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 reas above roms directory and prompts for what game to run

MAME References:

https://docs.mamedev.org/index.html

MAME on Ubuntu 24.10 on a Raspberry Pi 5

Requirements:

a. Set up your Raspberry Pi 5 hardware as you wish b. These tips assume the Pi5 with 8GB of RAM, with an M.2 HAT with an NVMe SSD c. All this is done from an Apple Mac d. You need a USB drive/stick of at least 16GB in size

Basic setup:

Insert the USB driver on your Mac
brew install raspberry-pi-imager
Run the Imager and burn the latest Ubuntu Desktop 24.10 image
Once done, insert on your Pi5 and install Ubuntu on the NVMe drive. (May need more details here).

Additional configurations and settings follow below:

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 16x32 or whatever

Setup SSH:

sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

Updated Boot Order:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y rpi-eeprom
sudo rpi-eeprom-config
sudo EDITOR=vi rpi-eeprom-config --edit
Set BOOT_ORDER=0x6 to only boot off NVMe or 0x4 to only boot off USB
(Trying to set it to conditionally boot off USB is a nightmare)
sudo reboot

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:
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --autologin <USERNAME> --noclear %I $TERM
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart getty@tty1.service
sudo reboot

Issues If keyboard does not respond, you can try sudo usermod -a -G input $USER it’s not a permission issue with current 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 sound system 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

Compile MAME

You can also compile MAME yourself, which allows you to select only the machines you are interested in. Follow below instructions to do so on the Raspberry Pi 5 running Ubuntu:

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

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

To configure MAME with a specific USB controller, you’ll need configure within MAME itself, by selecting the game from the Attract-Mode menu, then pressing TAB, then configuring the buttons. There’s more info on page https://docs.mamedev.org/index.html.

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