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Saving Our Video Game Heritage
felis_panthera writes: "SecurityFocus has a great article on the preservation of the old arcade games like Arkanoid and Pac Man through the MAME program. MAME, which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, is an emulator for the old, stand up arcade games. This story has SecurityFocus's Kevin Poulsen chatting with a few people involved in the project."
Rader
Because a classic will always be a classic.
I agree that GPL needs an update, though perhaps BSD liscensing isn't the exact way to do it. More of just a change in wording to reflect the changing face of commercial software.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Eproms self-erase, so some of the se old video games self-destruct. someone needs to go out and harvest the ROMS for posterity.
Mame.dk
If it was about Preservation why are so many of the game authors and there employers upset ?
Ohh... Because they don't want these games preserved, they want all the old classics forgotten so they can sell new games and make more money.
Just goes to show that raising the duration of copyright to such an FSCKing long time as it's at now was a very domb idea.
Sure running a game on MAME isn't necessarily a copyright violation. But can we prove that ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I see nothing wrong with MAME. It is a fun way to play those old classics that the big guys (Nintendo, Atari, etc.) have forgotten about. "Abondonware" fits the whole deal nicley. The companies don't make any money off of the machines anymore, so the should allow MAME to live on. If anything, MAME makes people think "Man, that was a good game, I wonder if that company has any more good games". In the end, only good can come out.
-- TriviaMan "I offered my honor She honored my offer So all night long, I was on her and off her."
In the article, it claims that any modern PC has enough power to run MAME and still have enough for a spreadsheet and two word processors...is that all that our modern technology can afford us? Running Nesticle (although it runs "illegal" "unoriginal" software) doesn't slow my 333 down a wink, so why would MAME take an ancient system of coding and let it completely hog up the processes of a comparitable juggernaut? On the same note, glad to hear someone remembers whats important out in the computer world, fighting Bill can only hold so much amusement.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
Game design is an art form. Currently, it's all to common for new-release games to sport the latest whiz-bang 3D graphics and sound, while the game itself is absolute crap. Obviously none of the games from the 80s would win any awards today for technical excellence, but what made the classics great in their time was solid design and attention to gameplay. Game designers of today ought to study the history of games as well as the latest version of DirectX. That's why we need to keep these old games around.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Imagine if someone sold complete plans and hardware (joysticks, etc, but not counting the computer itself) that you could buy, and then all you'd have to do would be buy the wood, bandsaw it to size and insert a standard PC into, and boom, a full-sized arcade machine of your own with almost every game invented. Mmmmm, that gets me excited just thinking about it :)
And as sick as it is, yes I'd like an option to stick quarters in to play:)
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I just checked the list at mame.net, they don't even have Pong listed.
They better get with the program.
George
With old MacMAME on my mac. Now MAME32 for Win32.. I love it. Despite lots of new games I have, I play the old MAME one's more, like Elevator Action and hypercross and Track and Field and Spy Hunter, the list goes on. Note: you can get just about every ROM from www.mame.dk
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I found http://www.classicgaming.com about a year ago and, suddenly, I was 8 years old again, watching some teenager play starwars, except now I was big enough to reach the controls.
Then end result, and this is blatantly apparent in today's video games, is that technology (better sound, graphics, etc.) does not mean better game play. These games were/are great because they were built with game play in mind - not the technology. So, when something like Daikatana comes out it's easy to see why we keep playing Battle Zone, Dig-Dug, etc.
IMHO, video game corps want to keep you from playing the old games so you don't knw what you're missing.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I forget the exact details, but about 1.5-2 years ago, excellent sites like davesclassics.com were nearly shut down permanantly (Dave's was off for a long time) and are now but shadows of their former selves. Seems that some company or organization (I forget exactly who) took them to task and threatened major legal action. The whole affair was detailed pretty well there (I can't remember much of it.) So *that's* why you won't find any well laid-out ROM sites in the US anyway. I'll bet the guy was from www.mame.dk (looks familiar?) Personally I think MAME rocks and is an effort that should be supported by the makers of all those great games, from Atari to Taito....
You know you do...but perhaps the best way to deal with the legal issues is to for the people working on MAME to directly contact the copyright holders. Most would probably be willing to sign a legal agreement that MAME is fair use. They won't mind people playing for free, but if someone starts selling, then they will want part of the profit, is my guess.
I gotta say, this -is- a neat idea (unlike the whole videogame to Mozilla port thing we saw a few days back). I remember playing a lot of these old games back in my misbegotten youth (my favorite being Joust), and the though that I can pick up MAME and play the original Joust again (if I could find it) kind of warms the cockles of my heart.
:)
What really strikes me as very cool though is the idea of supporting old hardware and software on newer platforms. Not only does this mean my kids will get to play all the great games I grew up on, but it also looks like this is the first step towards Vernor Vinge's idea of a massive database of source code which could be used and modified in the future to really do anything we wanted. (He explains this a bit better in his novel 'A Deepness in the Sky').
Hell, in twenty years time you might well see people hacking toegther software with little algorithms ripped from old arcade game ROMS
Now -that's- a legacy system!
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
is a quarter slot inserted into an open 5.25" bay so i can invite my friends over for some gaming!
