Pac-Man is Alive!

After four months of hard work I've finally finished restoring/converting my Pac-Man cocktail arcade cabinet to full glory. This cabinet has been locked away from the world for more then a decade, maybe even two decades. It was hidden away in my buddies garage forever, and then a few more years in mine, until I had the time to invest in restoring it. The cabinet was empty other then the original monitor, and in very poor shape. So I made the tough decision to "MAME" the cabinet. I'm sure I'll be flamed by the purists out there, but for me and this cabinet, this was the right decision.

I started off by stripping the cabinet bare, and giving everything a thorough cleaning. I had to rebuild the under carriage and leg levelers as the wood was splintered from years of moisture. I sanded rust off the metal components and gave everything a new coat of paint. I installed my old 19" IBM CRT monitor, which to my surprise fit perfectly with only minor alternations.

I then installed a vast array of new components:

• 11" Cocktail Control Panels from ArcadeDepot. I had to modify the controls from pac-man's centered solo joystick to a proper joystick & 3 buttons layout.


• Red/Blue Suzo Universal STC 500 (OMNI Stik) Joysticks (set to 4-way)


• Red/Blue Translucent Pushbuttons from FX Buttons


• Mini Round Momentary Pushbuttons


• Reused my old I-Pac4 Encoder from Ultimarc, however I may installed a GP-Wiz40 Eco from Groovy Game Gear that I have lying around to try it out.


• Cold Cathode Lights from NW Computer Accessories


• an old Dell Optiplex GX1 - running Micro XP Pro.

To keep the cabinet as authentic as possible I only installed MAME and classic ROMs that have a cocktail cabinet dip switch mode. No Nintendo, Sega, Virtual Pinball, or jukebox craziness on this cabinet. I configured everything under the MaLa front-end, and set the machine to boot directly into Pac-Man (you can then backout to select other games to play).

I still have a few more lighting, electrical, and software tweaks to make to the cabinet, but it's in fully function order. It was ready in time for my 30th B-Day party, and got a lot of usage and rave reviews.

Mark another knotch in the project tree, let's see what's next ...

Natural Selection

I started playing Natural Selection again a couple nights ago. This game kicks so much ass, because:

• It's a quasi port of the movie Aliens, which is one of the best all time Sci-Fi flicks. So right there you know it's going to be awesome.
• You can play either side, everyone likes to play the bad guy once in a while.
• It combines two of my favorite game styles: FPS & RTS. Which others have attempted but miserably failed.
• It's a mod for the original Half Life. So it's non-profit game created by gamers for gamers. Plus almost everyone has a copy of HL1, if not it can be purchased for $9.95 through Steam. And HL1's system requirements are minimal. So everyone can run this game.
• The development staff are dedicated to constantly fix bugs and develop new enhancements. The mod was initially release approx four years ago and today it's on version 3.1.3, and have developed two game play modes: Combat & Classic. Combat is good for when you don't have much time to play or just want to play quicker matches. I usually play a few rounds when starting to get warmed up.
• It's got voice communication! How novel is that? I'm still shocked by how many games are released with out this. Especially when they are military strategy type FPS. So you can actually bark orders during a heavy fire fight instead of retreating to a safe house to type chat.
• There's a variety of weaponry, gear, and offensive/defensive structures for the marines. As well as a variety of alien species with different attack methods, and different offensive/defensive structures. This really helps keep the game interesting. Imagine walking into a room that appears empty, only to find that it's actually full of cloaked aliens. Alternatively, being rushed by jet pack enabled flying marine troopers.
• With a myriad of online servers around the world there is always someone to play with.

Dang this list is getting long! Really I could go on and on about how awesome this game is, but honestly you should try it for yourself. It's a ton of fun. That's why it's one of our regular games at our LAN parties. If you aren't getting invites to our LAN events and would like to attend, drop me a note. I'm even more stoked about this game as the development group are actively pursuing a production version of this game on a higher gaming engine (like maybe HL2?)