MAME and Retrogaming

[zeiss]

Being a child of the 80's and 90's I remember having fun frequenting loads of arcades and playing nintendo and sega systems. Now that retrogaming is so accessible through computer emulation, I can have one system that plays all the games I used to own. I plan on loading all of my old games on a computer have a major retrogaming machine.

I am even thinking about making my own home arcade cabinet utilizing MAME. Anyone else here into retrogaming and MAME (the arcade emulator). Anyone have any arcade machines?

 

[hairlesswookiee]

I haven't found a MAME program that works (Mac), but I do have just about everything else. NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, Sega CD, N64. I just played through Snatcher again for the 17th time a few weeks ago. I hook up my MBP to the 50" and it's the same as hooking up my Sega Cd.

 

[zeiss]

I don't have a mac so I don't know how complicated MAME is to install on there, but I have noticed an annoying trend for the software to have become more complicated over the years. Many of my old roms won't work on the newest versions of mame. It definitely is one of those things that requires a lot of time to tinker with.

 

[xenofreak]

This guy has audio you can download of a simulated arcade. It's great to put on in the background when you're playing classic games.


https://arcade.hofle.com/




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[Excalibur82]

Being a child of the 80's and 90's I remember having fun frequenting loads of arcades and playing nintendo and sega systems. Now that retrogaming is so accessible through computer emulation, I can have one system that plays all the games I used to own. I plan on loading all of my old games on a computer have a major retrogaming machine.

I am even thinking about making my own home arcade cabinet utilizing MAME. Anyone else here into retrogaming and MAME (the arcade emulator). Anyone have any arcade machines?

Hey man,

I used MAME for retro gaming on my little HP laptop a few years back. I sought out and downloaded over a hundred classic arcade titles from my arcade days back in the late 80s and early 90s. From Final Fight to Turtles in Time, Mame works really good.

The only downside was: it gets old fast. I spent so much time getting and sorting all of the best games, that when I finally had a few hundred at my finger tips, I just didn't feel like playing them. Also, the problem with emulation is that there is no penalty for dying in a game, so you always have infinite credits. It kind of takes the challenge away.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being too negative. My advice to you is to: download MAME, throw your favorite games on there, and see how much you like it before going all the way building an arcade cabinet.

Also check out the Nebula Arcade Emulator. You can play Capcom and SNK games in ultra Hi-Resolution and its super fast.

 

[Darth Waller]

I was really into MAME a few years back. I still have them on an older computer, but never installed them on my new computer since the MAME version changed and some of the ROMs no longer worked. That is definitely a pain in the butt.

 

[zeiss]

Yeah, the fact that many old roms don't work on new versions is definitely irritating. I am sure there was a good reason for the change, but I don't know what it is. Excalibur, I have played MAME on and off for almost as long as it has been around and I certainly understand how playing the games loses its luster after awhile, especially with the infinite lives. However, I still come back to it periodically. Nostalgia is a powerful motivator.

Anyway, the current allure for me is the awesome Hyperspin (https://www.hyperspin-fe.com/) graphical frontend that takes the emulated games from almost ALL previous consoles and puts them into a nice browsing system. I like the idea of having a place to revisit ANY game easily.

 

[xenofreak]

wow that hyperspin looks like an amazing front end, but I don't know if I would want to put in all the time setting up and configuring all those emulators. I've used similar frontends before and definitely spent more time working on getting everything running correctly than actually playing games. Had it all running in an arcade cabinet. Seems like I would always have problems and have to keep going into the settings. Took the fun out of it. I was going to put a PS2 in the cabinet and just put like the PS2 Capcom Classics or SNK Classics game disc in it, but I think I'll just put something simple like Winkawaks that plays CPS1, CPS2, and NEO GEO. I just recently redownloaded all the roms to make sure I have the current working versions and it was nice that I could download the entire romsets all at once! I remember having to download SNES, NES, GENESIS, MAME roms one at a time on 56K modem!

 

[zeiss]

Getting everything to work right is a huge pain. There have definitely been times where I just throw my hands in the air and walk away from it. I am hoping that this time, I can create a decent set that I don't have to change in the future too much (though I know it probably won't work that way).

To make the games more interesting, I have decided to implement my own personal meta game in which I don't allow myself to move on to a new game until I beat a couple levels or get a certain score in the game I sart with. That way, I hope to avoid the channel surfing efect where I play just a little bit of many games without any real purpose and quickly lose interest.