Arcade1up LCD Marquee MOD by 8-bit Roots!

RetroRalph·video·10m 40s·analyzed·May 27, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

8-Bit Roots LCD marquee kit simplifies dynamic marquee installation for Arcade1Up with LaunchBox/BigBox software.

Summary

RetroRalph demonstrates an LCD marquee modification kit by 8-Bit Roots for Arcade1Up cabinets, detailing both hardware installation and software setup using LaunchBox/BigBox. The video covers marquee display configuration, theme file editing to properly scale images, and alternative Pi 4 image options, positioning the kit as an accessible solution to previously complex dynamic marquee projects.

Key Claims

Dynamic LCD marquees have been complex for years due to projects like Hyper Marquee, but the 8-Bit Roots kit significantly simplifies hardware installation and software setup
high confidence · RetroRalph discusses barriers to entry for marquee projects and positions 8-Bit Roots as a solution that breaks down those barriers
LaunchBox/BigBox automatically scrapes marquee images when importing ROMs, though some images may not be high resolution and require manual sourcing
high confidence · RetroRalph demonstrates the image scraping function and notes quality variation
The 8-Bit Roots kit can be purchased as a complete assembled unit or as individual components (LCD panel and mounting kit separately)
high confidence · RetroRalph explicitly states 'you can buy the LCD panel raw like this but...he gives you a nice frame to put it in...he can give you the panel and it and the mount or just the mount itself'
Theme file editing (changing 'Stretch equals Uniform' to 'Fill' in Game Marquee View and Platform Marquee View files) is necessary to properly scale marquee images to fill the entire display
high confidence · RetroRalph demonstrates the specific technical steps and shows before/after results with black bars
LaunchBox/BigBox marquee setup is significantly simpler than previous solutions like Hyper Marquee
high confidence · RetroRalph states 'this is really simple in comparison to that' and 'something that was, you know, kind of unattainable before all of a sudden attainable'

Notable Quotes

“There's a reason why you don't see this everywhere. It's because it's been pretty complex for a lot of years.”
RetroRalph (Jon Hey)@ 0:10 — Establishes the pain point that the 8-Bit Roots kit addresses
“This video does assume you have some general knowledge of LaunchBox and BigBox so if you do need help with that I'm going to actually put a link in the description to an ETA Prime video that will help you with the initial setup.”
RetroRalph (Jon Hey)@ 7:40 — Acknowledges audience skill prerequisites and provides resource recommendations
“I think from now I might want to adopt this technology now on all my multi-cade builds in one-ups because it's just awesome...I'm sold on it”
RetroRalph (Jon Hey)@ 9:14 — Personal endorsement indicating strong confidence in the product and solution
“The fact that chase over 8-bit roots made it so simple to the install makes it easy for me because I'm not someone that likes to do woodworking”
RetroRalph (Jon Hey)@ 9:29 — Highlights target audience appeal—lowered barrier to entry for non-technical builders

Entities

Jon HeypersonChaseperson8-Bit RootscompanyLaunchBoxproductBigBoxproductArcade1UpproductHyper MarqueeproductETA PrimepersonRetroRalphperson

Signals

?
community_signal: 8-Bit Roots providing customizable build-to-order hardware kits and compiled Pi 4 images to support different user preferences and technical skill levels
high · Chase offers multiple purchasing options (LCD only, kit only, complete assembled unit) and provides both official Pi 4 image and BigBox/LaunchBox method support
$
market_signal: Significant demand indicated for accessible arcade cabinet modification solutions, with 8-Bit Roots positioned to capture market previously deterred by technical complexity
medium · RetroRalph predicts adoption saying 'hopefully it enables all you guys that were maybe kind of on the fence on it to engage and sort of adopt the technology' and commits to adopting it himself
?
product_strategy: 8-Bit Roots LCD marquee kit represents a significant simplification of previously complex dynamic marquee implementation, lowering barriers to entry for arcade cabinet modders
high · RetroRalph describes it as breaking 'barriers of step one, which is getting a screen to even fit in your marquee and make it look nice' and states the solution makes 'something that was, you know, kind of unattainable before all of a sudden attainable'
?
technology_signal: Transition from complex software projects (Hyper Marquee) to simplified hardware + standard software frontend (LaunchBox/BigBox) integration for arcade marquee displays
high · RetroRalph directly contrasts 'this is really simple in comparison to that' when comparing the 8-Bit Roots approach to Hyper Marquee and describes LaunchBox/BigBox as the simpler method

