bat..) There were a handful of quarter munchers at most. By the early nineties there was a MASSIVE arcade with hundreds of cabinets and prize machines all over the place! My local mall. In the early eighties they had NO arcade (the city had one and it was occasionally busy, but had only a handful of really good games), although certain stores had a few games near checkouts. In the late eighties they had a large arcade and by the early nineties it was a bustling place! Today it is either gone (with most of the mall..) or has no business (haven't been there in ten years, and have only heard bad things since..). I picked what I felt was relevant to support what I believe to be true. Arcades were limited in programming and selection in the late seventies/early eighties, whereas you could find all of those older games mixed with the newer (in my opinion, better) games from all over the place in the early nineties. A large number of console games in the nineties were RAM-halved arcade ports to CD (or GD-Rom in the case of the Dreamcast)! Hundreds of them, really!

 

I feel that there is an inherent flaw in cabinet to console ports and that is partly why I built this arcade. I came up with this design in the early nineties (sketched it out, really) due to the fact that thumb pads wore out so easily and didn't feel the same as standing up and playing in the arcades. I think that nearly every game from a cabinet that was brought to console plays better standing up with real arcade controls. Even Atari Pacman plays really great with an arcade stick (rather than the old stiff controllers). 8K Pacman from this forum is a DREAM! A whole lot of never-in-the-arcade games are super fun on a cabinet, too. Games like Tomb Raider, Jedi Power Battles, Clockwork Knight, Lords of Thunder, to name a few. My wife helped me (she is extremely good at old school arcade games.) put these together over the past 7-10 years after she got bit by the Galaga bug (she was getting super high scores) and we got two real cabs and suped them up with Multicarts. I built a giant cab (wonky) to house my X-Arcade that was later taken apart and some was used in our Big Play cabinet. Since then we have built nine additional cabinets.

Edited by Papa
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neo Geo, Saturn (titan V), System 16, Capcom (CPS2 and earlier), Taito, Konami, Nintendo..etc..

 

There were over 130 releases in the arcades for the Neo Geo ALONE!

 

There were MORE games out in the late eighties and early nineties than were even conceived in a programmers wet dreams in the late seventies.

 

Look, I don't want to drag this further off topic, especially because your build is cool. But you're wrong, plain and simple. Especially when you take production number into consideration. You can easily track game releases by year here: http://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=database

 

Games like Asteroids and Centipede sold around 50,000 units. Space Invaders and Pac Man had six-digit production numbers. If you don't think that dwarfs the number of Neo Geo games out there, try to find a Donkey Kong cab for sale, and then try to find an MVS running Fūun Super Tag Battle.

 

Don't take my word for it; here is inflation adjusted arcade revenue.

 

US_Inflation-Adjusted_Revenues_zps5dlfqa

Edited by racerx
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Look, I don't want to drag this further off topic, especially because your build is cool. But you're wrong, plain and simple. Especially when you take production number into consideration. You can easily track game releases by year here: http://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=database

 

Games like Asteroids and Centipede sold around 50,000 units. Space Invaders and Pac Man had six-digit production numbers. If you don't think that dwarfs the number of Neo Geo games out there, try to find a Donkey Kong cab for sale, and then try to find an MVS running Fūun Super Tag Battle.

 

Don't take my word for it; here is inflation adjusted arcade revenue.

 

US_Inflation-Adjusted_Revenues_zps5dlfqa

 

When I said MORE games I didn't mean sheer number of the same game being mass produced, I meant variety! I'm not at all wrong that there were MORE games in the late eighties and early nineties. You could go to an arcade and find several generations of games to play. Also the early to mid eighties was the video game crash period, not the golden age. The reason I picked the late seventies to the early nineties is because that covers what I would consider to be the event that was arcade games in general and their 'golden age'. Arcades are all but dead today. Just because I respect variety over sheer numbers in sales does not make me wrong. My opinion is different, that's all. I don't think that discussing arcade games or their rise and fall is to far off topic for this, but again, that is just my opinion.

 

I think my arcade covers the subject of video games in a pure light. I have games from the late seventies all the way up to the XBOX (original). My goal was to have all of the best consoles (in my opinion) hooked up to arcade controls and able to be played upright like much of the original source was. To play Joust on the VCS standing upright with arcade controls was something unheard of unless you bought an X-Arcade machine and used it with with PC Emulators. It was still not real hardware and I wanted to have all the actual systems with as little emulation as possible. I also wanted to cover video pinball games from consoles in a way that returned them to an original feel like real pinball and each of my cabinets has flipper buttons set up to play whatever pinball games were released for those consoles. As far as I know, this has never been done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Here is our original prototype cabinet. It housed a AMD Athlon 600mHz with a 3DFX Voodoo 3500 (later upgraded to a ATi 9200) and SB Live!! Primarily for emulation, it could also be great for PC games like Gex: Enter the Gecko, Unreal, Sin, Starshot and many other 3DFX specific titles. This led to our building of seven other cabinets with similar designs, the adding of marquees, front art, pinball buttons, and control panel upgrades and graphics.

 

post-40395-0-96058500-1427375591_thumb.jpg

 

 

It is now black with face art, a marquee, a 2.7G PC linked up to a modded XBOX (original). The computer is actually what I use to program with! It uses an I-PAC keyboard enumerator with an XBOX adapter and has been upgraded to an HD screen. It also has the right side wired to an Atari stick PCB that is then fed through an Atari 1040STE that is also in the cabinet, ready for Automation compilation disks. I really love listening to the music and looking at the graphics on those old Automation disks!

Edited by Papa
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Man I envy you guys! As a child of the 80s, my parents were very frugal and believed arcade games were a waste of money. By the time the late 90s rolled around and as a teen I began to aquire disposable income, the glowing video game arcades were slowly being displaced with "ticket dispensers" by the early 2000s. Aside from the occasional Ms Pacman / Galaga machine, there is nothing relly left but for kids to squander $20 bucks worth of tokens for a few measley tickets to redeem some crappy dollar store prize.

 

I missed an era, but have a deep appreciation for it. I found the CIB NES Action Set my mom never got me in the garage after my dad passed, in 2002 when I was 21. Pandora's box was opened, and for the last decade plus I've been regaining my lost childhood one forgotten classic at a time. In 2012, I discovered Atari, and the rest is history...

 

Video games are deeply ingrained in me; I love the feel of arcade controlls; and if I had the space and money I would build an arcade kiosk out of every retro system and flash cart I own. :D

Edited by stardust4ever
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I'd love more info on your custom switchbox to switch between the Jag and the 7800. Do you have the schematics? I have a 5200, 7800, and Jaguar. In addition to switching between consoles, I would also want the Jag to switch between joystick and rotary spinner (for Tempest 2000). I realize your switchbox isn't doing all that, but if I could see what you have, it would at least get me started in the right direction.

 

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd love more info on your custom switchbox to switch between the Jag and the 7800. Do you have the schematics? I have a 5200, 7800, and Jaguar. In addition to switching between consoles, I would also want the Jag to switch between joystick and rotary spinner (for Tempest 2000). I realize your switchbox isn't doing all that, but if I could see what you have, it would at least get me started in the right direction.

 

Thanks!

I did create a joystick to work between 7800/SMS although it used 3 buttons due to the 7800 not using common ground. I never mentioned a switching 7800 Jag schematic anywhere. I got some requests for Jag/Coleco regarding cigar box controllers, but I wouldn't have a method of testing them without a system.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...