Guitar Hero Arcade is just a computer running XP
- Thread starter blkdog7
- Start date
While I have seen plenty of Dell computers, there were certainly plenty of vendor brands used. My Centipede cabaret project was converted to Simply Solitaire, which has a fairly generic 386sx motherboard booting the entire OS (DOS) and game from a single floppy disk. The best part is it has a 19" Kortek VGA arcade mount monitor, which I will be reusing for other purposes. 
Scott C.
Scott C.
tbbk
Well-known member
The players are not supposed to see the thing boot in the first place. It should already be up and running when the doors are opened.
It seems tacky and ruins the mysterious facade that arcade machines have for players. True, almost all games today are produced via PC. Nothing wrong with that. It's one of the best ways to do it now.
However, players think less of the game when it gives the appearance that they could just play it at home on their own PC. It's just pretty lame. Having the screen display black for a long period of time would be more acceptable.
Think of it as Disneyland. Once you realize the mouse is some Joe/Jane under the costume. Doesn't it ruin the experience for kiddos? It's all about the experience, having everything fit into that "world" the designers have created. Seeing a human face under the toon, shatters the illusion.... whatever --not the best example. I just hope some folks understand the game design theory I'm talking about.
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2009
- Messages
- 5,834
- Reaction score
- 690
While that's all fine and dandy. Yes, patrons aren't suppose to be in a arcade during a boot sequence. Regardless, I would argue that any form of home OS displayed on boot-up is still problematic.
Errors happen. The whole thread was created because the OP had this experience. The chance of a game getting reset right in front of a customer is a probability.
What if a arcade owner owns arcade machines privately? (Who owns arcade games in their homes!?), Friends and family come over, you turn on the games. BAM! windows xp start up screens everywhere. 
Same situation as above, but a private party in a commercial arcade... right in the morning, none of the machines have been turned on yet, because the party arrived early... meh, same thing. Kills the magic.
One might not think such a small detail is important, but every detail of an experience can add or take away. If you start cutting corners. well, you get crap.
Neither you or I like crap. That sh!t stays in the sewers.
__________________________________________________
Unless you're a game designer, or work in the entertainment industry; none of these problems are elements for anyone here to get all bent out of shape about. There's nothing they can do. The game is already made.
It's just something to keep in mind if you are designing.
Errors happen. The whole thread was created because the OP had this experience. The chance of a game getting reset right in front of a customer is a probability.
What if a arcade owner owns arcade machines privately? (Who owns arcade games in their homes!?
), Friends and family come over, you turn on the games. BAM! windows xp start up screens everywhere. Same situation as above, but a private party in a commercial arcade... right in the morning, none of the machines have been turned on yet, because the party arrived early... meh, same thing. Kills the magic.
One might not think such a small detail is important, but every detail of an experience can add or take away. If you start cutting corners. well, you get crap.
Neither you or I like crap. That sh!t stays in the sewers.
__________________________________________________
Unless you're a game designer, or work in the entertainment industry; none of these problems are elements for anyone here to get all bent out of shape about. There's nothing they can do. The game is already made.
It's just something to keep in mind if you are designing.
ArcRevival
Well-known member
Unless you're a game designer, or work in the entertainment industry; none of these problems are elements for anyone here to get all bent out of shape about. There's nothing they can do. The game is already made.
Something to consider: the costs for doing this in hardware used in a commercial setting can be very different from hardware used in a consumer one.
In the late '90s and early 2000s I worked for a company that was involved with x86-based embedded systems. When powered-up, our devices showed what was effectively a standard PC POST screen similar to the ones you're talking about on the arcade games. We wanted to change the POST screen to be a graphic of our logo as opposed to all of the usual boot info.
Now, this sounds like a relatively simple change and it is, at least from the standpoint of the end result. Where it gets complex is when you get into all of the issues surrounding the implementation of that boot screen.
Firstly, this would have required a change to the BIOS. The BIOS manufacturer had an off-the-shelf version that did what we wanted, but at extra cost which drives up both component and unit pricing.
Next, we'd have to work with manufacturing to make sure that a new part number was assigned to the BIOS IC and that all documentation and processes on their end reflected this change.
Moving on from that, we'd have to make sure that our internal documentation reflected this change and that our developers and QA people were aware of it.
Further on down the line: because this meant a BIOS change, we'd have to change both our hardware and software QA practices to make sure that the new BIOS wasn't causing any problems for either one. It shouldn't... But you never know.
There was more to it than that, but you get the idea. And I do agree with you that this would have been nice to have, but ultimately I can understand some of the reasons behind why the game's creators may not have chosen to implement something along these lines.
