My little Retrogaming Project

[MrWu]

Hi all;

 

I do miss the old days in Brighton arcades, often getting motion sickness playing FPSs and too much emphasis on hyper realistic rendering, Anti Alaising I miss the old school hand drawn sprites....maybe I'm getting too old lol. Having played Emulators on LCDs and going back to old arcades I always regret how all the artwork of games of old are stretched scaled and deinterlaced beyond recognition.

 

So reading up on CRT I started a little arcade project (wife is most concerned!) here's the little handy work so far:

 

 

Middle LCD for work, the monitor to the left is an old Phillps CM8833 CRT (tilted vertically for Vertical Shoot em ups - or TATE) Screen to the right is a B&O CRT for horizontal shooters, powered by 2 Stone PCs (£34 ish each from eBay)..funny enough the most expensive thing was the VGA to SCART RGB adaptor (nearly £50 lol) This running madly enough down to 256 x 240 Progressive if needed.. so spits out video in native res as if it was originally intended, picture on it is spectacular, free of tearing and jerkiness when scrolling (even vs clever CRT filters they have in MAME now)

 

Some in game shots:

 

 

At some point I hope to learn a bit of Woodworking and build a proper arcade machine around the equipment I have got. Wife thinks I'm mad lol

Edited February 6, 2013 by MrWu

[ChrisH]

Good luck with it, I built a full arcade cab a few years ago but had to dismantle it for space, I still have the control panel though. Wasn't the best bit of woodworking but looked pretty good from about 10 feet away I used a 25 " TV for the screen. I'm planning to put the CP on some rails to slide out from under one of my work surfaces in the garage.

[pcstru]

This running madly enough down to 256 x 240 Progressive if needed.. so spits out video in native res as if it was originally intended, picture on it is spectacular, free of tearing and jerkiness when scrolling (even vs clever CRT filters they have in MAME now)

Fantastic. "spectacular picture" juxtaposed with "256x240" - that just seems wrong on so many levels.

 

Wife thinks I'm mad lol

 

She's probably not the only one.

[MrWu]

Good luck with it, I built a full arcade cab a few years ago but had to dismantle it for space, I still have the control panel though. Wasn't the best bit of woodworking but looked pretty good from about 10 feet away I used a 25 " TV for the screen. I'm planning to put the CP on some rails to slide out from under one of my work surfaces in the garage.

 

Cheers ChrisH,

 

It would be tricky because I forgot how heavy and bulky a CRT is, adding a cabinet to that I could imagine it needs to go in a garage, the idea of having a retractable CP is a good idea though, might be able to have a stealth arcade machine in the room.

[MrWu]

Fantastic. "spectacular picture" juxtaposed with "256x240" - that just seems wrong on so many levels.

 

 

 

She's probably not the only one.

 

LOL it's mad but it truly does, I sometimes look at the picture and hadly believe stuff is running around 320x224, this is only for old arcade games however..but for a real laugh let me present you the Windows desktop !

 

[MrWu]

Just an interesting comparison (although no so good photography) here's my Samsung 24inch LCD to the left running game at 1920x1200 with CRT Filters and to the left CRT running the game at 382x224 native)..in person the CRT has more vibrant colours,less banding and smoother scrolling..it does not make sense lol..but CRT was a well developed tech for gaming but was just too bulky and killed off quickly with LCDs. :-(

 

Edited February 6, 2013 by MrWu

[ChrisH]

This is one of my favourite stealth ones I have seen it folds back up into the bar.

[MrWu]

A little upgrade ! 2 x 21 inch B&O MX4000 TV (for Vertical and Horizontal Shoot em ups) Wife bewildered....