Remember my techie daughter that I mentioned in earlier sections?  Well it turns out that she and her equally techie husband were going to be in-town and staying with us so after they arrived I mentioned my plan to them.  Since he is a software engineer he decided to up the ante a bit and started concocting a plan for a more hi-tech solution that I could not have done on my own.

A few hours later, I had a real-time leaderboard that I can access via my mobile phone and update real-time.  He didn't stop there... he placed it on a server so it can be accessed remotely, I think mostly so he can update his high scores as well when playing on his own machine that he is building.

All-in-all this has been a great addition to my game room and is starting to get the desired result of a little competition.  I'm seeing my name on there too much which is only a result of the fact that my son and I have played the most during the setup and testing of the games.  I'm looking forward to getting bumped off so I can regain my titles legitimately!

Continue to Summary

This article will describe my journey to create a miniature version of the Atari VCS using a Raspberry Pi system.  At the time of this writing, Atari is struggling to go into production with their next generation of the VCS.  I hope they succeed because it does show some promise.  More about it at https://atarivcs.com/.

My introduction to the Raspberry Pi came when my daughter suggested that I use it to power my full-size arcade machine project. You can read more about that project at http://zopingo.com/dans-blog/back-to-the-arcade-a-1980s-classic.
 
Once that project was up-and-running as a semi-portable unit, I learned of the Raspberry Pi Zero and had a thought… what if I could use that to create a mini Atari 2600?  The thought came because my son had acquired a NES Classic and SNES Classic which did credit to their much older, much larger predecessors (NES and SNES) that came out in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s respectively. The classics are much smaller versions of the originals but looked the part and included many of the games that were originally released in cartridge format for their larger cousins.  All-in-all these were very nice machines that captured the look and feel of the originals.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Atari. ​

I’m not sure if it was licensing agreements or what the deal was, but someone dropped the ball when the Atari Flashback units hit the market.  Not only have they released multiple versions of essentially the same thing, but they gave the classic console a comical look with large, colorful, round buttons and styling that only somewhat represents the original design.  The original Atari VCS (later known as the Atari 2600) was a sleek, attractive, black ribbed unit with wood-grain trim and metal toggle switches.  It was a piece of art to be proudly displayed in any family room.  Oh, and did I mention that the game graphics on my Flashback were terrible? And I don’t mean terrible compared to today’s hi-def standard, I’m talking about terrible compared to 1970’s standards.  

Those pictures make me think of the Will Smith quote in Men In Black II, “Old and busted – New hotness.”  The irony in that is the old machine is the “new hotness” and vice versa.

The Atari Flashback 2 was the only model that has a chance at being modified to look like the classic because it most closely resembles the original design.  All the later versions added joystick ports to the front of the unit and they changed the shape of the bezel around the switches. 

The Flashback 2 still had those comical buttons though, which would need to be changed to satisfy my desire for the original look.  So, the quest began to find some toggle switches that would resemble the originals; no problem… right?  For those of you who have read my Back to the Arcade blog, you will know that I had access to an incredible electronics store not far from where I lived.  Think Radio Shack of the 1970’s but much larger; back in a time when the employees were usually electronics hobbyists and could actually help you with project challenges.

​Now that I have the switch thing figured out, I got motivated to get the rest of the project done.  One of the first things to do now was get rid of the cheesy, fake, plastic, simulated woodgrain on the front of the unit.  I’m going to get real wood, like the original unit I had in 1977.  

If I am going to match the wood trim of the original I will have to figure out which wood and color to use.  This led me down a rabbit trail for a few weeks before I finally figured it out.  My research revealed that the original was probably teak and I was able to simulate it nicely with a piece of pine and some Minwax Cherry – 235 stain.  Apply some polyurethane and voilà , it turned out incredible.

Now it’s on to the electronics.  I started this article talking about the Raspberry Pi Zero, or Raspberry Pi Zero W to be precise.  The W indicates a wireless (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) version and doubles the price to a whopping $10!  This will be the heart of the project, I will be able to run any game ever produced for the Atari VCS.
 
One of the things this project led me to was utilizing the GPIO pins to physically connect switches to the Pi.  Something I did not have to do with my full-size arcade cabinet.  This required a little knowledge of Python programming and some moderate soldering skills.  My soldering skills are acceptable and fortunately my daughter had recently finished a class which included Python so she was able to help me out here.

​​Since this unit will now connect to a monitor via HDMI and the joysticks connect via USB through an adaptor (2600-daptor) and the power plug is in a different place I had to delete some of the existing holes on the case and make new holes for the above mentioned jacks.

​​Remember the switches that I acquired earlier?  It’s now time to get creative and figure out how to mount them since they are mounted at an angle, it presented a bit of a challenge, but I figured it out.  Rather than explaining here, just look at the pictures below to see how it all got worked out.

