We’ve had guests in from out of town this week at work. When this happens my blogging tends to drop to a crawl, and this week was no exception. Apologies for the lull …

I did a bit of work out in the arcade this past week. In order, I …

… added a test button to my 48-in-1 cabinet. 48-in-1 boards need a test button in order to change the board’s default settings, one of which is the thing’s volume which is turned all the way up to ear-bleeding levels.

… did more work on my MAME cabinet. I never liked the old front end I was using and I replaced it with one that didn’t work at all. This week I installed MALA which is probably the easiest MAME front end I’ve ever installed. I’m still having an issue with getting MAME to run in full screen on my cabinet. It works fine in “Windowed” mode, but hangs when I tell the front end to run it in full screen mode. Funny thing is, I’ve switched out front ends AND MAME versions and I still have the problem. It doesn’t act like a hardware issue but it’s hard to say. I downloaded 10 different MAME releases last night so I’ll run through a couple of them and if that doesn’t work I guess I’ll rebuild the whole darn thing.

… picked up a bunch of stuff, including a 4-way/8-way switchable joystick (for my 48-in-1 cabinet), a couple of Neo Geo MVS PCBs, two games I already had (Samurai Shodown I and II) and one I didn’t (an MVS 16-in-1).

… rearranged the entire arcade. After getting rid of two or three games I’m back down to where I can line my games up around the outside walls instead of having little mini-rows. It feels much more open and I like it much better. I still have three games out in the garage (Commando, Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede) and a spot for at least one of them, which means it’s time to go back through the arcade and find a couple more I can live without.

Last night, Susan, the kids and I went to see Paula, Emily, and several of our other friends play soccer. (MySpace Picture Album) In the last game of the season the girls managed to pick up their second win. I’d like to think it was Morgan’s cheering that put them over the top.

No big plans for this weekend. I have a couple of arcade cabinets to pick up in Tulsa should I get around to it, and Sunday night I’ll be going to my next NBA game. Tonight the 1-3 Thunder take on the currently undefeated 4-0 Utah Jazz, and Sunday we play the currently undefeated 3-0 Atlanta Hawks. That’s great.