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Proposed Set-Top MAME Emulation Console
BRock97 writes "An interesting post over at MAMEWorld discusses the possibility of the folks at HanaHo Games (the creators of the ArcadePC and the HotRod joystick) creating a set-top system that would run the MAME emulator and allow the user to play their collection of ROMS on a TV. From what has been posted, it sounds like the unit would be comparable to an XBox (with x86 inards), run an embedded OS (sounds like it would be Linux), and the company would fully support end user hacking of the unit (i.e. boot a DivX player). They would like to hit a target price of $200-$300 and would bundle as many ROMS as they have the right to. The company is requesting feedback." I tend to think MAME is best played in a cabinet (guess thats why I built one ;) but would love to see a mame set top box, but a custom box seems harder than simply using a dreamcast or x-box to do it. Course if they can do this with permission of the original ROM makers, this could be awesome.
Unlike stealing a bunch of ROMs are you are doing on your XBox.
Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please. (emphasis mine)
I agree with this completely, and this is the big reason I very rarely buy those compilation packs of old games. When someone's trying to sell me a collection of 10 old Atari games for $30 and there's only maybe 3 of the 10 I actually care about, that's not very good value for my money. Those old games were fun, but not so much that I'd want to spend $10 on each one... that adds up pretty quick when there's 10 games you want. There just isn't that much gameplay in those old games considering you can go pick up two-year-old PS2 games for $20 that give you ALOT more playtime. I'd easily drop $200 on a legit MAME romset. With 2045 unique games (3596 including clones), that comes out to about $0.10 each. Yeah, there's probably quite a few of those (maybe even most) that I wouldn't care a bit about, but I'm still getting alot better value than what's available now. And that's better for all of them because they'd at least be getting _something_ from me, while right now, they're not getting a penny.
Who says they're just emulating 15 year old hardware? A lot of us emulate games from the late '90s, such as the Neo-Geo games like The King of Fighters 2000, Metal Slug 3, or Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Those games require, at minimum, a 400mhz processor and 256MB of RAM. Add a TV-Out card to that and a small form factor and $200-$300 with a gamepad and a custom box is pretty much the minimum price.
? "Flash" as in flash-RAM, or "flash" as in CompactFlash media? "du -sh ~/.xmame ~/.snes96_snapshots" returns a total of less than 1M, which should certainly be doable no matter what kind of media you're talking about. (YMMV on this, but I play a fair number of emulated games.) After all, an 8Mbyte SmartMedia card is roughly $10.
if those geeks are able to plug a terminal emulator and nullmodem into a service port on the back
Yes. If any company really tries to make this idea into a real product, this would be a big selling point. Let's just hope they can convince the marketroids and lawyers of this, and that some beancounter decides the $1-2 cost-per-unit of adding this functionality is worth it.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.