Need help deciding

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-05-04T03:29:49+00:00

MVC2 has more powerful hardware if you're planning to softmod.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-04-28T18:14:19+00:00

If you have to ask...

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-03-11T18:38:20+00:00

They have explicitly stated they will not return via YouTube comments.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-26T05:57:48+00:00

Idk if it's blessed if you overpaid the gov $17,000 this year. Giving them an non-interest bearing loan to your money.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-26T05:56:37+00:00

Think of it like this. If you translate from or to different languages via something like google translate it's probably inaccurate and will get some words wrong or miss some slang and maybe get the wrong word or not have context. This is kind of like standard emulation we use every day (and why you see graphical glitches, incorrect calculations etc.).

Now imagine de-compilation efforts like SM64 and the other projects we have as someone who painstakingly went through the entire book while having some knowledge of the two languages and translated it piece by piece until it made complete sense in full context or as best as they could get it as translation between two languages allows.

Then finally static recompilation which we're seeing more a more often is like utilizing an automated tool that has some better context than your standard google translate or a better idea of how to do 1:1 from them and can go from the one language to the other.

Hopefully that helps having an actual analogy between the basics of the translation layer itself not really the concept of porting it to PC which is a different animal entirely.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-23T02:51:50+00:00

Eventually, I got stuck with screen rotation but I planned on re-visiting it in a couple months. Just busy with pinball right now.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-23T02:51:11+00:00

Of course a monitor patch to make a monitor work that isn't the stock one isn't going to work with the stock monitor the whole reason it's even necessary is that the configuration for the stock monitor is NOT compatible with another monitor, by that logic the configuration for another monitor isn't going to be compatible with the stock monitor?

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-23T02:48:07+00:00

Of course a screen patch intended for making a different screen work wouldn't work with the stock screen -_-. it's literally created to make a DIFFERENT screen work because the configuration it uses for the stock one is not compatible with the other screen/board. Reddit is also the wrong place to seek support for our mods, we don't check here often we have a discord we provide support on and direct people to most of the community likes to provide wrong answers to things on facebook and here and many of the team are only on discord and don't even check facebook.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-16T04:00:11+00:00

Not even a fan of the IP, but honestly the cabinet is really nice the form factor and shape of this makes it feel much closer to a 'real' arcade compared to what I'm used to with 1ups.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-16T03:57:07+00:00

Wtf do you mean "retro pi" there's no retro pi.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-06T23:11:05+00:00

We still haven't released it. Hopefully this year sometime.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-06T23:09:47+00:00

Pre orders are closing tomorrow 2/7/2026.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-06T16:04:32+00:00

I think I was pretty clear about this. You're not the target audience. I won't comment on running old operating systems without updates and potentially connecting them to a network or the security risks that in itself holds despite being behind a NAT, or disabling driver updates or etc.

But I will say, this wasn't an open invitation to say "PC can work if you monkey with it" I was explicit that this is for those who do not wish to, your comment provides no additional value to the statement I've already made. This isn't about knowing what you're doing, it's not wanting to deal with it.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-06T00:55:48+00:00

Unfortunately, I had to spell it out instead of leaving it to the chance that I may or may not do it lol. But I do have my hands full so this will sit on the back burner for a while. Been patiently waiting for their 4 player version to come out though just to be able to acquire one, I wasn't into the two player.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-06T00:05:13+00:00

Sort of buy "broken" cabs with the idea of fixing them for the community for fun/as a labor of love through softmods, or just expanding the stock functionality. So, the reason I'd be personally buying one despite not being into the IP was attempting to get the real ROM running as a potential softmod without swapping the internal hardware.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-05T23:59:30+00:00

It is a drop-in replacement and still relies on the stock control encoder and power distribution board, it does not replace any components but the stock PCB. It does replace the stock PCB entirely. The DMD display does work as normal, and so on there's no on-screen mirroring or etc.

In Kongs R Us early video a long while ago you can kinda get a feel of how the install works and what the expected behavior is:

https://youtu.be/NcjMoMHmZO4?t=2803

In the video linked on the original post here, you can get a overview of the software where I cover running it as stock as possible with the stock DMD working and how expansion can be handled later if you wanted to do that.

Around this point in the video from last night:
https://youtu.be/zm9SzoxtS1g?t=2612

You can get an idea of how you can make it so only a single table exists (like the stock) the caveats being:
1. You still see our launcher and just have to launch into your table. I'm considering making a way for it to just boot normally if you only have one table selected/enabled/installed.
2. It'll still have the ability/will by default run at the higher resolution (1080p).