They could teach a thing or two to the Wine and VMware people. MAME's success in emulating the most oddball hardware/software configurations imaginable is nothing short of heroic. And yes, you guessed it, I'm an early-80's arcade nut. :)
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
there are many public domain games from companies who have either released them or gone out of business, and at least one company does sell rom images legally.
I'm one of the people who has about 1000 of these roms on my linux machine (sorry, don't shoot me) because they are fun. The nostalgia is great, and since the games themselves don't even exist anymore except in pieces or maybe somebody's basement or garage, it's the only way you can still experience many of them. It's a worthy cause, too bad they can't get more of the game companies on board to volunteer to release their old roms, it definitely wouldn't hurt them.
________
The benefit of MAME doesn't lie just in preserving the playing experience. It's also in providing an incentive for people to preserve the roms themselves. Bit rot is consuming old arcade machines like there's no tomorrow, and the problem is only going to get worse as the iron gets older.
This exposes a real problem with the way copyright is currently enforced. Yes, after a century, the roms will be in the public domain (unless Rep Sonny Bono comes back from the grave and hands another century to Disney). But if you're not allowed to copy the rom in the meantime, then the rom won't still be around. And don't just say that individuals have a fair-use right to make backups, since I'm talking about the harm to society as a whole by lost works in the public domain, not the harm to individuals.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I am one of those people who is "Saving our Video Game Heritage"... by saving the actual hardware. Although I am a hardware purist, I must applaud MAME. It has helped many an arcade collector determine what a game is, and what it should act like (as I used to discover a flaw in my GORF).
But the last paragraph is true... MAME really doesn't compare well to the actual hardware. (Especially the phosphor glow of vector [non-raster] games.... MAME can't do it.) And the presence of having a Gauntlet II arcade game in your living room far exceeds that of having Gauntlet II on your PC. People will run up to your arcade game and want to play it. They don't really do that with your PC.
BTW... excellent article and good focus on some of the hardware.
Now, what would really be interesting and entertaining would be an entirely 100% Java implementation of MAME. If you created a web site that could serve up the Java applet and a selection of, oh, I don't know, maybe 1000 games or so (don't think there are that many? Check out the MAME compatibility list, sucker!), you'd pretty much be able to own a huge amount of web traffic.
You throw muliplayer compatibility in there, an IRC add-on, and I bet you'd really have something. A wall of fame, for high scorers, guilds (I'm the leader of the Blood-Sucking Ms.Pac-Clan, how 'bout you?) and prizes, and you'd pretty much be GOD of the web.
Alas, it will never happen, though, thanks to the fookin' Mickey Mouse copyright laws. *sigh*. Hmmm... *thinks for a moment...* I've got it; how about a Gnutella-type open-source distributed app? ;-)
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Pong was one of the games that pre-dated the use of CPUs in video games. (The other popular one was Breakout.) It was made entirely with discrete logic chips, just like the old Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminals. Even the home versions that condensed the circuitry down to a single chip still used discrete logic.
A couple of years ago I found a book about making video games out of discrete logic: counters and flip-flops and big AND gates. Now that's what I call making furniture with a axe!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Of course, assorted evil companies are trying to control these games and it is their right to do so. The moral implications are somewhat more dubious, though. They may never do anything with the copyrights, and those games are the heritage of a generation.
While I'm generally pro-copyright and would, in fact, be willing to pay a reasonable price for the MAME ROM images of the games in question, I'm fully behind the sites that keep the ROMs and hope that they remain free for download for personal use. No one should be forced to install Windows to play those games, and a company's idea of what's a marketable game may be different than mine. Some of the cheesiest games of that era bring back the most potent memories.
Seems like a company could make a reasonable sum of money just selling hardware to support some of those games. Spy Hunter just isn't right without the steering wheel with 4 buttons, the gear shifter and the gas pedal, for instance. Discs of Tron is another one that could benefit from real controls. I'd definitely spring for a 720 degrees spinny joystick. A whole retro industry could spring up around that stuff. Perhaps we might even start seeing truly creative games again...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Wow, the MAME project seems to be coming along very nicely, but I think they should consider porting their software to more platforms.
Sorta like Apache.
I for one would love to see MAME run on an old Apple II, or Commondore 64...The old good gaming platforms...
[/noclue] -- Wait, it emulates what?
If anyone is looking for a good book that goes back to those wonderful days of black-and-green block graphics video games, can I recommend 'Joystick Nation' by J.C.Herz. There's also a chapter arguing why Doom was possibly the best video game ever, though you don't need MAME for that!
\\//MJG.
insignificant sig
please, think of the children!!
in other words, our kids should be playing these games on the long trips to saturn.
Checkout this from last week's quickies. Click on Sporty's link. He built a pretty cool cabinet relatively cheaply.