​I’ve got the switches, I’ve got the wood, I’ve modified the holes, I’ve got the coding right, and I have all the electronics and adapters; I’m ready to go…  Not so fast, there’s one more little detail to figure out; the switch grommets.  I have been looking at many, many options of things I could use as grommets but nothing was the right size or shape to satisfy my OCD on this project; especially since I had original switches. 

I came up with an idea to make the grommets.  I could have my friend print them on his 3-D printer, but I would need a 3-D file.  I can sketch pretty well in 2-D on my computer but not 3-D which is what my friend needed to ‘print’ them.  I drafted up my design in 2-D with complete dimensions (my former career as an Engineer came in useful at this point) and hired some guy in Pakistan (via www.fiverr.com) to convert my file to a 3-D compatible format for 5 bucks.  He had the file back to me within a couple hours which I then sent to my friend who in-turn printed my grommets.  From idea to physical parts in hand was less than half a day.  Gotta love technology.

Since I got rid of the goofy round buttons I needed to create some graphics for my new panel.  Fortunately there are Atari fonts available so I was able to go with those.  My panel replicates the original as close as possible with just a couple deviations. Rather than using a toggle on/off switch, I opted for a momentary switch in this location so I can safely shut down the system by toggling the switch.  Also, since this machine will not use actual game cartridges, I opted for a lighted button that will act an escape button to return to the game menu.

​Now that everything is in order, it is time to make it all fit in the console.  It started out seeming like an easy task but quickly filled the space, mostly with wires. At this point I’m sure glad I went with a Pi Zero because a normal size Pi would not fit at this point.

​Remember the real wood that I mentioned earlier? Well after my build was complete, I decided that I needed a full-size 2600 for some photo comparisons to show the size difference so I started shopping.  I found out that working units were somewhat spendy so my focus was on aesthetically nice units that didn’t work.  I finally found one on Ebay with ‘unknown condition’ for $27.85 shipped.

Once it arrived, I eagerly opened it up so I could get some pictures along with my newly created invention and lo-and-behold the wood was not wood at all. It was plastic with a simulated wood grain finish.  Good thing I wasn’t challenged with any bets on the topic because I stood to lose a hefty chunk of change because I was very confident that my unit in 1977 was real wood.  I think this is considered the mandela effect.   ​

After I got over the ‘wood’ thing I decided to see if this thing did indeed work; and it did not.  It sat in a  box until after I moved and one day I decided to see if I could get it running; which I did.  See my blog post entitled, Atari 2600 (VCS) Repairs.

I was fortunate to have an Atari VCS growing up but I gave it away while purging things before I left for the Air Force.  I never thought I would ever be interested in the Atari 2600 again, but this was a fun project and in the end I get to play some games that I remember as a young teen and share them with my now grown children.  

The following video is not mine, but I thought is was an appropriate ending to this blog.  It is a compilation of old Atari TV commercials.  Enjoy!

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

Now I have a multi-functional, decorative piece that is definitely a conversation starter.  It is fairly straightforward design using black iron fittings but I want to give a shout out to my friend Roy, The Gun Painter who owns a full-service gunsmith shop and has the equipment I needed to machine a couple of the parts for the lamp section.  I highly recommend him if you are looking for a custom paint job on any of your firearms.  Check out the gallery on his website at www.thegunpainter.com.

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

This project essentially forced me to learn Photoshop.  I didn’t know a thing about it when I started, but I am picky as to what I wanted so I had to learn so I could get it just the way I liked it.  I went through many iterations and a steep learning curve as well. ​

Some games like Donkey Kong had a monitor that was almost horizontal with a vertical glass panel and some games had the monitor installed virtually vertical right up against the glass panel. And there was probably every variation imaginable in-between.  I opted to install my monitor mostly vertical but at a slight angle and a few inches behind a glass screen to give it some depth behind the bezel art.  I designed my own bezel art and chose Escape Pod Online to print and install it which was one of the best decisions I made on this project.  The art I created was inspired by Space Duel side art.

I configured my machine to randomly play the attract mode from several different games and it will play the splash screen below at random.  My splash screen is an animation with Donkey Kong playing in the background and the occasional lightning flash with thunder sounds. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  As you can see, my custom attract screen matches my marquee.

BTTA Bezel with Attract Screen (video)

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

It has finally come down to this.  It’s been over 2 years since I built my stand-alone arcade control panel and I am now ready to build the cabinet.   The main reason for this timing is that after many years in a house too small for an arcade machine, let alone a family of 6, I finally have the space to enjoy it.

