In addition to ensuring the vector games look good again, and that I can take advantage of Cocktail mode whenever appropriate for vertical games, there are a few key mapping changes that I sometimes need to apply and I typically just handle this within the MAME menu. One interesting example is Gauntlet and Gauntlet II.
For the first time since I built my cabinet, I noticed something about these games that I hadn’t in the past—the Gauntlet titles’ audio is in stereo and coin drops are localized to the player position!
I recognize that my cabinet build and the 4-player control panel is unique—I have only ever seen a handful of cabinet builders taking on a 4-player cocktail style design. The benefit for me with this design is the ability to play side-by-side games (fighters etc.) along the horizontal side, and for old-school verticals to have players seated across from one another on the vertical ends (Cocktail mode). However, another huge plus is support for 3 and 4 player games. Titles like X-men, Simpsons, or even sports games like Stone Ball—and of course, Gauntlet, are really fun with 4 player action.
Regarding Gauntlet, getting the right players mapped to each position is key if you want to line up the audio. I only just realized this yesterday, so I went through the confusing challenge of re-mapping the controls to each position to get this working. To understand the results, it helps to show a visual of how my panel is arranged:
+—————————+
| |
Player 3 | display | Player 4
+—————————+
Player 1 Player 2
So, this is how the controls are setup, and these player positions correspond to the switch inputs on my IPAC-4. For vertical games, Players 3 and 4 remap to P1 and P2 respectively.
But for Gauntlet, if you just map them 1-1, 2-2, etc, sure, you get 4 players and it works fine, but when you drop a coin in one position, the sound of that coin going in is in the wrong, stereo location, if that makes sense.
I don’t know who else this will help, but if you have your physical controls setup like I do above, here are the mappings in MAME that I came up with:
The format is Game/Mame Player shown ==> Control Panel Player
P1 ==> P2
P2 ==> P4
P3 ==> P1
P4 ==> P3
Another point of reference is that the coin button in MAME for P3 should be “5” and P3 Start is “1” if that makes sense.
Anyway, for the first time in more than a decade, my 4-player build as the “correct” positions (from an aural perspective) for a 4-player Gauntlet (II) game! Yay!
