mrgthespirit
Beginner
Hi guys, first time posting here so not sure if this is the best place to share this but wanted to show off a project I've been working on the past couple of weeks.
I'm a big fan of the Bishi Bashi series so I thought it'd be a cool idea to make a 3 player setup of my own (little did I know how long this would take haha)
First things first was ordering the parts. I got a bunch 12V Led Arcade Buttons off amazon that also happened to have all the correct colors I needed to match with the look of the original arcade cabinet
From there I decided to make the controllers out of cardboard since A) I have no idea how to do woodworking and B) Even if I wanted to I definitely do not have any of the equipment to cut wood so finding the sturdiest cardboard available will have to do. From there I started taking measurements and cutting out holes to test fit the buttons. Found a stack of 9 by 6 inch cardboard boxes online that was the perfect size for what I was making.
When I found the right dimensions It was time to decide on what kind of hardware to use. As much as I would of loved to use the original pcb board they aren't exactly easy to come by and I know next to nothing about power supplies or hooking up game boards to the correct CRT monitors with Jamma so I decided to stick with emulation for this. The main way I would be connecting the buttons to the mini pc I was using was through a tiny box with a keyboard encoder. However, I also noticed that Hyper Bishi Bashi was one of those really cool arcade games that had custom LED outputs and I just knew that I had to get those working for my setup with a PacDrive. This is what the box with the Keyboard and Led encoder looked like before and after it was all said and done (Some of the red 12V wires I didn't end up using as I went a bit overboard with the splices)
I ended up adding a button in the back as a shortcut to the mame menu so I wouldn't have to swap games using a mouse and keyboard (more on that later)
Thanks to a nifty program called mamehooker I could get the LED outputs from the games buttons on the fly using some simple ultimarc led commands
Now its time to hook up all the buttons to the boards. The wires that go to the keyboard encoder (blue & white) were easy to connect to the buttons as they use crimp connectors, however for the 12V power supply I needed one wire for the power (red) and one for the ground (black) that is connected to the PacDrive so I ended up soldering those directly to the buttons.
Here's what the inside of each controller ended up looking like. I placed some additional padding under each button to reduce and wear and tear on the box over time as well as a small weight so the boxes wouldn't move as much. I knew that people were gonna be smacking the crap out of these buttons so the build quality was a huge concern for me. I went pretty crazy on the hot glue inside & outside to make sure that these things were made to last (or as much as controllers made out of cardboard could last at least)
Ended up using a smaller button for start as I would be pretty hard fitting 4 of those big buttons with such small space (but was still able to find ones that were 12V which is nice)
Just had to repeat this process 2 more times and a ton of soldering, splicing, and hot gluing later and voila we have ourselves a homemade Bishi Bashi arcade machine!
Here's a video of what the intro sequence looks like with the led buttons accompanying it. I never knew until filming this that the lights all sort of "dance" in succession to the beat of the song it's pretty cool.
I even ended up having time to make a little marquee. I did this by simply printing out the picture on two pieces of paper and traced over most the image with sharpie (hard to find a high res image of the title by itself) I wish I could have made it a little bigger in the end but I think it still looks good and helps complete the whole cardboard DIY aesthetic
But wait, remember in the beginning when I said that I was running this on an emulator and not original hardware? Well not only can we run Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ with all of its cool LED outputs it had from the original arcade, but we can do that for ALL (or at least a good chunk) of the Bishi Bashi games that run in mame!
I've gotten the following games working 100% with led lights and all:
- Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ
- Great Bishi Bashi Champ
- Anime Champ
I have a couple of youtube shorts showing them off on my channel if you want to see what those look like in action.
Unfortunately I couldn't get all the bishi bashi games emulated in mame working perfect with each game having their own issues:
Bishi Bashi Champ (96') - has serious graphical issues and no light outputs but is still *technically* playable
Super Bishi Bashi Champ - Game works great with 3 players but has some sprite layering issues in some games, also no light outputs even though they should be there if this video shared by another forum user is anything to go by
Step Champ - Game appears to be working ok... until you realize the sound doesn't work (does have light outputs though surprisingly enough - although each player only has one led besides the start button labeled as "halogen" in mamehooker)
Salaryman Champ - Only has Player 1 and 2 buttons working as there isn't an option to bind keys to player 3. Does have outputs however a lot of the minigames aren't english friendly so I didn't bother adding it to the list of games to play from
Steering Champ and Gachaga Champ use different controls than the 3 button layout but should still work.