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.032

0:00

Hey guys, welcome back. So in today's episode we're talking about an exciting topic, LCDs for marquees. Now there's a reason why you don't see this everywhere. It's because it's been pretty complex for a lot of years. There's the hyper marquee project and then there's all sorts of slews of other projects to get hyper or dynamic marquees going on a multicade. Now what I'm going to show you today is pretty exciting because it sort of breaks down the barriers of step one, which is getting a screen to even fit in your marquee and make it look nice. So we're going to handle that today. And we're also going to tackle the software end of it. One way I'm very familiar with and it's going to be easy to show you. The other way I'm just going to kind of give you some guidance. But you will leave this video with at least one way that you can do it that should be fairly easy for everyone. So let's dive in and check it out. All right, so what we're looking at right now is we're looking at the LCD marquee, but it's taken out of the mounting system that you saw earlier in the video. And then we have something simulating our primary display, and the LCD marquee is running as monitor 2. It's hooked up to this small form factor PC, and how this is actually used as a monitor is you need one of these VS display boards, and the system does come with the VS display board, so you're all set there. So as I scroll down the list, you'll see the marquee images will change with every game I select. Now, the cool thing is, is LaunchBox and BigBox, which we're running here, actually scrapes these images for you. So when you import your ROMs, it pulls down the images that are associated with those ROMs. So it sometimes doesn't pull everything down as high res. And if it doesn't, then you'll have to kind of go and find a higher res images yourself. But it does a pretty good job. So how do you get this to work? So in LaunchBox and BigBox, this is a function. Now keep in mind, you do have to pay for BigBox, but it's pretty affordable. You can get a yearly subscription for pretty cheap, and I'll show you across the screen how much those subscription fees cost. All right, so how do we get this second display working as a marquee? So when we exit out of BigBox, there's an options menu. When we go to the options menu, you're going to see there is options under, I think it's actually under general, believe it or not. yeah under general it says primary screen and secondary screen so this one that says secondary screen screen two when you have the marquee plugged in it will actually show up as uh screen two so you actually select what screen you want it to be so right now i said none if i go back and say screen two now when i back out it should actually display the images so if i go back And there it is So keep in mind there one step that you going to need to do So if if you just try to do it the way I just did it and you turn it on your marquee images may not display correctly. You may end up with something where the image is just sort of in the center of the screen. It doesn't fill up the whole screen. If you encounter that issue you're going to need to do this. I'm going to show you really quick. All right so the first thing you want to do is want to back out and you want to go to manage themes now I'm going to show you what's probably going to happen is what you're probably going to have is you're going to have the default theme applied if you didn't change anything so I'm going to apply back to them that back to the main theme now what you're going to notice is after this happens my marquee is going to display the images incorrectly so let's go back and look at that okay so as we back out after applying the main theme which would be the one you'd be using the default is now you'll notice the marquees don't take up the whole screen you got this strip across the front with the black bars so that's not good we don't want that so there's two things we have to do one of them is we have to copy a theme and make a new one because you can't actually edit the default theme so we're going to make a new theme and i'll show you how to do that and then what we'll do is we'll do we're going to edit two files actually and the two files that we edit will fix this problem because if we try to edit those files on the default theme it won't work so let's do that real quick all right so in order to fix the marquee images we're going to go to our c drive we're going to navigate to users launch box there's gonna be another folder called launch box we're gonna go in there and then we're going to go under themes now in themes these are going to show you all the themes you have installed so the one that we want to actually edit is the default theme because that's what i'm running on now you'd have to do this for any of the themes that you want to use if the marquee on So I'm going to basically copy this and make a new copy. And then we're going to name it. I'll just name it Fix for just lack of me being creative right now. I'll just call it Fix. So when I go into Fix, there's a certain file we're going to want to go to. It's under Views. So the first one we're interested is Game Marquee View. So we're going to open that up and edit it. And basically the only thing we care about, leave all of this alone for right now. You should be fine with all that. Where it says Stretch equals Uniform, you're going to actually type in Fill.

