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Emus And Do-It-Yourself Arcade Construction
Jake Pinsky writes: "3DGN posted a large emulation feature discussing arcade emulation, Super Nintendo emulation, and even Sega Genesis emulation. It's a nice look back on the games we used to play, and it even has places where you can get the ROMs. In the section on MAME (a popular arcade emulator), the writer even discusses building your own arcade machine, and there are some photographs of the one he hollowed out and put a computer in. There's nothing like having an arcade machine in your home that can play over 400 games..."
I'm still trying to get the quarters out of my 3.5" drive...
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My karma is still less than my age.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
How wise is it to post these kinds of stories? I really wish that Slashdot wouldn't.
.... Everybody and their mother are downloading from Napster. RIAA now has enough evidence to gain an injunction (albeit temporary).
Let's go over what we've learned, shall we? Nobody gave a crap about Napster, until it became public knowledge what Napster really was. Then 'lo and behold...
I enjoy emulators. These ancient games are why I became interested in computers to begin with. We all did. We wanted to program these games for ourselves... this was before Nintendo. So checking out the ROMs and source on these babies is a wet dream for me.
But, thanks to idiots and their concepts of intellectual properties (which is unconstitutional unless a patent is involved... don't believe me? Read the constitution) want money for doing nothing. And some marketing major is going to read these articles and say, "wow, what a good idea... we can charge for this. I'll take these articles to my boss and show him that there's a market for this stuff." We always get things taken away because we aren't smart enough TO KEEP OUR MOUTHS SHUT!
I guarantee you some MBA from Namco is going to file suit against MAME in the next few weeks.
Rule #1: If someone is having a good time, there's money to be made.
Rule #2: Anyone can make money, it takes a wise person to spend (and acquire) it well.
Therefore, any good time will be inevitably ruined by some greedy moron trying to make money. The only thing that protects us is that they're not involved in our world. They don't even know that emulators exist. So please, stop informing them!
its already being done. sony suing bleem!, conectix (play station emulators). Nintendo trying to sue Ultrahle(n64 emulator) and so on. I dealt with it when I was into emulators in early college and my old company still hosts a majority of the emulator websites. pretty much the rule is stay away from roms and you stay out of trouble.
I posted a comment about this yesterday[or was it the day before?]... and it's only a matter of time before Jon Katz writes up an article about it all.
"The oppressed geek culture will rise up against evil corporate America and download ROMs through file sharing." --preview of future Jon Katz post
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
The definitive site to learn how to build your own arcade machine, such as a MAME arcade machine which will allow you to play the classic 80s games:
Build Your Own Arcade Controls
But Im a wimpy geek that works 40 hours a week. I have no where near enough time to put one of these together. So I was going to find someone to do it for me. I found Arcade 2000. It seemed great, he seemed like a really nice guy. After a few weeks I was ready to order from him, then got an email from some former customers.
"Dont buy from Arcade 2000" they said. Upon further investigation, I realized this guy handn't shipped a single machine, and took over 6 months to give refunds, some didnt get refunds at all.
So what Im trying to say is: Dont buy from Arcade 2000 (or at least buy at your own risk), and I still want to buy an Arcade Machine, anyone know where I can get one?
Dude! How did I miss that one?
:-) )
I checked a whole bunch of low sids, but must've skipped that one or something. Check my new signature now.
(too bad there wasn't room for both
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
And you, Sir, just got on my list.
My dad builds Perl tools for other developers and about 20 years ago had a modem and terminal at home - I was 6 or 7 - and he showed me how to play. I was hooked. Seriously, Larn is one of the greatest games ever. My question is, does anyone still play Larn? Or even know what it is?
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
For a coupla hundred bucks get yourself a 25" or 27" television set (like the originals use) and then get a good quality TV out card like a Matrox G400 or an ATI Card -> these games aren't that hard on video cards - and then you have a MONSTER display for the cost of a good quality 17", and since the games were designed to run at these resolutions, you don't lose anything.
..don't panic
I think you should look up the definition of 'facetious'.