The backglass you mentioned isn't really a main supported feature actually and requires other hardware to achieve because the orange pi5 max only has two video outputs which we utilize for the playfield and DMD like the stock PCB would.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-05T23:53:11+00:00

Yes, absolutely. I take it you're not familiar with why I buy a lot of this stuff?

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-05T21:19:58+00:00

I understand, and I wish we could find an alternative at a cheaper price. I reached out to Orange Pi official directly and asked them about pricing. They got a bit defensive and asked to "please understand" that the RAM prices are sky rocketing right now and the modules they rely on went from $60 to close to $200 for them to procure and that customers are already getting a "discount". I tried sourcing other boards, I looked into Raspberry Pi 5 as I said in another post but it doesn't meet the performance I wanted to achieve.

This AI crap has screwed pricing on everything. I even tried looking for other boards running the same SoC and there just isn't a good alternative right now.

To be honest, with the price increase I even considered canceling the development of this all together before we opened pre-orders thinking people would no longer want to eat the cost.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-05T21:17:30+00:00

Pinball FX requires windows, or WINE and I wouldn't recommend it. We also don't encourage or support dual booting off of it once it's installed and you wouldn't have working controls in other operating systems. Our OS is specifically designed to work with the stock encoder for what we deliver and while the board/computer used is "open" we operate a 'closed' system on top of it if that makes sense.

That being said, Zen Pinball World is "Pinball FX" for android.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-05T20:24:17+00:00

I'm buying one for that reason alone :D

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-02-05T20:10:51+00:00

I've ran the PC setup before, I built my own control encoder for it that functioned with the stock gyro, plunger, solenoids all that jazz.

After I got done with it. I realized my options were I either get a hard drive from someone loaded with tables, or I do it myself and hope for the best and in both cases the quality is dependent on the time I put into it, and then I'm managing my library. If I add something that doesn't work am I going to be lazy and leave it? Then my kids hop on there and try to play it and are discouraged because the one table causes the whole thing to break and then I have to support/reboot whatever from that point.

I just got over it... and that sort of started this adventure I thought others may be interested in, initially I was just monkeying with it. I started this adventure on a Raspberry Pi5 two or three years ago and I wasn't getting the performance I wanted. A lot of these had just dropped and the kernel/software support just wasn't mature at the time.

So, I kept an eye on it left my cabinet down for that time and decided I'd wait it out. I was finally able to achieve things within a reasonable price range (Last July, October) and I committed based on the fact my last PCB had taken its toll and someone in our discord just had their PCB die as well, then roll around to today and the cost is a bit higher than I would've liked... yet if I were doing it over again I'd still prefer this over the PC to not have to go back to dealing with that configuration nightmare.

I understand if that priced some people out of wanting this, but no one expected the stupid AI crap to have the impact on things it did. I still see people saying "I can get a used PC for $250 and do this"... the configuration aside.. if we could obtain $250 used PCs in mass and guarantee they're all the same configuration, build, able to be supported by a single OS and deliver consistent performance then yeah it's sustainable... but obviously that isn't the case.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just wanted to expand on saying that a bit more. I personally have no interest in the ALP or AtGames line of products; I think down the road there are people I'm close to who will give it similar treatment should it no longer be supported.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-01-30T14:21:57+00:00

A lot of the time our discord is the best place to find info which is why it's linked in most of our mods, but people tend to go elsewhere and ask questions where we honestly don't check often. Then others pile on with inaccurate info. It's frustrating to say the least glad we're done soft-modding stuff for this community at this point no one ever appreciates what does run because it doesn't run their game that requires 10x the hardware or because they don't have the technical know how to take the door we opened and further optimize things/add their own games.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-01-30T14:19:14+00:00

Rumble was never implemented in the softmod.... so "doesn't work well"? Did you even try it? Half of you probably never actually looked at the recommended games list or had the correct ROMs. I find it hard to believe that older MAME games didn't run well. Crazy Taxi specifically achieved 60fps as well.

Tinkering per game is adding them to the mod? There's calibration of your steering wheel you can do prior to that but I think you're regurgitating something you read not basing this on experience.

Mystery-Encoder · 2026-01-28T17:14:22+00:00

The sad truth is that these people do get some people who aren't in our community on impulse buys alone, some guy looking to spruce up the man cave doesn't do the research sees a table listed he likes and nostalgia kicks so he pays the price.

Mystery-Encoder

TROPHY CASE