Having grown up in the 70s, I've always loved Star Wars and wanted to build an interactive display of the history of Star Wars in the Arcade. I've been looking for a while but wanted something that wasn't in great condition as I didn't want to butcher anything that could have been better off restored. I found a Star Wars Trilogy arcade control panel in a rusty unloved state. This was ideal as it had a seat and control console but the main unit, screen, game board etc was missing, they are quite unreliable components so often taken for spares. I contacted the seller who also had the top light (marquee) from the game which is great. The control panel unit has the chair attached, I don't think it can be separated, so it's very heavy. A lot of that weight comes from the huge SEGA force feedback motors and their enclosure! There's also a mighty subwoofer and speaker set in the unit. The plan is to build a front end menu detailing the history of the Star Wars arcade games and allow you to select and play everything Star Wars related from the original vector based game to Starfighter.
My plan / To do list:
| TASK | Complete |
| Clean up control panel and marquee | 100% |
| Wall mount the marquee | 100% |
| Test and rewire marquee light | 100% |
| Black out the area behind the machine | 90% |
| Wall mount a large LED screen | 0% |
| Strip out original wiring looms | 100% |
| Remove original controls and replace temporarily | 100% |
| Wire and test speakers with new amplifier | 100% |
| Connect everything up to a Ubuntu PC | 100% |
| Build Supermodel3 for Ubuntu | 100% |
| Build a menu system for launching different games | 50% |
| Strip down original controls | 0% |
| Add new interface board | 0% |
| Add new lighting to seat back and control panel | 0% |
| Sand and repaint speaker covers | 0% |
| Remove rust from control panel | 0% |
| Touch up paint work | 0% |
The software I'm running so far is Star Wars Trilogy 1998 (Supermodel3), Starwars 1983 (Mame), Starfighter 2003 (PC) and a custom front end. This all sits on top of Ubuntu 13.04. Most of this project is straight forward, a bit like building a standard MAME cabinet with some fancy lighting, except for the controls. I want to use the original joystick, which I think is designed by ATARI and released under license to HAPP. (http://na.suzohapp.com/joysticks/95006500.htm) Connecting an arcade stick to a PC is easy enough, an I-PAC is probably the best solution (http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html), an analogue stick is a little more tricky. I could buy an A-PAC or I could strip down a PC joystick and steal it's controller PCB. I decided on the second one, the main reason being that I wanted to take the force feedback signals from the donor joystick and pipe them through a servo-amplifier to control the SEGA motors.
Game Screenshots
The software I'm running so far is Star Wars Trilogy 1998 (Supermodel3), Starwars 1983 (Mame), Starfighter 2003 (PC) and a custom front end. This all sits on top of Ubuntu 13.04. Most of this project is straight forward, a bit like building a standard MAME cabinet with some fancy lighting, except for the controls. I want to use the original joystick, which I think is designed by ATARI and released under license to HAPP. (http://na.suzohapp.com/joysticks/95006500.htm) Connecting an arcade stick to a PC is easy enough, an I-PAC is probably the best solution (http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html), an analogue stick is a little more tricky. I could buy an A-PAC or I could strip down a PC joystick and steal it's controller PCB. I decided on the second one, the main reason being that I wanted to take the force feedback signals from the donor joystick and pipe them through a servo-amplifier to control the SEGA motors.
