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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..."
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!
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?
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.
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 don't know if any of this is correct, but there is a Neo-Geo faq here.
For the geeks (from the faq):
Processor: Motorola 68000(12 Mhz, 16-bit), Zilog-80A(4 Mhz, 8-bit)
(technically a 16-bit machine, not 24-bit)
Resolution: 320x224
Color Palette: 65,536
Maximum Colors On-Screen: 4,096
Maximum Sprites On-Screen: 380
Minimum Sprite Size: 1x2
Maximum Sprite Size: 16x512
Maximum Amount of Game Planes: 3
Sound Channels: 4-FM synthesis, 7-Digital, 3-PSG, 1-Noise channel
Internal RAM: Work RAM: 64Kb
Video RAM: 68Kb
Z80 RAM: 2Kb
Memory Card(see below)
The NEOGEOCD has all, including a single-speed CD-ROM drive,
64Kb of Static RAM, 512Kb Video RAM, cool loading screens, and 56 Mbits of D-RAM! The
CDZ, likewise, except with more cache and a faster CD controller.
I seem to remember them being much better than that. Maybe it was just the cd-rom that was so cool.
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My karma is still less than my age.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
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