4:51

and then all you're gonna do is go up to file save and then we're gonna do the same thing with another file in here and it's called platform marquee view so we're gonna go edit I actually don't know if you have to do this one but I did both of them anyway just to be safe so again we stretch you gonna pay say fill and then go file save at this point what we going to do is we going to go back into BigBox and we going to enable the fix view And when we do that, it should fix our marquee. Okay, so we're back in BigBox and I didn't change the theme so you can see the marquee is still messed up. So we're going to go over to manage themes. And remember, we called our theme fix. So we want to go to installed themes, which is the top option. And then we're going to enable fix. and then you're going to see you can't really see it on the screen but it says apply as main theme so i want to click that and i want to say yes now when i go back i'm going to exit out the marquees take up the whole screen so that was the biggest snag i hit so now we're just ready to have fun so let's go over we're going to put this in the machine over there but i'm going to swap out the marquee right here for the one that that i'm going to tell you about in a second that's really cool. All right. So where do you get the marquee? You go to 8-Bit Roots. So he sells the marquee kit. Now he sells it with or without the LCD. So you can just buy, you know, the kit itself and then buy the LCD separate, or you can buy everything from him and it'll be all assembled and ready to go. He even includes a back panel that fits right up against the marquee. So it's nice and snug. So I love this. This is awesome. So you can decide to do this all on your own, but I think he makes it super easy and gives you a drop-in kit that you can put right into your arcade one-up pretty sweet all right so let's take a look at this thing in action so this thing is pretty sweet so chase over at 8-bit roots just makes this thing look awesome and it's a drop-in kit if you want it to be he'll give you the lcd and the mount and everything and it'll be all assembled when you get it so it's really just more of a drop-in solution now you do still need to know the software end of it and that's why I covered big box launch box but there's an alternative method to doing this. So Chase actually created and compiled his own Pi 4 image that has a track mode. Now that will work with this. You'll have to just bring your own ROMs. I found that Big Box Launch Box was the most simple way to do it. And honestly, when I've been finagling with things like Hyper Marquee in the past, this is really simple in comparison to that. So it kind of makes something that was, you know, kind of unattainable before all of a sudden attainable. So I will have links in the description to Chase's Etsy store so you can order this stuff you need and I will also have a link to his pi4 image if you choose to go down that route. This video does assume you have some general knowledge of LaunchBox and BigBox so if you do need help with that I'm going to actually put a link in the description to an ETA Prime video that will help you with the initial setup. Alright guys it final thoughts time so what do I think about this LCD kit from 8 roots I think it awesome so you can buy the LCD panel raw like this but what chase does which is awesome over at 8-bit roots is he gives you a nice frame to put it in he can even customize that however you want because it's all build-to-order kind of stuff so that's pretty damn cool but keep in mind I'll have links in the description to just the panel itself if you want to go that route and then buy just the install kit from chase you can do it either way he can give you the panel and it and the mount or just the mount itself so that's really cool the other thing that i think is awesome is i showed you guys big box launch box which i found to be way easier than compiling my own pi 4 image with with uh tracked mode but chase actually is going to provide that for us too so it's not going to have any roms or anything in it it's just the base image that he compiled i'll have a link in the description to that base image so should you go the pi route if that's your preference you can do that but to me right now it seems a little bit more difficult and keep in mind you're on your own if you decide to use this image so on the launch box big box end if you're new to it then maybe this video isn't as helpful so i'm going to have a link in the description to an eta prime video which basically tells you how to get launch box set up and add roms and all that stuff and then from there you can go back and watch this video and pick it up and you should be good to go so other things i'd like to sort of like leave you guys with i think from now i might want to adopt this technology now on all my multi-cade builds in one-ups because it's just awesome I mean it's really cool to change the games and see the marquee change with it the screen's relatively high res so it looks really good and I don't know I'm just I'm sold I'm sold on it and the fact that chase over 8-bit roots made it so simple to the install makes it easy for me because I'm not someone that likes to do woodworking I hate doing woodworking it's just not my skill set maybe one day I'll pick it up but for now I'm not interested in that so hopefully it enables all you guys that were maybe kind of on the fence on it to engage and sort of adopt the technology. Okay, guys, that is it for now. That's all I have. We'll probably do other videos about this topic. It's really hard to cover it in about 10 minutes, but we will definitely cover it again in the future. If you have any questions, put it in the comments below. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel and turn on notifications so you can be informed of future videos. That's it for now, guys. We will see you on the next one.