MaximRecoil

Yeah, that's why I'd only do those things if I got one for free. The total cost of all the stuff I mentioned would probably be around $100, which includes $60 for a new Happ 2¼" trackball (the cost of real arcade controls would be far less on say, a Pac-Man; just 1 joystick and 2 buttons which would be about $15). I already have several spare 17" CRT PC monitors lying around, but those are easy to find for free last I knew.

Karate Champ, when I was 9, in 1984. That was the first arcade game I ever played more than once, and the first one I ever got good at. It didn't stay my favorite for long though, because pretty soon a brand new Punch-Out machine showed up, also in 1984, and that quickly became my favorite. That remained my favorite until Super Punch-Out showed up at Fossa's General Store in 1987. Karate Champ hasn't aged well for me, but Super Punch-Out is still my all-time favorite arcade game, and Punch-Out is my second favorite.

Yes, it's usually a major project, but there's no known risk of death, i.e., the people who subscribe to the old "CRTs can kill you" wives' tale have never been able to produce a documented case of it ever having happened. The biggest danger from getting shocked by a CRT is not the shock itself, but your reaction to it. For example, while reacting to the shock you might trip over something and fall down, which could result in injury or death. But that could happen if someone sneaks up behind you and yells "boo" too. I wouldn't want a Sony for an arcade machine. Their Trinitrons had cylindrical, and later, flat-faced picture tubes, and an aperture grille. Neither of those things look right on an arcade machine, because they used standard spherical picture tubes (made by companies such as Sanyo, Philips, Zenith, RCA, Orion, etc.) with a standard RGB triad shadow mask. CRT displays were a very mature technology when they stopped making them about ten years ago. You can't make them slimmer because of the way the CRT itself works; it needs that long neck to achieve proper deflection, as well as house the other elements, e.g., heater, electron guns, focusing coils. None, or at least, nothing significant. It's only been ~10 years since CRTs were last made. I bought a brand new Happ Vision Pro CRT arcade monitor in 2009 for my Missile Command cabinet, and that was right around the time they stopped making them. BNC connectors are fine, so are RCA connectors, or VGA connectors, or a Molex connector, for that matter (which is what arcade monitors use). They all do the same thing in the context of an RGB video signal, which any hypothetical new CRT should definitely have an input for. S-video and composite inputs could be included for legacy purposes. I'd rather it be Sanyo, Wells Gardner, JVC, Mitsubishi, etc., than Sony, but if you remove TV tuning then it is a monitor-only by definition, not a TV. As for sizes, 19" and 25" will fit the vast majority of classic arcade machines, and 32" to 42" would be great for the living room to use with home video game consoles. All 15 KHz CRTs can inherently sync to 240p, and yes, any new CRT should definitely be 15 KHz-capable, and they should be available in only 15 KHz for arcade monitors, since ones that can sync to higher frequencies/resolutions (multisync) have a finer dot pitch / less coarse shadow mask which doesn't look right with the classic arcade games. Multisync would be fine for the 32" to 42" models, say, 15 KHz to 64 KHz, like the big "presentation monitors" that various companies used to make (Mitsubishi MegaView Pro 42 for example). HDMI is meaningless to a CRT. The electron guns in a CRT are driven by RGB signals no matter what you feed it. Even a lowly composite or RF signal gets converted to RGB in order to drive the guns. HDMI is a digital signal which can not drive electron guns, so while an HDMI jack could be included on a new CRT (and indeed, some widescreen HD CRTs did have them), it would just be a built-in HDMI-to-RGB converter. RGB is the best possible analog color video signal.

