NOTE: I do not own an Arcade1Up, but I have a friend who has the Centipede version. I am posting this article to give some extra exposure to research he and others are doing on the trackball problems.
Arcade1Up is a 3/4-sized 80s arcade cabinet for home use. They have several units available, with most playing four classic arcade games (and one special edition with 12 games).
The Centipede unit has a vertical monitor and comes with Centipede, Missile Command, Millipede and Crystal Castle.
After first playing my friend’s unit, we both agreed that Centipede played very poorly. This led him to dig into the problem, and he found this Do-It-Yourself solution on YouTube:
The trackball is a rotary encoder where, as it spins, a little wheel turns and is either blocking or allowing light to flow through and be detected by a light sensor. The software counts the pulses and determines how far the wheel has spun. (Here’s the Arduino playground on them.)
The stock encoder wheel has 30 spokes, and this D-I-Y solution shows how to make one with 24. My friend decided to try it and designed one on his 3-D printer. After installation, Centipede does indeed play much, much better, and the other games seem to still play as well as they did before (they were mostly fine, so I can’t tell if there was any significant improvement without doing a side-by-side comparison with an unmodified cabinet).
I think we could convince him into making these replacement parts available at a low-cost for folks who don’t want to DIY. Comment to this post if you might be interested.
Until then… There is an active discussion on Reddit about various problems, solutions, and modifications to the Arcade1Up machines. Be sure to drop by there check it out.
