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What you really wanted was http://www.ultracade.com/openoffer.pdf which is a reaction to the reaction to your link.

Contents of the document follow:

February 21, 2005
An open offer to the M.A.M.E. community.

Our recent actions to protect our products have met with a lot of controversy. Many people have been quick to judge and make accusations about what we are attempting to do, and what we have already done. It is my understanding that the spirit of the M.A.M.E. community is ""M.A.M.E.'s purpose is to preserve these decades of videogame history." It is further my understanding that "Selling either is not allowed" with regards to M.A.M.E.

Given this understanding, we are willing to help promote these goals and work to provide the original authors with the protection they deserve. Our goal is to prevent the commercial offering of machines with illegally obtained ROMs. I believe our goals can work in parallel.

Furthermore, we have a long standing relationship with many publishers of many games, and we are constantly working to obtain more and more licenses for these games.

Our goal in filing the trademark for the name M.A.M.E. was simply to give us leverage against those companies that promote and sell machines with M.A.M.E. installed on it, and more importantly, provide their customers with the means to illegally obtain the ROMs. This doesn't help our sales of our products. This doesn't help the community in general.

We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it commercially.

I am available to work with the community to ensure that this happens, and to help get more games made available to the community at a reasonable price.

David R. Foley
CEO
UltraCade Technologies

So the whole problem could theoretically be solved by giving it to someone appropriate.

For those who are wondering about the MAME license:

II. Cost

MAME is free. Its source code is free. Selling either is not allowed.

Also interesting:

III. ROM Images

ROM images are copyrighted material. Most of them cannot be distributed
freely. Distribution of MAME on the same physical medium as illegal copies
of ROM images is strictly forbidden.
You are not allowed to distribute MAME in any form if you sell, advertise,
or publicize illegal CD-ROMs or other media containing ROM images. This
restriction applies even if you don't make money, directly or indirectly,
from those activities. You are allowed to make ROMs and MAME available for
download on the same website, but only if you warn users about the ROMs's
copyright status, and make it clear that users must not download ROMs unless
they are legally entitled to do so.

IV. Source Code Distribution

If you distribute the binary (compiled) version of MAME, you should also
distribute the source code. If you can't do that, you must provide a link
to a site where the source can be obtained.

IAAL, and to make a trademark application of the kind that is at issue here, you have to make a declaration that you have a bona fide intent to use the trademark.

HOWEVER, on Ultracade's website, there is an open letter to the MAME community dated February 21, 2005 in which they write:

"We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos."

In other words, they are admittedly committing fraud on the Trademark Office.

If you want to hit him where it hurts, target his business:

http://www.ultracade.com/

Here's a link to a 300k image from that site:

Big image

Hmm... What about games by companies that are completely gone and no legal permission for ROM images can be obtained? With these people setting themselves up as the gatekeepers for MAME, those games would fall through the cracks. One of those games would be one I worked on, and that kind of pisses me off.

Ultracade have posted a statement in reponse http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf:

"February 21, 2005

Like most things that are spread by rumor, the facts about me, UltraCade Technologies, and the M.A.M.E.
emulation system are quite distorted. I will try and educate anyone who cares to listen about the reality of our
marketplace and what we are doing and what we are not. Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the
commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on
the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim
ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial
marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. user groups and forums.

I have been working on emulation technology since the mid 80's when I did work on an emulation project in college.
In 1994, while working on games for companies like Sega and Williams, we developed an emulation of the arcade
games Joust, Defender and Robotron that ran on a Sega Genesis. In 1996, we started the Lucky 8 project which
turned into the UltraCade project. In 1998 we were one of the first companies to acquire the rights to classic arcade
games from various publishers. We have licensed games from several manufacturers including Capcom, Jaleco,
Taito, Stern, Incredible Technologies, Midway, Atari and more. We have started several projects and built
prototypes for companies like Sega, based on technology that was licensed from authors from the emulation
community. We have licensed technology from many of the community's programmers, paying them to use their
code in our products and demonstrations. We have been the leader of the retro arcade movement, and have
invested millions of dollars creating a market for retro games. UltraCade was the first successful multi-game
arcade machine combining many of the old classics. We further enhanced the market by creating Arcade Legends,
our consumer version of the UltraCade product. We have also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing
fees to have the right to sell our games.
In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade
Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a
very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing
others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic
Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same
4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that
don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download
the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of
ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that
there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you
really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. These companies are simply selling the promise of
thousands of games on a machine that can not possibly run them legally. I sometimes hear the argument, "well, I
could go on eBay and buy up all of these games and then run it", and while plausible, it certainly would not be
anywhere near cost effective, and again, if the customer knew that to legally operate these games, they have to
spend thousands of dollars buying legal ROMs I seriously doubt that they would consider purchasing a M.A.M.E.
machine. Anyone reading this email thread is an intelli