That isn't even possible. The best LCDs have 9 ms of input lag, while the electron guns in a CRT respond to the video signal in what is effectively real-time, i.e., the speed of electricity through its circuitry. LCDs have literally millions of times more display lag than a CRT. It isn't possible for a CRT to have 9 ms of input lag, because it has no means of delaying and storing a video signal at all, let alone for 9 ms. A CRT only works with analog video signals and those aren't easy to store. They can be, for example, recorded to video tape, but there's certainly no VCR inside a CRT intercepting and recording the video signal and then delivering it to the electron guns 9 ms later. There's also no analog-to-digital converter inside a CRT intercepting the video signal, storing it in digital form in nonexistent memory, then sending it to a nonexistent digital-to-analog converter which then sends it to the electron guns 9 ms later. Claiming that an LCD can have lower input lag than a CRT indicates a lack of understanding of how a CRT works. Nothing can ever be faster at responding to / rendering a video signal than a CRT. The best that could be done is to equal it, and LCDs aren't even close to doing that. Any tests that ostensibly show otherwise are flawed by definition. In the case of the test you linked to, something in his PC is obviously delaying the signal before it reaches the CRT. Tests should be done with a video source that definitely doesn't delay the video signal at all; an Atari 2600 for example.

You quoted me talking about using an LCD as a PC monitor, Slow Doug. Since you've just admitted that you were talking about something completely different than what you quoted and replied to, can you tell me how the weather is tonight, out there in deep, deep left field? As for using a high-resolution LCD with a classic game console, that's even worse. Non-native resolution is garbage, regardless of how good your scaler is.

Why would you put an upscaler between a PC and an LCD? I had my PC set to the LCD's fixed resolution (1920x1080), which is as "good" as it's ever going to look. I hate the picture characteristics of LCDs though, plus, they strain my eyes.

Insert text here. Insert text here. Insert text here. Insert text here. The forum software here is among the worst I've ever encountered. The more they try to improve forum software, the worse it gets. Fortunately, KLOV and various other forums I frequent still use forum software that hasn't changed in many years, so when you click reply you don't get an annoying previewed BBCode format, you just get raw BBCode, and it wraps the text automatically for you as you type. It's perfect. In any case, there is a workaround for the issue you're talking about here. As you can see, I broke your quote into multiple quotes and added my own text between them, and I did it in the standard reply box. What you do is: select all of the text in the single quote except for the first excerpt that you want to reply to, and then cut and paste it back in below the quote. Now you can reply to the first excerpt which is now enclosed in a quote box by itself, and then manually type in quote tags for the rest of the now-plain-text that you pasted below the quote, and it will look like my example above when you post it.

That's a huge improvement. If one of those fell into my lap for free I'd do the same thing, but I wouldn't stop there. The side panels are already 1/2" thick, which is marginal, but adequate for a cabaret-size cabinet, but from what I've read, other panels (like the kick panel) are thin, like 1/8" fiberboard or something. I'd replace those with 1/2" MDF panels, plus I'd add blocking inside the cabinet (strips of 1x1s) and screw & wood glue all the panels together. Doing those things would greatly increase its rigidity and probably double its weight, which would give it more stability. I'd also replace the controls with real arcade controls and put a de-cased 17" CRT PC monitor in there, which would add even more weight (and have WAY better picture quality, including perfectly black blacks, zero color shift regardless of the viewing angle, no display lag, no potential for dead or stuck pixels, and a thick glass screen that isn't easily scratched/damaged). I'm guessing it would be up to at least 150 pounds at that point, which is more in the neighborhood of what real arcade cabaret machines weigh. A standard-resolution (~15 KHz) CRT arcade monitor instead of a high-resolution PC monitor would be ideal, but the Arcade1Up's hardware wouldn't be able to sync to it, plus a 19" one would probably be too big for that cabinet. Also, old 17" CRT PC monitors are free or cheap and easy to find, whereas arcade monitors typically aren't any of those things. If I were building a cabinet from scratch, or restoring/refurbishing an original arcade machine, it would get a real CRT arcade monitor, no question about it, but for cheap upgrades to something like an Arcade1Up cabinet, a CRT PC monitor is good enough, and a drastic improvement over any LCD in existence.

Correction to my previous post: the best case scenario is for an LCD is 1 ms response time, but as it turns out, response time isn't the same thing as display input lag, though I guess LCD marketing departments would like you to think they are the same thing. See here: https://displaylag.com/exposed-input-lag-vs-response-time/ And a chart from the same site: https://displaylag.com/display-database/ The best that I see on there for 2018 (which is the most recent year on the chart) is 9 ms of display lag; about 9 million times more display lag than a CRT. Combining that with the latency of emulation makes that worse of course.