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Oh, MAN I want a Gorf machine.... with the big flightstick... mmmm......
Of course, this only tells me you can't appreciate a game just for the pleasure it gave one. I remember having alot of fun playing Star Trek on the UC computers with the teletype machine and who can forget dungeons and dragons..."grib it...grep it...grab it!!!".
Wow, down here among the trolls there's a bit of gold.
Now, I say this with a mixture of awe, agreement and general empathy... but sweet bleeding zombie jesus, what the fuck IS that? I want the who, what, where, why, when and how for this...
Why are these things so popular? Simple, because we all have favorite games and fondly remember the ones that drew us in and kept us up at night. The newer games have multimedia product value up to your artistic assets, but almost none of them seem to be able to push the same adrenaline buttons.
For me, it was Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe and Dungeon Master on the Amiga. Or Doom, Wing Commander 3 and Half-Life on the PC. Or Avenger on the VIC-20.
We want to experience the same rush we did the first time around, but it's just never the same. Much like your first kiss, even if the second is exactly the same, the experience has lost some of it's magic.
Go play Pong or Gorf. I'm going to go find something I haven't done and expand my experiences.
I think he's kidding....
nWo 4 Life
I won't flame ya, but I'll throw out this: when I'm flying coast to coast, I'd much rather watch a movie of my choice on my laptop then watch a dull in-flight movie. My Dell Inspiron 3700 is the envy of all... I've had people ask me if they could sit by me (if there's an empty seat) so they could watch it too. DVDs are super-sharp and the audio is fantastic, too. When I'm at home, I'll use my home theater setup, but on the road nothing is better than the laptop.
--Shoeboy
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2000 11:58 PM
To: 'malda@slashdot.org'
Subject: something to consider
Dear Malda,
I think you should make me a slashdot author. While I may not have the raw sex appeal of roblimo or the deep and morbid fascination with Marilyn Manson lyrics that characterizes Jamie, I do have several areas of expertise that would make me a good fit. For starters, I am hated by nearly every regular reader on your site - this should guarantee Jon Katz level flames for every story I post. Additionally, I fully agree with your "pants are optional" philosophy, in fact I frequently remove my pants while thinking about you and your site. If that wasn't enough, I also spend a lot of time monitoring websites that are of interest to a large number of slashdot readers but are not currently covered by any of your current authors - specifically goatse.cx, olsentwins.com and natalieportman.com.
I have an extensive background in journalism dating back to high school when I edited the inmate newsletter at Decker Lake Youth Correctional facility in beautiful Salt Lake City Utah. My penetrating expose on forcible sodomy in the shower room led to an investigation by the state as well as several beatings. Since then I have kept my skills sharp by writing erotic "Sailor Moon" fan fictions and posting them anonymously on your website.
And that's not all. I also haven't had sex in the last 3 months - this gives me incredible empathy for the plight of the average slashdotter.
But wait, there's more. I also drive by the Microsoft main campus once a month and moon the flags outside of building 11. If this doesn't demonstrate the soundness of my moral code, I don't know what does.
Still not convinced? I also hate Microsoft, love Linux and xBSD, appreciate python, use napster, hate Jack Valenti, get sheared every spring for my valuable coat of wool and consider mySQL to be competitive with Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.Am I a perfect or what?
--Peter "Shoeboy" Johnson
User # 16224
There's a PalmOS version of Larn & Rogue, available at http://roguelike-palm.sourceforge.net I'm hooked to it myself, even though I'm not that good.
I know very little about Tristan A. Farnon, the creator of Leisure Town. However, I believe he can be contacted at correspondence@leisuretown.com (or at least that is the contact provided on his DNS entry).
I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that someone enjoyed the link I provided (and timothy the gun nut rejected).
Leisure Town
yours,
john
Trollin' for Art since 1992!
Absolutely in agreement. Emulated games are a load of unmitigated ass. The real deal is IT, period. Original, dedicated, full-size cabinets. Anything else is fundamentally useless, as anyone who grew up playing the classics in the early 80's knows. These emu JAMMA cabinets are particularly heinous- nothing exclaims "missing the point" quite as loudly and clearly as those do.
