MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: DU Update: And now, Weekend Update with Smitdogg Jones

>it might make more sense to focus on the ancient ones. I'm talking EM games and EM
>hybrids. They are more expensive, and it's a bigger pain in the butt (in most instances
>you'd have to buy the entire game, not just a circuit board) but these types of games
>are fading fast and as of yet there is NO effort to preserve them... pinball excluded
>of course.

>Most of them are so primative that it wouldn't take much to make an emulator/simulator.
>They just need to be carefully taken apart, have the artwork scanned and have
>their "trace boards" scanned as well as the speed of movements documented.

>I think 18 wheeler is a good example of this. It's already emulated pretty well in
>mame.... we just need a scan of the road surface and lamps and some 2d/3d models based
>on the truck. Then it's just a matter of exploiting the artwork system and setting up
>some virtual switches and you've got a really good approximation of a game most people
>will never get the chance to play.

I agree, but in some cases some serious money is needed to get a working cab unless a non-working/unrepairable cab is for sale and various parts can be salvaged in order to improve artwork.

As dwidel had posted here many years earlier on the forum (iirc something along this line): "It's not the cost of the item iself, but the cost of shipping that item. That is the main expense itself." imo one of the top 10 opinions ever posted here. A recent example comes to mind. A seller had a For-Play Rally cab on craigslist for sale at $50 in northern California. Someone here that wanted that cab resides in central Texas. With gas expenses these days shipping charge is likely around $600 to $900 to get a small, miniature size cab between those two locations. Even if I could have driven up there to get the cab, it would have been about $300 to 350 for gas expense.

As for old games being supported, I believe the best chances are with the various wall unit games like Gremlin's Trap Shoot or other simple artwork usage games since it appears to be possible to carefully remove section that has artwork piece and carefully scan that piece. What would still be needed is more folks in artwork area to clean up and improve scan quality and also a few folks with heavy duty EE experience that can emulate analog hardware discrete components in order to get audio sounds emulated and also any of the lamp backdrop visual effects. Unfortunately it looks like we're almost running on empty in this area that is needed for the older generation games.

With Pong emulated, it is a nice start for non-cpu videogames getting preliminary support.