Turns the 1UP Sonic arcade cabinet into a 24-game cabinet. Everything runs from the USB stick — pull it out and the cabinet is exactly as it came.
Install
- Unzip
sonic.zipto the root of a USB stick. - Plug the stick into the full-size USB port and power the cabinet on.
- It asks "An upgrade package has been detected locally. Do you want to upgrade?" — choose YES.
Open the drive and check it looks like this before you plug it in:
✓ Right
D:\
├─ SonicUpdate.state
└─ SonicCab\
├─ roms\
├─ icons\
├─ controls\
└─ order.txt
✗ Wrong
D:\
└─ sonic\
├─ SonicUpdate.state
└─ SonicCab\
├─ roms\
└─ ...
If there's a sonic folder on the drive, open it, move those two items up to the top level and delete the empty folder. The cabinet only looks at the top level.
The screen goes dark for about 40 seconds while it installs. That's normal — don't power it off. When it comes back you'll have six pages of four games. Leave the stick in; it won't ask to upgrade again.
Adding your own games
Drop a ROM into SonicCab/roms/. It appears next time the cabinet starts.
To give it a proper logo and control screen instead of plain text, add matching PNGs named exactly like the ROM:
SonicCab/roms/Golden Axe (World).md
SonicCab/icons/Golden Axe (World).png
SonicCab/controls/Golden Axe (World).png
Games with CD-quality soundtracks (MD+, MSU-MD) come as a folder of files. Copy the whole folder into roms/ and leave it intact — the cabinet loads the .cue, which is what plays the music.
Hiding or removing games
- Remove it — delete the ROM from
SonicCab/roms/. - Hide it — put a minus sign in front of its name in
order.txt. The game stays on the stick, just off the menu, which is handy for swapping things in and out.
The four games the cabinet came with can be hidden the same way. That's how Sonic 1 is swapped for the CD-soundtrack version.
order.txt
SonicCab/order.txt decides what's on the menu and in what order. One game per line, four to a page:
# page 1
Sonic The Hedgehog (USA, Europe) (Mode 1 CD)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (World)
Sonic 3 and Knuckles (USA)
Sonic CD (US)
# page 2
Sonic 3D Blast (USA, Europe, Korea) (En)
...
# hidden
-Sonic The Hedgehog (USA, Europe)
- Names are the filename without the extension.
#starts a comment.-in front of a name hides that game.- Anything you don't list still shows up, after the games you did list.
- Delete the file entirely and the cabinet falls back to its own order — so it's safe to experiment with.
Going back to stock
Take the stick out. The added games disappear and the cabinet is back to Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3D Blast and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Nothing is installed to the cabinet's own storage.