NAWA ASOBI ARCADE · 縄遊び

TECH / PROOF

Why this arcade exists — and how we check it

1 · WHY THIS EXISTS

縄遊び Nawa Asobi is a public demonstration of AI-assisted software development. It is a private, non-commercial, educational exhibit — the arcade is the demonstration; the receipts are the point.

The experiment: take arcade and handheld machines from 1978–1989, originally written in Intel 8080, Zilog Z80, MOS 6502 and Sharp LR35902 assembly, and have an AI (MonkeyAI) rebuild each game from scratch in a modern web runtime — working only from the documented machine behaviour: annotated disassemblies, MAME driver notes, rules wikis. Never the ROM, never the original code, art or sound.

Then measure the conversion instead of describing it: real build clocks (start and finish, to the second), a re-runnable headless test harness per game that asserts every documented value, and a MAME frame-comparison pipeline for pixel-level truth.

The rule for this page and for every dossier: every number shown is measured. Anything not yet verified is labelled pending or approximated. If a claim cannot be checked, it is not made.

Licensing. Nawa Asobi is in active licensing discussions with the rights-holders of every title shown. The owner fully expects to pay licensing fees for them; the games appear under their real names as work in progress toward those licences, not in place of them. The exhibit is pre-licensed — licences being negotiated — and stays a private, non-commercial educational exhibit meanwhile.

2 · THE METHOD

3 · EVIDENCE PER MACHINE

Generated from each cabinet's dossier in src/games.js. Clocks are NZ time. Harness counts are what node test/<game>/_harness.mjs prints.

4 · STILL PENDING · HONEST LIMITS

5 · THIS SESSION, MEASURED

Live readouts from the running renderer on your device. Real values — never faked.

RENDER

—

fps

INPUT LATENCY

—

ms

3D MODELS

—

ms load

Input latency shows once you interact (press a key / tap). Model load fills as real cabinets finish loading.

MONKEYAI

The method that checks the conversion

1 · WHAT MONKEYAI IS

2 · THE CHECKS

Five things that check and double-check every conversion. Each status line is computed from the machine dossiers and the credits registry.

3 · WHAT WAS CHECKED, PER MACHINE

Generated from each cabinet's dossier in src/games.js. Tap a machine name for its full dossier.

4 · WHY DOUBLE-CHECKING MATTERS

5 · PLAY THE METHOD

The five checks, as a playable 1980s arcade game. Each level IS one of the checks above — beat all five and the cabinet ships. It's the 12th machine on the floor, and honest about what isn't verified yet.

ABOUT NAWA ASOBI

縄遊び (nawa asobi — "knot play") is the Japanese echo of Knot & Coin Arcade: a genuinely playable walk-in 3D coin-op arcade, and a public demonstration of AI-assisted software development.

Every cabinet is a faithful from-scratch reimplementation of the documented machine behaviour — never a lifted ROM. The rebuild is the demonstration. How it is checked is on the page.

Every timing and fidelity claim on this site comes from actually-measured work. Where a measurement is still pending, we say so.

LICENSING

Nawa Asobi is in active licensing discussions with the rights-holders of every title shown. The owner fully expects to pay licensing fees for them; the games appear under their real names as work in progress toward those licences, not in place of them. Until then this is a pre-licensed, private, non-commercial educational exhibit — licences being negotiated.

CONTROLLER

Works in browsers everywhere, no bridge: the standard 8BitDo Arcade Stick (the non-Xbox edition — Bluetooth / 2.4G, with D-input / X-input / Switch modes) or any standard-mapping Bluetooth gamepad, on iPad Safari, Mac, Windows and Android. Honestly: not yet tested on our own unit.

Does not work in macOS browsers: the 8BitDo Arcade Stick for Xbox (MPN 81JA01D). It speaks Xbox GIP, and no browser on macOS can see it — Apple's driver only matches Microsoft's vendor id, and Chromium's list omits this product id. It does work in Windows browsers as an XInput / standard-mapping pad. On the Mac mini cabinet it works only through our own USB→keyboard bridge (padbridge), verified every button and the lever.

Key map of the Mac-cabinet bridge. In the browser the mapping is simpler: the D-pad or left stick moves, the four face buttons A / B / X / Y are each game's buttons 1–4 in order, MENU is START and VIEW exits the game; the shoulder buttons and triggers are not used in the browser yet.

LEVERarrow keys

ASpace

Bz

Xx

Yc

LBShift

RB2

RT1

LT / VIEWEscape

MENUEnter

GUIDE / XBOXHome — h

LS (click stick)Player 1 / coin — [

RS (click stick)Player 2 — ]

New: the stick alone now drives the whole cabinet — the Guide/Xbox button is HOME (leave a game, or step back to the floor), and clicking the left / right stick is PLAYER 1 / PLAYER 2 (walk in, insert a coin, start a 1- or 2-player game). No mouse needed.

Plug in or pair, then open the controller check page — it dumps exactly what your browser sees.

Mac users with the Xbox stick — easiest: download the Nawa Asobi Arcade Starter (macOS 13 or newer, Apple Silicon and Intel, about 0.25 MB). It opens the arcade in its own window and drives it straight from the stick — no Accessibility permission and no "which browser is in front" juggling, because the app is the browser. Unzip, move to Applications, open, plug in the stick, play.