Matt
I have to agree with some of the posts and go with the whole "it's not good enough unless you've got the whole kit". Such as the little doohickey in arkanoid, or a steering wheel. And personally, I can't get enough of Pinball (which is now officially dead!). But there is a way to get hold of these things, albiet expensively. Go to ebay and check out gaming, and then antiques or retro (can't remember). You can grab some sweet equipment.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
One would be inclined to think that the oldest games are the ones in most danger of disappearing. Fortunately, at this time, most people realize that the truly rare games are of value and keep them for resale, and eventually reproduction. Many of these games continue to plug along year after year, and some will still be working in thirty years or more. Unfortunately, for video game "preservationists", Capcom has been including a battery, on the boards of its CPS2 (and some of its CPS1 games) and if not replaced on its boards, the data on the boards dies with the battery. The CPS1 games are already dumped and emulated, but a rather nasty form of encryption, so far unbroken, protects CPS2. CPS2 games will slowly die, and without a verified correct dump, we may have the ROMs on which to build an emulator. CPS2's most famous game is Marvel Vs. Capcom. Now with M vs. C 2 taking the spotlight off of M vs. C at the arcade, it perhaps may be time to consider working on cracking the encryption and saving CPS2 before it rots away. Personally, I love CPS2. My favorite beat-em-up of all time is sitting in my basement right now, Dungeons of Dragons Tower of Doom (the four-player arcade game with the most buttons per player at four each plus player start). One day my battery will die and the game will be no more. I hope that I will be able to use an iMicro to output RGB to the monitor and wire the controls to a USB Happs interface, but with no roms, and eventually no more working boards, there will be no D&D: TOD, ever again :(
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I hav
its *important* for these old games to be saved. one of hte few things i remeber *distinctly* from my childhood is the video games. I would always get so excited when my family would to to "the black-eyed pea", not because i liked the food, but because i always got a handfull of quarters to play the one game in the restraunt, Mrs Pac Mam [and not the stand-up one, one of the old flat table-top style ones. that was *the* thing that made it so exciting to go out and eat there. what seven-year old girl *really* wants to go somewhere like that just to get a good meal of vegitables? no, it was for the video game! and the same thing, when we went to Ninfas, s good as thier food was i didn't care about that, i jus wanted to go to play Galaga. I've got coppies of both these games, and other old games such as 'asteroids' and 'joust'and the *original* super mario brothers, from *gasp* the NINTENDO--no number, no extension--on my machine now [although not thru running MAME], and i play them a heck of a lot more than any new flashy game i own. so my brother bought a dreamcast a couple weeks ago. i looked it it for about ten minutes, was suitably impressed, being the geek i am, with the three-d effects and such, critiqued the game where the scenery was too polygonal, watched the new sonic game, realized it was just like every other Sonic game ever *made*, and wandered back to my game of asteroids on my trusty computer. no contest. the games may be flashy and technically impressive but the *gameplay*, the *plots* are wothless. there is no creativity. all efforts are going into making a bigger flashier cooler game *visually* than theother guys, and neglecting all other aspects of gameplay. i could care less about the new whatever-the-heck nubmer Sonic exists now for the dreamcast, whatever new flashy game will appear in a restraunt next. i doubt i'll be forming any memories off of *those*. for me, give me my old games, with their fond memories and terribly-unimpressive-by-todays-standards but functional graphics. you can keep your N64's, your dreamcasts, your new fancy PC and Mac games. give me mrs pac man and i'm happy. now if you'll excuse me? tetris calls...
It's great that so many old arcade games are being preserved in ROM images and played by programs like MAME and Retrocade. I'm especially glad that the companies who own these old games haven't come down hard on the ROM sites, at least not yet. Even though the games are effectively no longer marketable, the companies involved could still throw a fit and destroy the top ROM sites, because unlike the warez scene the emulation scene tends to try to stay open and above-board; they just want to be able to freely use old games which are more useful to nostalgics like us than to the game companies themselves.
This is one of the big reasons that copyright law needs to be changed back to something like its original shorter terms, instead of this bullshit corporate agenda of "life of the creator plus 100 years." This is especially true in the information age, when things get out of date very quickly and the media we use doesn't last very long. Books can exist for a thousand years if stored in a dry place, but the boards used by old arcade machines are more likely to last 10-20 years unless they're stored extremely well and even then there can be damage from the board just getting burned out--that's why it was so important for the emulation scene to get these ROMs into a digital, downloadable format and distribute them to as many sources as possible. But to do that, they had to break copyright law, over something which isn't very marketable anyway. Arcade collections for the PC put out by authorized companies only contain three or four games which were unusually popular in their day, but if it weren't for the emulation scene 99% of the arcade games, part of our history, would probably have ended up disappearing forever.
There are currently several sites which are all very big and carry tens of thousands of ROMs, but with a few cease and desist orders they could disappear. I'd name my favorite one, but I don't want to lead the corporate lawyers who doubtless read Slashdot to their door, especially since Microsoft of all companies has a couple of arcade-derived collections. The corporate, abusive extension of copyright terms has to stop, or else we may lose other digital artifacts, not just video games.
And as a final note, MAME plays far more games, but Retrocade plays over 100 games with the slickest UI you could ever slap onto an emulator, it's just unfuckingbelieveably cool. Check it out.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I can't agree with you more.
2 33&cid=151
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/07/08/1654
These place is horrible when it comes to stuff like that.
Someone I just can't quite imagine pacman on a 19" high definition monitor, with a force feedback joystick, digitally remastered 3d sound, and high speed network-based multiplayer options.
:)
Just isn't the same
If you are interested in old video games, you should check out the VAPS-Site. VAPS is the Video Arcade Preservation Society and tries to collect old video arcade machines, especially old and rare games.
The Home of the Underdogs
It's a killer site. Though it doesn't have any ROMs of old arcade games (making this post slightly off-topic), it has all the lost and forgotten classics. Check it out.