So before I sent a kneejerk reaction email based off this topic.. I went to the Ultracade site to see if they had any argument to offer. Sure enough they do. The link to it is here..

http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf

David Foley provides a reasoning at least for his actions. While it may not be the correct way of going about it, it is how he plans to fight his "competitors" who use illegal software and piracy methods. I'm not saying that I'm in total agreement with him but I do see his side of things. Perhaps there is another way to deal with it.....?

This is a complex case amongst companies that are trying to make it about UltraCade stealing something from the M.A.M.E. team. That is not what this is about. This is simply UltraCade Technologies and other publishers doing whatever it takes to protect our commercial interests

But you be the judge....

February 21, 2005

An open offer to the M.A.M.E. community.

Our recent actions to protect our products have met with a lot of controversy. Many
people have been quick to judge and make accusations about what we are attempting to
do, and what we have already done. It is my understanding that the spirit of the
M.A.M.E. community is ""M.A.M.E.'s purpose is to preserve these decades of videogame
history." It is further my understanding that "Selling either is not allowed" with
regards to M.A.M.E.

Given this understanding, we are willing to help promote these goals and work to provide
the original authors with the protection they deserve. Our goal is to prevent the
commercial offering of machines with illegally obtained ROMs. I believe our goals can
work in parallel.

Furthermore, we have a long standing relationship with many publishers of many games,
and we are constantly working to obtain more and more licenses for these games.
Our goal in filing the trademark for the name M.A.M.E. was simply to give us leverage
against those companies that promote and sell machines with M.A.M.E. installed on it,
and more importantly, provide their customers with the means to illegally obtain the
ROMs. This doesn't help our sales of our products. This doesn't help the community in
general.

We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to
prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our
application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however
we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it
commercially.

I am available to work with the community to ensure that this happens, and to help get
more games made available to the community at a reasonable price.

David R. Foley
CEO
UltraCade Technologies

The other letter also attempts to clarify Foley's situation:

February 21, 2005

Like most things that are spread by rumor, the facts about me, UltraCade Technologies, and the M.A.M.E. emulation system are quite distorted. I will try and educate anyone who cares to listen about the reality of our marketplace and what we are doing and what we are not. Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. user groups and forums.

I have been working on emulation technology since the mid 80's when I did work on an emulation project in college. In 1994, while working on games for companies like Sega and Williams, we developed an emulation of the arcade games Joust, Defender and Robotron that ran on a Sega Genesis. In 1996, we started the Lucky 8 project which turned into the UltraCade project. In 1998 we were one of the first companies to acquire the rights to classic arcade games from various publishers. We have licensed games from several manufacturers including Capcom,

This is a complex case amongst companies that are trying to make it about UltraCade stealing something from the M.A.M.E. team. That is not what this is about. This is simply UltraCade Technologies and other publishers doing whatever it takes to protect our commercial interests

But you be the judge....

February 21, 2005

An open offer to the M.A.M.E. community.

Our recent actions to protect our products have met with a lot of controversy. Many
people have been quick to judge and make accusations about what we are attempting to
do, and what we have already done. It is my understanding that the spirit of the
M.A.M.E. community is ""M.A.M.E.'s purpose is to preserve these decades of videogame
history." It is further my understanding that "Selling either is not allowed" with
regards to M.A.M.E.