Here's another video of it if you wanna see some gameplay in action. Thanks for reading!
I'm a big fan of the Bishi Bashi series so I thought it'd be a cool idea to make a 3 player setup of my own (little did I know how long this would take haha)
First things first was ordering the parts. I got a bunch 12V Led Arcade Buttons off amazon that also happened to have all the correct colors I needed to match with the look of the original arcade cabinet
From there I decided to make the controllers out of cardboard since A) I have no idea how to do woodworking and B) Even if I wanted to I definitely do not have any of the equipment to cut wood so finding the sturdiest cardboard available will have to do. From there I started taking measurements and cutting out holes to test fit the buttons. Found a stack of 9 by 6 inch cardboard boxes online that was the perfect size for what I was making.
When I found the right dimensions It was time to decide on what kind of hardware to use. As much as I would of loved to use the original pcb board they aren't exactly easy to come by and I know next to nothing about power supplies or hooking up game boards to the correct CRT monitors with Jamma so I decided to stick with emulation for this. The main way I would be connecting the buttons to the mini pc I was using was through a tiny box with a keyboard encoder. However, I also noticed that Hyper Bishi Bashi was one of those really cool arcade games that had custom LED outputs and I just knew that I had to get those working for my setup with a PacDrive. This is what the box with the Keyboard and Led encoder looked like before and after it was all said and done (Some of the red 12V wires I didn't end up using as I went a bit overboard with the splices)
I ended up adding a button in the back as a shortcut to the mame menu so I wouldn't have to swap games using a mouse and keyboard (more on that later)
Thanks to a nifty program called mamehooker I could get the LED outputs from the games buttons on the fly using some simple ultimarc led commands
Now its time to hook up all the buttons to the boards. The wires that go to the keyboard encoder (blue & white) were easy to connect to the buttons as they use crimp connectors, however for the 12V power supply I needed one wire for the power (red) and one for the ground (black) that is connected to the PacDrive so I ended up soldering those directly to the buttons.
Here's what the inside of each controller ended up looking like. I placed some additional padding under each button to reduce and wear and tear on the box over time as well as a small weight so the boxes wouldn't move as much. I knew that people were gonna be smacking the crap out of these buttons so the build quality was a huge concern for me. I went pretty crazy on the hot glue inside & outside to make sure that these things were made to last (or as much as controllers made out of cardboard could last at least)
Ended up using a smaller button for start as I would be pretty hard fitting 4 of those big buttons with such small space (but was still able to find ones that were 12V which is nice)
Just had to repeat this process 2 more times and a ton of soldering, splicing, and hot gluing later and voila we have ourselves a homemade Bishi Bashi arcade machine!
Here's a video of what the intro sequence looks like with the led buttons accompanying it. I never knew until filming this that the lights all sort of "dance" in succession to the beat of the song it's pretty cool.
I even ended up having time to make a little marquee. I did this by simply printing out the picture on two pieces of paper and traced over most the image with sharpie (hard to find a high res image of the title by itself) I wish I could have made it a little bigger in the end but I think it still looks good and helps complete the whole cardboard DIY aesthetic
But wait, remember in the beginning when I said that I was running this on an emulator and not original hardware? Well not only can we run Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ with all of its cool LED outputs it had from the original arcade, but we can do that for ALL (or at least a good chunk) of the Bishi Bashi games that run in mame!
I've gotten the following games working 100% with led lights and all:
- Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ
- Great Bishi Bashi Champ
- Anime Champ
I have a couple of youtube shorts showing them off on my channel if you want to see what those look like in action.
Unfortunately I couldn't get all the bishi bashi games emulated in mame working perfect with each game having their own issues:
Bishi Bashi Champ (96') - has serious graphical issues and no light outputs but is still *technically* playable
Super Bishi Bashi Champ - Game works great with 3 players but has some sprite layering issues in some games, also no light outputs even though they should be there if this video shared by another forum user is anything to go by
Step Champ - Game appears to be working ok... until you realize the sound doesn't work (does have light outputs though surprisingly enough - although each player only has one led besides the start button labeled as "halogen" in mamehooker)
Salaryman Champ - Only has Player 1 and 2 buttons working as there isn't an option to bind keys to player 3. Does have outputs however a lot of the minigames aren't english friendly so I didn't bother adding it to the list of games to play from
Steering Champ and Gachaga Champ use different controls than the 3 button layout but should still work.
Here's another video of it if you wanna see some gameplay in action. Thanks for reading!