There's no such thing as super low latency, let alone zero latency, when using an LCD or any other type of digital display. The best digital displays have about 1 millisecond of display lag, while CRTs render the video signal in what is effectively real-time, i.e., at the speed that electricity travels through its circuitry, which might be a ~nanosecond. That means that, at best, a digital display has about a million times more latency than a CRT (1 ms = 1,000,000 ns), and that's clearly because of "progress." You won't consciously notice say, 1 ms of lag, but it can still negatively affect your gameplay because it inherently narrows your various windows for success in the game. For example, suppose you are playing a video game on a CRT and you just barely avoid an object that can kill you, i.e., you were at the very edge of the window for successfully avoiding the object. But what if it had been an LCD with its at least 1 ms (and usually more than that) of lag? That could be enough to put you outside the window, making the object hit you instead of you avoiding it by the skin of your teeth. Human senses aren't precise enough to parse time in 1-ms increments, so you'd probably chalk the death up to you being too slow, but in reality, it was the digital display's fault.

I'm no fan of LCDs; in fact, I probably hate them more than anyone else on Earth does. I'd rather not play a video game at all than play one on an LCD. To me the difference between a low-end and high-end LCD is the same as the difference between a turd and a polished turd. But regardless of that, 4:3 LCDs are certainly still being manufactured, ones specifically made for arcade machines no less. Longtime arcade monitor manufacturer Wells Gardner makes them (both 17" and 19" versions), and there is the 19" Happ Vision Pro as well (albeit a disgrace to the name; the original Happ Vision Pro, last manufactured in the late 2000s, was a beautiful standard-resolution RGB CRT arcade monitor; I bought 3 of them new just before they and everyone else stopped manufacturing CRTs): http://www.arcadeshop.com/i/479/19-vp-lcd-monitor.htm https://www.wellsgardner.com/product-category/lcd-monitors/

Yeah, definitely an afterthought, and pretty much guaranteed to be costing them more money than to print the CPOs right in the first place. Reverse-printing onto 10-mil clear Lexan may be more expensive than printing onto e.g., 3-mil vinyl (though I doubt the vinyl they use is even that thick), but I doubt highly that it's more expensive than printing on vinyl plus machining out a 2mm (79 mils) thick plexiglass panel complete with button/joystick/speaker/bolt holes to go on top of it. On top of that, reverse-printing onto clear, textured 10-mil Lexan would give the cabinet a touch of authenticity, and it would look and feel way better than thick plexiglass sitting on top of printed vinyl.

That works, but it's a kludge which brings to mind the glut of generic and converted cabinets from the JAMMA era. If you reverse-print onto 10-mil clear Lexan in the first place there's no need for a plexiglass covering, especially in a home-use environment. I suspect that it would also be cheaper to do it right than to print on top of vinyl and also add a control panel-sized piece of plexiglass to it. In any case, I find it bizarre that they didn't see that coming. Reverse-printing onto Lexan isn't even just an arcade machine thing. I already mentioned NES gamepads, but it's also standard procedure for control panel overlays on all sorts of equipment, like the old fast food joint cash registers that had membrane keys (before everyone went to touch-screen LCDs).

You could see premature wear on the control panel overlay in one of the early pre-release video reviews that was linked to in this thread in August 2018 (post #476): That's what happens when you ignore established standards. The standard for a control panel overlay is to reverse-print onto a clear, usually textured, sheet of Lexan (polycarbonate), usually about 10 mils thick. Since the ink is on the underside of the Lexan, it can't wear at all without first wearing through the Lexan, which, for all intents and purposes, will never happen. That's why the printing on old arcade machine CPOs is never worn off, no matter how beat up the CPO is, and you can make the colors look like new with a Magic Eraser (which is an abrasive). The stock NES gamepad uses an overlay that is made exactly the same way, which is why the words/letters ("Nintendo," "Select," "Start," "B," and "A") and accompanying graphics never wear off, nor wear at all, no matter how well-used it is. Here's a picture of a Punch-Out control panel with its original CPO that was used for years, if not decades, in commercial arcades. Most of the original texture of the Lexan is worn to a smooth, shiny surface. Also in the picture is a new reproduction, made the same way as the original (I drew the vector graphics file that was used to screen print the reproductions): If you just print on top of vinyl like they did with the Arcade1Up CPOs, of course the ink will wear off quickly. It doesn't take a prophet to predict it either.