Given this understanding, we are willing to help promote these goals and work to provide
the original authors with the protection they deserve. Our goal is to prevent the
commercial offering of machines with illegally obtained ROMs. I believe our goals can
work in parallel.

Furthermore, we have a long standing relationship with many publishers of many games,
and we are constantly working to obtain more and more licenses for these games.
Our goal in filing the trademark for the name M.A.M.E. was simply to give us leverage
against those companies that promote and sell machines with M.A.M.E. installed on it,
and more importantly, provide their customers with the means to illegally obtain the
ROMs. This doesn't help our sales of our products. This doesn't help the community in
general.

We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to
prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our
application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however
we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it
commercially.

I am available to work with the community to ensure that this happens, and to help get
more games made available to the community at a reasonable price.

David R. Foley
CEO
UltraCade Technologies

The other letter also attempts to clarify Foley's situation:

February 21, 2005

Like most things that are spread by rumor, the facts about me, UltraCade Technologies, and the M.A.M.E. emulation system are quite distorted. I will try and educate anyone who cares to listen about the reality of our marketplace and what we are doing and what we are not. Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. user groups and forums.

I have been working on emulation technology since the mid 80's when I did work on an emulation project in college. In 1994, while working on games for companies like Sega and Williams, we developed an emulation of the arcade games Joust, Defender and Robotron that ran on a Sega Genesis. In 1996, we started the Lucky 8 project which turned into the UltraCade project. In 1998 we were one of the first companies to acquire the rights to classic arcade games from various publishers. We have licensed games from several manufacturers including Capcom,

Have a read of the following statements from the Ultracade website:

http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf

http://www.ultracade.com/openoffer.pdf

Sounds like it was either a false rumor or the bad publicity changed their attitute Ultraquick.

Have a read of the following statements from the Ultracade website:

http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf

http://www.ultracade.com/openoffer.pdf

Sounds like it was either a false rumor or the bad publicity changed their attitute Ultraquick.

Here they say that the reason to trademark Mame, is to stop piracy? Wtf? Why shouldnt the mame team own the mame trademark, and the company stop piracy using the normal laws for that.

I suggest that the Mame team agrees to no less than owning all the mame trademarks themselves. I do NOT trust this company.

While still full of it, Foley issued an Open Offer to the M.A.M.E. community stating, among other things, that he was trademarking the M.A.M.E. logo for profit, and to squash his competition (legal or otherwise). It seems particularly interesting that he makes it sound like he's doing MAME a favor, and that he will retract his application if the rightful owners decide to trademark the logo. "We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it commercially." Yeah, right. he and his company are intending to use the trademark comercially. Aditionally, in the official UltraCade statement located here we find ubiquitous buffonery such as these conflicting statements: "In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. ...To them, they read an advertisement on a website or on eBay and compare our product with 50 games or an ad for a machine that promises thousands of games, with the promise of instructions about how to obtain those games. Of course, in this skewed environment the average consumer would gravitate towards the thousands of games machine, not realizing that the software and the games are unlicensed and illegal to play. "...Now that we have attempted to take legal recourse to prevent illegal competition, the same people, who steal the work of the M.A.M.E. authors, and then profit by selling machines that have no value without the pirated games being made available, turn around and cry foul when we call them on their ways. "The M.A.M.E. platform, while a technical marvel, consists of many violations of copyrights and trademarks. The authors have always stated in the documentation that it was not put into the public domain to steal from the game authors or publishers, and they have always been hands off about how to obtain the ROMs. They have also clearly stated that it is not to be used for commercial gains." I can't even put my distaste into words. It's an unforgivable insult to the intelligence of the entire slashdot community that Foley would pull an obvious scam like this and try to tell us we've "misunderstood" him. Additionally, he seems wholely ignorant of the fact he has willfully committed purjury and has attempted the theft of intellectual property in order to leverage a legal cantilever against opposing businesses that he calls thieves and pirates because they are stealing intellectual property! Ladies and gentelmen, I stand offended.