Wah!
They probably won't do it, but I sure wish I could purchase these game images legitimately from the copyright owners. I'd happily pay $10/pop for those game images...
I guess I'm not too worried about companies like Sega or Nintendo, since I figure they still have their source code and game images, but good grief, what about some of those now-extinct game companies? Hmm.
See ArcadePC , a Cabinet/PC/control system, all packaged and ready to purchase. Small & large versions available. I think they're working on a cocktail-type platform, too. Kinda pricey, though. The standard ArcadePC with a 19" monitor & a mini-cabinet is around $800, and the one with a 27" monitor & a full-size cabinet is around $2000.
If you just want the control panel, they're using the Hot Rod , available in 2 versions, that you can use with your current computer. The 'classic' is around $180, and the SE (with more buttons, same layout as many modern coin-op control panels), is around $200. They connect via a PS/2 port, but mention on their site that USB support is in the works (that's what I'm waiting for).
I'v played with MAME a little, and I've become convinced tht preserving the classics in their original form is more worthwhile than some of the recent attempts to "modernize" and recreate the classics. (I really don't understand the fascination with rehashing games every decade or so, it fits right in with making a 90's movie of "Leave It To Beaver")
For example, I recently bought Centipede for the playstation in a fit of nostolgia. And it's ok, the original mode is there, but the "new" version has been slaughtered with 3D graphics and awkward controls. But at least it really does have the "real" classic interface.
Much worse yet, not so long ago, I saw an arcade machine featuring 4 "classic" games (ala NeoGeo). I played a round of Pac-Man and was disgusted! Everything had 3D shading, the pellets bounced in place, pac-man was green!!! Absolutely stomach turning.
Give me the originals, and I mean originals any day, they were carefully crafted masterpieces that bring back memories like these recreations never can. And when tools like MAME can play nearly anything you can remember, you truly have a wonderful preservation that surpasses any "recreation" I've seen come out in the last few years.
my first was a triangular shaped one, I think it was in the Telstar family?
It came with a Pong, a tank battle, and a race game, and you rotated it to choose your game.
Sound familiar?
George
http://www.arcadeathome.com has message boards as well as links to homebuilt projects some including plans.
http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm has message boards and is more focused on building the control panel from arcade parts easily purchased online. Also with examples.
Vermifax
Vermifax
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I have MAME and love it....I have gotten to the 3rd level of Tron and gotten to maybe around 10 or 11 on Discs of Tron....its so nice to play these games....but I was truly overjoyed when I went to COSI....they have *takes a breath* Pac-Man Asteroids Space Invaders Space Harrier Atari Football Defender and a few more... Its simply wonderful playing these old games....I truly think game designers back then were better then quite a few we have now. In closing....get MAME...play the old games....and if you can...save a real arcade game....its the least we nerds can do to preserve the good old days. -Sarkdas (How sweet it is!)
What will be the abandoned and obsolete games of tomorrow ?
Today's networked games.
I've been wondering, what will happen to the Half-Life (TFC, cstrike), Quake 3, EverQuest games in the future ?
These games are very popular today, but maybe in a couple of years they will not be supported and you won't be able to play them ? Specially EverQuest, when they shut down their servers, how would you play it ?
Are these the next type of games to be resurrected by a future MAME like engine ?
- sigs are for wimps.
I remember seeing an exhibition of old video games at the museum of the moving image in london. They explained that they had seen so much in the way of old movies which had been lost because nobody had taken care of them that they had made a deecision to start collecting and archiving video games also.
It's a shame the museum itself has closed down - I hope the collection is still maintained though.
VAPS The Video Arcade Preservation Society is what
it is all about. I mean it is not easy work to
obtain and preserve an old stand up but it very
very worth it. If you look hard you won't have to
pay more then a few hundred dollars, although
shipping can be a big hassle.
The most amazing thing about the old classic video games is how they differed from one another, in comparison to alot of today's games...
Maybe it's been a long time since I went into an arcade, but it seems a lot of the games today are either simulation games (Racing or Flight Sim), or 1v1 fighting games (Tekken, MK, SF)... I remember when I was younger, I wanted to play every game in the arcade, but as I got older, I started focusing on Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats...
Whatever happened to the Ikari Warriors, 1942, the Double Dragons, Crystal Castles, Guantlents, Karnov's, Russian Attacks, Robocops? Are they still out there? I think MAME's idea is a great one, especially for me, but is there a limit to its emulation power? Does anyone know where one can read up on this?
The great thing is the old games are sometimes just as challenging as the new games... I remember getting a bigger rush beating a level in the original Star Wars game, then beating D Maul in Power Battles...
Does anyone share the same feelings?
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Last I checked, xmame didn't support drawing on the root window. Pity, since I think it would be very cool to have some of these video games as my screensavers via xscreensaver
Does anyone know if this has changed, or how hard it would be to get a "-root" option to xmame?
SPACE WAR can be played right now right here (if you have Java) - it runs the original PDP-1 code in a Java emulator. Story of it's development in early 60's here
(Thanks JL)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
VAPS The Video Arcade Preservation Society is what it is all about. I mean it is not easy work to obtain and preserve an old stand up but it very very worth it. If you look hard you won't have to pay more then a few hundred dollars, although shipping can be a big hassle. Opps, needs to be HTML formatted, tags to text does not do links :{p.