*gel
Arcade games run from a few hundred for old classics to several grand for the latest and the greatest at various auctions. Self built emulators sound pretty cool, but it's just not the same.
....
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--Hey Doctor Jones! No time for love!
A tilt sensor is very easy to add to an cabinet. arcadecontrols.com has some details I believe, and at least one cabinet manu includes a tilt sensor with their product.
In the beginning Japan created the Sega and the Nintendo. Now the Nintendo was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Gamers of Japan were hovering near the television. And God said, "Let there be Super Tecmo Bowl," and there was Super Tecmo Bowl, and it was good.
Ignorence is blis.
Sometimes if you so much as open the cd drawer or insert a floppy, the bios crashes. At other times, you could play your favorite drum song on the case. Just plaibn weird.
If you are interested I can sell it to you ;-)
I've played enough pinball simulators to know-- until force feedback tech gets a lot better than it is now, pinball emulators will always be a sad shadow of the real thing. Any good player can feel the kickers and the bumpers when they fire, can nudge the machine when they fire to put some extra kick into it, and so forth. I've seen some decently-designed tables in emulators (Timeshock comes to mind), but until force-feedback gets better than just the controller shaking in your hand (ala the pinball machine Earthshaker from 1989), we'll never have good pinball emulation.
Ask a race driver about the force feedback from the video games Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin'; they'll tell you it's a bit better than say Pole Position, but still far short. Same concept here.
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At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Just when I thought that Eastern Michigan University was good at something other than bowling.
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My karma is still less than my age.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Funny, I can't seem to recall that one (no clinton jokes please). Do you remember the name? (It wasn't the one where the robot tried to hide itself, was it? the robot without the three laws?)
I'll have to check the book when I get home, but I don't think that was a part of I, Robot. Remember, it was just a collection of short stories strung together to form a larger future history. It's really neat how the stories are unrelated and all stand well on their own, but become a breathtaking conclusion when put together on their own. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury did the same thing, but it was a bit more depressing. OTOH, I, Robot can also be quite depressing too, as the human race kind of loses its free will at the end.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"Just plaibn weird"
Did you used to be on a cartoon called "Fat Albert" ?
M$: "We're #2!"
A classic gaming story, posted by Taco? Come on Emmett, where are ya? It even talks about building your own cabinet! :)
Hanaho looks pretty cool, but someone needs to make a pre-fab cabinet like this that you can add your own monitor to... The price is $798 for the low-end box, but that's including a 19" monitor...
ideally it would be a box that would let you rotate your monitor 90 degrees so you could do the different orientation games realistically.
As for the game - the following comes from Videotopia:
There's also a picture of it next to it on the site, click here.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
SNK is not ceasing its US arcade operations. Metal Slug 3 has been quite a good seller, as I recall. I can't seem to find a link, but only the NGPC is ceasing distribution in the US and europe.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Whoa... never knew that the little birdies could pull *that* off. I mean, how do they hold the tools to even build the case?
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Back when i was VERY young, our house had a rec room in the basement, complete with bar and.....
an arcade game.
It was a very old one, Car Polo(made in 1977) to be exact. it was like a cocktail cabinet(monitor faced up), but 4 people stood up and had steering wheels and a gas pedal. Basically, it was playing Tennis with cars.
I have no idea how anyone got it downstairs since this cabinet was H U G E. Eventually the game died, but for some reason we kept the monitor after for awhile.
I would love to have one of those mini-cabinets like they had at the Minnesota State fair, but would be more than happy with a used cocktail for MAME. Now getting it situiated in my apartment would be a problem. Oh well, it would make a nice dining table.
I'd be happy with just a pre-83 marquee to stick on top of my monitor at work.
Do yourself a favor: Buy an old Jamma Cabinet that needs some TLC(maybe $150 tops) and buy boards!
Where does one buy boards?
And here I thought I was just being a jerk...
