Thanks for having me!

[500kvlineman]

I meant that, IMO, if he's got the smarts (or the crazies ) to work on 500KV, I doubt he would be satisfied with simply taking the easy way out with a laptop and USB joystick.
That's kinda like this:
View attachment 113089

I do appreciate all you've said. It will take some time for me to understand most of it,lol.. I just wanted to use my laptop to practice some arduino. I didnt have the download on that raspberry yet for arduino and the monitor was being used by my 8yr old for far more important things. Atari hahaa

 

[500kvlineman]

There's a lot of content online regarding MAME running on Pies.

I will have to check on this. My bookmarks have grew 10 gb from here with a introductory post. Im Afraid to start one out in the forums..haha.. thanks

 

[Mickster]

FWIW, I did (sorta) take the easy way out with a retro arcade system.
SWMBO is a demon on Ms Pacman and really kicks my ass. She won't play anything else, but is happy to sit playing for ages.
I ordered a dual arcade stick kit from Banggood:
https://www.banggood.com/Arcade-LED...-Push-Buttons-p-1156368.html?cur_warehouse=CN
and made up a 2 player console to use with MAME:

Sorry, but I didn't take photos of the rest of the construction, or the completed console. It is finished and working, the covering was done with black contact paper and looks kinda decent.
MAME was installed on an old Thinkpad and we can hook it up to the tv or projector with a HDMI cable.
However, for portability, a Pi would be far better and definitely adds to the cool-factor for a youngster and his/her friends.

Regards.

 

[large_ghostman]

Now those are nice buttons!! The joysticks look military spec for inside a super tank lol, It going to look sweet when done

 

[KJ6EAD]

I used to build and repair arcade video games. Here's the best-known source for controls:

https://na.suzohapp.com/catalogs/amusement

 

[dmiyares]

Simple and easy method would be something like MAME on an old laptop, with a USB joystick.
But I don't think you came here for simple and easy....

Even easier way to do something like this is via the RetroPie image which you can get at https://retropie.org.uk/ note that it doesn't come with ANY roms, games etc... you'll have to Google for those.