Arcade Configuration

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(this is the fifth and final article in the series on building a retro arcade table)

Now that the construction is finished, it’s time to finally make this game table work. The arcade configuration should really begin before you fully assemble the cabinet, so that you can check that your controls are wired up properly. Fortunately, RetroPie makes most of the setup very beginner friendly. You can think of RetroPie as a single-package for your Raspberry Pi that includes 

• an operating system (a flavor of linux called Raspian)
• several emulators that are virtual versions of game consoles and arcade machine hardware (like Super Nintendo and MAME – Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) 
• A software package that ties all of the components together to provide a cool-looking and easy-to-use interface

The installation guide at RetroPie provides the entire system in a single download, along with excellent documentation. 

The only thing you need to get separately are ROMs — the actual game software. While these ROMs are available on the internet, they are usually hacked from the original arcade machine boards or game cartridges. That means it may be a violation of copyright and/or trademark to share them. For that reason, instructions for obtaining ROM’s is not provided in this blog. Check out this article on legal ROMs.

There are a wonderland of customizations you can make to your RetroPie setup, but only a few that are required to make the cocktail operate nicely. As long as you have some basic computer skills, these tweaks are simple.

Set up remote command-line access via SSH

SSH allows you to access your Pi from another computer and will simplify your arcade configuration. With SSH you don’t have to plug a keyboard in to the Pi every time you want to change something. It also allows you to have reference docs and troubleshooting info open on a computer while you tweak your arcade configuration.

In order for this to work, you do need to have your Pi connected to the internet on your home wifi, and you’ll need to find the IP address that it’s using. (This is typically shown in the administration page for your home wifi.) Logging in via SSH takes you directly to a command line prompt for your Pi. While that may be intimidating, you only need to learn a few simple commands to make the necessary configuration changes.

For more help:

• This article at RetroPie explains how to enable SSH on your system, and provides some basic commands.
• Here’s how to set up SSH access using a free tool called Putty.
• Another guide that walks you through the SSH setup

Rotate the Display

The first change to make in your arcade configuration is to rotate your display because you’ll be sitting at the end of the cocktail table, essentially looking at the monitor from the side. This is easy to do. Log in to your Pi via SSH, and from the command line, type

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

This command opens the main configuration file for your Pi in an editor and gives you permission to make changes. Use your arrow keys to scroll through the file until you find this line:

Display_rotate = 0

Change the value to 1 or 3, depending on whether you want the display rotated 90 degrees clockwise (1) or 270 degrees clockwise (3). 

Press ctrl+x to exit the editor

Press Y when prompted to save your changes, and press Enter to save with the same filename.

Now, back at the command line, type 

sudo reboot

This will reboot your Pi with the display rotated. (Note that this will also terminate your SSH session, so if you have more changes to make, you’ll need to start a new session).

Tip: If you find that your games are shifted to one side of the monitor or cut off, you can also edit the overscan values in the same config.txt file to correct this.

Use Advance MAME for Dual Trackballs

There are several different flavors of emulators for playing classic arcade games. Generally, MAME 2003 is recommended for the Raspberry Pi (and it automatically installed in RetroPie) because it doesn’t require as much processor power as later versions of MAME. (MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and was first released in 1997). Unfortunately, MAME 2003 does not support two separate trackballs…at least not easily. Another flavor of MAME, called Advance MAME does support this feature, and it also works well on the Raspberry Pi 3. Advance MAME is not installed automatically in RetroPie, but it easy to add after you have installed RetroPie: 

1. Go to your RetroPie Options menu
2. Select RetroPie Setup
3. Select Manage Packages, 
4. Select Manage Optional Packages
5. Select Advance MAME (You may see options for different versions of Advance MAME, but select the one just labeled “Advance MAME” which should be version 3)

Notes: 

Advance MAME three requires a different version of game ROMs than MAME 2003. Look for version 0.106 ROMs.

If you’re lucky, both trackballs will work automatically in Advance MAME. If they don’t, here are a couple of places you can start troubleshooting

• RetroPie Spinners and Trackballs page
• Advance MAME site here

Vertical Emulation Station Theme

You can change the theme of your system to make it easier to navigate through the list of games for a given emulator. There are dozens of themes available; however, most are designed for landscape-oriented monitors. We used the appropriately named theme VERTICAL_ARCADE in this build. You can find out more about themes on the RetroPie site. To change a theme, go to your RetropPie Options menu and select ES Themes.

Enabling Cocktail Mode in a Game

The whole point of building a cocktail arcade table is to play a 2-person game where the screen flips from player 1 to player 2. To enable this mode, you have to access the dip switches for the individual game. The term “dip switch” refers to physical switches that could be changed on actual arcade games, such as the points required for an extra life. To do this

1. Start the game that you want to play in cocktail mode
2. Press the TAB key (you should have a hotkey sequence mapped to your controls for this, such as SELECT+Joystick Right)
3. Select Dip Switches from the menu
4. Look for the menu item “Cabinet.” It will be set to “upright” be default. Use the joystick to change this to “cocktail”
5. Exit the menus to get back to the game.

That’s it, but be aware that cocktail mode is not supported in every game, so some trial-and-error is required to find the ones that do. 

Other posts in this series

• Retro Arcade Cocktail Table
• How to Make an Oval Arcade Tabletop
• How to Build a Trapezoid Shaped Arcade Cabinet
• How to Build Arcade Controllers for a Cocktail Table
• Arcade Configuration