Posted by Bill Connolly on 16, 2001 at 11:51 AM:
In Reply to: Try again, What's the Ideal number of buttons/controls? posted by Paul Leskowitz on 16, 2001 at 1:11 AM:
I built my cabinet from scratch and have a small control panel 10 inches by 24 inches. I have 2 spinners, a 2 ¼ inch trackball, 2 joysticks and 3 buttons per stick. There is also 6 control buttons, 2 coin, 1 pause, 2 start, 1 escape, and 2 pinball buttons on the side which are mapped the same as player 1 button1 and player2 button 1. I don’t have a picture but I do have some images which I can post tonight if you like. I will take some pictures of the cabinet this weekend and post on my website one day next week after the film is developed.
You could easily have 6 buttons per player on my control panel, I just chose not to as most the 274 games I have don’t need more than 3 buttons and for those that do, they are 1 player at a time games that can use buttons from both groups.
This is my 3rd panel for this cabinet, Originally it was 2 sticks with 1 button each for Atari 2600, then 2 sticks and 6 buttons each, and now what I mentioned above. I am pretty happy with it given the size limitation. One thing I did is put the buttons up on the panel to allow room for my hand/wrist to rest on the control panel. The coin and start buttons are not on top but on front of the panel.
I use the IPAC but changed the pin setting so the shift functions don’t work. I have 3 kids plus half the neighborhood so I built it so they could play it and not get into any settings and screw anything up. I have to pull out a keyboard when I need to do any work. But know that I have the games I want all configured, the only time I will be pulling it out is when I add other emulators such as an MP3 player, NES, etc.
Questions, just drop me a line.
: Okay, I have an Final Fight cabinet, so there is not alot of room. Sadly, it is a nice Final Fight cabinet with all the artwork which is about to be converted, sorry Saint.
: Anyway, what is the optimal control setup with limited space to play the most MAME games?
: 2 joysticks
: 12 buttons
: spinner?
: Mini trackball
: Has anyone extended the control panel of this type of cabinet to add more buttons/controls? Or should I go for the have multiple control panels for difference games? Also, how many maintenance buttons should I have? Thanks ahead