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
OM*G, am I really that dumb?
(the obvious answer is no, I just pretend. In the movies. Yeah, that's it.)
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
I'm waiting for a pinball emulator. Hopefully realistic enough so you can whack the side of your monitor and get a "TILT!" message.
.. isn't that a Who song?
P.S. "Pinball Emu"
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I like the Neo-Geo mention -- didn't those things used to cost something like $500 for the machine and $120 / game or something? I remember being about 11 years old when that came out, and utterly in awe of its very being. The price made it all the more desirable. Naturally, I never knew or even heard of anybody owning one. I bet I could get one real cheap now. :)
Anybody have any memories of these things? Anybody every actually *own* one?
-Waldo
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So have a lot of sites. I can't see the one referenced (the filter nazis) but other than that there is Zophar's Domain that has been a good resource for a long time.
Rom sites don't stay up long though usually...
The true question is, can you get so that both joysticks and buttons work AT THE SAME TIME?!?
How Jaded Are You?
I just read that story three times in a row, and i can't find a single reference to an emu. And i can't imagine that one would be any good at constructing an arcade console.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Several arcade sites sell boards. Ebay has a steady stream of arcade parts for sale. Lots of people just buy the board and swap it into their cabinet.
I think people who step on puppies need hot grits down their pants. At least Kevorkian and Nazis have a political agenda (aka something to prove). Puppy-stepper-on'ers are just mean.
I grep, therefore I am
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
oh dear lord -- someone who has a love for the Gradius series as myself....
... ugh...
I can only hope you read this, but if you're interested in Gradius 3, maybe you'd like to grab a mod-chipped playstation and buy a copy (about 20-25$ if I remember when I purchased mine) of Gradius 3 - japan... I know it's not MAME or anything, but the playstation version is AWESOME to say the least... I e-mailed Konami about releasing this gem in the states, and they have no plans to
Karnal
cd players, at least discmen, are only baned during take off/landing.
AFAIK, the only devices that are banned for the entire flight are actual radios and devices that send radio signals --like cell phones and beepers
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
How long until ELSPA and whatever the US equvalent is have a huge lawsuit against the people who write these emulators. We know they will. Not because they make money from the games. No. This is all about them trying to control what we play. They're really going to get annoyed by the fact that people might be downloading old games instead of buying new ones.
We need to stop them before they start. Boycott the games industry now.
You don't need a monitor with some of the cards. I'm using a Asus TNT2 card with TV out and it even shows you the bios startups, not using linux (Mame32 runs faster, and has a nicer gui, from what I can tell), so I can't speak of X support, but you can definately completely do away with the monitor with one of these cards..
..don't panic
Honestly, at one point I had 5 arcade machines(Street Fighter 2 enhanced, Rolling Thunder, Contra, Aliens, and Star Wars), and I would never even think about putting a crappy emu in a cab and pass it off as an arcade machine. With the growing number of Games coming slotted for Jamma cabinets, just shell out $30-$80 for a board per game. I just bought a Final Final Jamma board, which I swap in and out of my Simpsons Cab. Do yourself a favor: Buy an old Jamma Cabinet that needs some TLC(maybe $150 tops) and buy boards!
"These are not people who use Linux because it is better; these are people who use Linux because they like the elitism t
Playing the game on a PC and standing in front of the real deal are 2 totally different things. Horz and Vert monitors, control layout, joysticks, buttons and cabinet looks have a lot to do with the overall experience of playing a game.
If you want to see some old school games or take a trip down memory lane, then yeah, the emulators are cool. But for the overall experience they fall short.
Try playing a game like Robotron emulated..lame. Now try standing in front the real deal and playing...takes your nerves and sends them through a blender...big difference.
They have their place. Long as it's not taking up floor space for the real deal.
I've actually built one of these things. And I'm not the only one :)
Check out http://arcadeathome.efront.com/pics.phtml
for lots of examples.
Also, check out http://www.hanaho.com for some pre-built cabinets and controls.
