Gankak
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The correct answer:
Star Trek:TNG pinball machine is so much better than this one
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Poll Best Arcade Game Ever!!
- Thread starter BoozeCube
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Star Trek:TNG pinball machine is so much better than this one
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The derelict movie $1 theater that was converted to a high school parking lot used to have a Rampage box, and also had a Super Off Road 'cade.
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torvaldutne
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We had an NBA Jam machine in the Pizza Hut I worked at and we would access it and play for free for hours after closing time. I loved all the other games on that list too but one I would add that came later was Killer Instinct. We used to blow whole paychecks trying to master the combos and beat that one older kid.
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Does anyone here have one of these self contained ones like the one linked? I've tried various RaspberryPi type emulators before and always ended up very disappointed. Far far too much work and super buggy. Is there a better thread to talk about emulation / emulators?
And the list is missing the real best arcade games ever made. Missile command, Tempest, BattleZone and Berserk. I spent far too much time playing those.. AH, and Bosconian. I have spent hundreds of hours in the lobby of our theater playing those Bosconian - Wikipedia
I used to have a ton of these from our theaters lobbies in our storage barn. I always intending to restore them someday. Parts for some of them, like Star Castle, RadarScope and Berserk were hard to come by. But dam vandals broke open the door and got in. Smashed the hell out of them 20+ machines ended up being tossed out or parted out. All I've got left is a Centipede and a Zaxxon.
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I have a Pandora's Box 5, pretty good. If you're some kind of arcade elitist apparently the joysticks and buttons suck, but for a layman like me they seem fine.
I also have an Odroid XU4 running Batocera. If you thought the Raspberry Pi running Retropie (I'm assuming) was too complicated, try Batocera out. It's available for multiple devices, including PC, super easy to setup because it basically is already setup out of the box. It isn't as customizable as Retropie, but it requires literally 0 setup. The advantage to the Pandora's Box is that it has the joysticks and such built in, whereas I use a PS4 controller for the Odroid. Not the same experience using a gamepad as compared to a joystick, but obviously you can just buy a joystick.
Gamma Rays
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That is interesting that you said that the buttons & joystick are possibly not so good. I had put that as a caveat in my earlier post ( that I couldn't vouch for the buttons & joystick ) knowing that the button and joystick action can affect the game experience, once you've been used to it being a certain way.
To explain that further, with my arcade machine build, I had bought buttons that were illuminated, The player 1 & 2 start, then the game buttons would be red and blue, a row of red and a row of blue per player. Thinking of how good they'd look all illuminated like that.
I got them and fit only a few as part of getting the system running and checked. I soon realized that the feel was just that bit wrong, the return action of the button was a little loose and the button could lean to one side just a bit and rise slower as it slid against the internal walls and that the spring is lighter. All this is because of the added bits for the internal light. So the button return being off means that when you want to rapid fire 1942 or Galaga style, the return of the button is 'patchy'. You want a button that allows you to find the pressure sweet spot and ( for want of a better word ) flutter it up and down to rapidly click the micro-switch mechanism. I had also bought a few buttons that were plain old style all in black, to use as service buttons. A quick change to them and game play was much improved. In truth the feel of the different buttons might only be a 5% difference . . . but that's the 5% that makes the difference. I have since ordered a replacement pack of 12 all black buttons.
Also joystick feel, I bought a pair of good joysticks. But even fresh out of the pack I still needed to make minor adjustments.
Basically what I needed to do was, the little metal tangs extending from the micro switch, I had to grab them with needle nose pliers and add a little bend to a couple of them. To give them a consistent and even stick travel distance in all directions.
The method of checking the joystick feel is to give it a spin around the clock a few times. Do that at a even speed and listen for the micro switch's pattern of clicks. You want to have it so that there's a perfect rhythm to the clicks, that tells you that the metal tangs are set up just right.
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Well that's the thing, at least on my unit I don't have any problems with the buttons sticking or being slanted or anything else. I hit a button, I get a satisfying click, the button does what it's supposed to do and then it returns to it's natural position. I only made the comment about the buttons sucking because that seems to be what a lot of arcade experts say. I personally have 0 problems, but I wouldn't know the difference between a sanwa and a (perfectly working) knock off. Maybe there is a difference and I need to use both back to back, but from my perspective the buttons are fine. Then again, maybe my unit is a unicorn and a bunch of units out there have sticking buttons or whatever else. If you do decide to buy 1 you also have the option of changing the buttons or the sticks to whatever you want as well, they are fully modular and built just like any arcade stick. If you're not satisfied, but some sanwa buttons or whatever and plop then in there.
I should also point out, after looking at the original post, I believe that unit might be a knock off of the actual Pandora's Box. There are a ton of random Chinese companies making these self contained units and they are not all built equally well, but they all seem to be piggy backing off the Pandora's Box name. The original Pandora's Box units are made by a company called 3A Games and they tend to be more expensive than the knock offs (I believe mine was $220ish). The 3A Games units have a much faster processor than most of the knock offs, and from what I've read a lot of the knock off units have significant slowdown in certain games. The trade off seems to be that the knock offs will allow you to load your own games so if the list of 1000 or whatever games is missing something you really want, you can go ahead and put it on there. The 3A Games units have a totally locked down bios or something, any change to the SD card or thumb drive (don't remember what it is) causes you to brick the device. I don't know if there's any build quality difference (other than the processor etc) between the originals and the knock offs.
