If anyone has a lead on Jubeat machine, I'd be quite interested- the only rhythm game I didn't insta-fail at, so I came to appreciate it. Also not as enormous of a cabinet as Drummania XG and such.
The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
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Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an armchair woodworker with a tool buying/daydreaming complex, please share what gizmo(s) you refer to. Thanks. :)
At a guess, it’s probably something like a Festool Domino. You dry-fit the pieces and draw a line across the joint surface wherever you want a tenon. From there, the whole process is pretty automatic.
That's the one. The Domino is magic. And the after-market accessories are nice--the 3D printer people have gotten to work on this. I have an imperial conversion depth gauge for mine and stopped eyeballing millimeters.
It also cost a thousand dollars. But it's the sort of tool that has the obvious design and affordances to make me happy to pick it up and use it, and the things are unkillable--they last twenty years at a minimum. Festool is the sort of company that recognizes that customers are for life and they do a lot to support customers, too, even with thoroughly out of warranty stuff.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#43Oh I never thought this topic would go on HN. Playing music arcade games is my guilty pleasure. These arcade games always have creatively designed input devices that blows PC and smartphone games out of the water. Check Dancerush (DDR but you step on a touch screen), Wacca (With a round display area and round input panels) and Ongeki (Gacha and some light bullet hell mixed in) out.
Apart from Museca mentioned in the article, there is also Beatstream from Konami that got shelved after only one update. That game's form factor is ideal for touch screens but it's a shame it never gets released on smartphones. Maybe the cost of making custom background videos is too high to bo justified.
And kudos for Sega for at least exporting Chunithm and Maimai DX even though the former is a old version and both got a lot of pop songs removed due to licensing. I'm lucky to live in one of the countries these are exported officially. Otherwise I will need to go to Japan every fow months to get my fix.
There is a community that managed to make those Sega music games run on a Windows PC and they have built those custom input devices out of acrylic or MDF, complete with custom PCBA, firmware and reverse engineered drivers.
It's pretty ironic that the best players of DDR include Americans and Koreans that presumably started their career on those smuggled machines.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#44How does someone blow that wad of cash on a game and convince some editor to let them write an article about it only to not include a picture of the cabinet in the article? I guess it could be their desire to monopolize they mention, but they don't seem adverse to bragging about it. Also I'm surprised there isn't a somewhat niche pachinko parlor market in the US already. My quick search shows one place in Virginia ad…
Pachinko would be legally gambling in the United States and the loophole they use in Japan doesnt exist here.
There are elements of Pachinko that make it unattractive for casino's to mess with. All the machines would be licensed tech from Japan (cost), managing the balls (if you actually distribute them out) has costs associated that they dont get as many scaling advantages that Japan would get, the machines go through more wear and tear than slot machines do. Also its my understanding you redeem the balls to get your prizes (though some just print out tickets now?), so you would have to create some kind of redemption mechanism for the balls (and also create anti cheating measures agains this).
It's just a bunch of work for what doesnt appear to be much gain. The main appeal to the game is that it has more illusion of skill than slots do. And the gambling authorities would have to figure out what the acceptable win/loss rations are on the machines.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
At a guess, it’s probably something like a Festool Domino. You dry-fit the pieces and draw a line across the joint surface wherever you want a tenon. From there, the whole process is pretty automatic.
I assumed large CNC machine, ha ha. (I'm not there, yet.)
CNC is the one thing I have trouble getting my head around. It's cool, it's absolutely cool. But it doesn't fit my conception of "woodworking" very well. It's more of that "wood machining" side of things, which I respect but I'm not into.
I like the Domino because it makes easier a process I know I can do through slower means. I have used a dowel jig, I have used pocket holes, I've chopped mortises. But usually I just want to put two pieces together so I can clamp them and glue them and get on with the next thing. But most uses of CNC with wood seem to be "do things a person can't really practically do in a home shop" and I don't dig that.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#46If anyone has a lead on Jubeat machine, I'd be quite interested- the only rhythm game I didn't insta-fail at, so I came to appreciate it. Also not as enormous of a cabinet as Drummania XG and such.
