Thoggo

Pigskin 621 A.D. Taking a page from Cyberball's "football but robots" playbook, Pigskin 621 A.D. is "football but actual Vikings and other medieval and sometimes fantasy characters, but also sort of rugby." Appearing with the tagline "Ancient Archrivals on a Rampage" (because the game's designers worked on both Arch Rivals and Rampage), Pigskin litters the field with hazards like pits, pools and logs, and encourages beating up the other team at every opportunity. Control can be difficult at times given that the game follows the ball (so your character is regularly offscreen and can be hard to find), but the game offers an amusing take on a familiar sport. The original cabinet featured light-up indicators of your team's current strategy, which are sadly non-functional in my version (perhaps I will get them working at some point as I know it's possible), but the same information appears on-screen. pigskin.zip

Blasted This somewhat experimental, not-quite-a-gun game started out as a four-player shooter called International Team Laser, but switched directions to this two-player version instead. Blasted pits one or two military snipers against evil cyborgs intent on wreaking havoc in... an apartment building, for some reason. It is not a gun game, but instead uses a joystick that moves a targeting reticle, providing both a zoomed-in sniper view and a wider view to take out your enemies. You must shoot the glowing red sweet spot on the various cyborgs, with a particular emphasis on the floating "cybornetic balls," before they can shoot back. The original cabinet used gun-shaped joysticks, which are reproduced in some of the presets, if you're into that sort of thing. blasted.zip

Rampage It may have mutated into a questionable Dwayne Johnson movie, but Rampage started as an '80s arcade hit, centered around three erstwhile scientists who tear their way across the country after transforming into giant monsters. Players choose a character and then must destroy all the buildings on a level to advance, eating people and other food for health and avoiding attacking helicopters and soldiers. Like the arcade version, the MAME version ties the character to the controls, so you may need to edit the controls in the Tab menu to get the character you want. Rampage's pixelated cityscapes, tiny denizens, expressive creatures and addictive gameplay make it a classic worth playing today. This overlay includes multiple screen sizes – the preset shown above is most faithful to the original cabinet, but you can enlarge the screen to suit your taste. rampage.zip

Zwackery Zwackery was an oddity in mid-80s arcades, combining excellent and expressive graphics with surprisingly complex gameplay and controls. Players step into the robes of Zachary Thwacker, a wizard on a quest to save a lovely princess who has been turned into a frog. Along the way you'll encounter crows who love to drop things on your head (and then turn into flying eyeballs), aggressive mushrooms, gargoyles, guards, devils, skeletons and ultimately a dragon, all while trying to defeat the Evil Ghoulum. Zwackery requires near-ambidexterity to master, as you control the wizard with a flight stick with two buttons corresponding to your sword and shield, rotate your sword/shield arm with a spinner, push the spinner down to pick up items and pull it up to cast spells. I included this game because it's a cult classic, but it is very difficult to play on MAME without a two-button flight stick and a push-pull spinner (controller users will likely fare better). If you can find a way to play it, it's something special. zwackery.zip

Two Tigers Take to the skies and slowly sink the enemy's ships with the flaming wrecks of their planes, with or without a wingman, in this challenging shooting game. The mechanics of Two Tigers take some practice, as you must shoot down enemy planes or drop bombs in the same spot several times in order to punch enough holes in the ship to sink it, before the ship sails off for calmer waters. Fortunately your lives are unlimited (you lose after two ships escape) and the enemy planes mostly don't notice you're there (though you can be killed by enemy fire and some planes). The game includes a dogfight mode in which the players take turns trying to shoot each other down. Note that there are three buttons – shoot, speed (accelerate) and bomb. twotiger.zip

Timber Timber takes the working-man ethos of Tapper into the woods, where two burly, enflanneled woodsmen compete to chop down the most trees within a time limit. In addition to trying to crush your opponent with falling trees, you must avoid beehive-throwing bears and catch newly homeless birds for bonus points. Timber was designed by Steve Meyer, who also designed Tapper, and like that game it features a minigame every couple of levels, this time a log-rolling challenge that is a fair bit tougher than the beer-shaking game of its predecessor. timber.zip

