MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Sadness in the front end world....

> I'm reading retro-madness here, not retro-gaming.
>
> Playing ATARI2600 or some consoles in a cab? C'mon. Just go on eBay and search for an
> old 14'' (or more) CRT TV and build a decent setup. Those machines *were not*
> designed to be played in cabinets. And at least you'll be able to connect the
> keyboard and enjoy computers as well.
>
> Though I understand that the future is seeing kids play pacman on their smartphones
> and move it with their fingers (when MAME will have touchscreen support).
>
> This is not meant to be a reply to someone in particular, but a general hint. Then,
> it's a only a matter of personal choices.

Well Sega put the Megatech stuff in a cab, with a stupid menu / timer circuit. Those are 100% Megadrive roms, the files are identical, just with an added menu. Playchoice 10, likewise.

The arcade game 'Tournament Table' is also basically A2600 tech.

The Max-a-Flex games were also Atari hardware with a timer, licensed.

So clearly the manufacturers of the games / systems did think they had a place in Arcade cabs, albeit with a way to make money out of them.

Then there are the unofficial ones, eg. Aladdin, or the Russian bootlegs
brod "Brodjaga (Arcade bootleg of ZX Spectrum 'Inspector Gadget and the Circus of Fear')"
kok "Povar / Sobrat' Buran / Agroprom (Arcade multi-game bootleg of ZX Spectrum 'Cookie', 'Jetpac' & 'Pssst')"

or of course the questionable TourVision

the MD version of SSF2, the butchered up versions of various SNES games like Final Fight 2 where running the original unhacked ROM would just make so much more sense...

Before arcades started using bootleg xx-in-1 emulation boards most of them had things like the NES based 'Super Game' with 20 NES games

In addition there are timer circuit boards available for most of the common consoles too, I'm surprised you haven't noticed this because one of the times I was in Italy one of the arcades I visited was almost *entirely* that kind of thing.

So yeah, people do want these things on cabinets, these things were often used on cabinets... by excluding them all you're doing is forcing the hand of users to use the handful that were officially released in that form, or the horrible hacked up bootlegs that often fuck up the games completely,

By having a complete version of MAME, you can fully explore things, make comparisons, draw your own conclusions. I'd definitely for example say that it would be preferable to run a regular Megadrive/NES version of any of the MegaTech/PC10 games, 99% of cabinets people build aren't going to have a special monitor above the screen for the timer display and 99% of people using the cabinets aren't going to want it squeezed on the main display, and if you hide it then it just looks like your cabinet is broken when the inputs stop working / game resets due to the timer they can't see expiring.

Some of the recent releases for these platforms also make for great games to play on a cabinet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3G44ghxzks
for example is your offers perfect 'classic arcade' gameplay