Hardware Reviews ( 70 items )

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RetroBlast! Review: Happ Controls Rotary Joystick by Kevin Steele, 2004/08/01

Modeled closely after the Happs Controls Super, the Happ Controls Rotary's main claim to fame is the unique rotating joystick handle. Armed with a 12-position rotary switch on the joystick shaft, the Happs Rotary is the ideal solution to playing games such as Ikari Warriors.

RetroBlast! Review: Dream Arcades Cocktail Cabinet by Kevin Steele, 2004/07/01

Want that "arcade authentic" experience but don't have the room for a full size cab? A cocktail cabinet is the solution. Small and designed to be placed up near a wall, a good cocktail cabinet can give you all the authentic arcade gaming action you could want, without the space investment a full size cab involves.

Update, December 2004: I've updated the review to reflect the new hinges and ribbon connector in the latest version of the Dream Arcades cabinets.

RetroBlast! Review: KeyWiz Keyboard Encoder by Kevin Steele, 2004/07/01

The KeyWiz Max 1.5, by Groovy Game Gear, is a PS/2 keyboard encoder for MAME controller applications. It's a compact 32-input encoder unit, with a "Shazaaam!" shift function to double the number of effective inputs.

Update: Clarified the number of inputs used on both the KeyWiz and IPAC.

RetroBlast! Review: Happ Controls Perfect 360 Optical Joystick by Kevin Steele, 2004/06/01

Where to begin? I have to admit I'm having trouble thinking of an objective way to say that this is my favorite joystick, and by a wide margin. This will obviously slant my review to some degree, but if you've come here looking for opinion, I've got plenty of that to share.

Review: Groovy Game Gear's OMNI-Stik Prodigy Joystick by Kevin Steele, 2004/06/01

For the longest time, there were no truly switchable joysticks on the market. Sure, you could open up your cabinet and move an actuator, or you could use special metal frames that attached control panel to limit movement, but neither of these was really elegant or easy to use.

Then Groovy Game Game gear announced their OMNI-Stik Prodigy, followed shortly thereafter by Ultimarc's T-Stik Plus. Both joysticks provide easy 4/8-way switching, but they've both taken dramatically different paths to the same destination.

RetroBlast! Review: Ultimarc T-Stik Plus Joysticks by Kevin Steele, 2004/06/01

And now, time for something unique: the Ultimarc T-Stik Plus. What makes this joystick so special is its ability to switch between 4-way and 8-way operation from the top of the control panel, without opening anything up.

Happ Controls Super Joystick

RetroBlast! Review: XGaming Joystick by Kevin Steele, 2004/06/01

XGaming, creators of the X-Arcade, also sell the components they use in the X-Arcade console. The XGaming joystick is closely modeled after the Happs Super joystick: it shares many of the same specifications and is a dead-ringer in the looks department.

RetroBlast! MAME Spinner Roundup by Kevin Steele, 2004/05/01

RetroBlast! Review: Happ Controls Competition Joystick by Kevin Steele, 2004/05/01

The Happ Controls Competition joysticks is the one joystick in the roundup that I feel most comfortable calling the "industry standard." Used by both SlikStik and Treyonics as the default joystick on their controllers, the Competition is a good, reliable, all-around performance joystick.

RetroBlast! Review: Devastator II by Treyonics by Kevin Steele, 2004/04/01

It’s not often that you get to talk to the designer of a product when you’re doing a review of that product. It’s even less often that the designer hand-delivers the product to your door, yet that’s exactly what happened for this review.

RetroBlast! Review: Bits Limited Smart Strips by Kevin Steele, 2004/04/01

As a very happy owner of a Smart Strip, I recently re-visited the Bits Limted web site while surfing (yes, only a true MAME-cab junkie surfs power strip sites! ;-). I was pleased to see several new versions of the Smart Strip on the site, and I contacted Bits Limited about the possibility of reviewing one of them, the LBG1 “Brownout Protector.”

RetroBlast! Review: SuperBrightLEDs.com by Kevin Steele, 2004/01/01

GloWire.com's Lazer LED products, you already know I'm a big fan of these new light sources. Far brighter than yesterday's LEDs, the new ultrabright LEDs open up a new world of possibilities, especially when it comes to illuminating your arcade cabinet. They use less power and produce much less heat than incandescent lamps (an LED is typically 90% effective in turning electricity into light, an incandescent bulb is only about 10% effective). Plus, with a life span measured in decades rather than hours, LEDs are a "one-time" purchase for your cab. Install them and forget them.

RetroBlast! Light Gun Shootout by Kevin Steele, 2003/10/01

Just as it's not the same playing a trackball game with a mouse, playing a shooting game without a light gun just isn't right. There's nothing quite like stepping back, taking aim, and blowing some alien away with a well placed shot.

RetroBlast! Review: ACT-Labs PC USB Light Gun by Kevin Steele, 2003/09/01

After building an arcade cabinet with joysticks, a trackball, and spinner on it, the next logical gaming controller to add to the system (at least, in my eyes) was a light gun. However, choices in the PC arena are pretty lean for light guns. ACT-Labs, however, has come to the rescue with their “PC USB Light Gun,” a light gun for Windows-based PCs that is specifically billed as being MAME-compatible.

Being the only game in town, does the ACT-Labs light gun measure up? Or are PC gamers still stuck with using a mouse to “pretend” they're shooting in arcade shooters?

RetroBlast! Review: Wells-Gardner D9200 Arcade Monitor by Kevin Steele, 2003/08/01

When choosing components for a MAME arcade cabinet, one of the most important choices is the type of display. Quite often if you manage to find an old arcade cabinet you’ll get an arcade monitor included with the cab. In this case, the choice of display has already been made.

RetroBlast! Review: Bits Limited SmartStrip by Andrew Lattof, 2003/02/01

The Bits Limited Smart Strip

RetroBlast! IPAC Review by Kevin Steele, 2003/01/15

One of the most important parts of creating a MAME cab is connecting the arcade buttons and joysticks to the computer — without working buttons or a joystick, you just don't have an arcade machine! Since the PC can't accept arcade controller input directly, you need to adapt the button and joystick input into a format that the PC can understand.

RetroBlast! Review: Lazer LEDs by Kevin Steele, 2003/01/03

As soon as I finished building the MAMEframe, I soon discovered that I had made two errors in the lighting choices for my cabinet: the fluorescent trackball illumination and the incadescent lights on the coin mechanism.

Arcade Controller Roundup by Kevin Steele, 2003/01/01