Tapper The closest I ever got to hanging out in bars in middle school, Tapper featured Budweiser taps and drink holders, and was designed to be placed in bars before it was re-released as the far less cool Root Beer Tapper (the dancing girls don't quite make sense in a root beer parlor). You control a bartender who must serve an onslaught of thirsty customers without dropping beer mugs or making the customers angry, with a shell game-like interstitial minigame between levels. The distinctive character designs and charming music make Tapper even more refreshing than a sip of Dad's beer on a summer afternoon (ew, gross). tapper.zip

Journey Released during a period in which even middle-of-the-road rock bands wanted to get on the arcade bandwagon, Journey launches the titular band into space to retrieve their "electro supercharged instruments" from "wild alien groupoids" (yep). The game riffs on the minigame formula of Tron to send the five band members, complete with digitized black-and-white heads, through multi-stage levels to grab their instruments (which turn into weapons) and make it back to their scarab spaceship. Completing all five games takes you to a final concert (which featured a cassette-powered loop of "Separate Ways") in which roadie Herbie must defend the stage from the aforementioned groupoids, lest you be forced to do it all over again. Weird stuff, but worth a try. Make sure you grab the audio sample Zip file from Mameworld and place it in your MAME samples folder. journey.zip

Tron Still a beloved classic from the early '80s, Tron adapted the concepts and overall vibe of the Disney movie to create a memorable set of minigames. The music and sound effects still evoke an '80s arcade almost as much as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Tron also featured a distinctive cabinet design, with a deep interior that made you feel like you were being sucked into the game world, and a black light-enhanced glowing flight stick. My version of the cabinet is somewhat stylized, taking some liberties with the actual design in order to represent the feel while optimizing playability. To play it on MAME, you'll need a one-button flight stick or joystick as well as a spinner (thanks to a resurgence in interest, you can now get a decent reproduction of the flight stick, and there are several spinners available). (Note that the forum is compressing the JPEG even more, so it may look very dark – click on the image to see it in more detail.) tron.zip

Satan's Hollow One of the first games released under the Bally Midway label, Satan's Hollow centered around the somewhat edgy (for the '80s) concept of fighting Satan's minions in "the Hollow" (because hell was presumably one step too far). The gameplay is reminiscent of Galaga, with the addition of a shield and the ability to drag segments across the playfield to build a bridge over a lava pit, which enables you to fight Satan himself (who is actually not terribly impressive). The original cabinet featured a translucent red flight stick that glowed next to the black light embedded in the front of the control panel. shollow.zip

I'm baaaack, with a huge new vertical overlay pack, AND a new website! Check out verticalarcade.com to find all my overlays, along with links to other overlay creators and info on buying your own vertical cabinet. My latest pack is the Bally Midway Attack Pack, a set of 12 new overlays (including two already in this thread, Wacko and Xenophobe) featuring some of the best games released by one of the great American arcade manufacturers of the '80s. I'm including all of the overlays here as well, but this current set does not include instructions or preset info as on my other downloads, as that information is now on the website. As such, these downloads are now simply the overlays, so you can drop the Zips from this pack directly into your MAME artwork folder. As noted in previous posts (but you might have missed it), these overlays include multiple presets, accessible from the MAME Tab menu under Video Options. The Curved presets are designed to work with curvature shaders – if you don't have a curvature shader, or it doesn't look right with the shaders you have, choose the Straight presets instead. Check out the site for preset info for specific games. Keep scrolling to find the games themselves, or download the entire pack at the link above. Have fun!

