MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: MAME 0.245

> Sorry for the late reply. Now I understand the reason why he refused to emulate it.
> Also, I realize the reason why it failed location test since I played it. Because it
> didn't use trackball controls to simulate inertia, taking the challenge out of that
> game. There is still a lot of potential in that game. It's just that all they need to
> do is put the trackball controls back, causing the inertia simulation & challenge to
> also be put back. Unfortunately, the possibility of someone helping them put the
> trackball controls back into the game then release it does not seem like a big
> possibility anymore because the arcade industry is dying out because video game
> consoles are getting more popular than arcade games.

This may have been correct around 2000, but it's outdated and not reflective of market trends for the past 15 years or so.

The amount of R&D money put into a given set of platforms is reflective of where the money is, and the design of arcade hardware has tracked those platforms for the past 30 years.

"video game consoles are getting more popular than arcade games" would have been an accurate statement from 1995 to 2005 or so, as that is when there was an explosion of arcade platforms derived from console chipsets: Namco System 10/11/12 (PS1), Konami GQ/System 573 (PS1), Sega Naomi (Dreamcast), Sammy Atomiswave (Dreamcast), Konami Python and Python 2 (PS2), Namco System 147/246/256 (PS2), Sega Chihiro (Xbox), Nintendo/Sega/Namco Triforce (GameCube), Namco System 357/359 (PS3), and others.

Since 2005, the market statistics indicate that there's been a rapid shift towards PCs being the dominant platform for gaming. Alongside that, pretty much all arcade manufacturers - Sega, Taito, Konami, and Namco alike - have collectively broke towards PC-based arcade hardware: Taito Type X/X+/X2/X Zero/X3, Namco N2/ES1, Sega Lindberg/RingEdge/RingWide/Nu, Konami arcade titles since 2005, and others.

As for Marble Man II, you're pretty close to being on the money. However, working in game development, I can tell you that you're not seeing the forest for the trees. Just re-adding trackball controls wouldn't solve anything, as for the most part the stage layouts and enemy behavior have also been tuned for joystick controls. The game itself is boring as sin, but the design is broadly aligned with the control method. You can't change one without changing the other.