‘Thetwoco-foundersofourcompany,
BenGrantandMattPrecious,grewup
playingarcadegamesthemselves.So,
withourpre-existingrelationshipswitha
lotofcompaniessuchasBandaiNamco,
whoownPac-Man,Galagaandsoon,as
wellasourhistorywithofficialgaming
merchandise,it wasa naturalprogression
forustocreatetheQuarterArcades.’
ThedesktopQuarterArcadescabinets
includeSpaceInvaders,DigDug,Track&
Field,Galaxian,Ms.Pac-Man,Galagaand
theoriginalPac-Man.Sofar,Pac-Manhas
launchedandGalagaissoontofollow,with
theremainderscheduledformid-2020.
They’renottobeconfusedwithsomeof
the‘1,000-in-1’knockoffsthough.Each
cabinetplaysa singlegamethat’sfullyand
officiallylicensed.There’sattentiontodetail
inthebuildprocesstoo.‘Theaccuracyisa
big,bigthingforus,’saysBrown.‘It’swhat
we’re proud of more than anything else
with the range, and something we strongly
believe we do better than the competition.
‘We literally buy an original arcade cabinet
of each game on which we work to produce
a 3D digital model and compare it with
the original cab. We do this multiple times
again throughout the development phase,
with multiple prototypes sent over to us to
compare against the real deal. Of course,
we also work in unison with the licence
holder, who has to approve everything
and can be very picky about the details!
We’re at the point where we spend a not
insignificant amount of time comparing
the screws on top of the cabinets.’
At their heart, of course, the Quarter
Arcades are emulation machines, but
they’re accurate ones, claims Brown. ‘The
emulator runs on a board inside the cabinet’- which is based on the Allwinner V3 Arm
SoC – ‘running an accurate original arcade
ROM of the game, with the whole thing
looked over with a fine-toothed comb by
both ourselves and the licence holder.’
The launch of the first cabinet, a Pac-Man
system, wasn’t without its teething troubles
though. Some early adopters complained
of poor build quality, while others were
disappointed by the inability to adjust
settings controlled by physical DIP switches
on the real cabinets. There were also
complaints about lack of a high-score save
system – despite having an internal battery,
which is used to allow the cabinets to be
played without a wired power connection.
‘The majority of cabinets have been
received incredibly well, but as with all
products, there will be some that are faulty
and don’t live up to our standard,’ Brown
admits. ‘For those customers, we’ve been
very happy to replace their cabinets. As Pac-
Man was our very first release, we have of
course taken on a lot of feedback from that,
and applied it to Galaga and future cabinets.’
Speaking of future cabinets, the
company’s current list of upcoming
machines is by no means exhaustive.
‘We’ve started with the obvious classics
because they are, of course, very popular
and very important to people,’ says
Brown. ‘Starting with the most beloved
classics really helps us open doors to
other, more niche arcade games, and even
potentially games that never reached the
arcade, now that we’ve proven ourselves
to retailers who stocked and found
success with our previous cabinets.’
More information on the Quarter Arcade
cabinets is available from numskull.com,
along with links to purchase Pac-Man or
pre-order the other systems at £149.99
and £129.99 respectively (both inc VAT).HackersunlockRaspberry Pi 4 PCI-E slot
Engineers Tomasz Mloduchowski and Colin Riley
have been working at gaining access to the
Raspberry PI 4’s PCI-E bus directly, desoldering
the VL805 chip and soldering a proper PCI-E slot
in its place. They’ve enjoyed surprising success.
Riley’s work is particularly impressive: as well as
connecting a bunch of USB 3 cards to the PCI-E
bus, he also connected a SATA controller and even a pair of high-performance GPUs.
While drivers for the latter aren’t yet available, his experiments continue. More
information is available from mloduchowski.com and labs.domipheus.comN EWS I N BRI EF
The reduced scale does have a casualty:
a switch from CRTs to small LCDs
The team at Numskull has outlined a range of
cabinets to come, and teased some never-before-
seen systems to boot
Impressively, the marquees – complete
with original arcade art – light up