It's cool to be able to tell your friends you've got over 10 nintendo games ;)
At least some made it to the UK as well, not seen one for a while now tho'
Man, I don't know what this has to do with emulation, but you're right: Leisuretown is beautiful!
The warm greetings that you'll soon be receiving come straight from my cabin workshop in Montana.
The latter is a coworker's page who has the screen rotated vertically..the machine is beautiful.
OOPS! Wrong URL for the pic. Click here instead.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Legend of Zelda and Contra just look wrong on a crisp $700 21. However, they look perfectly in line with the original when I use the composite line out on my cheap ($25) Trident or my slightly less cheap ($90) ATI, and connect it to my nice $200 27 TV.
.sig: Now legally binding!
It doesnt make sense to me...I've read the article and I dont even see a mention of EMU!!! I've used many emulators for a couple years...Mike Tysons Punchout for good ol' Nintendo is my favorite. The ROM's are usually relatively easy to find, but the sites aren't worth bookmarking because they usually dont last for more than a couple months. I can't wait to start using the emulators again and try them with an optical mouse, and perhaps a joystick. I was just thinking that software companies that make games could produce a game which would allow a webcam to put a picture of the user on the screen, and they could play the game with a wheel, pedal, ball or bat. I think it's an interesting concept that would take off. btw...did they even mention emu?
http://tomgould.com/
Also MAME allows you to take the arcade with you on a Laptop, or even a Windows CE / PocketPC no PalmOS support yet. The PalmOS devices can bearly emulate a Gameboy much less an arcade machine.
Anyway the advantage of the real deals is that they have the original Controllers. The controllers for MAME stink unless you have one like the arcade has with spinners and so forth.
Were those on the C64. All this 3D stuff is tedius even to look at. Give me M.U.L.E. anyday.
Nearly as addicting was Ralph Reed's (not sure if he isn't the religious zealot) BattleMech on the Amiga. (I still play from time to time, tho I need a new mouse.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"My puppy died, late last fall, he's still rotting in the hall. Dead puppies aren't much fun. No, no, no. Mom says puppie's days are though. She's going to throw him in the stew. Dead puppies aren't much fun."
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
What about Atari Star Wars (also 1983) and Atari's Battle Zone Cabinet (1981). Didn't they use polygons?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Anyone know where I might find some Joust ROMs? No, not images for an emulator, but physical ROM chips for a real Joust machine?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Those were among the many vector based games that atari produced. The diffrence (I belive) is that a polygon is a surface, where the vector arcade machines where just lines connected to make shapes....
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I don't really mind double posts on
Well, that makes sense, and is a good use of expensive gadgetry to do something that can't be done otherwise. (not that expensive gadgetry needs to be justifified...)
:)
I'm just laughing at people who have a 21"-27" TV in their living room in front of the couch, but watch DVDs on a 17" monitor sitting in an office chair.
ShoutingMan.com
And flight personnel didn't complain? Last time I checked airlines did allow the use of laptops during flight, but CD players (and in extension DVD players) were still strictly forbidden due to interference possibilities with airplane electronics.
Or did you just copy the whole DVD to harddisk and played from there?
jeez, do I feel sorry for you
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
I don't know if I'd actaully want something like this. The feeling of having an old original arcade game in my house would be intresting, but having something that could just emulate one of the older games like that? What's wrong with just owning a Super Nintendo or Genesis.. .and if you wanna make money off it charge your friends (Watch em go fast). I think having the old arcade game would be much better. It'd be nice to look and see the artwork of an old Street Fighter II or Wrestlefest arcade game on the side. Oh welps, I guess I'm just in the older odder generation.
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
i went out and bought a cabinet, 2 joysticks,
:) and a 14" monitor that i had (max
.71dot-pitch monitor, p3-600) plus
8 buttons (1p start, 2p start, 3buttons/player)
for $25
stuck my sister's amd K6-300 in it (she was out
of town
resolution 640x480).
another $40 later (2 keyboards and a mouse) i
had a working arcade box.
it's a blast, i don't think i've played a "normal"
computer game since. plus it's great for partys.
now if i could only get my pinball machine to
display the scores correctly....
