Target multi game - intersting info
Stephen Beall
Did a reset on the machine (toy) and while reading all the copyright
stuff I noticed it was powered by a Gamma Arcade, LLC board.
Gamma Arcade, LLC (gamma-arcade.com) is owned by Clay Cowgill. Me thinks
this has a the standard MultiWilliams board in there? Hmmm.......
-Stephen
Chuk
the menus were almost identical. Though I thought that arcadeshop had hired
them out to do that board. I wouldn't think he could produce it for someone
else. However, I have no idea what the actual situation is there. Maybe
Clay will speak up if he can?
"Stephen Beall" <sbe...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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davep...@aol.com
phoenixarcade.com
this? too bad he wasnt able to consult them on the whole game, the
final product would have cost a little more but probably would have
been a lot better.
oh well, maybe clay can step up and help the group out with a wintron
replacement. most people respect his designs
Clay Cowgill
news:A56mf.10180$l1....@fe26.usenetserver.com...
> Someone mentioned that the emulation was identical to the MW board, and
that
> the menus were almost identical. Though I thought that arcadeshop had
hired
> them out to do that board. I wouldn't think he could produce it for
someone
> else. However, I have no idea what the actual situation is there. Maybe
> Clay will speak up if he can?
Well, hey, I was just waiting for someone to ask!. ;-)
Of course I'm NDA'd on the subject as to most of the particulars, but yes,
we were involved with the product. We worked under contract to do the
software development and help bring up the hardware design. (Our software
solution is optimized to run on hardware with very limited RAM and CPU
resources-- a good match for a very cost sensitive device like this one).
The hardware wasn't directly done by us (we worked with another contractor
that implemented the ASICs and handled the final hardware design). If
someone tears into it it's kinda anticlimactic-- a couple 'block blobs' (COB
packaging) and a little memory. That's about it!
I must admit that I've been conducting a little science experiment
collecting the feedback here before people got any sort of bias knowing any
back-story about it. :-P
(Clearly the product wasn't intended for readers of this newsgroup.) ;-)
That having been said, it really *is* fully emulated. (...and quite
accurately so with the exception of the TV output instead of a full-on
arcade monitor.) One of the early comments to the contrary was from someone
who had pitched a competing design that we beat out. I didn't feel like
getting in a pissing match over it. No, it's not a Nintendo or Genesis. :-P
I will say that every 'negative' that people mentioned here was not the
first time it had been thought of... When it came right down to it though,
the costs couldn't move and the delivery date was set in stone. If the
retail price point was going to (really) be $499 and not $397 that might
have changed some things, but the channel buyers know what will sell at what
price points and the product needed to go out the door at the $397 mark and
still make everyone a profit at that price.
Like most engineers, given my druthers I'd probably just work on 'unlimited'
price stuff with 'open ended' timetables, but alas, that's not the kind of
thing you can sell by the truckload at Target... That having been said, all
indications are that it's going to do quite well in its intended market. I
suspect you'll see more.
-Clay
P.S. Some years down the road when the NDA's expire and if anyone's
interested in hearing them, I do have some good stories to tell about the
project. :-)
Big Al
> interested in hearing them, I do have some good stories to tell about the
> project. :-)
Sign me up. I can just imagine some of those conversations.
The site that has the old Atari correspondence makes great reading.
DOH !
Big Al
Bradenton, FL
neve...@verizon.net
source. Your end was a really nice job, Clay. Great game selection
too. Any "Easter Eggs" or hidden games in there? I emailed Big Games
and he said "no". But. . . ? He also stated that there would be no
future cartridges. Bummer. I'm working on a control panel for it as
we speak. Hopefully the TV remote will come soon so I can make the
picture at least somewhat better. . .
, Bill
Arcadefreaque
outputs... then when people toss the machines out sometime around june,
the boards could be salvaged for cheap multi-williams type setups
Matt
Multi-WMS and and other games that are listed on Arcadeshops site.
"Arcadefreaque" <arcade...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1134144855....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Michael Lenardon
was so bad that I could not see 1/2 of the colors in Wizard of Wor etc.
