ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
To a lot of people, a serious home arcade project might involve bodging together a MAME setup via a PC or Raspberry Pi inside a repurposed cabinet of old or even a home-made shell fashioned to resemble the classics of yesteryear. And, sure, these tinkerings have their place. But they can’t help but pale in comparison to the work of Swedish arcade enthusiast Mikael Tillander, whose latest project is a complete hardware platform of his own design that works with any JAMMA-compatible cabinet.
Tillander describes his hardware specs as “somewhere between the Mega Drive and the Neo Geo”, offering a resolution of 320x224, with 4,096 colours and 128 simultaneous sprites. The system will debut with a revamped version of Twin Tiger Shark, a vertically scrolling shooter Tillander originally released seven years ago, incorporating influences from classic Toaplan shooters of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The project’s Kickstarter campaign offered various configurations, starting at around £130, and reached its goal on its first day, towards the end of January. If you’re too late to pledge now, Tillander plans to sell units aside from the crowdfunding drive, albeit at a slightly higher price. Visit his campaign page at bit.ly/twintigershark for more details about what he calls a “childhood dream coming true.”