Super Arcade of Awesomeness and Super Hero Justiceness

Greetings earthlings!! Here I will show you how to build a super awesome arcade machine with mostly recycled parts!!

Here are some of the features of this arcade of super awesomeness:

Over 2000 classics, 9 emulators, 4 usb ports for controllers, Bluetooth, trackball and lighted buttons!!

systems:

Atari 2600

Gameboy Advanced

Nintendo

Neo Geo

Mame

Super Nintendo

Nintendo 64

Sega Genesis

Sega Master System

Lets get started!!

Step 1: Gather Materials

You can use many household objects as you see fit or have at your disposal. This is what I used:

Card board - very thick, i used double walled cardboard, you should get a good amount, maybe 5 BIG boxes

old cds - these can be skipped, but i like to use them for re-enforcement. About 3 or 4 should be fine!

old laptop screen - mine was from an hp that died a few years ago

speakers - this can be from anything that can connect to a computer

desktop computer - mine was donated to me by a friend that said it was too slow!

lcd controller board - this will turn your laptop screen to vga, i got mine on ebay for 20 bucks without the power supply and vga cord. If you dont have these lying around it, youll need them. The vga cord is standard vga to vga. The power supply will depend on the model of the controller board.

arcade buttons and joystick - i bought 10 buttons and a joystick, ebay has lots of great offers

mouse - any laser mouse that works

leather - the leather here is synthetic, colors are optional

Mosquito net - small piece about 2 hands wide (medieval measurement lol)

deodorant container - you need the ball from one roll-on and the ball holder from 2 of them

tupper ware lids - preferably old ones, as it will have to be cut

leds - i used 10 yellow ones and 2 blue ones, took apart from toys

some wooden blocks - i used 8 jenga pieces

pieces of mdf - the size of your motherboard and width of one of the boxes (box 1 in later pic), can be skipped

ps2 controller and a usb adapter to plug it into a computer

4 port usb hub

mini usb bluetooth

on/off switch

6 washers, 6 screws, size is up to you

lots and lots of hot glue, tape and staples

Step 2: Build Frame

Start by cutting 3 pieces of double walled cardboard for each side of the rectangles in the photo, except for the bottom(Box1B) and joystick part(Box1D) which will be 5 pieces. Glue them together, I found that wood glue works wonders for cardboard. This is where the Cds come in, you can re-enforce some layers with Cds in between, i did this for the screen rectangle.

Box 1

Tape all sides up except F which is the backside, that one, just tape along the bottom so that the sides aren't connected. Make sure the tape is strong, packing tape works well.

Box 2

Tape all sides except D which is the top part or joystick part. That part will be connected later.

Step 3: Drilling Holes

Now its time to drill some holes for the electronics and air vents.

Box 1

1. the size will depend on your LCD screen, just center it and cut away, box cutters work but are tedious. I used a drill. Make it a bit smaller than the screen, so that the screen can be "mounted" (glued).

2. The size for the 2 outer holes should be a bit smaller than your screw so it will be a tight fit. The middle hole should be big enough to fit a VGA cord through. I placed a piece of MDF along this bottom part for stability. i found it too wobbly without it. If you do take this route, cut the MDF to size and drill the holes as mentioned.

3. This hole should be a bit smaller than the deodorant ball container.

4. This hole should also be a bit smaller than the deodorant ball container.

Box 2

1. Measure the buttons and joystick, then drill or cut the right size. The larger circle at the bottom and the 2 smaller ones on each side will be the mouse/trackball. The mouse circle should be a bit smaller than the deodorant ball container, and the two buttons should be smaller than the two mouse buttons. The four corner circles are for screws. The 3 top circles are for the lcd. The bigger middle circle is for the vga cord, and the two outer circles for the screws. This may take some time to get right and exersize your eye balling powers, but in the end it doesnt have to be pretty just functional. The synthetic leather will cover any imperfections!

2. The circle is for the air vent and the rectangle is for the power cord, so again eyeball and cut, I mean precisely measure and cut.

3. These two circles are for the air vents, they should be the size of the black ring from the arcade buttons

4. Same as step 3

5. This rectangle is for the 4 usb ports and button switch.

Step 4: Assembling Box 1

I have used what I had lying around to stick each part to its place. The placing is up to.