Vigilante Back to more conventional cabinet ground, Vigilante is my replacement entry to round out what I'm now calling my Run n' Gun n' Hack n' Slash Pack, as I'm moving Xenophobe to the upcoming Bally/Midway pack. Vigilante came out in 1988 with somewhat dated gameplay (a beat-em-up in which you can only move left and right), but its colorful graphics and amazing 80s synth score made up for it somewhat (plus the thud of the punch sounds is quite satisfying). There is very little strategy to Vigilante, just timing, and as you will see from a variety of YouTube videos, once you get the nunchucks you will basically beat the game. Nonetheless, it was a classic of my youth, and thus worth recreating. Includes a larger version if you really want to show off those pixels. Vigilante.zip

Wacko A preview of my upcoming Bally/Midway Attack Pack! Wacko is legendary for its ingeniously stupid cabinet design, which tilted the marquee and control panel at an odd angle and perfectly captured the mentality of the game. The control scheme is odd, but the game isn't especially difficult, at least for the first few levels. Wacko works best with a trackball and joystick combo, but it also works fine with two 8-way joysticks, and you could even rig it to work with buttons for shooting if you have enough of them. Not the most memorable game ever made, but certainly one of the most original cabinets ever. Includes a larger screen version and a straight screen version for BYOB (bring your own bezel) shader enthusiasts. Wacko.zip

Toobin' One of Atari's quirkier cabinets of the 80s, Toobin' featured both an unusual all-button control scheme and a weird stretched cabinet design that evoked the laid-back aesthetic of surfing, tubing and the endless summer. Toobin' also has unusually high-res graphics for its era, which shows off its beautiful waves and waterfalls. It plays best on MAME with a 6-button Street Fighter-esque layout, where you can use the outer buttons for paddling and the bottom center button for throwing cans. The biggest challenge with this one was capturing its unusual cabinet shape while still making the game playable – I took some liberties with the actual construction of the cabinet, but I think I pulled off something that feels like the original cabinet. In order to best display all of the game's art and still make the game playable, I included several versions, which you can see below: The Medium version (left) features the entire header in all its gnarly glory but crops off the control panel, while the Medium Alt version shifts up to show off the control panel with a more compact header. I also included two larger versions which focus on the game and leave the cabinet design behind – you decide which is most fun to you. Toobin.zip

Cyberball 2072 Cyberball was a clever way to make football a bit more appealing to arcade nerds – by adding robots and an exploding football. The original Cyberball cabinet featured two screens, allowing head-to-head team play that was unusual for its time. The sequel, Cyberball 2072, added new game modes and a lot more plays, and included both a two-player cabinet and a four-player Tournament Cyberball 2072 version. My design for this overlay is a bit of a hybrid, combining the big header style of the two-screen Tournament Cyberball 2072 cabinet (I replaced the mirror with a metal plate stamped with ICBL - International Cyberball League) but shrinking it to fit on top of one half of the same cabinet. Provided you have the right files, you can play any variant of Cyberball with this overlay – the single-player screen will appear where it should, and the second screen will just be invisible. You will need to be able to access all the game's clones if you want to choose which version to play, and you may need to set your controls accordingly. I also included a somewhat weird but certainly playable head-to-head overlay, seen above. Yes, this means if you want to play head to head, the second team will have to look up to see their screen, which is not ideal but also not really avoidable on a vertical screen. It does work, however! Please refer to the included instructions for more info. Cyberball 2072.zip

Xybots Xybots was one of my favorites of this period, with a dungeon-like pseudo-3D maze filled with robots to shoot (not to mention one of Atari's biggest sins of this era, the ever-decreasing player health, because apparently both the space heroes of Xybots and the fantasy squad of Gauntlet had some terrible wasting disease that required constant eating). Nonetheless, it's easy to get into while being challenging in later levels, and it plays great on MAME without a fancy twisty joystick (if you have 3 buttons in a row, just map the center button to Fire and the first and third buttons to rotate). Don't get neutralized! Xybots.zip

Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters A pulp comic book sci-fi adventure that makes up in gameplay what it lacks in tastefulness, EPRoM used a "hall effect" joystick that allows players to move and shoot in many different directions. It works best with an analog joystick, but also works fine with a standard 8-way stick. I reproduced the most fun version of this cabinet, which had an enormous graphic header to go with its enormous screen bezel (the version shown is my Large preset, which enlarges the screen from the original size to make it more playable). Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters.zip

Gauntlet II Don't shoot the food! One of the first and still one of the best 4-player action game series, Gauntlet was a staple of every mid-80s arcade. Gauntlet II was the amped-up sequel, which not only added many new gameplay elements to the mix, but also let any player choose any character, which makes it ideal for MAME cabinets. This overlay recreates the feel of the original cabinet, including the control panel and instructions, with two screen sizes (the Medium screen shown here is the most accurate to the original cabinet, but I included a larger size that still fits with the look). Gauntlet 2.zip

NEW: Atari Later 80s Pack! I'm back with an eclectic set of new MAME vertical overlays, this time focusing on some classic Atari games from the mid-to-late 80s (as opposed to the early 80s) – my favorite period of Atari games and some of my favorite arcade games of all time. The amazing soundtracks, the distinctive graphic style, even the fonts were unlike anything else out there. I'm mostly interested in recreating cabinets that had something unusual about them, and Atari created a lot of oddball cabinets during this period. But they're all great games, and with these overlays and your vertical cabinet you can get closer to the original cabinets than ever! Keep on scrollin' to see, learn and download. Later!

Thanks Walty! The marquee "lit" look, which was inspired by ArsInvictus in his vertical overlays, has two parts – I'm adding shading around edges with a feathered black brush to simulate the light falloff toward the edges, which I then set to something less than 100% opacity, and then there's another layer that sort of blows out the center. The second element is a matter of taste – it looks more realistic to a lit marquee, but it also washes out the colors so you can't see as well what the actual art looks like, so you have to decide how much of that you want. I'm not sure exactly how you would do that in GIMP – in Photoshop, I'm using a layer with a very feathered wide white oval and the Exposure adjustment layer. You can get a similar effect (in Photoshop) using the same blurry white oval with the Overlay blending mode. I could post a little tutorial if it's helpful, though again, I don't know much about GIMP.

RoadBlasters RoadBlasters is not the easiest game to play on MAME given its original control scheme – it really needs a yoke like Star Wars, though it only steers on the x axis obviously, or a 270-degree steering wheel. A dial or trackball could work, an analog joystick would probably work better, a standard 8-way joystick works with the right settings. Even if you don't have the optimal setup, it's worth a try! Roadblasters.zip

Peter Pack Rat Like many Atari games from this era, Peter Pack Rat features an odd mix of elements – it's part platformer, part maze game, it features several very different stages and has a jazzy, eclectic soundtrack. It also had an unusual blue joystick grip (the same style as BattleZone, except... blue), which I reproduced in a stylized way. Peter Packrat.zip

Road Runner (shown here with the Large Curved Light preset – all of these have two screen sizes) Road Runner starts out fairly simply, and ends up becoming a fast-paced maze runner pretty quickly. The graphics and music capture the feel of the cartoons nicely. With an 8-way joystick, which is what most MAME players are using, Road Runner runs at max speed all the time, which arguably makes the game easier, if a bit harder to control. Road Runner.zip

Marble Madness Marble Madness is a classic, one of my childhood favorites, even though it was a quarter eater. You can actually play this game with a joystick, with much less control, but if you just want a hit of nostalgia it's definitely not unplayable. Marble Madness.zip

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom A movie tie-in released in 1985, Indiana Jones featured pretty novel gameplay and graphics for its time, and included speech generation and stereo sound. The gameplay is a little fiddly and you can't really kill any of the enemies (as you only have a whip), but features a variety of different stages and is fairly difficult. (The image shown here is the smaller screen size, which is more accurate to the original design, but I included a larger screen size which is probably more playable.) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.zip