Arcade machine building.

It's a project I haven't touched for like 8 years, probably. So much so that the board to controll the buttons via usb that came with them is gone, idk where it is - I have every other part of that kit except that fucking board and the GPIO of the original RaspberryPi, which is what I am using there was N0 other models back when I first wanted to make it, it's THAT FUCKEN OLD, anyway it's too small, not enough free pins on it, so I got literally the cheapest USB gamepads I could find on the internet, literally less than two dolars each once I split the shipping cost. Literally 40% the price of the little thumb """sticks""" on coil spring some people put on their phone screens to pretend they are using a gamepad (that's without the shipping for both of them tho)

And here is what they look like:


and the craziest part is that at this point genuinely I can't see how this could fail anymore (more on this later)

The one problem I'll actually need to face is the coin slot. They are crazy and pretty expensive but also people make arcade cabinets witghout them just as well, no one cares that much, so it'll probably boil down to a single input internals-side.

Other than that I guess the TV I'm using as screen is quite small. Like, I got enough buttons to make the controls ambidexterous but there is no room to make both players ambi. in fact to make even one of them ambi I'm considering using an alternative control layout. Not a brand new one, just one that didn't come with the "general use" version of my target system. It'll still probably end up as the left hand control layout, so you can also use it as directional input if you'd preffer if I feel like making that happen. And even if I forego allat - I need to angle the players so their arms don't naturally overlap. I think I already found (and lost, but it's not rocketscience, I'll get 'em back) the best angles for that tho.

I also need to figure out the woodwork at some point but there's places around I could ask too.

Here's the layout I wanted to go with initially, nicely angeled too:


I actually want to put A real NeoGeo board in there one day, but those are expensive so I'm only doing that if the emulation approach pays for the upgrade.

I even know where I could put the cabinet to allow it to make that money. I know where I could ask to put it otherwise.

I actually got RetroPie working easily already, but the button config I went with shouldn't be legal so I opted to re-instal the whole system in my spare time.
Here is a photo of the initial triumph (very dark because CRTs do emit a shit ton of light):


Really all of my problems boil down to emulation being whack-ass. I felt like shit in the week since I initially started and now, so Dealing with things like finding a BIOS that should work on an emulator that isn't even really supported anymore, but one I have to use because old Raspberry... But idk if actually will yet. I'm doing that tomorrow (maybe). This part will be edited then. What I do know already is that the "start" and "select" buttons don't exist on that controller. Not a big issue, I just need 4 directions, 4 other buttons and then I can repurpose the shoulder buttons and triggers for everything else.