This week I started the process of adding a M.A.M.E. PC to my cocktail arcade cabinet. The PC is a 3.33GHz Celeron D with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Probably a little overboard for a MAME PC, but I wanted some room to grow if I need it. I also wanted to make sure I had adequate horsepower to play games like Street Fighter II and the Metal Slug series, which can be problematic on slower MAME machines. The whole PC was under $300, but I also had to buy an ArcadeVGA card and a J-PAC from Ultimarc so that I could interface the PC with my vintage-spec arcade cabinet.

I decided to use Windows XP as the OS. I considered both Linux and DOS, but XP ended up being the best fit for my needs. I also installed a VNC client, an FTP server, and a wi-fi card on the box so I can administer and configure the machine remotely. That way I don’t end up elbow deep in arcade guts every time I need to make a simple software change. The arcade screen looks great with MAME, but using XP with a 640×480 interlaced screen is a nightmare…that’s where VNC comes in handy.

Finally, to handle sound I got a little unconventional and decided to modify a small car amplifier and an ATX power supply to drive the four 4″ speakers in my arcade cab. Most MAME builders just modify an existing set of PC speakers, but I wanted to try something a little different. Modding the ATX supply to work with the car amp was a lot easier than I expected and my bench test with a pair of junk speakers and a CD player sounded great.

Right now all I need to do is install the amp and tidy up the wiring and I’m done. I’ll post some pictures of the guts when it’s finished.

A few years ago I purchased an FC Twin and went on a NES and SNES cartrige buying spree, but a lot of the games I really wanted (RPGs, mostly) were incredibly expensive. I also wanted to play some of the Japanese RPGs and platformers that never made it over to the states, but those required a Japanese SNES and any ROMs that had been translated to English required an emulator.

As much as I love emulators, they just aren’t the same as playing on the real hardware. I have a PC hooked up to my TV that I’ve used with NES and SNES emulators in the past, but I’d much rather use the FC Twin or my SNES if I’m going to sit down and do some serious playing. For years I wished I could buy a flash cart for my SNES that worked the same way my Gameboy, GBA, and DS flash carts did.

It took some hunting, but there are a few dark corners of the interweb that provide just such a device. The one I found is made by Tototek. It works with about 90% of the SNES ROMs out there, and more importantly, works with homebrew and modded SNES ROMs, which includes the fan-translated RPGs. The device can also copy SNES carts for creating your own ROMs, and is capable of copying and writing save games to original SNES carts. The only ROMs it won’t work with are ones that required additional chips. Super Mario RPG, Mario Cart, Pilotwings, Star Fox, Yoshi’s Island, and the Mega Man X games are just about the only “good” games that fall into this category. I already own cartridges for all of these, so this really wasn’t an issue for me.

My only gripe is that the flasher requires a parallel port, so any laptop users are out of luck. Luckily I just switched from a laptop to a desktop, so this isn’t an issue for me. It might make using this thing a little tough in another 4 or 5 years, though.