LCD. Attached with hot glue, make a support so it can stand on, I used desktop port coverings.

Monitor Buttons. Also hot glued, these are the contrast buttons and menue buttons for the monitor.

LCD to monitor convertor. Follow the directions to connect.

Adaptor for LCD board. I chose to place this on top as there was more space.

Computer speakers. This model had one green led to show it was on, I removed it and soldered two blue leds in parralel and added a resistor just in case. Also had one usb connector and one audio jack. So not to use up all of the computers usb ports I cut open the usb cable and soldered some wire to each end and connected directly to the desktops power supply.

Deodorant ball container. Cut it up and glue a piece of mosquito net onto back.

Place all wires through hole.

The cape was made with fabric and synthetic leather, I confess I dont know how to sew, so I cant help you there. Get your friendly neighborhood grandma to do it like I did. When tracing out the "S" just make sure you dont mirror the image like I did, when you trace it out on the underside of the fabric. Its held in place with staples. You can also just hot glue the fabric together if your not so friendly neighborhood grandma refuses.

Step 5: Assembling Top Cover of Box 2

There is a picture of all the holes and placement of each. Again I found that adding the leather first before the buttons helped make it look better.

Screws. these can be the size you want. They will be shown through the leather so its best to make them pretty!

Power button. I cut out 3 old tupper ware lids and hot glued them together. Then attached the desktop power switch to the underside. This was done with the ps2 grey soft pad thing and string. Its best to look at the picture or making your own contraption for that matter. Then printed out a power sign and laminated it. Ive uploaded the designs. Wait to attach the power switch later on, for now just cut out the lids.

Joystick. Assemble it according to the model.

Lcd screen screws. Held in place underneath with a washer and nut.

Lcd wire hole. -

Game Buttons. I made this top part very thick so it could take children abuse therefore the buttons didnt need the black ring to hold them in place.

Mouse. Disassemble a laser mouse and separte the two buttons and bottom laser part. This I got from an instructable already on here. You then cut out the ball holder and glue it to the underside of the mouse bottom. Test out the accuracy of the mouse on a computer. You want to get the ball close enough to the laser but giving it room to roll at the same time. Place it through the leathe and cover up any imperfections with laminated paper and random black ring.

Mouse buttons. This was very tricky for my limited knowledge, took a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I "first" assembled the button underneath the cardboard and added the leather, then cut out a small x and add the peice of green leather. Then cut another small x on the geen peice. Next get the analog stick from the ps2 controller and cut off the fat part. Add hotglue to the bottom and stick it through the leather.

Step 6: Connecting the Buttons and Joystick to the Ps2 Controller.

I added a yellow led to each of the buttons. Its best to add all of the same type of leds as they will be soldered in parralel to a 5v supply.

First dissassemble the PS2 controler and remove everything but the buttons and analog control pcb. Then stick it underneath with a mass of hot glue and tape, just make sure not to cover up any important buttons. Also cut off any motors, then again it may give a nice buzz so try to leave them on somehow.

Add leds to buttons. With a soldering iron or something cylindrically hot burn a small hole through the bottom of the buttons. Attach the leds and close off with hot glue. It would be nice to write out the position of the negative and positive side of the leds at this point.

Now add the switches to the buttons. There is a correct placement, so observe the switch case. The led legs go under the switches and bend outward.

Now lets get to soldering. Each controller is different so it would be best to search for information or find it with a multimeter. I used the site slagcoin.com. It has lots of information. There are pictures with a screenshot of the site. Mine had black contact pads for each button. I hooked it up to the pc and went into the joystick configuration ui (for windows go to devices or control panel then joystick) and tapped around the buttons with some wires to find the contacts. Then scraped off some of the black material and soldered some wire. Its good to reenforce the connection with some hot glue.

For the LEDS I had some very thick very long wire. You will need two, one for positive and another for ground. Measure the length, you want it to reach the bottom of the case aproximately where your power supply will reach and get to all the leds and on/off switch. For both of them, glue them to the underside approximately the middle of the length, the ends need to reach the bottom of the box, and start cutting small slits in the wire close to the led legs. See "artistic" pictures.

