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Excellent. I have an original mortal kombat cabinet I'm restoring, I can't imagine delving into an esoteric project like this.
You should add "kick" sensors to the bottom of the cabinet for full immersion.
And a sensor where you can shoot the cabinet with a gun to immediately win the match.
It sounds like the author is part of a wonderful community.
The game SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium used a similar system because the Neo Geo Pocket only had two buttons.
the ngpc's stick was so good, its mad that it was never attempted on another controller
The much discussed "motion inputs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WhbSNP_zF4 which came from SF1—the stick movements for special moves, like the fireball's quarter-circle-forward, the Dragon Punch's Z and so on—were surely meant to be of a piece with the pneumatic buttons, all part of an input scheme to make the player feel that (s)he's making or at least mimicking the physical efforts of his/her character. (Making the special moves so hard to get right in SF1 probably tended to defeat that purpose, but oh well.)
There's so much documentation about specific games thanks to the work of the MAME developers and manuals uploaded to KLOV. There's also tons of hackers making reproduction parts or even new products to help keep your home arcade in good shape. I wouldn't have any doubts that where there's a will to get some old arcade hardware working, there's most certainly a way.
I remember playing this version in the arcade at Golf & Stuff aka Castles & Coasters in Phoenix AZ.

The arcade attendants would yell at you for 'hitting the game'.

I played the pneumatic version at an arcade on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. I had played the 6-button version before that a few times and was really intrigued by the giant buttons. Unfortunately, it was quickly apparent that the pneumatic controls were atrocious.

That said, I just loved the idea of all of the different types of fighters going head-to-head. I loved Enter the Dragon and Bloodsport.

I had been a huge fan of Karateka on the Apple II and Ye Are Kung Fu in the arcade. Street Fighter was like Ye Are Kung Fu on steroids, but even the 6-button controls weren’t very good. When SFII brought the concept and controls together, it was love at first sight. I’ve been a big SF2 fan ever since and prefer it and its variants over all of the sequels.

One of the few remaining arcades that’s still a lot of fun!
This was a fun read. I love projects like this!
What an awesome read. I’d like to do this when the time is right down the road with the time crisis series.

I think time crisis 2 or 3 had the pistol controller attached to a tube and there was a noise making mechanism (or the slide actually moved) that activated when you fired. I’d love to get each one of those cabinets for 1, 2, and 3.

The way I remember it, Time Crisis had a slide that moved. It emulated the kick of a real firearm - albeit poorly, but as a teenager I had no idea otherwise.
I swear the pistol did slide. Also the stepping plate was genius: by default the character would cover, and you hd to physically step down on the plate like a pedal to go out of cover and shoot.
What a gem of a writeup, really enjoyed the read. Have many fond memories of playing SF2 as a kid.
Very nice write up. Very lousy game and even worse with the pneumatic controls. The cabinets collected dust back in the day.
Sounds like a source of problem for the arcade hall operators.
Great write-up.

It saddens me to think of modern online games, and how many of them will be lost once they become unprofitable.