M. Neko

So yeah, the progress on making my own teeny weeny arcade machine has not been going too smoothly. I thought I lucked out when I found a Fire 7 2019 on Woot! for ten bucks (twenty minus a ten dollar "please come back!" discount), but it turns out Jeff Bezos really locked this thing down tight. There are ways to jailbreak it and run a non-annoying operating system, but there are two methods, hardware and software. Software is only for users who actually bought this thing in 2019... if you bought it recently and have it turned on long enough to make it actually do anything, the new hack-proof Amazon operating system will have already been pushed to it, and you'll be stuck with Fire OS. Fire Toolkit mitigates this to some degree, but Fire OS 2019 even manages to block some of ITS features. And that sucks.

Oh, but wait, it gets better. RetroArch will still run on the Kindle Fire, but adjusting settings on this emulator is like wrestling with a rabid bear, and it's quite insistent on ignoring controllers it doesn't like. Take for instance the palm-sized New Wave Street Fighter II arcade stick I chose specifically for this project. Sometimes RetroArch will see it! Sometimes it will rename the buttons without your knowledge or consent! (What the hell kind of button assignment is "plus six?") Sometimes it will forget it's there, forcing you to reconnect and wait until, "oh, hey, there's a controller in me that I didn't notice before. I wonder how that happened?" The ways to fix this problem are strange and arcane, like making a witch's brew, and they rarely ever work. This doubly sucks.

So now I have to figure out a workaround if the project is to continue. Who makes tiny joysticks that use the XInput standard RetroArch actually recognizes? Am I actually going to have to craft my OWN tiny joystick with tiny buttons that fits into the cabinet I made and connect a zero-delay encoder to it? The buttons are no problem- you can find them as small as 16mm on Amazon, but the tiny joysticks are typically designed for wheelchairs and industrial applications, and they're often annoyingly expensive. At that point, I may as well just scrap the whole doomed project and buy an Arcade1UP cabinet instead.

A joystick adapter is also a possibility... I have several lying around, and one of these disguised the New Wave mini-stick as an Xbox 360 controller, which was detectable by both RetroArch and its remedial school cousin Lemuroid. I just couldn't get out of a game after I started it, which is, yanno, gonna be kind of a problem.

It's unfortunate, because the Fire 7 2019 (as wimpy as it is compared to other tablets of the time) is well suited to emulating old arcade games. It's pretty much torn through everything I've thrown at it, including games that were too much for the Namco Museum cabinet or my Playstation Vita to handle. Plus the games (vertical games especially) look great on that screen, strengthening my resolve to finish this project. Oh yes, ten dollar Android tablet, you will become my tiny arcade cabinet. It is your destiny. It's only a matter of time before you bend to my will...

The Kindle Fire 3rd, which I dismissed as a lost cause, is back on its feet. Turns out that it wasn't so smart to enter Fastboot without finishing this tutorial. (Also, removing the -i subcommand from many of the fastboot commands in the tutorial. The commands wouldn't run with that in there.)

So yeah, my Kindle's got TWRP (affectionately referred to as "twerp") on it, along with a working OS. Color me relieved! I really, really do need a better operating system for this thing, though. Maybe Twerp will get me to that point.

This Namco Museum cabinet plays games well enough with a little tweaking, but I've found that the system is at least as fun as an arts and crafts project. Terry Goodwin's script really lets you maximize the customization in this novelty toy, letting you not only add games, but create cover artwork (itsy bitsy teeny weeny covers, like 160x120 in size) and classify each title by system.

I decided that since EVERY game I put on the system will be an arcade game, I would change the system icons into a performance gauge. If a game runs well and is well suited to the cabinet, it gets a full four bars. If there's no sound, as is the case in Fire Shark, it gets that little mute symbol next to its name. And so on and so forth. It helps keep things organized and will likely help others if I ever release this to the public. (I want to, really, but there are... ahem... legal concerns.)

Because the resolution on this system is so tiny, I had to scrap the plans I had to give the ratings a fun video game health bar look and keep them very, very, VERY simple to make them readable. It's just the absolute necessities with this old Android device in disguise... there's no room for extravagance.

Anyway! Here's how it looks. I wasn't a smart-ass with all the thumbnail designs, but for this one, yeah, I had to do it.

1. I just hacked that Namco Museum cabinet with Kingo Root. There are good times ahead, if I can figure out how to squeeze a different interface in there. Someone created an alternate menu for the system, but unfortunately said someone wants users to compile the source code themselves. What makes you think I know how to do that? Can't you just offer a nice, convenient binary instead?

2. There's an update for the Xbox Series version of Dolphin, which lets you adjust settings directly from the Xbox Series, rather than your computer. Phew, thank goodness.

3. I had written off Treasure's Alien Soldier in the past, but I recently played it in a Sega Genesis collection and everything just seemed to click. I'm still not GOOD at it, mind, but I better understand the play mechanics. Darting across the playfield to dodge each boss's attacks and target their weak spots is a big thrill, and pretty rewarding when you can keep the enemy desperately swinging at dead air instead of your head. And as an bonus, there are gleefully murderous alien pickles! That's the tastiest explosion I ever heard!

That is all.