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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.
Mame.dk
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.
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.
is a quarter slot inserted into an open 5.25" bay so i can invite my friends over for some gaming!
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?
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
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*
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!
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
Actually, when I read A Deepness In the Sky (nominated for a Hugo this year, BTW) I thought of open source. In almost the same thought, I remembered Ken Thompson's article Reflections on Trusting Trust. I hope someone (RMS maybe) has copies of gcc and login that have never been compiled with uninspected patches.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
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.
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.
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!
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...
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
(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.
Let me know if you need help setting it up, though there are some details in the release notes for XMame.
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...
In fact, Magnavox patented the concept of the home video game system. Atari reportedly licensed this patent at a very low fee. Magnavox later realized their mistake, and demanded hefty royalties from Mattel. Mattel's legal department thought the patent would never stand up in court...but it did, leaving Mattel on the hook for a few megabucks in damages.
Incidentally, if you want to talk about limited system resources...the Intellivision used a GI CP1610 16-bit microprocessor running at about 0.9 MHz (no, that's not a typo, less than one megahertz), a display resolution of 160x96 at 16 colors, about 1K of RAM total, and a few K of ROM containing an elementary "operating system." Despite those limitations, they were able to make some very compelling games...
A good source of info about Intellivision is the Blue Sky Rangers page, created by the programmers who wrote many of the Intellivision games. Recommended.
Eric
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Be who you are...and be it in style!
Not exactly instant gratification; though if it was instant grafitication, the owners of new, expensive games would be motivated to sue it out of existence to avoid losing sales to it.
This way consumers looking for a quick arcade fix without much hassle will go to the game shop and buy the latest first-person shooter for their PlayStation, while the arcade trainspotters whose interest lies in the historical value of these old games will jump through the requisite hoops. The games' corporate owners are more likely to sue ROM traders if they're running a mass consumer-oriented operation than if they're just geeky hobbyists catering to the anorak brigade.
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
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