Michael
"Arcadefreaque" <arcade...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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Brian Morris
board only output to RGB for a TV screen? Might be worth it to buy and
put the board in something else with a nice cabinet and bigger sized
monitor. $379 for a multi board is not that bad. Might be able to make
a nice multi game in a arcade cab with a RGB converter, etc.. for
around $500-600.
Brian
Arcadefreaque
Brian Morris wrote:
>. $379 for a multi board is not that bad. Might be able to make
> a nice multi game in a arcade cab with a RGB converter, etc.. for
> around $500-600.
>
> Brian
>
enough someone would buy one and have their kids destroy it.. then I
could buy the board for $50 .. or maybe trade them a cheap "REAL" jamma
cab with MK or something like that in it and end up only spending
nothing :/
rescu...@gmail.com
after Christmas based on these developments. I may be listing a "free
cabinet" ... no boards. :)
Bret Pehrson
> P.S. Some years down the road when the NDA's expire and if anyone's
> interested in hearing them, I do have some good stories to tell about the
> project. :-)
I want to know how far off my cost estimates were...
mjarcade
I'm curious how many went into production, and how many have been sold
or ordered. I tend to agree with some who have said that it will only
peek interest for people who want a real game.
someotherguy
>The group's tone sure has changed about this...
Funny; I was just thinking the same thing earlier. It sure went from "what a
piece of crap" to "Oh cool; Clay was involved.. It's not so bad ..." : )
Richard
mjarcade
these days? Not much. That's why I am curious as to the production and
order numbers. Might be suprised. If nothing else, the guy on Ebay
should have his ass kicked by a buyer for this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6234561344
Eric
serious balls. It's like selling a paper cup as the holy grail itself!
Pretty shady. I wonder if he puts a gun to your head to buy it for that
price if you take a look in person.
~eric
Eric
commercial machine. Like home versions of pinballs. The cool thing
about it is that it will renew interest in classic games even if it
only sells a few. Shit, who knows?? Maybe it will bomb so bad they will
become more valuable then a quantum or a computer space. ;)
~eric
mjarcade
David Haynes
I looks like a piece of crap and from the pictures and descriptions of game play and the monitor I
can only assume it is.
When I return from Japan on Dec 22nd, I will get to see for myself.
Just because someone on this group had something to do with it does not change the facts.
Either it is a pieice of shit or it isn't.
David Haynes
d...@bombjack.org
big dog
I have played it and was not impressed, those games are not really the
ones I like anyhow. The gameplay was fine but the colors sucked and the
cab was way to small not to even mention how horrible the control panel
is:( I still think they will sell though, my Target was about sold out
a few days ago.
Mark Capps
Tim Iskander
door to all the crackpots and aholes to screw with "legit" ones too.
Caveat Emptor ... rule #1 on epay!
/Tim
zadok!
developed the board set. It's still a piece of crap after. The emulation
package might work fine, but the total package is what should be judged.
And the total package is a piece of crap.
Michael Lenardon
the emulation which is cool but apprarently there is no RGB out put making
it unlikely the board will have uses outside of the crap cab. When I saw it
my opinion was it is bad as a first impression. Because the monitor was so
bad I could hardley see what was on the screen. The re-assurance that the
emulation is accurate is fantastic. If anyone manages to test the internals
with a real monitor post some pictures and give a proper review.
Great programming effort and hopefully something good will come out of it.
Perhaps some cheaper non programmable boards will appear that are licensed.
Heck if Clay made a connection with Williams perhaps he can get full
licensing to sell with the jamma boards.
Michael
"zadok!" <aa...@REMOVEclassicarcade.org> wrote in message
news:c4SdnTJr8rG...@comcast.com...
Scott Caldwell
poor). However, if Clay can make-up a boardset (him
and the other company) for this pricepoint, then
he should also be able to come-up with a comparable
PCB with RGB output. Seems like that could be sold
for less than the existing Multi-Williams JAMMA
PCBs, by a large margin. I really like the idea of
a Multi-Williams JAMMA PCB, but just couldn't
justify the price. However, this PCB with RGB
outputs could be adapted to lots of cabs and be made
into Multi-Williams or "Midway" clones.
