Arcade Cabinet/INTV

[ZillaRUSH]

Hello all.  Wanted to ask my fellow INTV friends...if you were to purchase a complete arcade cabinet (with MAME)...what brand/store would you buy it from?  Also, does anyone have INTV ROM's added on an arcade cabinet?  Is it possible?  That would be awesome!!   Thanks!

[gar0u]

ROMs are always tricky because of copyright issues.

 

I built a MAME cabinet out of an old Donkey Kong, Jr. cab that was converted (poorly) to Gumshoe.  I don't know how you'd lay out your controls to support most Intellivision games because of the keypad.  You're just grounding a switch and sending an input to MAME, so the machine-machine interface is simple.  I think the human-machine interface without the Intellivision controller would be awful.

 

I just received a Ultimate PC Interface yesterday and I'm playing with that along with the RetroPie OS for Raspberry Pi B.  If you don't want to homebrew it, you can buy one complete and ready to go.  You'll still need to do a little hacking to get it into your MAME cabinet though.

[mr_me]

If it's running a modern version of mame you can add intellivision rom files.  The controls will limit what intellivision games can be played effectively.

[+Rick Reynolds]

I have a MAME cab and definitely spent some time working on this exact problem.  I wanted to play Intellivision (and other console) games on my arcade cab.  I eventually decided that (for me) it wasn't that great of an experience for a lot of the inty library.  The arcade ports translate decently well, but not much else.  And I think that's probably to be expected.

 

To give you a glimpse into the setup, here's a control panel I worked up and tried for a while.  It was an attempt at a panel that would allow for playing Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Colecovision games - note the little spinners in place for the paddle games.

 

In the end I just didn't find playing by pushing down on a controller from above to be satisfying.  I wanted to hold the controller in my hand and reach with my thumbs like I was used to playing.  I ended up scrapping this design when I rebuilt my cab.

 

 

 

 

[Scathe]

I have a lot of experience with arcade machines and MAME, particularly building cabinets with Raspberry Pi and RetroPie, so I'm going to chime in with my thoughts. I do think it's possible, but it comes with a unique set of challenges.

 

Other than what's already been mentioned, the INTV controller uses the disc for directional input, which is something like 16 or 32-way. As far as I know, there's nothing like that for an arcade control scheme (in the traditional sense), as joysticks only come in 2, 4, or 8-way. The closest thing would be some kind of analog stick, like the ones found on modern console controllers. I don't know of any analog sticks that are designed for an arcade control panel, but you might look into some kind of flight stick. Some games would work fine with a traditional joystick, but others would be either clunky or impossible to play correctly, but flight sticks I believe are analog and work much more closely to the INTV disc internally.

 

Aside from that, as others have pointed out, the games could use any of the 16 controller buttons. You might be able to get away with a 10-button layout, and remapping the controls to work within the constraints of those 10 buttons, as I don't know of any single games that used all 16 buttons on the INTV or probably more than 10 or so. I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong about that, though. Regardless, you'd be able to do the VAST majority of the library with this type of setup.

[+stupus]

Sure its possible and many of us have been doing it for over 15 years.

Of course you cant get the 16 directions on an arcade stick but most games you dont have to have that. For the control pad you can map the second controller to the keys you need. Say for cloudy mountain. Or map buttons if you have enough. Or of course use the ultimate pc interface and map that with a real inty controller.

I helped many years ago build the frontend for hyperspin for intellivision with mame.

Of course most people agree nothing quite compares to the original inty hardware and thats how i play most everything now besides arcade games in mame.

Also i dont think there is any legit store that sells a complete mame arcade cabinet with roms and all systems included. But you can add anything yourself with enough effort.

[popsicle]

I used an Ultimate PC interface and Flashback controllers to build a dedicated Intellivision cabinet a few years ago. It uses an old win xp PC, jzint emulator, and a custom layout in Mala frontend.