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.

Comments

Similar Posting?

[webword]

All-In-One Arcade Console

Charge something nominal for ROMs?

[mgkimsal2]

What'd be cool is if there was an agreement between the major ROM copyright holders to allow some company to put all the old ROMs on one CD and sell, then split an amount between them. I'm thinking small amounts per CD (1-2 cents per game?) - a disc with 500 games may have to split $10 between the original copyright holders. Perhaps the administrative costs might be too high for some, but they'd be getting *something* instead of people continually 'stealing' their original work. Yes, I've got ROMs for VCS cartridges I bought, and C64 games, and even a few I never bought. If I want more, the only options I have are 'illegal' ones.

Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please.

Re:Charge something nominal for ROMs?

[orbital3]

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.

Site will go down, here's the info...

[zoloto]

/. effect soon:

Subject New Idea.. need opinions! Reply to this message
Posted by borg357
Posted on 01/07/03 02:28 PM

Hello Everyone! Some of you know me, some may not. My name is Richard and I work at a company called HanaHo Games (www.hanaho.com), where I'm a product developer. Over the years, we've created some kewl emulation products like the HotRod Joystick and the ArcadePC among other things..

I wanta drop the ball on something here, and I need some honest opinions. Over the years at HanaHo, we've gained allot of experience in creating our own embedded PCB's for use in Coin-op markets, and we also have experience in marketing, as well as some really good contacts with various partnerships in the real coin-op business.

What would you guys think about a console based gaming system (embedded hardware unit) for use for emulation? This would be an incredibly ambitious project, as we would be facing some huge obstacles! But I've been kicking this idea around for a while now.. and here's some details:

A stand alone game system, that's about the size of an X-box or PS2. It would have the ability to plug in USB game pads, HotRod, X-arcade, Slickstick, or home made joystick keyboard hacks. It would also be able to plug in to a TV or a VGA monitor, as well as direct sound output, and Network support built in. The base system, would simply boot up (within seconds), and play MAME. There would be an optional hard drive, but contain a DVD-ROM player for the games to load.

With our experience in embedded products, I feel that we could launch such a project, as an alternative to "hacking" an x-box or ps2 to play MAME. Emulation would be the main purpose for this console unit, however, it would be very similar to the way the X-Box works, in fact, given today's chip prices, we might even be able to create something even more powerful than an X-Box.

The OS would be embedded into the boot-up of the console, and we would have to reply on a team of people, working with, and creating a MAME version for this unit.

The target price I'm shooting for would be $200-300, and we would of course bundle this with as many ROMS as we can get the rights too.

There would also be some added bonuses here too.. First off, creating our own game system would solve a lot of ROM licensing issues, and also create and help legitimize MAME, while still keeping MAME as a grass roots movement. The only way this major gamble would work is to have the support of the MAME community. We know very well, that the market is now saturated with consoles and titles by some heavy hitters, but we're NOT after the same market of newer games. In fact, while microsoft is busy sueing everyone offering mod chips, we would fully embrace hacks in our system. This system, unlike X-Box or GameCube, or PS2 would be very very useful in "home-brew" arcade units, as well as the engine in our own line of cabinets we sell. It might even be a significant cost savings as a PC is actually a bit of an overkill for a MAME machine.

Take a moment.. think about it. tell me what you think..

Thanks
--
-Richard Ragon/Senior HanaHo Evangelist

http://www.HanaHo.com - HanaHo Games, Inc.

Hope this helps.

ROM rights cost an arm and a leg...

[$$$$$exyGal]

...we would of course bundle this with as many ROMS as we can get the rights too...

Licensing ROMS is a very expensive deal, I wonder how they plan on paying for them? I'm pretty skeptical of this venture getting much further than that post (but I'm still hopeful).

--naked

Re:ROM rights cost an arm and a leg...

[Thedalek]

HanaHo is no fledgling company when it comes to the emulation community. They have successfully licensed a number of games in the past, and turned it into a profitable enough business.

Check out www.hanaho.com.

HOW much???

[darylp]

$300 is far too much money for something like this. Put it this way, over here in the UK we can buy a console that looks suspiciously like an old N64 controller which plugs straight into the TV. It holds a large amount of NES games on it. (I haven't checked the number, but there's loads.)

The price? 30 quid. That's roughly $50.

Sure, some geekier-than-thou types would get a stiffy from being able to plug Linux into their telly, but the average person won't care whether or not they get their Retro gaming fix from the NES or Arcade versions of games.

Re:HOW much???

[DarkZero]

Many people use MAME for Neo-Geo games and other such fighting games, which require at least a 400mhz processor and 256MB of RAM. Emulation nowadays is more than just Atari 2600 games and I think Hanaho realizes that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they made it quite a bit better than that, since a 400mhz processor with 256MB of RAM won't even play Mortal Kombat properly.

Re:HOW much???

[CJ Hooknose]

It will still need a hard drive, save files and savestates are still too big to just put on flash,

? "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.

Ok with me.

[handsomepete]

Considering the horsepower that's required to do everything post 1997, Xbox level hardware may not cut it for the folks who like the Metal Slug/Capcom Vs. games/etc. For those of us who just want to sit around and play Burgertime or the Ninja Turtles arcade game, I'm all for it.

I have a feeling this may cause more problems than it's worth, though. The last thing I want to see is some company decide that this is the last straw and really persue shutting down the mame project. I imagine getting permission from more than a couple companies to distribute rom images will be pretty hard, even if they're offered compensation. I can't get to the thread right now - what do the mamedevs think about all this?