While still full of it, Foley issued an Open Offer to the M.A.M.E. community stating, among other things, that he was trademarking the M.A.M.E. logo for profit, and to squash his competition (legal or otherwise). It seems particularly interesting that he makes it sound like he's doing MAME a favor, and that he will retract his application if the rightful owners decide to trademark the logo. "We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it commercially." Yeah, right. he and his company are intending to use the trademark comercially. Aditionally, in the official UltraCade statement located here we find ubiquitous buffonery such as these conflicting statements: "In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. ...To them, they read an advertisement on a website or on eBay and compare our product with 50 games or an ad for a machine that promises thousands of games, with the promise of instructions about how to obtain those games. Of course, in this skewed environment the average consumer would gravitate towards the thousands of games machine, not realizing that the software and the games are unlicensed and illegal to play. "...Now that we have attempted to take legal recourse to prevent illegal competition, the same people, who steal the work of the M.A.M.E. authors, and then profit by selling machines that have no value without the pirated games being made available, turn around and cry foul when we call them on their ways. "The M.A.M.E. platform, while a technical marvel, consists of many violations of copyrights and trademarks. The authors have always stated in the documentation that it was not put into the public domain to steal from the game authors or publishers, and they have always been hands off about how to obtain the ROMs. They have also clearly stated that it is not to be used for commercial gains." I can't even put my distaste into words. It's an unforgivable insult to the intelligence of the entire slashdot community that Foley would pull an obvious scam like this and try to tell us we've "misunderstood" him. Additionally, he seems wholely ignorant of the fact he has willfully committed purjury and has attempted the theft of intellectual property in order to leverage a legal cantilever against opposing businesses that he calls thieves and pirates because they are stealing intellectual property! Ladies and gentelmen, I stand offended.

I want to say this. He will most likely recieve a TM on that "exact" image, and that "exact image" alone. (i.e. not the word mame, not the word mame in that font, style, size, color, but that EXACT font, size, color, background, and that one ONLY).

Read UltraCade's comment on this matter:
http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf
http://www.ultracade.com/openoffer.pdf

They seem to be friendly, just trying to prevent other companies from abusing MAME and reselling that stuff.

Read UltraCade's comment on this matter:
http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf
http://www.ultracade.com/openoffer.pdf

They seem to be friendly, just trying to prevent other companies from abusing MAME and reselling that stuff.

Summarized: Yes, there is a business interest in this, to put some stop to those advertising competing systems, (often with the MAME name,) that play Thousands of Classic Games! at a lower price point than Ultracade's which only a have a couple dozen. These other systems either come fully loaded with one massive federal copyright violation, or its seller points you to some website to download or purchase the ROMs (illegally.) On the other hand, Ultracade's systems' games are licensed, and for more than a pocket of fairy dust.

If Ultracade has evil world domination plans for the future, I really don't know. Perhaps Foley should've had more involvement in this from the MAME developers; taking care of trademark matters on their behalf (leave them to what they do best, development.) I don't see anything on their website about this, at least not on the front page. Does he have a past history of pissing people off? If not, then for the time being I'll side with him on this one.

..they'd found Foley's explanation on his site. He doens't intend to sue the creators. He's only interested in taking down pirates who compete with his legit business. It's a crooked tactic but apparently he thinks its justified.

Like most things that are spread by rumor, the facts about me, UltraCade Technologies, and the M.A.M.E. emulation system are quite distorted. I will try and educate anyone who cares to listen about the reality of our marketplace and what we are doing and what we are not. Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. user groups and forums.

I have been working on emulation technology since the mid 80's when I did work on an emulation project in college. In 1994, while working on games for companies like Sega and Williams, we developed an emulation of the arcade games Joust, Defender and Robotron that ran on a Sega Genesis. In 1996, we started the Lucky 8 project which turned into the UltraCade project. In 1998 we were one of the first companies to acquire the rights to classic arcade games from various publishers. We have licensed games from several manufacturers including Capcom, Jaleco, Taito, Stern, Incredible Technologies, Midway, Atari and more. We have started several projects and built prototypes for companies like Sega, based on technology that was licensed from authors from the emulation community. We have licensed technology from many of the community's programmers, paying them to use their code in our products and demonstrations. We have been the leader of the retro arcade movement, and have invested millions of dollars creating a market for retro games. UltraCade was the first successful multi-game arcade machine combining many of the old classics. We further enhanced the market by creating Arcade Legends, our consumer version of the UltraCade product. We have also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees to have the right to sell our games.