You could build a _really_ nice cabinet for about
$800 (19"
you could use it as an mp3 jukebox (just add
an irman) if it's next to a stereo!
you could get more use out of it by making it
the ipmasq box for the house...
the only problem w/ my cab is that it makes too
much noise (i spin down my hd, no powersupply fan
only the cpu fan) when the TV and stereo are
off in the living room. if only Via would release
their latest Cyrix chip that can run w/ only
a heat sink.....
Maximum PC did an emu piece a while back, good for newbies needing to cut their teeth...
/. should get an Emulation topic?
RomNet, now this, a few more emu stories, and maybe
mmmm, a MAME/zSNES/NESticle/Genecyst arcade style box...
Re: ROM sites... yeah, they are always up and down, but I've found them much easier to find and leech from then MP3 web sites [Napster is not a web site damnit]
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
When I got an ATI TV tuner card and an ATI Rage with TV output, giving me the ability to watch TV on my TV, through a $2000 computer.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
This one is better!!!!!! (Refers to the .sig or above poster.)
.sig
Fellowship 9/11
I'm curious if anyone has built a dedicated emulator machine, and if so what CPU/Video Card combination is ideal.
I'm curious, as running some games, such as Gradius 3 (which I have a masochistic love of), are *really* slow in parts. Like 10 FPS or so. (Average FPS when running Gradius 3 is about 17, as opposed to the 60 FPS or so in 1943).
I'm in the process of testing my skillz by building an arcade joystick. (Thanks be to http://www.arcadecontrols.speedh ost.com/ and Happ Controls for information and parts respectively). If this is successful, I would like to find and strip down an old console. But I'm not going to do it if all the games I want to play run like shit =)
More to the points, are there any tips/advice for speeding up MAME and/or other emulators? Specific video settings, etc?
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Sort of like watching DVD's on your computer...
:)
(Oh no, I'm in for it now, donning flame-retardant gear from lab
ShoutingMan.com
You remember that great scene in I, Robot (by Asimov) where the robot had to walk around a big tiled floor to change all the tile colors while someone was trying to zap him with lasers, don't you? The arcade was a perfectly faithful adaptation of the story, and totally preserved the deep and meaningful plotline.
Yeah, that kind of stuff really makes you think about whether our machines will someday develop to the point where they have souls of their own.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
The airlines I have experience with ban all electronic devices during take off and landing and allow laptops w/o CD-ROM and other apparantly harmless devices during flight.
Radio signal emitting devices are of course banned throughout the whole flight but CD-ROMs, audio CD players and probably MiniDisc (not sure on that one) are included in that ban.
Maybe they hardened the board electronics against interferences nowadays. Maybe they sacrifice security for market share ("If you don't allow me to use my CD-ROM I'll take another airline in the future, I tell ya!").
When I was deciding how to outfit my Hanaho ArcadePC (www.hanaho.com), I did a lot of surfing on the topic. I found that the key piece of information I needed was that the video mode code in MAME was all done to the ATI Mach64 chipset. I bought a card with this chip (ATI XPert 98) for the Celeron-500/128Mb RAM box I was planning to use. I run the Windows 98 version of DOS, and the AMAME optimized compile of MAME/DOS, and I just checked out Gradius3 on my rig and I am getting 60fps all the way through the first act (I suck at Gradius3). The INTRO, and parts of attract mode, slow way down (which is a bit odd), but gameplay at least at the beginning is pretty cool...
- i got yer sig *raht heah* -
That's good to know =) If I am not mistaken, ATI's 2d engine hasn't changed since the Mach64 (i.e. all thier innovation recently has been in the 3d arena), so any modern ATI card will work for that. I hope.
I was actually planning on going with OpenDOS, as the machine will be a dual-boot DOS/Linux box (The Linux being there for when I need a dedicated Quake/HL/UT server =), and I figured installing Windows would be a pain if I didn't need to.