Noooooo....!
Somebody moderate this down! www.mame,dk is the greatest site out there, and I don't want 'Them' to find out about it and shut it down!
Seriously though, if you like MAME, you'll love mame.dk
Set up a watch for when your deflector shield in the old Atari vector graphics Star Wars game gets hit, then fly straight through fireballs & towers without taking damage. Or give yourself powerups in other games. I finally got past that old Nintendo Punch-Out game, and without using $10 in quarters!
cheetin' like crazy
Although it doesn't really say anywhere, I am assuming that the Kevin Poulson referred to here is the phone phreak god of the 80's. Man, when I was young(er) I worshipped that guy...
2 1337 4 u!
If MAME folks and those who review MAME are concerned about copyright issues and what-not, they should consider releasing a devkit to write old-style arcade games. Preserve old classics by preserving the platform (emulators in this case) by making new games that popularize the platform. Besides, my last programmable Z80 fried last week...
Well, okay, only partially serious here. But for you real old-timers, look at what Inform and others did to prevent old text adventures from dying out completely.
Here's a thought someone online mentioned recently. A freind of his was thinking of buying a bunch of old arcade machines and opening a "classic arcade." I was think that, what with 80's nostalgia and all (or has that died out?) that an acrade sporting classic machines, some period music, and so on would be a hit. I was thinking that this was a pretty neat idea. And, of course, you could also perserve pinball machines, which simply can't be preserved the MAME way. So, are there any places out there that are classic arcades? I hear a lot about people having a few games in their basements... but what about places you can actually go and play? (hopefully still for a quarter, unlike the $0.50 - $1.00 that some places charge these days).
Classic games do seem to pop up some odd places, though.
There's a pretty large arcade place north of Boston that has some classic games sitting forlorn in a back area. I forget what they had, specifically, but they didn't have my all-time favorites (Galaxian and Spy Hunter). A few seeme to be busted, as well. Maintainence must be a pain.
Then there was the Holiday Inn in Iowa I was in last year, which had Tron and a few other classics.
Oh, and the obligatory "mame rocks" comment: It's great fun to recall a game I saw, way way back in a dinky little arcade in New Hampshire, and be able to play it within a few minutes of hunting around (Tail Gunner, specifically). If only other aspects of my mis-spent youth could be summoned up so easily...
Just out of curiosity, has much effort been put into vector displays in the past decade or so? I presume work has been done (probably for CAD shops..), but they are vastly outnumbered by raster displays.. Also, I suppose it would be (theoretically) possible to convert an ordinary raster display into a vector display, but I have only a small understanding of what goes into a CRT display.. (and there would probably be deficiencies, like you might only be able to display in one color or something..)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Screw MAME, I own 13 of the actual classic machines =) =)
Of course, assorted evil companies are trying to control these games and it is their right to do so.
It disburbs me to see how effective pro-intellectual property propoganda has been -- they have convinced most of us to think in their terms, without our even realizing it.
Copyright is a misnomer. It isn't a right, it is a privelege which our government has granted various authors, publishing houses, software enterprises, etc. A privelege which they look upon as a right, and have convinced most of the rest of us is their "right." It is a privelege which has been sorely abused in the last century and will be abused even more in the years to come.
Losing our digital heritage is just one cost this privelege is exacting from our society.
Movies are decaying, by the time they enter the public domain many of them are unrecoverable, lost forever.
The same is often true of other media as well -- recordings which go out of print and are never released (or recordings which were never made, of concerts for example, except by fans doing so illegally).
Restricted copy priveleges are costing our culture our digital, cinematic, and musical heritage, all to protect the revinue streams of Disney, Time-Warner, and their ilk.
Still think we have a government "by the people, for the people?"
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Dunno if this is just trollin', but, if so I'll bite with a real response here...
Actually, MAME is supported on quite a few different platforms already. Various platforms of Linux, *BSD, Windows, Mac, Amiga, etc. It's there already - MAME is a voluntere effort, so if you need it for a different platform, compile it there. It should compile very nicely after a couple of system-dependant changes (MAME is written to be portable.)