It isn't even cabaret-sized, it's only 4' tall which makes it Moppet-sized (4'-tall arcade machines made in 1982 by a company called Moppet Video exclusively for Chuck E. Cheese, intended for children age 3 to 8). Unlike this thing, Moppet cabinets were built to true arcade standards, just scaled down. A real cabaret machine would look big next to one of these. Cabarets have normal-height control panels (the normal height for a control panel is about 36" to 40", depending on the angle of its slope and the height of the leg levelers). They are usually about a foot shorter than a standard upright (around 5' rather than 6'), and they are narrower and have less depth. They weigh around 200 pounds (compared to around 300 pounds for an upright, or a comical 58 pounds for the Arcade1Up). For example, here are the specifications for Atari Centipede: Type Height Width Depth Weight ----------------------------------------- Cabaret: 60" 20.50" 24.75" 220 lbs. Upright: 71" 26.75" 32.25" 307 lbs. Cabarets are perfectly playable due to the most important part being at the correct height (the control panel), plus they are heavy enough to be a stable platform for "spirited" gameplay.

If I couldn't have a CRT I wouldn't play video games at all. My PC monitor is a CRT too. A couple of years ago it was down for about a week because I had to fix it (take it apart to document the ~100 electrolytic capacitors, order them, wait for them to arrive, install them and fix some cracked solder joints on the yoke header), and in the meantime I grudgingly bought a 27" Acer G276HL LCD monitor. I hated every minute of using it, and I haven't touched it since I got my CRT back up and running.

they are showing off microswitch buttons which click when pressed. Classic Arcade games didnt use microswitches, they used leaf switches, which dont click are are far more responsive. Every classic Nintendo arcade game used microswitches for both the buttons and the joystick, e.g., Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Popeye, Mario Bros., Punch-Out, Super Punch-Out, etc. Atari's "cone buttons" used microswitches, which were used for Missile Command's three gameplay buttons (cone buttons were usually only used for the player start buttons). There's no difference in responsiveness between a microswitch and a leaf switch, as they are both digital switches (i.e., they only have two states: open or closed). There is only a difference in sound and feel, plus, leaf switches can be adjusted by bending them to change the point during the button's or joystick's travel at which they close.

Yeah, it was the fall of 2015 (October). I mailed you the resistor shortly after I did the modification myself: And it definitely makes a big difference: Before: After: And for comparison: Light Sixer: Atari 7800: The 6-switch models still have the best color, but it is still a big improvement for the 4-switch model nonetheless. Plus it is an easy modification to do, and practically free.

I played the ColecoVision when it was new and I hated the controller. The joystick was short, stiff, and not particularly responsive, but the worst part was that my hand that held the controller would soon start to cramp up (the same thing happened with the standard Atari 7800 joystick). I didn't have any problems with the standard Atari 2600 joystick, though in hindsight I much prefer a gamepad (I currently use modified NES controllers with my Atari 2600 and 7800). Yes, but they were nothing like the joystick on a CV controller. Aside from being much larger and having far superior design and construction, they were also solidly mounted to the control panel of a ~300-pound arcade cabinet, so you didn't have to hold onto anything to stabilize them. The buttons were solidly mounted on the same control panel as well, rather than being on either side of a controller that you operated with the same hand that you were stabilizing the body of the controller with. Arcade machines normally had the joystick on the left and the buttons on the right. In some cases the joystick was mounted in the center (such as with Pac-Man). I don't know of any classic arcade machine that had the joystick mounted on the right. A solidly-mounted joystick is the best way to play a video game in my opinion, but a handheld joystick is the worst way. If I'm going to use a handheld controller, I'd much rather it be a gamepad than a joystick. With a gamepad you're not applying any leverage against the base when operating the D-pad like you are when operating a joystick, plus a gamepad is stabilized with both hands instead of just one.

I just played the Genesis "Special Champion Edition" port for the first time on a real console (previously I'd only played it in an emulator). I played on the hardest difficulty level and beat the game with two losses on my first try (one to E. Honda and one to Vega): 1. On my 32" CRT TV from 8 feet away, using composite video, the graphics aren't noticeably better or worse than the SNES versions, though the colors are a bit different. 2. The sound is hard on the ears, especially on Dhalsim's stage with those elephants that won't shut up. Those elephants are bad enough in the original arcade versions which have good sound quality, but they are downright torturous on the Genesis port. The SNES TWW port eliminates the elephant sounds altogether, which is the best approach in my opinion. In the SNES Turbo version, you only hear the elephants at the end of a round, which isn't bad either. 3. The OEM 6-button Genesis controller has the ideal layout for SFII, which is nice. I've never cared much for the Genesis D-pad though; it is loose and has lots of travel compared to the SNES D-pad. It's plenty responsive though, and works well enough in this game. 4. I've heard people claim that the Genesis version plays better than the SNES version. That's not true in my opinion. For the most part, they play the same, however, the Genesis version sometimes has hit detection issues, which is bizarre. For example, Balrog is particularly susceptible to foot sweeps; you can often knock him down with a heavy foot sweep a few times in a row if you time it to connect just as he's getting up. In the Genesis port it would sometimes ignore the foot sweep. Balrog was absolutely in range of the foot sweep, and he should have had to block it or take the hit, but instead he just stood there while my foot went through his with it doing absolutely nothing. I don't know if it happens with other opponents or not because I mostly only use that strategy against Balrog. I have never had that happen on the arcade or SNES versions. So, in my opinion, the only thing the Genesis version has over the SNES versions is a better controller layout (the SNES shoulder buttons are awkward for SFII), but even the controller is a mixed bag because I prefer the SNES's D-pad. In every other category, the Genesis version is either the ~same or worse than the SNES version.

I didn't know anything about Street Fighter II (I'd never even heard of it) or any hype surrounding it when I first started playing it. The time frame was late 1991, not long before CE was release in the arcades (which was March of 1992 according to Wikipedia). I was 16, almost 17, and had just gotten my driver's license. At the time I had a weekend job behind the counter at a laundromat/drycleaner place which was located in a plaza. In that same plaza was a LaVerdiere's Super Drug Store, which had a room in the back that they called "Action Family Arcade". Hardly anyone was ever in there. They had maybe a dozen arcade machines in there, including a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior machine in a Dynamo HS-5 cabinet. When Wendell McCoon showed up that night, that was the first time I played a human opponent, and the first time I realized that the game could be taken to a skill level that I hadn't been aware of. Also, he told me that a new version of the game had just come out, which he had been playing at Space Port in the Bangor Mall, called "Champion Edition". Not long after that I drove to Bangor to check out Champion Edition, and there were several CE machines lined up, front and center. They were also in Dynamo HS-5 cabinets, which was one of the three types of "dedicated" cabinets that Capcom used for them (the other two being 3-KOAM Z-back and Capcom "Big Blue"). I had improved significantly in the short time since I'd played Wendell, by applying the methods I saw him use against me. The only game I remember specifically playing in Bangor that first time was against some guy who used Dhalsim. He beat me several times in a row before I figured him out, and I didn't lose to him again. I vividly remember the first time I played Mortal Kombat. It was at the Dover-Foxcroft bowling alley and I was with my friends Ian and Corey. I had mixed feeling about it. I loved the graphics and the sound effects, but I didn't care for the gameplay mechanics. I especially hated that you had to press a button to block, which, being an SFII player, seemed very awkward. Also, throwing didn't work the same way as in SFII. My friend Ian was just mashing buttons and kept throwing me, but I didn't want to mash buttons; I wanted to know what the correct input and timing was so that I could throw when I wanted to. Technically it was the same as in SFII, i.e., when close enough push left or right in the direction you want to throw and press a punch button, but it still wasn't implemented in the same way (different distances or timing windows or something), and I could rarely get it to work intentionally, whereas throwing in SFII is as easy as falling off a log and as reliable as the sunrise. I also didn't like that you took damage from normal punches and kicks even if you blocked. This was not only at odds with SFII, but also at odds with other arcade games I'd played a lot of, such as Punch-Out, Super Punch-Out, and Karate Champ. On top of all that, I didn't like the price: 50 cents to start and to continue. All the SFII machines I'd played were 50 cents to start and 25 cents to continue. The 50 cents to start in SFII was bad enough; it was the first game I ever played regularly that was more than 25 cents. The first 50-cent game I ever saw was Dragon's Lair when it was new, but I didn't play it, and fortunately the 50-cent pricing didn't catch on with other games, not until SFII came out many years later anyway.