Has anyone bought that single player X-arcade joystick?

Go For It

[RailGunner]

Since most "home" translations of popular classic games left a lot to be desired (Atari 2600 Pac-Man, anyone?), why not release a set-top box so people can easily relive their youth by playing classic games?

And yes, I know how easy it is to get MAME up and running, but face it. If you're reading slashdot, chances are you're in the top 5% of the technically inclined and setting up an emulator is *easy*. But, if you're mom and pop AOL who don't even know what type of sound or video card they have, let alone the processor speen and RAM, well then it becomes a more daunting task.

Though I have to wonder how much of a market there will be for this... considering how many publishers have released collections of their old games for the latest consoles already..

Bundling

[mgkimsal2]

Replying to own post:

What'd be SMART - if they were to do it - is for a company to bundle all its old games together and ship it with MAME. I thought Activisin did something like this, but EA hasn't done it. Yes, it's not MAME, but there are C64 emulators available. If they'd ship all their old classics (Skyfox, Archon, Seven Cities, etc) *with* an emulator, it'd certainly sell. Huge amounts? Maybe not, but the development cost is practically nill.

Re:Permission?

[Sancho]

Because they want to include as many roms as possible in the system itself. Clearly just to make and sell the unit isn't an issue, but what's a unit without games you can purchase for it/games that come with it?

What do you mean a custom box seems harder?!

[autopr0n]

Steps for getting an Xbox to play Mame games:

Find grey-market chip for your xbox on the 'net
order it
wait
open up your Xbox, solder it in
burn the right CD, with all the games you want to play


Steps in using a dedicated MAME console:

Use it.

Yeah, seems so much harder.

Seriously this thing seems a lot simpler. I already have an x-box, but I might be more intrested in this, since for *me* this will be a lot simpler. And I lost the urge to dick around with computers just for the 'fun' of of it a few years ago.

New system would make sure coders get $$$.

[Viewsonic]

Unlike stealing a bunch of ROMs are you are doing on your XBox.

Re:New system would make sure coders get $$$.

[glesga_kiss]

Argh! Piracy is not stealing, not that old argument again. If it were stealing, the courts would have decided long ago that there are no need for anti-piracy laws, because the anti-thieving laws already cover it.

And as you can't buy these ROMs anywhere, how are you depriving someone of any income? Even if you were paying for them, who would the money go to? Not the original developers, I can tell you that much!

Can you say "victimless crime"? No one is hurt, so frankly I couldn't care less. I base my life around what is morally correct, not what is on the lawbooks.

MAME doesn't allow distribution of roms

[Virtex]

They would have to get the permission of the MAME developers as well. If you read the license that comes with MAME, it forbids distribution together with roms.

Re:MAME doesn't allow distribution of roms

[Drachemorder]

"They would have to get the permission of the MAME developers as well. If you read the license that comes with MAME, it forbids distribution together with roms."

I don't think that would be much of a problem if they legally bought the rights to distribute the roms. The MAME developers put that in there as a guard against being accused of copyright violations and piracy. Take away the threat of piracy lawsuits, and I imagine they'd be perfectly willing to allow MAME to be shipped in this sort of system.

Re:MAME doesn't allow distribution of roms

[BigJimSlade]

Not only is this true, but they have shipped a "MAME-Dev blessed" version of MAME in the past with a CD of Capcom ROMs. This came with their HotRod PC arcade joystick. I don't know if you can still get it this way or not, but I have one.

Chances are... 0.0%

[Mulletproof]

"Course if they can do this with permission of the original ROM makers, this could be awesome."

Nintendo is still making money off of selling trading cards with classic games imbedded on them. How many incarniations of the Classic Gaming CD (which contains 10 games, taking up less than 10% of the disk) have you seen? Care to by the sequel?

No, they're gonna have to shell out for the permission to use those ROMs.

Sooo....

[Joe Tie.]

If it's allready running Linux, does that mean we have to change our usual plans and try to get windows to run on it?

Re:Here is the "Obligitory post"...

[mccalli]

Time to burn some karma ...about imagining a certain cluster of these!

I believe such a cluster is known as an 'arcade'...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:I can do this myself

[clontzman]

I'm guess it's because releasing 30 games for $40 could really hurt their bottom line, since one of the main thing that drives new game sales is that you've played through your existing games already. If you've got hundreds of hours of gameplay for $40, what's the incentive for you to buy more games?

I'm not saying I agree, but I imagine that's what's preventing Nintendo from putting every Super Mario game onto a single disc. You might never have to buy a game again.

Re:isn't $300 a bit high

[DarkZero]

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.

Re:Vertical games?

[AtariDatacenter]

I know you're being funny. But to address it seriously, for any good size TV, that is physically not very realistic. Additionally, the yoke (or something) gets out of alignment when a TV is placed on its side, and you get some big colored splotches on the screen.

Although, I must say, it'd be interesting to see 'veritcal' and 'horizontal' home console gaming. ;)

Check your facts

[freeweed]

Hanaho has been legally distributing quite a lot of roms, with full permission of the copyright holders, for some time now.

See: Capcom, for one. There are also quite a few arcade roms that have been put into the public domain over the years.

Nintendo is not the end-all and be-all of video games (even if they did make some of the funnest :)