Matt's MAME Project

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Hello everyone, to start off I would like to introduce myself. My name is Matt Lozy, I am a 19 year old college student who grew up going to Wildwood, NJ every summer. What does that have to do with building a MAME cabinet? Well its where I learned to love the arcades. Before arcades started to die out or turn into casino arcades (why oh WHY!), arcades were filled with cabinets ranging from Pac man to House of the Dead. I loved going every summer to the Wildwood shore and going on the boardwalk where there were at least 5 - 10 GOOD arcades. Now, however many years later, there are ZERO! Why? because they all either shut down or turned into a casino arcade where all they have are quarter slot machines where little kids play for plastic pieces of junk. Right now there is only 1 decent arcade left (it used to be the best one) and it isn't even very good. It has probably a grand total of 20 arcade games, with about 5 that are actually worth playing. Now this may sound like its just small, NO! its not, its actually quite big, but among 20 games are LOADS of slot machine games and crane games. Yes even the best one fell to the hands of arcade slot machines.

Well pretty simple really. One day on the net (about 2 years ago) I stumbled upon Webb's MAME Arcade Machine, which then led me to Jeff's Ultimate MAME Cabinet. Both providing an incredible wealth of information that really kick started this project. I really suggest checking them out if you want to see how others did their projects (both turned out excellent, which I hope mine does too). Anyway so I found their machines and I said, "Wow I really want to do that, that would be awesome!" OK so I probably didn't say that exactly, but you get the idea. So now fast forward until present day, where I now have some spare money, and a bit more knowledge about how about going to do this. With ideas swirling in my mind as I write this; I just can't wait to start.

That's the reason for this web site! So I can document and share my experience with others and hopefully give them some pointers on how about doing some things themselves. Have any questions? Email me! Please give a descriptive, non spam-like subject just to be sure I don't delete it by accident. :)

If your visiting this site I'm sure you know what it is, BUT for those that don't, well here's a quick explanation. First look up the definition to "emulate," then read on. Okay so a MAME (look at the banner on the top of every page for what MAME stands for) cabinet is... well... an authentic "looking" arcade cabinet. Okay let me step back a little. Way back in 1997, a couple of programmers made an emulator (now take the definition of emulate and apply it to a computer program) called MAME which emulates real arcade hardware on any PC.

Ok so now step forward again. What a MAME cabinet is, is a cabinet that looks like a real arcade cabinet, but instead of authentic arcade components inside, it has a PC (most likely running Windows) with the MAME emulator running on it. To control the games you buy REAL authentic arcade controls (such as buttons, joysticks, and if you want trackballs and spinners) place them in a control panel and then wire them to an interface. The interface I am using is the IPac4 which allows you to hook up your controls to it, then from the interface to your computer through a standard USB cable, simple as that! Once you have that, you get a computer monitor (some people use real arcade monitors in theirs, but that is overkill really. Arcade monitors are old, not made anymore, and tough to repair if it breaks. On top of that there are two types of arcade monitors, raster and vector. You can only play games with raster graphics on raster monitors and games with vector graphics on vector monitors) hook it up to your PC and VOILA! you have an arcade cabinet that can play 4,060 unique arcade games (with more being supported with every MAME release) out of the 7883 ROM sets.

Once you have the whole thing built and ready to get, you can then go a step further and use a front end application that runs alongside MAME. THEN hide windows (check the "Links" section of this website) and make your machine REALLY look like an authentic arcade cabinet.

So wait why go through all this trouble if you can just play the games on a PC?

Simple, without the whole setup you don't feel like your playing arcade games. Plus using a keyboard to control the games just doesn't feel right. It's really all about the experience.

NOTE: This is a site in progress. Until the project is complete this site won't be complete so check back often for updates!