Add solder to all slits and led legs and then connect them. The positive wire will also be connected to an on/off switch. These can be found in various toys or you can make your own. Connect the positive wire to one of the switches end. And add another cable for the switches other connection.

At this stage I mounted the lcd Box1 to the top cover of box2. Lay it on the edge of the table (bed)so the top cover hangs off the edge while you work on box 2.

Step 7: Assembling Bottom Part of Box 2 (motherboard and Final Connections)

Again add the synthetic leather as you see fit, then add the button rings with mosquito netting glued on the back to the holes. I have uploaded the design of the usb and button panel. Print it and laminate it then tediously cut out the unwanted laminated paper with box cutters.

With the outside all nice and pretty, lets get to the messy part. For screw connectors I drilled some jenga pieces and with contact glue mounted them to each corner of the box. Now if you erred the size of the screw like I did and made the hole too big you can use hot glue to fill in the hole and make a sorta mold if you will. After inserting the glue, quickly add the screw and wait for it to cool down. Then twist out the screw and your finished.

I added a piece of mdf to the bottom so the motherboard could rest on, its not necessary, but I wanted a heavier box and feel more secure about the cardboard catching fire with the heat.

Dissassemble the desktop. Just remove every screw you can find. Disconnect the power supply, power switch and leds. Mine had a reset button that I removed. Remember the location of the power switch and led connectors.

Now for the power supply, I removed most of the case and glued it to the back. This desktop had a nice grill for the fan so I cut it out with pliers, painted it and glued it onto the leather. To cover the imperfections, print out some cool arrows and glue them on. This one came with an extra power outlet to connect the lcd, so luckly it could be hidden inside. If yours doesnt, drill out another hole to pass ou the cable and decorate it!

The adapter for the power supply was a pain to cutout, but its doable. Mount it with screws and nuts.

Now place the mother board inside and connect the mouse, lcd screen vga cord, lcd power cable and speakers audio jack. Next connect the ps2 controller to usb adapter and usb hub. Glue the usb hub and led button to the slot. Now add the laminated paper to the side and hope it fits. If not print out more designs and decorate the errors!

place the powerbutton through the hole and attach the lids and the soft grey pad thingie to the switch with some waxed string. I cut out a little hole through two of the lids so it could fit better. The leds for the HD and power button are sort of just loose under the lids. If this sounds wrong, then remember that necessity is the mother of invention and Im sure you can figure out a better way of making this work.

Now after the power button is connected. Mount the hard drive as you see fit, again hot glue is your friend.

Now check the connections of your power supply for empty sockets similar to the hardrive power one. Use a multimeter to check that the voltage is 5v. Place the multimeter ends through the red wire pin slot and black wire pin slot and turn on the computer to read the voltage. Check your multimeter on how to read voltage or look online for your power supply cable outputs.

When youve found two 5v connections, place the led button wires through the correct pin connection. Remember to expose the wire end and add some hotglue so it wont come off. Positive led button wire goes through the pin with the red wire, and the negative wire goes through anyone of the black wire pins.

Now add the speaker wires as well to the respective outputs. I hid the volume potentiometer, but if you want to add it to the side of the box, just unsolder it and add wires so it can reach.

I also added another fan and a usb bluetooth module.

Now mount the lcd box and top cover to the bottom box. Before you screw it all together check to make sure everything works. Turn on the led buttons, the computer, and connect a pendrive or something to test the usb hub.

Step 8: Software and Hiding Windows

I installed windows xp for the operating system. It would be a good idea to update it to the latest service pack.

Here is a list of software that I used:

Sakasa mouse. This is for the mouse to work properly, it will be flipped if you dont use it. Add this to the start menu so it will start with windows.

xpadder. Use this to map the arcade buttons to keyboard strokes. It helps with the emulators. Also have this startup when windows starts.

For the game frontend I used atomic FE. I have uploaded both layouts I created for each screen and button layouts. There are many options for this, but its very intuitive to use. Some of these plugins are very useful: nircmd volume control, simple cpviewer, and simple config title display.