Clay, is the sound 100% emulated too? The Target
game I played sounded a little off.
Scott C.
neve...@verizon.net
new control panel for it last night. I played it gleefully for hours.
I have no intention of losing the cabinet. I like it. I was going to
make it taller, but I've been playing it sittng down. It's in my
computer room and I just roll my chair over to it to play. I also have
my Atari Flashback 2 hooked up to it.
Never thought I'd ever use the word "gleefully". . .
, Bill
Shatter Proof
<neve...@verizon.net> wrote in message
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Scott Caldwell
Scott C.
neve...@verizon.net
their up.
, Bill
Clay Cowgill
news:bGDmf.26948$BZ5....@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
> Seems like that could be sold
> for less than the existing Multi-Williams JAMMA
> PCBs, by a large margin.
Price is, of course, largely volume driven. In the case of the Target unit,
the very first shipment that left the factory was more total units than the
sum of every multigame kit, JAMMA adapter, pacman daughterboard, etc. that
I've ever sold in the last *ten* years combined. Suffice it to say that at
those volumes they can get a lot better deals on parts that the little guy!
They also kept the per-unit cost down by doing custom ASICs to integrate a
bunch of functionality down onto a couple IC's... Then they ran a lot of
product through high speed factories which gets good pricing (because the
setup/teardown expense on the line gets smaller when you run the line
longer). The problem for small volume products is that ASIC math just
doesn't pan out when you consider minimums and NREs. (Even if you just put
one wafer through on a small process you wind up having to buy 5-6K parts,
plus the engineering costs up front, plus the cost of the ASIC designer. ;-)
> Clay, is the sound 100% emulated too? The Target
> game I played sounded a little off.
Yep-- but the cabinet, speaker, and the audio output stages make a big
difference in the "sound" as you hear it. I can't imagine the TV has a very
beefy speaker in it. It's hard to get good bass without one, so higher
frequencies might seem more prominent. The original games also all have
slightly different analog filtering in their audio path, so we did have to
compromise a bit to try to get things as good as possible across all titles.
(Having a steep rolloff on a filter to make the old Williams games sound
'just right', resulted in the other games sounding too muffled, etc. We had
to pick something that was "good" for all, but probably not the best
possible for any one particular architecture. You could likely 'fix' that
with some DSP on the sound, but there wasn't that kind of budget in the
hardware.)
-Clay
Steve Muccione
but the question is how many will get returned and how many actually sold?
it's going to be interesting to see if this is a money maker/loser.
"Clay Cowgill" <c.co...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:HN6dnSYrNpHftgbe...@comcast.com...
Arcadefreaque
Michael Lenardon wrote:
> The cabinet, monitor, and control panel are crap.
I dropped by target to take a look for myself... calling the
cabinet/monitor/cp crap is an insult to crap.
Scott Caldwell
Scott C.
Dane L. Galden
I think 80% of the perceived problem with this unit is the monitor. If it
were bigger and brighter, the other things could be overlooked more easily.
Dane.
heyyou
to play it and all the screws holding the joy sticks had fallen out .
both joysticks were fallen throught the contrl panel.but it did have 19
" monitor LOL
Dave Bush
> It's a piece of crap. It was a piece of crap before everyone knew clay
> developed the board set. It's still a piece of crap after. The emulation
> package might work fine, but the total package is what should be judged.
> And the total package is a piece of crap.
I completely disagree, and I felt that way when I posted my original
reply BEFORE I knew Clay had anything to do with it.
My wife got me one of these for Christmas, and I find it to be a fun
system with most of the Williams and a few Midway games that I really
enjoyed playing "back in the day."
Is this the same as having a nice custom cab with a multi-Williams board
in it? No, but it's damn close and for a lot cheaper.
I'd rather have this and understand that it's not the exact same thing
than spend my life worrying that "It's not a real cabinet" or "It's just
emulated" etc. Give me a break folks!
