Last night I invited the ultimate frisbee crowd over to my house for vindaloo and arcade games. This is the second time that I've done this (last time, a few weeks ago, it was chicken carbonara). Last night about 10 people came over and a lot of fun was had. Stu brought a great rice pudding, Sierra made a spinach pear salad, and Sirhc brought a chocolate chip cake. There was a ton of food and no one left hungry.
The arcade machine figured prominently. The games that saw the most use were SNES Super Bomber Man (4-player) and Super Puzzle Figherter II Turbo. My control panel isn't really configured right for four players, but with the dual-stick setup on each side I was able to squeeze in the extra players. A SNES pad has 8 buttons in addition to the directional pad, so I don't have enough buttons to give all four players a full compliment. But Super Bomber Man only really uses four of the buttons, so I was able to make it work. It was a big hit.
Puzzle Fighter closed the place, with the last people leaving well after 11pm. Unfortunately, the last people only left because one of the joysticks on the P2 side got smashed in. Doh!
I disassembled the control panel today after work and discovered that, for some reason, I had only used 1/2" wood screws to fasten the joystick base to the underside of the control panel surface. Half of the screw length was squandered going through the plastic base, so each screw was really only biting with a couple of threads. I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened sooner. I'm now awaiting the arrival of Bob, who promises to bring me some 3/4" wood screws with which I will re-secure the joystick and return the arcade cabinet to it's full capabilities.
Good call on the SPF2T. Though I'm curious, why screws and not bolts? I would think screws would tend to strip and rip out over time and once you rip up the wood, your CP would probably be hosed. With bolts if things get loose you just tighten them back up again. Even if the threads get stripped it wouldn't affect your CP.
The joystick mount holes don't go all the way through the MDF board, so in order to use bolts I would have had to use screw-in nutserts or something, which would, in the end, amount to the same problem. I'm not sure what possessed me to use 1/2" wood screws everywhere, but last night I replaced them all with 1" pan-heads (which, it turns out, end up about 1/8" below the top melamine when fully tightened down). It's pretty solid now.
Oh, and thanks for the help with the MameWah configs. It took me about 3 hours last night to get a single emulator working with it (ZSNESW), but getting the second one up and running took about 5 minutes.