Museum of the Game® & International Arcade Museum® Forums
I decided to take a go at making a ¾ scale Donkey Kong as a B-day gift for my bother. He really likes the Arcade1up games (I think he has three of them). He has also stated to me on a couple of occasions that he hopes that Arcade1Up would come out with a Donkey Kong. I said I doubt that, because Nintendo doesn't license their games very often. So I decided (without his knowledge) to make a ¾ scale Donkey Kong to go with his other Arcade 1Up games.
BTW, he was totally surprised when he got the B-day gift.
I took what I learned from my ThinCade project and got to work.
I wanted the machine to feel as much like the real deal as possible (within my budget), but only ¾ scale.
Here's the finished game:
The game is actually three in one (DK, Dkjr, & DK3). I'm not a big fan of "front ends" to mame as I feel it somehow makes it not feel "back in the day-ish".
I used a Pi Zero and AdvanceMame and with the help of my wife (programmer), we devised a way to select one of three game on boot-up via a selector switch. The switch must be in position on the game you wish to play before you power on the machine. The machine is set to silent boot and boots right into mame and loads the game. From the end user perspective it's just a flick of a switch (pause for about 30 seconds) and play the game. Here's the back of the finished machine showing the selector switch next to the power switch:
In reality the game isn't exactly a true ¾ scale machine. I did resize some dimensions in order to get the game to "line up" a little better at the smaller scale when placed next to an actual Arcade1Up game. Because of this, a lot of work went into resizing the cad drawings and the artwork. Here it is pictured next to my one and only Arcade1Up machine:
To coin-up the machine, the user just needs to press the coin reject button on the faux coin door.:
The coin door is just a big decal with two momentary push buttons. I whipped up the coin door in Photoshop, printed it, and laminated it. The push buttons I used are actually designed to be pressed by a foot, but the action of these buttons are quite soft and easy to push with your fingers. They are the closest looking to the original reject buttons I could find within my limited budget.
As to the electronics, it's pretty much the same set-up as my ThinCade project. They only difference is I used a 17 inch Dell LCD monitor instead of a 19 inch. That way the monitor is also ¾ scale to an original DK.
The black shroud around the monitor is just a heavy weight black poster board. It's held in by a few strategically place pieces of Aluminum tape (very aggressive adhesive).:
More details to come...
BTW, he was totally surprised when he got the B-day gift.
I took what I learned from my ThinCade project and got to work.
I wanted the machine to feel as much like the real deal as possible (within my budget), but only ¾ scale.
Here's the finished game:
The game is actually three in one (DK, Dkjr, & DK3). I'm not a big fan of "front ends" to mame as I feel it somehow makes it not feel "back in the day-ish".
I used a Pi Zero and AdvanceMame and with the help of my wife (programmer), we devised a way to select one of three game on boot-up via a selector switch. The switch must be in position on the game you wish to play before you power on the machine. The machine is set to silent boot and boots right into mame and loads the game. From the end user perspective it's just a flick of a switch (pause for about 30 seconds) and play the game. Here's the back of the finished machine showing the selector switch next to the power switch:
In reality the game isn't exactly a true ¾ scale machine. I did resize some dimensions in order to get the game to "line up" a little better at the smaller scale when placed next to an actual Arcade1Up game. Because of this, a lot of work went into resizing the cad drawings and the artwork. Here it is pictured next to my one and only Arcade1Up machine:
To coin-up the machine, the user just needs to press the coin reject button on the faux coin door.:
The coin door is just a big decal with two momentary push buttons. I whipped up the coin door in Photoshop, printed it, and laminated it. The push buttons I used are actually designed to be pressed by a foot, but the action of these buttons are quite soft and easy to push with your fingers. They are the closest looking to the original reject buttons I could find within my limited budget.
As to the electronics, it's pretty much the same set-up as my ThinCade project. They only difference is I used a 17 inch Dell LCD monitor instead of a 19 inch. That way the monitor is also ¾ scale to an original DK.
The black shroud around the monitor is just a heavy weight black poster board. It's held in by a few strategically place pieces of Aluminum tape (very aggressive adhesive).:
More details to come...