Suggestions on what else to add to new Bar Top

[bclinton]

Hi all - I am about 75% finished with my second arcade build. A bartop. I have Mame running fine with all the buttons working. It has 6 buttons a joystick and a trackball. On my full cab I added everything I could fine but quickly found out not all of them were playable with my buttons - more seemed to be geared toward using a gamepad. My question is - of the emulators which are more playable with the the button joystick layout I have?

Also, do you guys add all the mame games you can find or only include a small list of them. My full size has over 7000 mame games. I am thinking about limiting them to just a few chosen ones....

[Tom Speirs]

In my personal opinion and based on what I have found your basically limited to first gen such as the Atari consoles and second gen such as NES and Master system. Daphne is also a good choice but other than that you need to start digging out the gamepads.

[DazzleHP]

Also, do you guys add all the mame games you can find or only include a small list of them. My full size has over 7000 mame games. I am thinking about limiting them to just a few chosen ones....

I personally don't add all MAME games. If you keep up with the latest "fullsets" you'll know that there are 28k+ roms in there! I certainly don't keep all of them on my live system. I trim the fat down to what works with my setup (1x360 pad). It takes a bit of work but is worth it in the end if you ask me It definitely saves the embarrassment of a friend or family member launching a game, only to complain that it's completely uncontrollable I use two programs to achieve this and they have become invaluable to me over the years:

RomLister - easily filter your set on criteria you choose (ie less than 6 buttons, no lightgun games etc) then either move them out of the directory or delete the excess fat - entirely up to you. One of our Titans, Tempest made a great guide on its usage.

RomCenter - A brilliant rom manager that will "fix" your custom set you made using RomLister. May i recommend 1G1R setting when fixing a custom set. This will make it so all your roms are truely portable, and not rely on other BIOS/system files to run.

As for other emulators/systems i would say anything from the 16bit era (and before) should be fine. Rarely did any of those systems require more than 3 buttons simultaneously

[bclinton]

Great info. I am going to check out the 2 you recommended tonight. I assume after I trim the fat I simply update the list via Gameex?

[DazzleHP]

Great info. I am going to check out the 2 you recommended tonight. I assume after I trim the fat I simply update the list via Gameex?

That is correct yes - but i would also warn that when messing with auditing tools to first use a copy of your set! Otherwise if something goes wrong (and it most likely will if you've not done it before) then you'll be majorly screwed It's just good practice to always work on a copy in this hobby

[stigzler]

hi bclinton,

This is the exact predicament I found myself in recently. Cab all setup, but not knowing which games work well for which CP Layouts. DOn't think it's really platform specific. For example, Tekken 5 on the PS2 works great with just four buttons and a digital joystick. However, some older platforms, like N64 are a bit of a nightmare! - For example. Goldeneye doesn't work well at all. However, other N64 games will work fine as long as you can get away with digital joy and number of buttons.

I'm putting together a user-contributable database of console games that work well on cab/arcade sticks. Curently ironing out all the creases, but once finalized, will include link for people to add games. Please feel free to contribute when you find good games for cabs! Check beta below:

https://sites.google.com/site/alienarcade74/top-console-to-cab-games

[DazzleHP]

@Stigz i so hoped you saw this and even battled a lil bit with myself on whether i should call you out on it! Being in the forum that it was i didn't feel right doing so. I'm glad you posted man!

If anyone missed it - CabSoles!

[KRC]

16-Bit systems and earlier tend to be the way to go. Why not look into using your trackball as a mouse and playing some point and click adventure games, ScummVM springs to mind

[Circo]

So far I have built 3 bartops with 19" 4:3 touch screens. You can usually find them on ebay for $100 with a glass screen if your a little patient. Really adds to the experience in my opinion. The kids love it and there are tons of pc games that work great with a touch interface.

[bclinton]

So far I have built 3 bartops with 19" 4:3 touch screens. You can usually find them on ebay for $100 with a glass screen if your a little patient. Really adds to the experience in my opinion. The kids love it and there are tons of pc games that work great with a touch interface.

Thanks. I see quite a few on Ebay. Is Elo pretty much the standard? How about drivers for Windows. Never messed with a touch screen so I was wondering if there are any gotchas.