You may want to hide windows, remove all windows sounds, change boot loader make atomic fe as the shell. Here is some info from the build your own arcade wiki:

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Hiding_Windows

Introduction

To create the illusion that your home arcade machine is a 'real' arcade machine, it would be nice to be able to hide the familiar Windows PC look and feel. Nobody wants to see the Windows logo when your cabinet is turned on; it's kind of like being caught with your pants down. There are several ways of achieving this, let's have a look at your options...
note: this article deals with hiding various parts of the operating system when the computer is in start-up phase. To hide the windows user interface and select games take a look at the front-end software article. Instant Sheller Before following this guide consider trying Instant Sheller by Tom Speirs to automate the process of hiding cursors, boot screen, startup/login/shutdown screens, setting auto login and hiding the desktop. Replacing Your BIOS Logo Some modern BIOSes support changing the logo that is the very first thing displayed when your computer turns on. It should be noted that there’s not too much to be gained from doing this as most computers are so fast that the image is only momentarily flashed and your display device normally won’t have got up to operating specifications before the BIOS screen disappears. If yours can be changed, there will be an utility to do this on the motherboard manufacturer’s website. Some (but not all) ASUS brand motherboards support this feature. Support for this feature in other brands is unknown. Hiding Windows XP Replacing Your Boot Screen The boot screen is the Windows XP logo on a black background with a little blue progress bar underneath it. Before making any changes, be sure to create a System Restore point before attempting these methods. While not a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card, it can save you from yourself. This way, in case something goes wrong, restarting your computer, pressing and holding F8 until the Operating System menu appears and selecting “Last Known Good Configuration” should get you back to your previous state in most cases. You can modify your boot screen in these ways: BootSkin This product inserts a driver file into the XP startup sequence that displays an image instead of actually loading a driver. Pros: It does not patch or access any operating system files. If something goes wrong, it is simple to fix. You can customize both the screen and the progress bar. Cons: Relies on BIOS and driver manufacturers strictly obeying certain guidelines. If the system is incompatible, you'll likely get a "blue screen of death".

BootXP This alters resources and some other bits in a file called “ntoskrnl.exe”. Pros: You can customize both the screen and the progress bar. Cons: If something goes wrong, you will need an original Windows XP CD to put it right and knowledge of how to use the recovery console. It accesses and patches a critical operating system file. You get really ugly and slow nag screens every time you want to change your boot screen if you don’t pay for it.

Slimm Boot-Logo / The Microsoft Way There is an undocumented switch in Microsoft Windows XP’s operating system settings file. Slimm Boot-Logo simply flicks the switch. You can also set this switch manually. Go to My Computer >Properties >Advanced >Startup and Recovery >Settings. Select “Edit startup options file”. Add “ /bootlogo /noguiboot” to your default operating system (there must be a space between each switch) and add a 16-color 640 x 480 pixel BMP file called "boot.bmp” to your Windows directory. Pros: Simple, safe, simply asks the operating system to use a custom boot screen. No illegal or unrecommended patching of any file. Least chance of anything going wrong (your changed settings can be checked before you reboot. After performing the change, go to My Computer >Properties >Advanced >Startup and Recovery >Settings. If you still have “Microsoft Windows XP” in the combo box at the top, everything should work fine next time you boot. Cons: No progress bar on custom boot screen. Have to convert your image to 640 x 480 pixels and 16 colors yourself. If it goes wrong you will need an original Windows XP CD to put it right. If something goes wrong: You need to rebuild the “boot.ini” file using the instructions in this knowledge base article Making Your Own Bootskin for XP using Bootskin_Free This may work for other "skinning" softwares but I have only used Bootskin. This is a description of how to make your own Bootskin for win XP. The bootskin is composed of 3 parts. The main image, the progress bar, and a little script (for lack of a beter term) to tie the two together. These are then placed into a folder and zipped. Start by making a folder for your bootskin. Rename it to Whateveryoulike.bootskin I use Photoshop to make my images, but you can use any program that will allow you to change color modes and save a profile of an indexed color palet. Main Picture is 640 x 480 (72dpi) Make it "Indexed color" - 16 Colors Save color loader table (Image->Modes->Color table->Save) Save as BMP - 4 bit - Imagename_Bootskin.bmp (Imagename is whatever you want it to be called) Make sure that you save this in your new bootskin folder. Progress bar is 22 x 9 (72dpi) Index color - load color table from BKG image (Image->Modes->Color table->load) Save as bmp - 4 bit - Imagename_Progress.bmp (imagename is whatever you want it to be called) Save this in your bootskin folder. Next you will need to open notepad and make a description for the bootskin program to know how to put your bootskin together. Here is a description of what needs to be inside.