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2009
- Messages
- 5,834
- Reaction score
- 690
I agree man. As designers you don't always get your way with the tools (Limitations, complexity, time, money) you have to work with. You can't always have 100%. But it's nice to strive for it.
I guess I will just have to carry my pet peeve of tacky OS bootup screens to my grave!
Unique dedicated hardware essentially died after the NAOMI/Atomiswave. The exceptions have been Namco still turning PlayStation hardware into an arcade hybrid (if you watch the Deadstorm Pirates boot-up, you'll see a PS3 menu and options to use a controller); Taiwanese/Chinese hardware like the PGM2 or when Cave was still making arcade titles. Everything else has been PC.
Guitar Hero was one of the last games that Raw Thrills ran Windows on...since then they've been favoring Linux. Jurassic Park as an example uses an HP system running Ubuntu; Big Buck Wild uses some other Linux variation and OpenGL.
Sega systems like Lindbergh, Ringwide/RingEdge, Europa, Nu are all still using Windows XP Embedded
Taito Type X/X2/X3 same thing.
Namco has given up on converting consoles into arcade hardware and now just uses PC - the new Mario Kart Arcade GP DX and Star Wars Battle Pod are examples of that. They did create a mini version of the PS2 to operate Pac-Man Battle Royale(2012) on though.
Guitar Hero was one of the last games that Raw Thrills ran Windows on...since then they've been favoring Linux. Jurassic Park as an example uses an HP system running Ubuntu; Big Buck Wild uses some other Linux variation and OpenGL.
Sega systems like Lindbergh, Ringwide/RingEdge, Europa, Nu are all still using Windows XP Embedded
Taito Type X/X2/X3 same thing.
Namco has given up on converting consoles into arcade hardware and now just uses PC - the new Mario Kart Arcade GP DX and Star Wars Battle Pod are examples of that. They did create a mini version of the PS2 to operate Pac-Man Battle Royale(2012) on though.
Last edited:
I agree man. As designers you don't always get your way with the tools (Limitations, complexity, time, money) you have to work with. You can't always have 100%. But it's nice to strive for it.
I guess I will just have to carry my pet peeve of tacky OS bootup screens to my grave!
And this is exactly why games on the NES and SNES back in the day are still wonders to me. How with such INCREDIBLY limited space available, the designers were able to create masterpieces. In fact, some of those limitations are what forced programmers to be more efficient, better skilled, etc. With newer games, the immense amount of resources available to programmers and designers kind of gets rid of that need to be efficient and creative.
At least it seems that way to me.
SanTe
Well-known member
Super Mario Bros. for the NES is 40KB.
Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES is 256KB.
Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES is 384KB.
I agree that having essentially unlimited resources makes game programmers lazy.
DarthNuno
Active member
and I presume they simply used Guitar Hero 3 'retail PC version', and ask the developers few modifications such adding credits management, removing 'home options', adding attract mode, etc... in order to use it as an arcade game.
We could simply use the regular GH3 PC version but I would be so happy to have a version without all the useless 'home' options (I have a Guitar Freaks cab and I would like the possibility to also play GH)... ;-)
Argh... I wanna play "For The Love Of God" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IAkn9pgDSc
I suppose it could be a stripped down version of GH3 retail.
Messed up thing is that there are several songs that are ON the arcade versions hard drive but not enabled. For instance, One by Metallica. I tried EVERYTHING I could to get the song to be playable and when I thought I had it the game crashed to a CRC Checksum error as it was booting.
I gave up screwing with the game after that.
Messed up thing is that there are several songs that are ON the arcade versions hard drive but not enabled. For instance, One by Metallica. I tried EVERYTHING I could to get the song to be playable and when I thought I had it the game crashed to a CRC Checksum error as it was booting.
I gave up screwing with the game after that.
Could it be an unlockable over time thing? Perhaps in the same vein as hidden characters in Marvel vs Capcom 2 or other fighters.
I think they (Raw Thrills) intended it to be unlocked with codes that they would sell to operators. Here's why I think that.
When we bought the games we were told that in a few years there would be "new songs" that we could buy. Those new songs were going to be given to us either by software updates or some sort of user entered code. Since the songs are already on the drive I'm going with the code entry method. I've not studied the test mode on the game but I'm sure theres something in there that would have allowed this. Or perhaps RT was going to issue another "update" that would open up this feature??
From what I've heard when RT went to Activision for the re up on the license Activision asked for $30Million instead of the $3Million that RT was told they were going to ask for. RT backed out and the games are what they are now...