Or, to use your own browser: the free menu-bar helper Nawa Asobi Pad Bridge (same sizes). It talks to the stick over USB and types the key map above into whichever browser is in front — the same bridge our cabinet uses, packaged for any Mac. This one needs the Accessibility permission (see steps below).

Install: 1 unzip and move the app to Applications · 2 first launch — macOS 15 and newer: double-click once, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway; macOS 13/14: right-click → Open · 3 grant Accessibility when asked (that is what lets it type into the browser) · 4 plug in the stick — the menu-bar icon says "Stick: connected" and you can play.

Honest caveats (both apps): neither is signed with an Apple Developer ID yet, so macOS shows a warning on first launch (notarisation needs the US$99/yr Developer Program, which we have not bought yet — source is in the repo). macOS only; iPad cannot use them. The non-Xbox 8BitDo stick and normal Bluetooth gamepads need none of this. Not yet tested on a stranger's Mac — tell us if it fails.

Want the same stick? We may sell them here — TBC.

🔒 PRIVATE CABINET

This area is the owner's private workshop. It is only available to the owner's account. If you reached this by accident, head back to the floor.

Owner-only. Signed in as —. The images below stream from your private encrypted cloud vault (S3, no public URL) — every request is checked against your Cognito token and re-checked for your owner email in the Lambda, so nothing loads for anyone else. No copyrighted ROM assets are ever served from this site (guard rail #2). The real ROMs run privately on your own machine; this panel just points you to them.

DEV FLOOR — WIP & HONEST GRADES

Cabinets and grades that are not on the public floor — including the from-scratch Street Fighter (owner grade: F, 2026-09-18) and its measured timing record. Visible to you only.

BEFORE / AFTER — THE CONVERSION

Your real-arcade reference screenshots beside our from-scratch engine, with the measured frame-data writeup (Street Fighter engine: harness-verified 160/160 against documented ST frame data). This is the legal "show people the conversion" demonstration — commentary, no copied assets. Upload reference images to your private vault (bucket nawa-arcade-vault-722851019028, keys street-fighter-real.png / street-fighter-ours.png) and they appear here — served only to you.

REAL ROM — PRIVATE LOCAL PLAY

The 100%-accurate real game runs on your own machine, from ROMs extracted from software you own (SF 30th Anniversary Collection) — never from this server. That is legitimate private-use; re-hosting on this public site is not, which is why it lives locally.

Setup steps for your hardware are in the repo at docs/private-cabinet.md (Mac mini → OpenEmu/MAME; Windows → sf30ac-extractor + MAME; Pi → RetroPie). Tell the keeper your cabinet hardware and it will be filled in end-to-end.

This launcher opens your local emulator, not a web ROM. If nothing is configured yet, it says so honestly.

SIGN IN

Demo auth — no real Cognito call yet.

✉ 🔒

·

CHIP IN TO COVER HOSTING

INSERT COIN

balance 0 credits

Every play is a flat 20¢ ($2 = 10 plays) — that covers the hosting, payment-processing and running cost of one game. There are no free plays: add credit, or sign in with a nominated or supporter account.

Support the backend · $20 / month

A monthly contribution that keeps the AWS services behind the floor running. Supporters play free while it is active; cancel any time from the checkout receipt.

Got a Nawa Asobi token?

The honest small print — cost-recovery & privacy

Nawa Asobi is a private, non-commercial educational exhibit. Credits are not a purchase of the games — they are an optional cost-recovery contribution at a flat 20¢ per play ($2 = 10 plays, $5 = 25, $10 = 50), with no markup and no "buy more, save more" bonuses. Right now checkout is MOCK / DEMO — no real charge, no merchant keys. Real cost-recovery payment drops in at the Phase 5 seam (src/tokens.js). See TERMS.

Privacy: We store a random balance ID (and your sign-in session) in your browser's local storage. No advertising or analytics trackers, no third-party cookies from us. Payment pages are hosted by Chargebee/Stripe and set their own cookies for fraud prevention.

HOW THIS WAS RESURRECTED

SPACE INVADERS

CREDITS & LICENSES

The people whose work built this arcade

🏆 ARCADE RANK THIS DEVICE

Every machine, one score

Each machine's best is scored against its par — 1000 points for a documented "good game", capped there — and your ARCADE RANK is the sum across machines.

YOUR MACHINES

SET YOUR HANDLE

Scores are reported by the game in your browser — a private exhibit, not a competitive ranking; sign in to keep scores across devices.

SPACE INVADERS

PRESS START

Arcade — see the machine, touch the buttons

CONTROLLER MAPPING

ARCADE FLOOR

Our own diagram of the stick — labels match the cabinet bridge mapping. The face buttons A / B / X / Y are each game's buttons 1–4 in order.

Works here: the standard 8BitDo Arcade Stick (non-Xbox edition, Bluetooth / 2.4G) or any standard-mapping Bluetooth gamepad — not yet tested on our own unit. The 8BitDo Arcade Stick for Xbox is invisible to every macOS browser (Xbox GIP); it works in Windows browsers, and on the Mac mini cabinet only through our padbridge USB→keyboard bridge. The lever works in D-pad or left-analog mode. Detected: — · controller check page

NAWA ASOBIARCADE · 縄遊び

WELCOME TO NAWA ASOBI ARCADE