[BOOTSKIN] = what it is Type = (I do not know what this is for. When I read about this it said to use 0 and it works) Name = title of Bootskin (inside quotes) Author = You (inside quotes) Description = Description (inside quotes) Progressbar = the name of the progress bar file +.bpm Progressbarx (y)= X & Y Coordinates (in pixles) for where the progress bar is on the screen Progressbarwidth = How wide (in pixles) do you want your progress bar to be. Screen = The name main image + .bmp

Here is the last one that I did. You can use it to get yourself on track. Open notepad and copy - paste the script below.

[BootSkin] Type= 0 Name = "Blackout" Author = "MYX" Description = "Blackout Theme based skin" ProgressBar= BO_Progress.bmp ProgressBarX = 140 ProgressBarY = 400 ProgressBarWidth = 360 Screen= Blackout_Bootskin.bmp

Once you have finished filling out your tweaks, save it as bootskin.ini You will have to type the .ini. This changes it from a txt document into a configuration document. Make sure all 3 parts are in your Your.bootskin folder. Then you have to zip the folder.

Right click on the folder. When the menu comes up select send to -> Compressed (zipped) Folder Now that your bootskin is zipped you can put it into the bootskin program. In Bootskin, I have found that when I navigate to where the folder is many times the bootskin folder does not show up. In the name box, if you start to type the name of the bootskin folder, it will appear and then you can select it. Not sure why this is. Clear as mud? Good. A Hardware Solution For Hiding BIOS & Boot Screens This may be set-up dependant thus it may or may not work for your setup. In the first step, a cheap or even free part is recommended. This will make testing this method easier on the wallet. You must be using an AGP video card in your PC. Add a PCI video card to your system (use the cheapest model you can find - it may not even have to work, so you may be able to find a free card!) Go into the BIOS setup screen of your PC, and find the "Video Card" setting. Change it to "PCI" instead of AGP. Reboot your PC The BIOS messages and boot screen should now be output only to the PCI card. The monitor, still plugged into the AGP card, should stay blank until Windows starts. If any BIOS changes are needed, you'll have to plug the monitor into the PCI card, so ensure your PC's BIOS settings are configured prior to attempting this step. Replacing Explorer With Your FE In XP To almost completely bypass Windows and its trimmings, you may want to set up your front end as a shell. Note: To do this automagically during startup in XP your computer may be a part of a workgroup, but it CAN'T be part of a domain. Here is the process to follow in order to set up your front end as a shell:

You must have at least 2 users with admin privileges Open the user that will be auto logged in to the account that will be running your front end as a shell. This user should have admin rights. Set XP to automate the login process. Click start >run >type control userpasswords2Deselect the Users must enter a username and password... checkbox. Click Apply Enter the user & pass you want to login with & click OK Click OK again Configure your front end... this is not a trial run, so make sure it's the way you want it. You can always get the explorer back, but it will take a minute or two to do so. Open regedit and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot Find a string entry called Shell. Change the first 3 letters (which should read SYS) to USR. The path after USR will look different for your system, but it should appear similar to this: USR:BLAH\BLAH\BLAH. This tells windows to ignore the system’s shell values and load up a shell value on a user by user basis. If you don’t do this it will never even look for the shell value in the current user key, meaning the next part won’t ever be seen. Now (still in regedit) open these registry folders as follows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon If you can't find Shell create a string entry and name it Shell. Set the string entry to the name and directory location of your front end, for example C:\arcade\mamewah.exe YOURS may be different, use YOUR OWN path to the exe! Log out as the auto-login user and log back in as another user with administrative rights. (You DID create 2 accounts with adminstrative priveledges as was suggested, right? ) If you want to limit the access of the auto log-in user set the auto-login user to a standard user

What to do if you removed the taskbar and want it back Should you ever care to go back to the way things were, after firing up your front end, simply hit ctrl alt del and run regedit again, and delete the shell entry you created. POOF! Everything’s back to “normal” again!