As for the other machines - MAME is a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Apple II, C64, etc. arent arcade machines. HOWEVER - check out MESS which handles: Acorn Atom, AdventureVision, Amiga (NTSC), Amstrad CPC (464, 664, 6128), Apple I, Apple II (6 varieties), Atari 400, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari 800, Bally Astrocade, BEACA, Colour Genie 2000, Coco 3, Colecovision, Color Computer, Commodore 16, Commodore 64, Commodore 64gs, Commodore 65, Commodore 128, Commodore 2000, Commodore 3000, Commodore 4000, Commodore 8000, Commodore B Series, Commodore Max, Commodore Plus/4, Commodore Vic 20, CP400, CPS Changer, Dragon 32, Enterprise 128K, IBM PC/XT, Inves Spectrum 48K+, Jupiter Ace, Kaypro 2x, KC Compact, KC85/4, KIM-1, Laser (110, 200, 210, 310, 350, 500, 700, TX8000), Macintosh Plus, Memotech MTX512, MicroBee, MSX, Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo Gameboy, Oric 1/Oric Atmos, PC Engine, PDP/1 (SpaceWar!), Philips P2090T/M, Sam Coupe, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, Sega Megadrive/Genesis, Spectrum Plus 2, Spectrum Plus 3, Spectrum Plus 4, TI99/4A Home Computer, Tandy 1000TX, Tandy MC-10, Timex Computer 2048, Timex Sinclair 2068, TK90x Color Computer, TRS-80 Model 1, Vectrex, VZ200/VZ300, ZX Spectrum 48K, ZX80/81. (I know: Information overload there...) If it resides in someone's closet now, there's a good chance it's emulated, or being worked on adding to the emulation now. MESS is pretty much as cool as MAME - just think of it as MAME for Consoles and Computers. Plus, it's somewhat portable, IIRC.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Its da CiXeL, yea you remember me from the hardcore old school emu days back when nesticle was considered revolutionary. I just want to wish all of you a lele and a tata for mooglezz, and say hi to everyone out there, all nostalgic from back when sardu was king of the hill and when mindrape stole the source code. The history of emulaiton and shit, anyways im just rambling and wanted to say hi to #emu so lates.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Its hard to emulate the feel of the Robotron, Sinistar, Stargate, etc... When you play these games, part of the playing experience is how you physically interact with the machine itself.
MAME definitely has its place and I support it 100%, however, once you've played the real thing again, MAME just wont cut it.
The major benefit to MAME though, is that it takes up a lot less space :-) If you want to know what it feels like to own 20+ Arcade games, go out and buy 20 Refrigerators. Another benefit is that it's a lot less maintenance.
Even with those benefits, I wouldn't give up my Donkey Kong, Robotron, Stargate, Joust, Sinistar or any of the others I have in my collection!
WARNING! If you start with by collecting ONE game, you wont be able to stop!
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
(I submitted the patch way back on Nov.8th 1999 to XMame & didn't get credit, but it was trivial...so no fuss. Read the man page for XScreensaver and look at the text covering vroot.h. This is easy to do with other programs because -- duh -- the source is available.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I was going to write this in as an Ask Slashdot, but it seemed a little small.
:)
Does anyone know if you can purchase the rights to old video games? I was just thinking of buying my favorite NES game and putting it in the public domain or something. Any idea how much that would cost? Would that even happen?
In my opinion it's a great way to legalize the whole ROM thing. Hopefully the old games wouldn't cost too much.
Is this even worth considering? Anyone?
A nice article, if a little out of date, but with one discordant note at the end. I was very worried to see a, rather throwaway, reference at the end to "taking a Galaxians or defender cab and putting a PC inside". Now, we all know that MAME cabs are becoming more and more popular - but this tendancy to destroy the very thing that MAME is trying so hard to preserve is absolutely flabberghasting.
A little story to illustrate my point. About two months ago I was browsing loot (UK free ads paper) and found an ad for a "1979 asteroids tabletop" in good condition. I rang the bloke up and was told "The game didn't work, but it's alright, I ripped it out and I've fitted a Playstation in it - it's lovely" (or words to that effect). Quite frankly, words fail me.
Please, please, please, if you have an original cab (even if it doesn't work - especially if it doesn't work!) try and resist the temptation to drill a few extra holes in the control panel and fit a PC inside it. Get it working! Or, if you don't fancy the challenge, find someone else to take it off your hands and keep it dedicated! http://www.vaps.org is as good a place as any to start.
Good condition dedicated cabs are already as rare as hen's teeth, and this kind of practice amounts to barbarism.
This has been a public service annoucement. Normal bickering may now resume...
Actually I have and I still receive royalty payments for some of it. Even then keeping a game or a film behind copyright "Protection" too long dose more harm than good.
Right now the Copyright on creative works lasts much longer than the effective life of the original media. This means that if the production house that owns that old movie don't want to preserve it it will in all likelihood be lost forever. Same goes for those classic games. How many original Pacman arcade boxes are still around ? I mean _original_ as in with the stack overflow bug at some ridiculously high score.
My view ? Copyrights should last until the creator's youngest child turns 21 or 5 years after the creator dies if he has no juvenile children. There is too great a public loss from onexploited copyrighted works.
What about his children you say ? This is the reason I set the age at 21. Beyond that you should make your own living or exist on solid assets your parents left you.
As for corporations. You should limit how they can own IP. In cases where they do own it anyway then the duration is 20 years total.
Yes. I do make a distinction between IP and solid assets.
How dose all this affect these games that were created in the 80s ? Under my scheme they would be back on the " market" in a few years from now. As is you are always in danger of prosecution for using this.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
All those who already played old games on either MAME (or other emulators) or old computers emulators (ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, C= 64,...) will agree with the fact that many of these old games may still entertain you for hours.
There is no need for 3D Games, full-movie adventures, 3D sounds,... for a good game... It only need to have a good gameplay...
So, you may spend as much time on these old games as you'd on the brand new, out of the box, costly (to buy and in hardware) games.
I happen to play much time on old games as Gyruss... My old P166 and my more recent P233MMX is enough for that... Some older games (Admidar for example) may even be played on my 486-66. And when I try to launch Z80, a DOS Spectrum Emulator (which even allows me to load spectrum floppies if you used to have a PlusD interface) if even telling me that it can't run on my P233 because the computer is too fast !!!