What is the AMAME optimized compile? I'm running the mameppro binary right now (from mame.net) on a Celery 450.
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What's this thing that SlashDot as for flightless birds that live in the Southern Hemisphere?
I mean, emus aren't even cute and cuddly like penguins. Though according to the Encyclopedia Britannica emu meat tastes like beef, which is curious for a bird, since so many non-birds have meat that tastes like chicken.
Help
Work for Change & GET PAID!
How much did you pay for your several full size uprights? I'll bet it was more than the $0 I paid to download MAME and a bunch of ROMS.
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
the price i quoted included a wellsgarner monitor.
these are VGA monitors that have the same
dot-pitch as arcade monitors, but you can still
use them to boot X (or windows if you have to)
i think the url is: www.wellsgarner.com but it doesn't seem to be working... better than dealing with TV-out and not=TVout, when do you switch, having two displays hooked up...etc. _maybe_ w/ the matroxfb stuff you could set the frequency of the console to work with a vga->rgb converter and see your boot messages on the TV otherwise it gets to be tough...
Space Duel was the ultimate evolution of Asteroids -- it was like "Asteroids on acid!" (not advocating drugs here -though I don't oppose 'em either and think most should be legal - but that's the best description I've ever heard of the game).
The great thing about Space Duel was that you could cooperate with another player against the machine, or go it alone as a single/double ship, or compete with the other guy (while cooperating at the same time, to kill each-other and get new shields -- "kill me, dammit, KILL ME!!!"). The best was cooperation mode, especially once we figured out the "trick." Unlike the original Asteroids, where you stood your ground in the middle of the screen and blasted, in Space Duel you had to march to survive. Momentum was a life-saver, and keeping the march gave stability.
We generally marched left-to-right, with the only danger zone being the crossover from far-right to far left of the screen. If one guy got hit, he became a popgun, and generally took over navigation/thrust duties because the other guy still had full-auto shots available. Then once either of you got nailed again, the tie between the ships became a fuse, and the other guy had just enough time to bring weapons to bear and kill the fscking-saucer that had done this to us. We even developed a shorthand language for the game so we could warn eachother of rocks and other hazards, and if we missed them on the first few shots, we'd occasionally try to outrun the double-spaceships sent after us so that we came up behind them.
The game was never popular with arcade owners, for good reasons. We could make 2 quarters last from 45 minutes to an hour or more, and the problem was that once I bought the damn thing myself (which I should have done before I finally did) the video display had a habit of crapping out, and Atari was too busy screwing themselves over Apple-computer-style to ever either fix it or tell me how. In a cruel twist of fate, most of the shells of old Space Duel games (stand-up, not table) are now another, much less fun game, so I occasionally enter a video parlor and see one, only to be disappointed. It's sad...I haven't seen one in years!
Anyway, people who didn't love the game tended to hate it, as it was never as complex to play as Defender (9 out of 10 fingers!!!?!) or some of the others I was too fumble-fingered to play, or as simple as Battlezone (the tank game), but I REALLY miss it a lot, and if there are any arcades that still have it or people who can emulate it, I'd love to know about them! Thanks.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Does this have any relation to the famous I, Robot by Asimov? That is one classic book. Just from the tiny screenshot, it looks like the only connection is the name. Was the name licensed? Did they just use it to get people interested in the game? If anyone has ever played this game, please respond with your thoughts.
BTW, if you haven't read I, Robot, READ IT!. It is a classic.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Actually, Vector games like Battle Zone were the first Polygon based games, however, I, Robot was the first to use FILLED Polygons.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
I shall spend $5,000 for a multimedia computer, outfit it with top of the line speakers and subwoofers! Now, I will purchase a bass-boosting seat for added realism! Then, I will purchase additional monitors to place around me to give me 180 degree+ field of vision!
m l
Then I'll load up PacMan.
This reminds me an awful lot about the linked Onion article:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3308/realtimetv.ht
Titled: New $5,000 Multimedia Computer System Downloads Real-Time TV Programs, Displays Them On Monitor