If you just want the taskbar back temporarily then do the following: Exit your front end and go back to your taskbar-less desktop. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete. In Windows XP the task manager appears. On Windows 2000 you need to press the "Task Manager" button as an extra step. Click on the "New Task" button. At the "Create New Task" window type "explorer" and hit OK.

Launching Programs/Utilities in the background If you set your front end as a shell you may notice that other programs you had set to startup on Boot are no longer loading in the background. XYNTService will allow you to continue to load any programs that don't already support launching as a System Service. Alternate Method Without Messing With The Registry You can achieve a similar affect as the above (although not as "complete", and may or may not be acceptable to you) with the following steps: Put a shortcut to your FE's .exe file in “Startup” folder. Hide all windows desktop icons. You will need to download and install the Microsoft PowerToy TweakUI and change the Desktop settings. Set desktop to black or use a wallpaper image of your choice Auto hide task bar. Returning to Explorer once FE Quits If you would like the Explorer shell to start up after you quit your frontend, this is possible. Here is how to do it using Mamewah as an example. Keep in mind, that this is only possible if the frontend that you use supports launching an application on exit. Also, the location of the option to do this won't be in the same place everytime, Mamewah is just used as an example. Go to your Mamewah folder and edit your mamewah.ini file Near the bottom of the list of options is app_to_run_on_exit enter explorer.exe next to it and save the file. Now, everytime you quit Mamewah, it will exit back to the Explorer shell. Edit: From http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?PHPSESS... posted there by Capthowdy

Edit your mamewah\ctrlr\default.ini

EXIT_WITH_CHOICE EXIT_TO_WINDOWS "DIK_ESCAPE" EXIT_AND_RUN_APP EXIT_AND_REBOOT EXIT_AND_SHUTDOWN

guess where "DIK_ESCAPE" needs to be! That's right...make it look like this: EXIT_WITH_CHOICE EXIT_TO_WINDOWS EXIT_AND_RUN_APP "DIK_ESCAPE" EXIT_AND_REBOOT EXIT_AND_SHUTDOWN Getting rid of the "Loading settings" Popup screens The following will hide the dialog box that appears that the beggining of Windows startup informing you that the system is "Loading Settings". To do this,follow these steps: Go to, Start Menu -> Run and enter regedit Navigate to entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Policies>System If there is an entry for "DisableStatusMessages" set it to 1 (the digit one) If there is no entry, right-mouse click the "System" word, and select New->DWORD value, and enter "DisableStatusMessages", right-mouse to edit the value of it, and enter 1 (the digit one). Hiding The Mouse Pointer While Logging Into Windows After having everything else stripped out of Windows, seeing the cursor briefly while Windows boots up is a real experience killer. Here is how to get rid of it! Please make sure you read this thoroughly before you start, as you might get stuck with an invisible pointer, and that won't be fun to get back to normal! Download this version of TweakUI, it has a special option that we are going to need. http://www.systemsmedic.com/DownloadFiles/TweakUI... (dead link -- company closed October, 2007) Once this is installed, go to Control Panel>Mouse>Pointers and change all of your cursors to a cursor file that is invisible, and save this to a scheme of your choice, Ex. "Mame cursors". See TIP at the bottom for some extra info on the cursor. Save the scheme, but don't apply it yet, as it will be hard to navigate Windows with an invisible pointer. The last thing to do is to apply the settings to make the cursors invisible. Go back to the cursor screen in the Windows Control Panel, load your scheme and hit apply. It'll be hard, if not impossible to see your cursor, depending on which type of cursor you made, which is why this is the last step. Squint your way into your start menu and open TweakUI. If you can't see the cursor, just hit the Windows key on your keyboard to bring up the start menu. (If your keyboard doesn't have a "Windows key", you can alternatively get the start menu by pressing Ctrl + Esc.) Go to the LOGON option, and somewhere there is the option to copy your wall paper etc. across to the Logon Screen. Check that, and hit apply or press Alt+A. If you have made an invisible cursor and you can't seem to get around Windows once you exit your FE, you can just log out of the current user and log into the computer as an administrator and all those settings should be untouched. To do this without a mouse, just hit Win+L and it will bring up the login menu (Win is the windows key on the keyboard, right between Ctrl and Alt. Another useful hotkey is Win+R which brings up the Run menu. TIP: When you download Mamewah, the zip contains an invisible cursor, so you can use that one if you'd like. Also, you can make a cursor that is just a dot, so that it is almost invisible but it can be used to navigate if needed.