It's a machine targeted at consumers who don't want to use a furniture
dolly to bring it in the house, nor do they care if it doesn't have coin
mechs. Accept it for what it is - a nice CONSUMER GRADE system that
accurately emulates 12 classic games. For 99.9% of the people this is
targeted at (ie: not everyone in here) this is a great cabinet and will
make them happy for years.
You folks that are complaining about this not being perfect like a real
cabinet are the same type of folks that won't listen to MP3's because
it's a lossless codec, nor will you play games in MAME because it's an
emulator and not the orignal hardware, right?
Life's too short guys. Have a beer, relax, and let's enjoy a few games
of Joust on my new Midway Classics cab.
Eric
understand that the portion that Clay worked on works as intended but
was placed into a cheap wrapper which still makes the total unit a POS.
I just see lots of people that are going to be looking for them in
garage sales this summer to yank the MW board out of it.
mjarcade
That's all that was meant by the tone changed about this, and it did in
this thread. Others have obviously posted since then, and said it's a
piece of crap. Who cares? If someone wants one, that's great. AGAIN,
this machine was not marketed to this group, and the fact that a few on
here have bought one and enjoyed it, speaks for itself.
rescu...@gmail.com
If it
were bigger and brighter, the other things could be overlooked more
easily.
Dane."
For me, it was 50/50 dissatisfaction due to the display(50%) and the
controls(50%).
Games played fine, just looked and felt terrible...not to mention the
squeaking joysticks...
I have heard back from someone who has tried the monitor from that unit
with other games, PS or xbox, said it looks great. Not sure why the
display looks so aweful in the midway/target cab.
Arcadefreaque
rescu...@gmail.com wrote:
> For me, it was 50/50 dissatisfaction due to the display(50%) and the
> controls(50%).
Same here, except I had another 50% dissatisfaction with the size and
quality of the actual cabinet too.. so that makes me 150% dissatisfied
with it
James
http://retroblast.com/reviews/biggames.html
Inside Pics Here:
http://retroblast.com/reviews/biggames_2.html
Modded Cabinet here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzer1zdf/
"Scott Caldwell" <lscottc...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:_3Emf.27149$BZ5....@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
MARK
eloctofavigarity pressure in the regesrty.Am i right or wrong?
Clay Cowgill
news:oeonf.7523$Kf4...@fe08.lga...
> Yes but what about the digratory function??.It all come's down to
> eloctofavigarity pressure in the regesrty.Am i right or wrong?
Yeah. 220... 221, whatever it takes.
-Clay
VRJUNKIE
Here is some additional things I have to add to the review retroblast
posted of mine:
The sound in my home is actually much better than I anticipated.
Especially at this price point.
Everyone thinks the colors are bad due to the use of a bad monitor -
but I connected up my playstation and shot some emulated games to the
monitor and it does pretty good graphics and colors.
It must be a limitation of the hardware or memory constraints... It's
a shame the colors are not better, this is my main gripe (maybe Clay
could comment on this). The controls could be easily upgraded but not
the graphics!
What I do like is that it plays Rrobotron right... with two sticks. I
believe this is the only way short of having the actual arcade or a
special Mame setup. This definitely seems to be the cheapest way to
play Robotron as it was meant to be played!
Many ridicule this for not being a full size cab. This thing is perfect
for my basement as it is already full with many other big items (i.e.
bar, movie area with a projection TV, foosball, pool table, card table,
chess table, darts, etc). I had to really push it to fit this in, so
the small size is really a BIG plus for me. I am going to build a small
platform (with a foot recess) for it to get the height up,but the other
dimensions are perfect for me.
I really struggled on whether to buy this or not - It eventually came
down to bang for the buck... do I want to 3,000 or 300 to play Robotron
every now and then???
My guess is that for die hards that have to have EVERYTHING accurate
and must have a full size cab - will indeed want to pass on this. But I
think the masses (asssuming there is a mass market for these) will be
satisfied.
Regards,
Lane
rescu...@gmail.com
mfitz...@gmail.com
will buy it for $1K.
I need to sell one of the Target cabs on eBay lol...
Look at the SNK bartop for $500 on the Target site... i've tried it and
it has much higher quality.