Tips

Arcade

Tips on playing the old-style coin-operated video arcade games. You can buy the actual old game cabinets from eBay and other places. Or you can set up MAME on your desktop, using game ROMs you legally own. Or you can build you own game cabinet, with a small dedicated computer running running MAME.

MAME on Your Desktop

MAME originally stood for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, but nowadays it means much more than that. As its website states:

MAME is a hardware emulator: it faithfully reproduces the behavior of many
arcade machines (it is not a simulation). This program is not a game but can
directly, through ROM images, run the complete system of these old arcade
machines. These ROMs are subject to copyright and it is in most of the cases
illegal to use them if you do not own the arcade machine.

To set up MAME, do the following:

• Install the latest MAME binary using your OS package installer. On macOS you can just do brew install mame
• Copy the ROM zip files into the ~/.mame/roms/ directory
• Run any specific game from the CLI with mame stargate
• Install manu, a small Go util that reads above roms directory and prompts for what game to run

Read more in the MAME Reference.

MAME on Raspberry Pi

• Install Ubuntu 24.04 desktop on Raspberry Pi 5
• This assumes you’re using Apple macOS to do all this
• Use an SD card of at least 16GB in size
• Insert the SD card on your Mac
• brew install raspberry-pi-imager
• Run the Imager and burn the latest Ubuntu Desktop image
• Once done, insert the SD card on your Pi5 and install Ubuntu

Ideal Arcade Monitor

The ideal arcade computer monitor is the ViewSonic 4/3 aspect ratio VG939Sm monitor. The Model No = VS15843.

Additional configurations and settings follow below

Below are some general guidelines and configuration settings for such a setup, but you’ll need to improvise where necessary.

Adjust CLI Console Character size

sudo mount -o remount,rw /boot/firmware
sudo vi /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
Remove the 'quiet splash' at the end, and add 'video=800x600' or 1024x768 ; 1280x720 ; 1920x1080
sudo vi /boot/firmware/config.txt
Add below
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=16  # 9=800x600 ; 16=1024x768 ; 4=1280x720 ; 82=1920x1080
dtparam=pciex1_gen=2

If necessary, you can make further adjustments via dpkg-reconfigure utility:

sudo apt install console-setup kbd   # To optionally install addtional Font Sizes
sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
Select Terminus                      # Default is VGA
Select Font Size 8x14, or whatever

Setup SSH

sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

Disable desktop

sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
sudo reboot
sudo systemctl start graphical.target        # To manually start the Graphical Desktop
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target  # To re-enable Graphical Desktop

Auto-login setup

To set default user for automatic login, edit the getty service:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf

Add below:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --autologin USERNAME --noclear %I $TERM

# Note: Replace USERNAME with the actual username

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart getty@tty1.service
sudo reboot

Issues

• If keyboard does not respond when the manu menu comes up, ensure that the user you’re running all this under has the correct permissions by doing sudo usermod -a -G input $USER

Set New Hostname

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname <NEW-HOSTNAME>
sudo vi /etc/hosts  # Change it here too
sudo reboot

Ensure Sound is Working

Plug a USB-to-3.5mm audio connector to the Raspberry Pi 5 and connect that to your speakers. Test with below steps:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber pipewire-audio-client-libraries
sudo apt install --reinstall libspa-0.2-bluetooth
pactl info | grep "Server Name"
pactl list short sinks
aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav  # To test speaker

Install MAME

To download and install the latest MAME binary. Use the binaries located at https://stickfreaks.com/. Note that they use 7 Zip for compression. Note also, that this setup puts certain binaries under the $HOME/bin/ directory.

cd ~/bin
curl -LO https://stickfreaks.com/mame/mame_0.281_debian_13_trixie_arm64.7z
sudo apt install 7zip
7z x mame_0.281_debian_13_trixie_arm64.7z -omame_0.281
ln -sf mame_0.281/mame mame

So the mame binary will reside at $HOME/bin/mame, and remember that the standard MAME configurations normally reside under the $HOME/.mame directory.

Compile MAME?

If you decide to compile MAME yourself, which allows you to select only the machines you are interested in, follow below instructions.

Install required packages and clone MAME repo

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential libsdl2-dev libfontconfig1-dev libpulse-dev \
  qtbase5-dev qtchooser qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools libqt5opengl5-dev \
  libasound2-dev libxinerama-dev libxi-dev libgl1-mesa-dev python3
sudo apt install libsdl2-ttf-dev

git clone https://github.com/mamedev/mame.git
cd mame

Initial Compilation

You will need to do a full compilation first, in roder to build the needed emu.h and other core headers. This *can take a long time:

time make clean
rm -rf obj
time make SUBTARGET=mame SOURCES="src/mame/skeleton/testpat.cpp" REGENIE=1 NOWERROR=1 -j$(nproc)

Note that emu.h and the .pch files aren’t part of the source tree, and they are ONLY generated during a full regular build. This pre-step is a requirement in order to later do a restricted SOURCES build of a “tiny” MAME binary with only selected games.

Prepare Source Files

From the root of the checked out mame directory:

$ cat src/mame/custom/custom.mak
# Custom build for specific games

SOURCES += src/mame/capcom/1942.cpp
SOURCES += src/mame/namco/galaga.cpp
SOURCES += src/mame/pacman/pacman.cpp
SOURCES += src/mame/midway/williams.cpp

$ cat src/mame/custom.lst
@source:capcom/1942.cpp
1942            // (c) Capcom

@source:namco/galaga.cpp
galaga          // (c) Namco
galagamf        // (c) Namco
galagamk        // (c) Namco

@source:pacman/pacman.cpp
mspacman        // (c) Namco/Midway

@source:midway/williams.cpp
stargate        // (c) Williams

Tiny Compilation

time make SUBTARGET=mame SOURCES="src/mame/capcom/1942.cpp,src/mame/namco/galaga.cpp,src/mame/pacman/pacman.cpp,src/mame/midway/williams.cpp" REGENIE=1 NOWERROR=1 OPTIMIZE=3 USE_QTDEBUG=1 -j$(nproc)

# Confirm version and list of supported games
./mame -version
./mame -listfull

Boot into manu Binary

Boot into default manu Game Menu binary - See https://github.com/git719/manu

You may also want to update your $HOME/.bashrc file with below snippet, so that this special menu utility always run:

# Always run manu menu binary. See https://github.com/git719/manu
while true; do
    manu
done

Configure MAME USB Controller

Before configuring MAME, make sure the OS is able to read the joystick controller and buttons:

sudo apt-get install joystick
jstest /dev/input/js0
# Then press the buttons and joystick controls to confirm

Once you know the OS is able to read the controller, configure it within MAME itself by pressing TAB from an attached keyboard, and MAME will allow you to configure the buttons accordingly. For more info see the MAME documenation pages.

Creating USB Installers

• Download the desired ISO using curl -LO (see below).
• You will need an empty USB drive of 16GB or more in size.
• Create the USB using below instructions, which are for macOS, and therefore require the ISO be converted to DMG format:

curl -LO https://github.com/substring/os/releases/download/2023.11/groovyarcade-2023.11-x86_64.iso.xz
xz -d groovyarcade-2023.11-x86_64.iso.xz
hdiutil convert groovyarcade-2023.11-x86_64.iso -format UDRW -o groovyarcade-2023.11-x86_64
diskutil list 
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
sudo dd status=progress bs=1m if=groovyarcade-2023.11-x86_64.dmg of=/dev/rdisk4
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4

Now remove USB from your Mac, and in short, you’ll need to:

• Ensure that the target system allows booting off of a USB drive
• Insert USB into target system and follow the OS installation instructions