Alternate Change Cursor Method (Without TweakUI) NOTE: This method was tested to work with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. 1. Open up regedit.exe 2. Go to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Cursors 3. Here you can change the assigned mouse cursor files for your the current user. You can change them all but in my experience the following three do the job for cursor concealment: "AppStarting" "Arrow" "Wait" NOTE: At this point it is a good idea to backup this branch in case you change your mind. 4. Change the values you wish to replace with the name of the cursor you wish to have instead. Write it using a FULL PATH, for example: "c:\temp\my_special_cursor.cur" Make sure what you writing is correct and prefer changing spaces to something else if your cursor file is using them. 5. Close regedit.exe and reboot your machine.

Changing the Cursor Shape During the Logon Screen For this you need to change the assigned cursor values for the ".DEFAULT" user account. The registry key is: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Cursors If the "Cursors" key does not exist then create it yourself. At the "(Default)" value type a title for the cursor scheme (e.g. "My Special Cursors"). Create REG_EXPAND_SZ entries for the cursor types you wish to change. Use the values mentioned in the previous section as a guide. Reboot your machine for changes to take effect. Welcome/Startup/Shutdown/Background Color To hide the Welcome Screen (where you'd normally log in) you'll need to change from the default windows XP welcome screen to the other style by going to Control Panels >User Accounts >Change the way users logon or off. Deselect the “Use Welcome Screen” checkbox. To change the login background color from blue to black (to better hide it), use regedit again and navigate to HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors\BackgroundThe 3-digit RGB color for black is 0 0 0. If this causes the "Classic" login screen to appear that prompts for a password, the login can be automated as follows: Click start >run >type control userpasswords2Highlight the user you want to log into automatically, then deselect the Users must enter a username and password... checkbox. Click Apply and you'll be asked to verify the username and password to log in automatically Click OK again and the next time you restart your computer, you'll automatically be logged in without having the classic prompt or Welcome Screen. Removing pop-up bubbles In Windows XP, you occasionaly get pop-up bubbles with all kinds of useful (or less useful) information. In the application of running an arcade machine, we use low resolutions, like 640x480 or even 640x288. In these resolutions Windows XP tries to be helpful and lets you know via a pop-up bubble that your resolution setting is not ideal for this videocard. (Another bubble that can come up because of the low resolution is from the Start menu indicating it cannot show all items on the Start menu because of the low resolution. We need to live with this, so there is no point in these bubbles coming up everytime.) To turn ALL (!) bubbles off follow these steps: 1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER. 2. Navigate to the following subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips. 4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0. 5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on. These steps disable all Notification Area balloon tips for this user. There is no way to disable balloon tips for specific programs only.

Hide Desktop Icons To hide all of your desktop icons look for the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDesktop Set it to 1 to hide the icons, 0 to show them (this is the default). Hiding Windows 98 Hiding Windows 98 is lots easier than hiding Windows XP. Replacing Your Boot Screen Create a black picture with in BMP format, RGB encoded, 320x400 resolution, 256 colors in MS Paint or another paint application Do NOT try to save pictures in 16bit or 32bit colors or such, because it may crash Windows. Replace logo.sys, logow.sys and logos.sys with your new picture (these are actually bmp files, which were renamed to sys). Here is more in-depth info about replacing: Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens. Here is a post with lots of good links to logos and free editing tools: Animated/static Win9x/ME logos and free tools to create/edit/manage animated/static logos. Special concerns when using the ArcadeVGA When using a custom boot screen logo with the ArcadeVGA video card, the boot resolution is 320x200. This results in only the top half of the image being visible. However, Windows still requires an image that is the full 320x400 pixels. A simple way to handle this is to make a standard sized boot screen image, resize it vertically 50%, then paste two copies (stacked vertically) into a new 320x400 BMP image.

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The most tedious part was the screenshot of each game, that took awhile (3 days), but its well worth the trouble. Some games I left without a foto and placed a "foto sequestrado" image or foto was robbed.

And Thats it, if you have any questions please feel free to ask! Im sending this instructables to the videogame contest, please vote if you like it!! Thank you!