As I said I am still very much interested in MAME. I fully intend on seeing this project through. The pros are far greater then the cons. And even if its just one more "cool" thing in the house, so be it !
Recently I dug out my MAME for XBOX , I had a custom list I had created for my other MAME project and decided to test out the games. The majority of games worked well, others not listed, and some simply not working. But all in all I was pleased with the outcome.
A rather large portion of the classics I enjoyed could be played via my XBOX on my 42" wide screen........ Nice ! Now like many others have said there really is something about playing the oldies the way they were meant to be played. But none the less this was a great alternative.
I recently purchased three modded XBOX's with DUOX2 mod chips & the Cromwell bios. In addition to this I was able to obtain two extra mod chips. I now have six XBOX's.
One is a limited edition, clear green, HALO XBOX with upgraded 80 gig hard drive. The other your standard run of the mill XBOX, however I have painted the "X" white and installed a 180 gig western digital hard drive. My third remained bone stock with the cosmetic mod, in this case I painted the "X" green. The other three are at this point stock with the exception of the mod chip. I intend to perform a cosmetic mod to all three & upgrade all the hard drives.
The plan was to have an XBOX for every TV in the house, but even at that I only have 4 TVs. With that said two XBOX's would be left unused. This gave me an idea, use one of the leftover XBOX's as a primary emulator machine. I had wanted to install NES,SNES,N64,SEGA,etc onto the computer and run via the MAME machine. But fealt I would be better served to leave that space on the computer as it would be needed to network all the XBOX's. Not only that, but all data that had to be moved in and out of the XBOX's would need to done via that computer.
With that decided my plan is as follows :
Continue with my build of the MAME machine using my existing computer. The machine will be used to play MAME only and operate with MAME32 contained on a P4 computer (now MAME UI). My next bright idea was (is) to purchase another empty cabinet at the next auction. But this cabinet would be used to contain one of the six XBOX's. The only difference would be all my ROM sets & emulators would be stored directly on the XBOX hard disk. And in turn the XBOX would be contained inside the actual cabinet itself. I'm not going to get really fancy here, in reality the XBOX itself will be stored behind the coin door. The controllers will be either (a) wireless or (b) removed for game play via the coin door when the XBOX is powered on. I will remove the existing monitor and replace with a suitable TV for game play.
Once all the elements are in place I will consider weather or not to begin cosmetically altering the machine. Be it a new coat of paint, some decals, upgrading the sound system,etc. I have to realize my limits, and cost is a major factor. I figure as great as it is to play a real arcade classic and in real arcade way...there is no real loss playing Mike Tyson's Punch Out via an XBOX joystick.
I think this project is well within my means, and will be rather simple to pull together. I have the XBOX and all I need is the empty cabinet. I can purchase that at the next auction (May 31st, 2008) for $50. Nothing fancy, just another cool addition to the games room that people can enjoy with ease.
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