Can you tell me the name of the person who broke the record on that game over there, and where I might find him?

This project was born out of having MAME installed on my home theatre PC downstairs. I originally started out by running it with a GameEX front end with two wireless game pads.

Game pads, unfortunately, do not lend themselves well to the majority of classic arcade games. Also, having spent a small fortune in my youth on arcade games, I had also wanted to reproduce the classic feel of all my favorite games.

From there I found the Project Arcade book on Amazon, as well as the BYOAC forums. Several weeks of intense research and discussion with my good friend J and I managed to finalize an order for parts and start the project.

I had originally intended it as a 4 player, 7 button each, 2 trackball and 1 spinner design. J reminded me of the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars we had spent on Rampart. The design was modified to be:
4 player
7 buttons for player 1 and 2 4 buttons for player 3 and 4
3 trackballs
2 spinners.

A significant amount of controls, to be sure. However it maximized the number of classic games I would be able to play. J has been the sole reason for the success of the control panel design with his AutoCAD skills. '

This blog will keep track of the project as it progresses as well as showing the costs, steps and learning curve along the way.