Mad Planets MAME
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I was given this cabinet for free. It used to be a game called Mad Planets, which is fairly rare. Mad Planets was made by the company Gottlieb, who also made Q-bert. Other than the color, the cabinet is the same as Q-bert. I got the cabinet with no monitor, hacked up original wiring, and no speaker panel. It did have a partially working game called Mania Challenge installed. The cost of restoring it back to a Mad Planets would be more than the value of the restored game. |
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Here's the front of the cabinet which shows the Mania Challenge artwork. Mania Challenge is a wrestling game for one or two players. Notice the lack of any Mad Planets artwork, other than the cabinet sides. There was a credit switch in the upper coin door, in place of where the lock originally was. |
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Closeup of the metal control panel. There are two 8-way joysticks and two buttons per player. Also note the Mania Challenge instruction stickers that are stuck to the cabinet below the panel. | ||
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The speaker panel was missing when I got the cabinet. I made one from scratch, which you can see in this picture. I used a pair of PC speakers I had on hand. |
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Here's the inside of the coin door. You can see the credit switch and the PC speaker unit. I removed the speaker and mounted it in the top of the cab, so the only thing this piece does is let you adjust the volume, plug in headphones or turn the sound off. Update - the motherboard I'm using doesn't support power on after power failure. I had to mount a switch in the middle of the speaker grille that you press to start the computer. |
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I hacked two Microsoft Sidewinder game pads for the controls. There are still nine inputs available, so it could support a control panel with six buttons per player. | ||
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Here's a closeup of the hack job. It may not be pretty, but it works. | ||
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I like to call this a "PC on a stick". It's a PIII 450 mounted on a piece of wood that is completely removable from the cabinet. | ||
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Everything is screwed to the wood except the CD ROM, which is attached to the top of the power supply with velcro. I didn't have a spare PC case, so I decided to see how this would work. | ||
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19 inch computer monitor with wood to hold it in place. It's not going anywhere! | ||
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This shows the monitor bezel I made out of some mat board. You can still see some of the beige monitor case. I'll leave it up to the buyer to decide if they want to paint the monitor black. They may want to replace it, so I decided to leave the choice up to them. | ||
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This is a shot of the monitor bezel without flash, and with the room lights dimmed. You can barely tell the monitor case is there when looking at it in person. | ||
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Nice shot with the room lights out, showing the front end menu. The front end is called cocktailfe. It's an older front end, but I keep using it because it's so easy to set up. | ||
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Here's a shot with flash, showing the side and front. I also cut two pieces of plexi that can have a custom printed marquee sandwiched between them. I just made some dumb quickie art for a placeholder. | ||
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Closeup of marquee area. | ||