phresh

I imagine this will play almost any of the games it supports. All of these games ran on standard pc hardware so allowing for a bit of headroom as long as your machine is a better spec than the arcade machine itself then it should be fine.

Thanks, I do like the look of Tales from the Loop. I'll be DM'ing the first part of Mines of Phandelver on Saturday evening! Nervously excited about it - it's with good friends (who are all just as inexperienced with D&D) so I think it will be good fun and relaxed, and everyone seems quite excited about it. I'll post here with how it goes (and probably a thousand questions!).

That confirms it then! I'll get the starter set ordered...

Our small group is considering D&D as a way of getting back to gaming in a reasonably socially distanced way (and giving us the option to continue should there be another lockdown). Problem is we've got no idea where to start or if there are any obvious alternatives to D&D that might be better. 1) There will always be a minimum of 4 people (including the DM) with 5 some of the time. Unlikely the group will expand beyond that though. 2) None of us have ever played a TTRPG before, or certainly not in the last 15 years. 3) Our board game sessions tend to be long-ish affairs so time shouldn't be a limiting factor. 4) Theme isn't hugely important, although we haven't discussed that 5) I think the group would probably err to something with a reasonably well defined ruleset and not something that relies on very heavy RPG/creative elements. At least to start with! D&D seems like the obvious option, and if it is - where the hell to start to have a 'trial' session of sorts? I'll probably end up being the DM and i'm happy to do all the initial legwork to get it up and running.

Probably my second favourite retro soundtrack after SOR2! One of the handful of console games i've put on my arcade machine too.

Super Aleste

You can check one of the Mame databases like ArcadeItalia and look at the 'Status' section for any given game. Only slight issue with this is that retropie uses out of date sets (likewise for FBA Neo, which is the recommended core for arcade games on retropie) so that may not match. There are probably other resources. I would recommend coming up with a list of 'must haves' and simply using that as your start point and googling whether each game works. I'b probably be inclined to just pick up a Pi4 and test it, the outlay isn't huge and if it doesn't work you could recoup most of it. Not sure on memory, but I don't think you'd need to go for the 4gb version.

Still sorting through GW stuff but I have a complete, pretty much unplayed, 3rd Edition Blood Bowl. If anyone is interested let me know, ideally i'd just bin the box and ship the contents as there is a lot of fucking air in it. £25 including delivery? I'll double check all the components.

I think you'll struggle to get a lot of that running really well on a Pi, although I haven't used the new Pi4. If it's primarily arcade emulation you want then a PC would be better.

I blew up a pi3 making a bartop, that took a few minutes* of quiet contemplation to recover from. *best part of a day

Like the snap in ones the short threads are meant for a metal panel really. You could have countersunk them like you said, 10mm thickness around the buttons would have been ok. If you're going to hot glue just be sure you can get them out again without damaging the panel.

If you haven’t bought any primer yet then I would recommend Zinnser BIN (the red one). You’ll need methylated spirits (the purple stuff) to clean the brushes but it will far and away give you the best base and is much better than any ‘specialist’ mdf primer. For paint there is plenty of options but I’ve used the wood/Matt Valspar eggshell from B&Q with good results before using a medium pile roller.

You can use the Ultimarc Ultrastik 360 which is analogue, although they aren't cheap. They do include a built in 8 button interface though so you wouldn't necessarily need a separate interface. Not sure how well they work on a Pi though, but i've seen people doing it. Most of the top down racing games are fine and even those that need a wheel can have the controls changed to work with a joystick. Driving cabinets are notoriously difficult to setup though so that's a can of worms you may not want to open!

For a simple, single player arcade machine, the picade is difficult to beat, not least as it also includes an amp for the speakers and a connection for a power button. You would need to do both of these separately otherwise. If you want a two player machine then you'll need to buy some of these components individually (like a controller board, amplifier, power button etc.). Don't let that put you off though, it's still pretty easy. You could also check out Pandoras Box which are effectively mini computers like the Pi but with everything preinstalled. I'm not sure how these are wired though, but they are popular. For components checkout arcadeworlduk, they don't sell any of the Pi related components but for buttons/joysticks, t-moulding etc. they are great.

I don't think we ever really played standard Warhammer so I probably only got the Chaos Dwarf stuff quite late on. Shame as I think i'd probably have prefered standard Warhammer to 40k. I've been through the Warhammer Quest pricing and have the following. First price is what i've taken from ebay for recent sales, bearing in mind the condition/missing components (which only really effects the base game, everything else is complete). Second price is at 30% discount (15 ebay/paypal, 10 for active thread contributor, 5 for bulk purchase). I'll also throw in the various White Dwarf bits due to the variable quality on them and the lack of supporting documentation (although i'm sure this is available online). Free Delivery within 2ish hours of Oxford still stands. Still expensive, I appreciate - but you won't get a much better pack for the game for the money. If anyone is interested let me know.