Check out Jubeat Plus. Maybe it is real enough if you play on a large touch screen. Or perhaps you can find some replacement parts for the real machine and cobble together a DIY input controller.
I remember seeing a bootleg Jubeat (that isn't called one) in my local arcade. Perhaps it is from some Chinese or Taiwanese vendors. The input devices are very similar but it does not run Jubeat though.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#47If anyone has a lead on Jubeat machine, I'd be quite interested- the only rhythm game I didn't insta-fail at, so I came to appreciate it. Also not as enormous of a cabinet as Drummania XG and such.
Check out Jubeat Plus. Maybe it is real enough if you play on a large touch screen. Or perhaps you can find some replacement parts for the real machine and cobble together a DIY input controller. I remember seeing a bootleg Jubeat (that isn't called one) in my local arcade. Perhaps it is from some Chinese or Taiwanese vendors. The input devices are very similar but it does not run Jubeat though.
Hm haven't seen any machines that have the similar form factor, but the only arcades I go to are in Japan. Would be interested what music they have in the clone machines. I had a sideloaded APK that was a Jubeat approximation called Yubiosu for a while, before the official Android Jubeat Plus came out, but for whatever reason they only ever supported Jubeat Plus on a few devices. Since I don't otherwise have any iDevices, I'd rather just import a cabinet than get an iPad just for that.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#48I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college, but to get a box to actually put the machine in, its either a lot of time and effort to build one (I do not have woodworking skills, nor the desire to learn) or a lot of money to buy a shell, which I don't have. So it will likely stay a daydream. It would be nice to see people playing together in the lounge, though.
As another responded, building a cabinet is a pretty good first woodworking project, not really that hard. A cabinet can be as simple or complex as you want. Extreme example: a large cardboard box in fact is how I have often begun many of my past MAME cab builds. I make the cardboard prototype to test ergonomics, fit of the various components — surprisingly you can play on them if you go all the way to install and wi…
Funny that you mention a track saw. Because my TSO rail square just showed up...
Also, I don't even think MDF is a necessity for this, is it? The cabinets I babysat at the arcade in college were all three-layer or graded-density particle board.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#49I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college, but to get a box to actually put the machine in, its either a lot of time and effort to build one (I do not have woodworking skills, nor the desire to learn) or a lot of money to buy a shell, which I don't have. So it will likely stay a daydream. It would be nice to see people playing together in the lounge, though.
I'm assuming you want to build a full-size machine that mostly looks like it could have really been in an arcade... And you're right. The wood alone for such a project is very expensive right now. I know because I started it a while ago with scrap wood, and I'm rethinking how I'm going to do it with cabinet-grade plywood. Add in all the knowledge and effort to design and build the cabinet, and it becomes quite a task…
Arcade cabinets are made of low grade sheet goods, including just particleboard (not even MDF).
I'm thinking about making a furniture grade arcade cabinet personally (and mounting a CRT into it), but I'm a cautionary tale, you need not make my mistakes.
Re: The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US
#50I've visited plenty of arcades in Japan, and they were all horrible. Sure, the games were interesting, but they are sad and sometimes creepy places. Smoking is allowed in there, and with Japan's well known tobacco abuse problem, words fail to describe the stench in there. My Japanese girlfriend told me that "nobody normal would ever go in there" and was actually disappointed in me wanting to enter in that sort of pla…
The arcades I went to in Akihabara was pretty family friendly, but I did go to a smaller one on the 3rd floor of an anonymous looking business building in a different neighborhood and it was a bit seedy, but it was just nerdy guys playing classic games and classic consoles and not dangerous seeming at all. I wonder if your gf's perceptions are colored by how conformist and competitive Japanese culture is. Of course t…
Went to many arcades in the early eighties, smoking was never allowed. However, it was in California which was a pioneer in that area.