But the games that you may find on the shelves could definitively not be played on that hardware... too slow !!! So, the new games push us to buy new hardware.
So, the availibility of these old games is not a good thing for either the game software (the time you spend playing these oldies, you don't play their games) nor for the hardware manufacturer (no need for a P3-700 or a K7-700 to play Amidar or Gyruss).
So, the real problem with these copyright holders is not that they would make any money with these old games, it's that these old games could prevent them to make more benefit from their new one.
But they can't honnestly defend this position publicly... So, they try to discourage the distribution of these games, make it marginal, and hope that most of the people will keep looking at their brand new 3D/Full of movie/6-CD games.
The good thing is that they don't go really after those who distribute/share these roms. The bad thing is that they don't legalize them. (see Legalize 8bit roms.)
As for the old computers emulators, why don't the copyrigt holders legalize the use of their Roms (Amstrad had authorized the use of the Spectrum roms for emulation for example). But, some of these simply dissappears (Think of the Sam Coupe, by the creator of the spectrum... It went down with only a few sold and nobody bought it I think). When the company went down as that, what happens to the Copyrights it holded ? Anyone has an advice on it ?
Emulation is a great thing, it's not about making a program, it's about making a good program... like people were used before... It's about making it portable (MAME) or really fast (or both). It's about using all available ressources and not spoiling them by these all-made badly-written toolkits/libs (who named DirectX ?) in order to speed up the development.
There were petitions to have drivers/info to write drivers for Linux, why not have petitions to have the roms of old games freely available (for example, directly on the copyright holder site, allowing it to add some advertizement for his new products,... so they would get something back).
I personnally have 1 ZX Spectrum (+2 Out of Order), 1 ZX80; 1 Amstrad CPC464, 1 Sinclair QL, 1 MSX II, 1 Spectrum +2, 1 Apple II and I regret not having more (Oric, C=64/128, ...) It takes less room that coin-ops/pinballs !!!
Download MAME
Patch it N times
Wait, you downloaded the other binary, repeat step 1
Get some random system library update
Get an illegal ROM
Download some sample sounds, which are not bundled with everything else
Play MAME, except if it doesn't work, flames to /dev/null. It would be nice, because I'm lazy and I have a million better things to do than look at MAME source and fix some path entry, if you could just download a big binary.
Windows-esque? Sure... would many more people download it? Sure...
My emulated 2 cents.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Now THAT was a real classic game, two player Asteroids-on-acid, and if you played cooperatively (hooked together by essentially a fuse) and marched left to right, you could kill everything and get about an hour of play out of 2 quarters (which is why arcade owners hated it, I guess). *sigh* It was one of the few games where you could cooperate, violently, against a computer with friends, instead of just killing your buddies all the time (though that mode was available, too). I miss it.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Someone should seriously start one of these.. A historical society dedicated to the development of electronic gaming.. Just to make sure it's not forgotten..
- soy
so I was playing Diablo II on battle.net
:( :( :(
I had just completed the fifth quest of act I. the reward for that is charsi will upgrade a metal non magical, non rare, non unique weapon. i upgraded my superior two-handed sword and now i have to be lvl 16 to use it
why is this a problem? because I'm lvl 14. good thing necros level up like crazy.... i'm putting up with a normal two-handed sword in the mean time.
I strongly applaud the Techno-archivists saving our videogaming heritage. These games are pure history - Diablo II, Quake III, Half-Life, all started out with Space Invaders and a plumber jumping over barrels. MAME's ROMs, as corny as it sounds, are living history of how we got to an age of 3D polygonal mapping and Direct X version-whatever.
When I find an old arcade game in some out-of-the-way-place, it's a reminder of so many things - how I got to be a programmer, how far we've come, what stood up over time, the challenges faced in the day. It's history with bits and bleeps.
It's a shame that there are copyright concerns over this - it certainly shows that copyright law needs to be strongly considered and re-evaluated. Certainly there's no malice and no profit involved in MAME sales and ROM copying.
Technology is transitory these days, and preserving history and information is of utmost importance - especially when media change (anyone use 5 1/4 disks anymore?).
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Up until this article, most of the stuff I had read about MAME -- which I found in doing research for an article about arcade game emulating for Digital Home Entertainment magazine -- was about hot "cool" it is to be able to play old arcade games.
I agree with the "cool"ness of it all. It's still even a bit mindblowing that those tall cabinets that towered over me so as a kid can now all be reduced and saved into a place barely 1/32 my size. And, yes, the games are fun.
But now comes this article that adds the title "archive" to the scene -- a title that turns all the "how cool this is" articles on their sides. Suddenly emulating because a "study" and MAME's author becomes something of, at best, a scholar and archivist and, at worst (or even better, depending on your viewpoint), a liberator of code from dust and closets everywhere.
I'm not at all against either viewpoint. I love MAME and use it regularly. But I'm wondering if this article is an actual reflection of MAME's author's and the community's motivations. Is it that? Or is it an atttempt to place a happier, more tolerable face on something the arcade industry -- at least those that still own those titles -- finds very ugly: property theft?
LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Hold on to your hat.