In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. These companies are simply selling the promise of thousands of games on a machine that can not possibly run them legally. I sometimes hear the argument, "well, I could go on eBay and buy up all of these games and then run it", and while plausible, it certainly would not be anywhere near cost effective, and again, if the customer knew that to legally operate these games, they have to spend thousands of dollars buying legal ROMs I seriously doubt that they would consider purchasing a M.A.M.E. machine. Anyone reading this email thread is an intelligent person, and if they put emotions aside, they will realize that what we are saying about selling M.A.M.E. machines and the promise of getting 4,

The guy who runs Ultracade has made a brief one page statement on the following URL - its linked off ultracades web page - its an interesting point of view, although I don't quite understand the relationship between the cause and his solution. http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf

Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not be legally obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. usergroups and forums.

Before jumping to conclusions, did anyone actually consider looking for Ultracade's side of the story?

http://www.ultracade.com/mame.pdf

February 21, 2005
Like most things that are spread by rumor, the facts about me, UltraCade Technologies, and the M.A.M.E. emulation system are quite distorted. I will try and educate anyone who cares to listen about the reality of our marketplace and what we are doing and what we are not. Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. user groups and forums. I have been working on emulation technology since the mid 80's when I did work on an emulation project in college. In 1994, while working on games for companies like Sega and Williams, we developed an emulation of the arcade games Joust, Defender and Robotron that ran on a Sega Genesis. In 1996, we started the Lucky 8 project which turned into the UltraCade project. In 1998 we were one of the first companies to acquire the rights to classic arcade games from various publishers. We have licensed games from several manufacturers including Capcom, Jaleco, Taito, Stern, Incredible Technologies, Midway, Atari and more. We have started several projects and built prototypes for companies like Sega, based on technology that was licensed from authors from the emulation community. We have licensed technology from many of the community's programmers, paying them to use their code in our products and demonstrations. We have been the leader of the retro arcade movement, and have invested millions of dollars creating a market for retro games. UltraCade was the first successful multi-game arcade machine combining many of the old classics. We further enhanced the market by creating Arcade Legends, our consumer version of the UltraCade product. We have also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees to have the right to sell our games. In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. These companies are simply selling the promise of thousands of games on a machine that can not possibly run them legally. I sometimes hear the argument, "well, I could go on eBay and buy up all of these games and then run it", and while plausible, it certainly would not be anywhere near cost effective, and again, if the customer knew that to legally operate these games, they have to spend thousands of dollars buying legal ROMs I seriously doubt that they would consider purchasing a M.A.M.E. machine. Anyone reading this email thread is an intelligent person, and if they put emotions aside, they

Someone should start an e-mail campaign to tell these people that we won't stand for stupid asshole tactics like this.

They have an email address posted on their web site: mailto:support@ultracade.com

Someone else has posted personal info on the author of the site: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140128&c id=11733396

Oh my God, his name appears next to an EA logo on a race car: http://www.davidrfoley.com/Personal%20Web%20Page_f iles/image003.jpg

Even better is the 300k animated gif on their front page (which you can shift-reload to your heart's content).

There are a couple of machines manufactured that play classic games via emulation, and I believe that the games themselves are either licensed or no suitable copyright owner could be found. Ultracade is one of them (site requires Flash and is annoying as hell; visit this site for a picture of the cabinet and description). I *believe* that there is another, but I cannot remember the name of it now.

And then there is the venreable ArcadeControls.Com with a hundred or so examples of home-built MAME machines.

You can't do this. The licence is for non-commercial use only. If you want the ultimate in retrogaming in the arcade get yourself a cabinet from these guys UltraCade who have games licenced for commercial use.

The MAME license specifies that MAME cannot be used for profit. There is a product thats intended for commercial use in JAMMA cabinets that has multiple games in it called Ultracade.