SPACE PARANOIDS - The way it's meant to be played

As a kid, I saw a lot of movies in the mid-80s in which kids spent all their quarters in arcades playing games such as centepede, pacman, space invaders, galaxian and more. I always wanted to also make that experience, but unfortunately, in my country you couldn't find any arcades offering these kind of machines - especially for kids to play. Because here pretty much everythin g was declared as gambling and so made avilable only for adults.

Then, somewhen around the late 80s, my family visited legoland in denmark and I prior to this, I found out that there also was some kind of arcade. However... I was too young - again. That sucked.

I promised to myself that one day I would own such a machine instead!

MOre then ten years ago I finally purchased a set of detailed instructions about how to build a full sized Arcade Cabinet... but didn't find the time and could prioritize that project to even start.

This year however, I took a first step by simply purchasing another Raspberry Pi and a kit with arcade controls from ali express (this one: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005007271571363.html)

And then I had a lot of problems purchasing the right monitor. You know... of course I knew that it doesnt really matter which display I used for this project and only because that instructions from over ten years ago mentioned this exact model didn't mean that I couldn't purchase virtually any other display, but I thought that the mentioned display was a really good one for this project. I won't go into details - and eventually I got one - but it was a real unneccessary hassle.

For the controller board I not only needed an MDF board with 19mm thickness and the correct size, but also a drill bit that enabled me to drill the correct sized holes for the buttons and joysticks. These are called "Forstnerbohrer" here and I didn't have them. These are the ones, I purchased: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0FXM9YSPD

Funny thing: although it worked perfectly, the threads of the buttons were not long enough for the female screw to still fit. So I had to drill bigger sized counterholes from the back of the panel so that the female screw can be flush mounted - you notize that this is not my vocabulary so I hope you understand what I am talking about.

Wiring everything was actually a piece of cake.

However, I am still missing the rest of the arcade cabinet panels to mount everything and then also put in the electronic. BUT I really wanted to test the arcade controls.

Of course I also tested it with my own game Bomberfun Tournament and it is HELL OF A FUN experience I never had before! <3

I also played a couple of historical games using the Raspberry Pi and Batocera.

And THEN, @landon published a teaser of his implementation of the fictual game "SPACE PARANOIDS" from the 80s movie "Tron", which happens to be one of my most favourite movies of all times.

You guessed it already... I had to try it out on my test rig.

And so I installed AntiMicroX (Releases · AntiMicroX/antimicrox), mapped the games' controls to my buttons and joystics, installed the game as an App with Microsoft Edge, put it on FullScreen with F11 and used the touch display to gently zoom it into FULL SIZE.

And I must tell you: THIS IS THE WAY this game IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED.

Seriously.

Of course at first I tried it out on a PC with keyboard controls. But I didn't get quite used to it although it was already really FUN. But with the arcade controls, two joysticks and a button... just WOW!

So that can get an impression of the gameplay using arcade controls, I recorded a very long video and pupblished it here: https://youtu.be/kR61KeuLXkg

Just in case you alread have an Arcade Cabinet around and didn't have the idea yet: Play SPACE PARANOIDS on it. You won't regret it. ;-)