A raster display is very simple. An electron beam, controlled by electromagnets, paints the screen. The electromagnets are driven by oscillators. In a an ordinary NTSC TV set, the oscillators are at 60Hz (for vertical) and 15,750Hz (for horizontal). The beam is turned on and off in the appropriate places by video amplifiers which simply turn on the beam where there is supposed to be light, and turn it off where there isn't. The deflection oscillators are kept in sync with the TV station, VCR, video game, etc. When they lose sync, you get the familiar roll or twist to the picture, simply because the beam is being turned on and off for the image while the deflection oscillators have the beam in the wrong part of the screen.
Vector displays turn the beam on an off relative to the desired brightness at a particular location, just like a raster. But instead of using oscillators for deflection, they use digital-to-analog converters and amplifiers. You'd poke a numeric value to the D/A converter, which would produce a corresponding voltage, which would be amplified to drive the deflection magnets. Do it fast enough in X and Y axis, and turn the beam on and off at will, and you're graphing in the cartesian plane. (Or playing Asteroids...) While a raster repeats the deflection on its own (all you need to do it continue to turn on and off the guns at the right places), vector graphics requires that you keep cycling the X and Y values through the D/A converter, and keep turning on and off the gun at the right places. It's a lot more CPU intensive, although I doubt that's much of an obstacle now.
Color is a relatively simple addition. Without getting too complicated, there are three guns that shoot at three colors of phosphor. There's a mask, called a "shadow mask", just beind the screen, and because of its position relative to the phosphors, it serves as a filter. The angle of incidence of the red beam is such that it can only pass through the shadow mask to hit the red phosphor. This assures "color purity".
Now, while I suppose this could be done with a vectored display, I've never heard of any color vector displays- they all use overlays for color. Deflecting the three beams that make up color video requires a lot more current supplied to the deflection magnets. That means a bigger deflection yoke, and higher powered output stages. To deflect vectored video adds to the confusion: to make the beam abruptly change direction means that not only will the output stages have to be capable of a lot of current, but they'd also have to be capable of lots of high frequency response. It would be a challenge now to do that well using such parts as Harris HEXFETs and things; the only way to do that before about 5 years ago would have been brute force, paralleled MOSFETs - not really cost-practical in the early 1980s. Back in the early 80's, when the small amounts of video RAM required to make up a raster display were very expensive, this may have helped to drive the short-term popularity of vectors.
Finally, consider that to draw a screen, constant motion of the electron beam is required. Failure to do so (ie. CPU hang) will burn the phosphors of the tube and make it look like a worn-out ATM machine display.
The info required to draw any dot in a monochrome vector would be X = 0 to 255, Y = 0 to 255, L (luminance) = 0 to 1 (on or off). As you increase resolution, X = 0 to 1023, Y = 0 to 1023, and for fun, let's add gray scale: L = 0 to 1023. The resolution aside (arbitrary data widths for the D/A converters chosen), adding the gray scale support would require a lot more CPU overhead, as well as cost of another D/A converter and video amplifier stages (rather than just turning on and off the voltage applied to the CRT's cathode).
Color displays? Let's look at this:
X = 0 - 1023
Y = 0 - 1023
R = 0 - 1023
G = 0 - 1023
B = 0 - 1023
That's 5 pieces of information for every last pixel to be drawn on the display. Not much for today, I'm sure, but given the fact this has to be a real-time feature of the display, it's probably pretty CPU intensive for a 6800 that is trying to play a game and manage sound at the same time.
And we still haven't even looked into convergence issues... but let me mention that, since the CRT needs a high voltage "accelerating potential" (the big rubber cup on the back of the CRT in your monitor/TV set), you also need to produce a power supply to provide the 30kV or so that it requires. Rastered displays generally pull this off the horizontal deflection oscillator, which is a convenient source. Doing this on a vectored display would mean that your high voltage would fluctuate, which would cause brightness issues, focus issues, consistency of image issues, etc... The Vectrex home arcade system used a small separate power supply to do this, but it adds to the cost.
The ultimate vectored display system is a radar display. Vectors are drawn from the center outwards, lit up when the signal is bounced off a remote target, and carve either a full 360 or 90 degree sweep usually by moving electromagnets on the necks of their picture tubes. These days, though, most radar systems use rasters, with the vectored image existing only in the controlling computer: Video RAM is cheap, and it gets you away from noisy and unreliable moving magnet systems in the display. And a raster allows you to use color in your displays, which would be difficult in a vectored setting.
Not impossible, just difficult...
[BigBlockMopar contemplates driving X and Y deflection amplifiers off the convenient D/A converters in his sound card to try it out...]
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Regarding where it started at - actually a game of Pong-like was set up at one time that was played on an occilliscope - mid to late 60's (can't remember who or when - I just know it was a little before Bushnell, Atari and PONG) - it was called something like electronic tennis or something - not sophisticated in any manner, hard wired, and very ugly - but that would be probably the beginning of video games...
As for 5.25 disks? Yeah - I use them still - have an old TRS-80 CoCo 2 and Tandy CoCo 3 sitting right next to me, with an FD-502 5 1/4 disk drive for programs - still works like a champ!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
...Then do it! Maybe it may never run on another machine in it's current form - but maybe someone with a masochistic bent might want to convert it to a newer language (say, C or something) - just for the experience. Worse case scenario, putting it out on the Net will keep it alive (if done right), a little bit of extra code to help teach the future...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon