arcade machines running windows wtf?

[bradhig1]

Saw this at an AMC theater while waiting to see Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. What is this an emulation machine?

[4300]

Not sure what the innards of that machine originally were, but I've seen this more and more in "barcades" and the like. As these machines are breaking down, I guess it's easier to just insert a PC/raspberry PI/60 in 1 as opposed to actually fixing the board.

[simbalion]

It's getting harder and harder to find people willing to repair the old boards. Often, there are collectors out there with the knowledge, but they don't usually have the time or patience to deal with more than their old machines. Also, it can cost anywhere from $50-$75 an hour to work on these machines. If the person working on it has to stop and scratch their head over an odd issue, the meter just keeps running and the cost keeps racking up. It can cost $200-$500 just to have a jukebox amp rebuilt in my region.

[x=usr(1536)]

Saw this at an AMC theater while waiting to see Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. What is this an emulation machine?

 

Nope. The game runs under Windows. No, it's not a standard Windows installation and there are various protection methods and devices used in order to make running it on a regular PC difficult.

 

This has been happening for at least 15 years at this point - see the Taito Type X hardware for an example, though I think there were a couple of other arcade platforms doing this before that one.

[enoofu]

If i recall correctly Cave CV1000D Hardware was the last non Window/Linux Arcade platform for mainstream Arcades and that was around 2012.

Really the last major arcade board before this was Naomi and PGM series and once they aged it was game over for Arcade centrist hardware

[number six]

I've got a Pentium PC from a Beach Head 2000 in my garage.. so yeah this is nothing new

[davyK]

quite a few arcade machines still run Windows 98.

Edited July 1, 2018 by davyK

[x=usr(1536)]

Partial list of PC hardware-based games: http://www.system16.com/base.php#11

 

Note that that list is for games that run on PC hardware - that implies x86 / x64, not necessarily Windows (though many are Windows-based).

[mbd30]

Yeah. I've seen the blue screen of death on arcade machines, and this was over 10 years ago.

[VectorGamer]

When I was at ACAM a few years ago one of the laser disc games was sitting at a Windows 2000 desktop. Apparently that one is running Daphne...

[x=usr(1536)]

When I was at ACAM a few years ago one of the laser disc games was sitting at a Windows 2000 desktop. Apparently that one is running Daphne...

 

Speaking as someone who has owned a number of laserdisc games over the years, that's about the best way to make them reliable.

[Cynicaster]

For some reason, I'm picturing myself walking into an arcade and seeing a TMNT cabinet with that 90s "3D pipes" screen saver on the screen.

[Tanooki]

I remember it going on back around 2000, at work they had Arctic Thunder on the floor at Midway and it had some issue at one point and we had it tore open and the PC was right there. I think it was some old Pentium box, not even a 1ghz yet at the time tech wise, and they did it on an earlier one too in the 90s with Hydro Thunder which I think ran on some miserable little 486 compatible.

[masschamber]

I remember it going on back around 2000, at work they had Arctic Thunder on the floor at Midway and it had some issue at one point and we had it tore open and the PC was right there. I think it was some old Pentium box, not even a 1ghz yet at the time tech wise, and they did it on an earlier one too in the 90s with Hydro Thunder which I think ran on some miserable little 486 compatible.

Hydro thunder ran on a celeron at a few hundred mhz, but still it was a pc running windows

[Master Phruby]

Looks like Windows XP Embedded edition. It's the same hardware that use to run ATMs. It's a very different animal from the desktop os. It could be RISC or ARM based.

[masschamber]

Looks like Windows XP Embedded edition. It's the same hardware that use to run ATMs. It's a very different animal from the desktop os. It could be RISC or ARM based.

it is running embedded xp, but it is just an amd sempron and a nvidia graphics card

[+iesposta]

I never knew this about PC’s in arcade machines.

I knew they started using hard drives.

Seems natural that they would switch over completely to a computer motherboard.

PC’s were in bar top touch screens like Megatouch, way back to the 386 and 486.

 

I always wondered why arcade is home emulated on PC,

but Megatouch that runs from PC isn’t home emulated?

Nobody cares to preserve them?

The protection used has never been cracked?

Homes didn’t have a touch screen until recent tablets / phones / touch computers.

Megatouch does use a hardware key to block other uses.

Megatouch did make a Photohunt and then an HD version for iPad in the iTunes Store, but it’s no longer there, so must not have been profitable to the company.

 

MAME runs images from the arcade machines that use hard drive data...

 

I did know about recent bar-cades having MAME machines.