New Arcade Emulator

[Stella Kreuter]

Todayis the day I finally ordered my raspberry pi 3 model b, power-supply, and a 32GB SD card. I had an itch to get a bigger card, but then I came across this which led me to believe a 32GB card might be it's max and I don't want to pay more money only to find out it doesn't work.

Last week, while I was on vacation, I got inspired by my Uncle to build an arcade emulator. Then, coming back to work I found a hacker news post about an article from coding horror detailing some of the specifics about raspberry pi based emulators. I figure the first step to see if I want to take on this project is to price out all of the hardware. Then depending on how much disposable income I can afford, I'll hopefully act upon this impulse thought.

Yeah, I saw that when I loaded it up. That's how I would've done it anyway, considering the controller I connect to my arcade machine regularly is a DS4.

I did see that the "gamepad" option was greyed out for me. I can technically force the controls over (and have already backed up my own .ipc files just in case). Is it the same for you, or did you sidegrade to one of the firmwares that supports gamepad configuration?

I might move over to one of those anyways. Doesn't seem like the functionality is at all different other than the added gamepad functionality.

You have to flash the gamepad enabled firmware. It is identical to the non gamepad firmware except the gamepad section is now available. I just bought my xtension and the miniipac was several fw versions behind. (use 1.39 for the newest gamepad enabled firmware).

I vastly prefer the Xtension controller as two Gamepads with some buttons left as keyboard keys (mouse L/R, Exit, Pause). The trackball and mouse buttons still work without issue. Since the Xtension Arcade Cabinet has a keyboard tray and a keyboard connected most of the time, why bother having the Xtension as another keyboard? It causes too many issues that need complete re-configuring every time you change images. EmulationStation configures everything easily, and Mame would only need Coin1/2 and maybe start1/2 remapped afterwards. So much simpler, and no longer triggering fast forward and other retroarch defaults when using the keyboard only config.

Absolutely, thanks again. I guess I would've seen it anyway, since reading through your initial post completely before getting to work, I noticed that you'd already mentioned it. Whoops.

I'll definitely flash that firmware, then.

Im really new at this i was able to flash the controller to 1.39 and it now shows up as 2 controllers in using retropie emulation station but i cant figure out how to install the config files it says board FW version 1.39 keyboard only firmware board attached minipac and an apply button. when i hit the file button and push open and select the file it says file successfully loaded is that it?

I bought a used 2018 Xtension Ultimate Edition 4-player with Trackball recently, and can't get even 2-player to work with the free LaunchBox, only 1-player works for any games. Before starting LaunchBox, if I open a Notepad file and start pressing the Xtension buttons, I see the various keyboard characters in the file, so I know all the joystick and buttons are working. I found this 2018 Xtension unit does NOT have the various mode's options of later unit's as I tried holding START and Player 1 top buttons for 10s and nothing changed.

Just wanted to share this to the newbies like myself out there about which emulators run which type of games (this is referring to real Arcade stand up games which may have not been ported to a console):

3. SEGA NAOMI and NAOMI2 games are emulated using Demul ( ) and flycast core of Retroarch (these require different game types from Demul) using the *.lst file subtype. Most NAOMI2 games do not run in emulation yet. These games were circa 1999-2001

#1 The first thing I did was remove the SD card and put it in my computer to load ROMS onto it. Well, immediately, my PC's anti-virus software attacked the SD card and ruined it. I had to contact the seller and I had to download a repair tool. What I learned the hard way is to always turn off my anti-virus software before inserting the SD card into my computer!

#3 It doesn't work well for N64. Many if not most of the N64 games don't work. Or for example Beetle Adventure Racing and Crusin' USA do work, but they freeze up after maybe fifteen minutes of hard racing. You may want to look elsewhere for N64 gaming. I play N64 games on my laptop, instead.

#4 There's no cooling fan inside. You can play maybe up to Sega Genesis all day long and no problem, but if you try to play N64 or above, it overheats and then freezes up. Beware. Actually, so what I did was I added a cooling fan to mine. Maybe I'll share a photo later. N64 still freezes, but now I can play anything on the Arcade Box and it stays at a nice, cool temperature.

#5 A disappointment, the seller said that the emulator software can't be updated. So, not sure which version of the emulator it's using for Atari 2600, but all of the Champ Games demos won't play on it, unfortunately. I play those on my laptop running Stella 6.7.

It only seems to be affected on the FB emulator, but very frustrating!! Do I need to or can I connect another USB device, like a mouse or keyboard so I can actually control button actions and hot keys?

I am also trying to get AAE to work. I'm finding that even when using rocketlauncher, whenever I exist AAE my entire windows 10 machine loses resolution and color and gets stuck like that. Have to reboot. Anyone get past this?

Did you find a solution? I'm getting the same issue. I thought it was related to Rocketlauncher but it happens when I run emulator directly. This never happened before. Been using this thsi emulator for years without problems.

Very strange. I have AAE installed and configured here on both my Windows 10 machines (updated to the latest 2004 build) and don't have any problem exiting and not having the resolution go back to what it should. Perhaps someone with the problem show their AAE.ini file and I can see if I see any obvious difference which may contribute.

Although there were some differences in the graphics section between your ini file and mine, I was able to change my settings to match yours and continue to have no issues. I am leaning toward a video driver issue with your AMD card and AAE. This would not be surprising since AAE is so old.

I am using Nvidia and have the same issue however I was able to fix it through RocketLauncher by changing the Exit_Mode module setting to ProcessClose. Basically, if you exit out of AAE through task manager or through a batch script or similar, the issue won't happen. If you exit through AEE by pressing Esc, it happens. With this information anyone should be able to get it working even if they're not using RocketLauncher.

Arcades were venues in which many games were played at, often containing thousands of games. Arcades often got their revenue from players who paid to play games. Most arcade emulators focus on emulating many systems in one program, the scope of which varies between projects.

which was created by an anonymous user over the course of nearly half a year, adding a black background for OLED screens and poor eyesight, and suitable for Android phones to access without swiping the screen left or right. Use as little code as possible for quick access

Machines often varied by their design and, unlike consoles, were often tailored to just one game. Games were designed to eat as many quarters as possible, which is emulated with the "Coin" key. Some games have a service mode (mapped to F2 in MAME) with menus meant for the arcade owner to set dipswitches for difficulty, censorship, language, and most importantly a "Free Play" mode that allows players to continue as many as they want without requesting more coins. Sometimes, similar menus meant for developers (labeled debug or test usually, sometimes requiring a developer BIOS like with some Neo Geo games) are left in the game too.

Hardware made specifically for the arcade to provide for graphics and performance unseen on home consoles. Extremely common in the golden age of arcades but became much less frequent as companies used modified existing hardware instead to save on R&D costs and easier cross-platform development, or tried to differentiate between the home and arcade experience with control scheme gimmicks instead.

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