That's an utter non sequitur, given that exactly no one in this thread claimed, suggested, nor even hinted that there was "no storages device available"; quite the opposite in fact. And you've still yet to explain what "mental loopholes you had to jump through" to think that anyone in this thread claimed, suggested, or even hinted that computers didn't have any form of storage outside of an expensive floppy. I suspect you don't know what the term "e.g." means. It is an abbreviation of exempli gratia, which is a Latin term that translates to, "for example", and by definition the example(s) given is/are not exhaustive. So when I said... "And to save you would need to have a separate storage device (e.g., a floppy drive), because the Atari 8-bit computers didn't include one by default, and neither did other affordable home computers of the time, such as the Commodore 64, TI-99, VIC-20, and so on (not that I know of anyway)." ... that means that a floppy drive is one of multiple examples of a separate storage device. What of it? Many people (especially kids) who owned those affordable home computers in the early 1980s used them for video games. The e.g., TI-99/4A, Commodore 64, Atari 400/800, VIC-20, had cartridge ports. The Apple IIe was quite expensive; I didn't know anyone who owned one when I was a kid. They were common in schools, and that's the only place I ever used one. They also did not have a built-in or otherwise included RF modulator, which complicates the process of connecting one to a typical TV in 1982. My list of uncommon things which would have had to come together for the "generated on a home computer and output to a TV" theory remains unfazed by your efforts.

I hated the new voices and sound effects. The CPS-1 versions had a powerful "KSHHH" sound for the heavy punch and a very different dull thud sound for the heavy kick. Super Street Fighter II has a pathetic-sounding version of the "KSHHH" sound for the heavy punch and the heavy kick sounds almost identical to it. The original announcer had a normal sounding voice while the SSFII announcer had an irritating high-pitch voice. I hated that they changed how you throw someone in SFA3. 7 years and 7 someodd sequels in and they change something as fundamental as how you throw? That's like changing how you block or remapping the standard 6-button layout. Ridiculous and pointless. I have SFIII: Third Strike for the Sega Dreamcast (which I got for free), and I can't tell any difference between it and the arcade version (which I've only played in MAME). They changed how you throw yet again (absurd), and for no apparent reason there's some "street" sounding guy in the background on the character selection screen saying stupid random things like "Yeah, I got the picture" and doing some sort of weird "rap". The style of the graphics is an improvement over, though similar to, the Alpha series. I never liked that anime look that Alpha introduced though; I've always liked the classic graphics of the original CPS-1 versions the best. I dislike the 3D models of IV and V even more than the Alpha and SFIII anime look. I play the newer versions sometimes as a novelty, but it doesn't take me long before I'm wishing that I was playing vanilla SFII instead.

I have to wonder what mental loopholes one has to jump though to think that anyone in this thread claimed, suggested, or even hinted that computers didn't have any form of storage outside of an expensive floppy.

Yes, I believe that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof has been met in this case, and that it is a strong enough standard of proof to warrant the invalidation of a video game record.