Performance and Cocktails

Finally got around to taking a complete pic of the cocktail cabinet! By now most of you have seen it and used it but for those that haven't, wha-la.

Essentially its an old school, fish 'n chip shop cocktail cab but without the eyesore factor. Rather than being a 'landscape' design where you face the long edge and the joysticks protrude like ugly ducklings, the glass covers the entire thing in a 'portrait' fashion. This means for first time users, there will be a 5 second realization that you cant see the buttons while you're playing. As it's best practice to look at the screen, it's not an issue! If there's still confusion, ask a 2-3 year old to find them as its @ perfect eye height. :P

In the guts there's a PC (P4 with 512 if your interested) running Mame/MaLa. As the guts aren't quickly accessible, I've configured it to all turn on when the power is which makes life simple. One power lead running from the unit, flick it on at the wall when you want to play, windows starts then disappears behind 'MaLa'.

MaLa is a Mame GUI which is basically a fully customisable front end for Mame arcade gaming. Throw it into windows start-up and it will load a game list full screen. You can choose what/where/who to display on it so as you configure the games on the PC you can add them to the list. Using the joystick, you select the game you want and hit 1P Start - Done. Its a way of making the experience NOT feel like its on a PC which is always good.

It also contains shortcut keys to shut down the PC straight from the menus so, in theory, there's no need to see the windows backend component at all. After shutdown, flick it off at the wall and Bobs your distant relative...you know, a mate of your cousins uncles or something.

In all I'm really happy with how it turned out, it's a great way of having loungeroom arcading without having to look at a huge 2m tall cab with joysticks everywhere (like the new one!). When the screen is off it looks like a completely black sheet of glass and it also has the double plus of being flat so you could chuck a tablecloth over it and use it as a normal table if need be.

Enough from me.

Soundtrack of the Day: Can't you tell from the post title? Stereophonics - Just Enough Education to Perform - "The handbaaaaags and the gladraaaaags thaaaat-cha pooooooor old graaandad had to sweat to buy-ya"