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That's actually one of the few arcades I've put enough quarters in to finish in one sitting. Which was like $20-25. Same with the Jurassic Park shooter and the ST:Voyager Borg shooter. Even with 90% accuracy, those games guarantee kill you at least 3 times per area. The Voyager one took like 45 fuckin minutes. Played with my wife, after a while she's all, "my arm hurts," I push her continue button, "I don't care, keep shooting!"
Siliconemelons
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Void
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Whose dick I gotta suck to get Contra on this list?!
2-player Contra was the shit. Buddy and I could beat both Contra and Operation:Wolf almost every time at our college arcade. People would crowd around and watch us because we made it look so easy. Especially Operation: Wolf, where we knew where the guys were going to appear and would literally shoot them the split second they appeared in some cases.
That fame and notoriety translated into exactly zero pussy rewards. <feelsbadman.jpg>
Joust would actually be my pick for favorite/most nostalgic, but I can acknowledge that it probably isn't exciting enough for bystanders to really merit the top spot like Contra might. I feel that's an important part of best game ever, because if no one wants to crowd around and watch, less people are going to actually want to play it.
That's why, of that list, I picked SF2. I liked many other games better to actually play, particularly Golden Axe, but SF2 was (of those listed) the first and best at making people ooh and ahh in a crowd around the machine. Not saying people didn't do that for Pac-Man and Joust and others, but not to the same level that SF2 commanded. To me, that's the gold standard for crowd-drawing, combined with an actual fun game to play.
2-player Contra was the shit. Buddy and I could beat both Contra and Operation:Wolf almost every time at our college arcade. People would crowd around and watch us because we made it look so easy. Especially Operation: Wolf, where we knew where the guys were going to appear and would literally shoot them the split second they appeared in some cases.
That fame and notoriety translated into exactly zero pussy rewards. <feelsbadman.jpg>
Joust would actually be my pick for favorite/most nostalgic, but I can acknowledge that it probably isn't exciting enough for bystanders to really merit the top spot like Contra might. I feel that's an important part of best game ever, because if no one wants to crowd around and watch, less people are going to actually want to play it.
That's why, of that list, I picked SF2. I liked many other games better to actually play, particularly Golden Axe, but SF2 was (of those listed) the first and best at making people ooh and ahh in a crowd around the machine. Not saying people didn't do that for Pac-Man and Joust and others, but not to the same level that SF2 commanded. To me, that's the gold standard for crowd-drawing, combined with an actual fun game to play.
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Wow
Is this the same 3A games you bought from? 3A Game Store - Small Orders Online Store, Hot Selling and more on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group If so, how long did the order take to get to you?
I've already figured I would end up replacing the joysticks with better ones, maybe something like a Sanwa. <
Oh and going back to the theme of the thread. I was thinking about this again last night. Three games that should be on the list:
Tron (Not disks of Tron, the original)
Star Trek (Sit down version)
Ghost's N Goblins
All three of those were great games that drained many pockets of quarters. The only problem with Ghosts n goblins was that it would make people ANGRY when they lost. It was one we had a hard time keeping working, people would break the joystick on it. I think we sold ours or traded it for a Popeye game.
Dammit... Now I read this bit about 3A games AFTER I ordered one from someone called HAAMIIQII.
Is this the same 3A games you bought from? 3A Game Store - Small Orders Online Store, Hot Selling and more on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group If so, how long did the order take to get to you?
I've already figured I would end up replacing the joysticks with better ones, maybe something like a Sanwa. <
Oh and going back to the theme of the thread. I was thinking about this again last night. Three games that should be on the list:
Tron (Not disks of Tron, the original)
Star Trek (Sit down version)
Ghost's N Goblins
All three of those were great games that drained many pockets of quarters. The only problem with Ghosts n goblins was that it would make people ANGRY when they lost. It was one we had a hard time keeping working, people would break the joystick on it. I think we sold ours or traded it for a Popeye game.
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The HAAMIIQII is apparently pretty decent as well. Post a review when you get it. It's supposedly pretty "powerful", but a lot of the games are PSP versions, so you might need to find a true arcade file. Mostly the 3D games.
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NBA Jam was definitely fun, it's just not in the same league as MK2 and SF2.
I don't remember which teams I played with that much, I remember Golden State being pretty good, but the fact you couldn't play as Jordan was bullshit at the time cause Jordan wouldn't license his name to them.
Funnest part was inputting codes to play as MK chars and weird shit like big head codes. Or was that one of the sequels? I forget. I do remember laughing at the Marv Albert voice saying "Into the stands!" when you'd foul the shit out of people.
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NBA Jam from an arcade standpoint didn't have acknowledgement until it came out on SNES. Similar to NFL Blitz on N64. When I was up at Digipen they had an open NFL Blitz arcade that I smashed on, but not something I ever wanted to dump more quarters into every....quarter.