Although I used the Williams profile as my inspiration, I made a few changes to accommodate some features not normally found in arcade cabinets. One of the most notable, but also most invisible is the addition of a pull-out tray to accommodate a steering wheel/pedals or Analog flight style joystick for those games that require those controls to function properly. ​

One thing worth noting is that when I designed the original stand-alone control panel that would eventually become the panel in my cabinet build, I had to consider the overall width of my machine.  I wanted it to be wide enough for two people to play head-to-head games side-by-side without interfering with each other.  Yet I had to keep it skinny enough to fit through a standard doorway (the last thing I needed was to get it all built in my garage and not be able to gt it into my game room). In the slideshow below, you will see a cardboard panel with printed buttons that we used to 'mock play' games side-by-side to test the concept.  It actually worked out quite well.

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

​What is a Raspberry Pi?  It is a small (about the size of a pack of cigarettes) computer that runs open source Linux operating systems.  And best of all it is only $35.  Add a few more $$ for a case, power supply, and maybe a heat sink and fan and you may hit $60.  Not bad for a computer that will power a complete vintage arcade machine running hundreds of games.  Not to mention that the entire operating system, configuration files, and hundreds of games are kept on a Micro-SD card (puts shame to the microfilm from the old James Bond films of the 60’s/70’s). But I digress.

​The operating system of choice for vintage gaming is Retropie, which is what I am using. Because of the open source nature of this system, I was able to do some custom configuration of my project.  I am not a coder, and definitely didn’t know a thing about coding in Linux when I started this project but fortunately it builds on the BASIC programming that I learned back in high school almost 35 years earlier.  So with a little help (ok, a LOT of help) from Google, and some reverse engineering I have been able to muddle through it and figure things out.  Fortunately there are quite a few people building vintage arcade systems and I was able to tap into that community.  One of the best resources for me has been the Retropie Forum where you can find me as DRB.

​I talked about controls in an earlier chapter, and how I came to the configuration I chose but this may be a good place to talk about the software side of it.  One thing I have noticed about many of the posts on the internet is that it appears that most of the vintage system builders are building systems a bit later than mine.  Many of them focus on the fighting games that came later in the 80’s and into the 90’s as well as more Nintendo and Sega systems.  Due to my impressionable years being late 70’s to early 80’s, my drive was to build a system with the games from that era which makes me more of an Atari guy I guess.

​Now that I brought it up, I’ll take a minute to talk about MAME.  MAME, or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator is what makes all of this possible in the first place.  MAME is a project developed to preserve the history of vintage video games and how I got involved in this whole project many, many years ago.  I won’t go into all the details here, but you can click on the link above to learn more about the MAME project.

​Another thing to note is that I am not limited to AdvanceMAME, I can use different emulators as needed for my games, but as I mentioned AdvanceMAME is the best at handling the trackball/spinner games so most of my games run on this system which uses ROMset version 106.

​If you want to know if a particular game will run on AdvanceMAME version 106 feel free to leave a question here or contact me directly and I will do my best to answer, but please do not ask me where to get ROMs.

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

I have to admit that is was not until I tackled this project that I truly gained my appreciation for this game and the technology used.  I have probably spent more time trying to properly emulate Sea Wolf on my system more than any other game I have.

It is worth noting that not all of the Space Invaders games used this 3-D design in their cabinets. I remember the first one only being a black & white screen with transparent green overlays for the barricades at the bottom and a transparent red overlay for the special ship that transited the top of the screen. ​

This is actually a very interesting topic and for anyone who is interested in more information I would also suggest the following: http://discrete.mameworld.info/

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary

Our machine was up-and-running and we have been enjoying some vintage games but there was still some tweaking to do to get even closer to the authentic experience of 1980.  What better way to research than to travel back in time to an actual arcade from the 1980's.  Even though this whole project has been a research project since 1999 and we attended the NW Pinball & Arcade Expo to gather more authentic intel, there is only one way to really validate the authenticity.

My memory is not quite what it used to be so in early 2018 we got into our time-traveling Delorean, a.k.a. 2005 VW Jetta (OK, maybe not the same thing, but they are both silver) and traveled back in time to 1980. 

SPOILER ALERT - we didn't really travel back in time, but we did go to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle where they were celebrating the 80's with an exhibit called, Totally 80's Rewind complete with a 1980's high school computer classroom, family basement, and an accurate arcade called The Bit Zone. 

Although the above photo is not an actual arcade game (it is an Atari VCS home console game) it demonstrates the difference seen between the CRT and LCD.  Most notably being the ghosting (no pun intended) on the CRT side.  The LCD side is nice and crisp, which was not the original intent of the graphics.  Additionally CRT monitors had a noticeable curvature to them while LCD monitors are flat screens.  ​

Even with this knowledge, I will be using an LCD monitor for my project but adjusting the images via code to replicate the original as true as possible.

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary