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Arcade
Emulation I always wished that I could reproduce that authentic "video arcade feeling" at home: the responsive touch of the arcade control panel, the crisp, colorful arcade monitor, the satisfying sound the machine makes when a quarter is dropped in the slot... Until recently this was just a dream. Arcade machines are expensive (typically running from $500 to $5000 for games made before 2000). Plus, after investing all the time, money and effort it takes to bring one home, chances are I'd get bored of playing the same old game after mere weeks. With the recent advances in processor speed, however, it is now possible to emulate many of the classic arcade games on a PC using software such as MAME. MAME is capable of simulating the hardware of many (about 3800 so far) classic arcade machines. This means that the original game code, art, and sound are all faithfully reproduced exactly as they functioned in their natural habitat: the video arcade. These are not ports of arcade games, but the actual arcade games themselves running under emulation.
However, just getting MAME up and running on a PC isn't enough to recreate the arcade experience. There are a few more steps that must be taken before the experience is as authentic as possible. These three requirements are crucial to reproducing the look and feel of the original arcade games: 1. The
game must be interfaced to authentic
arcade controls. While the above requirements are not necessary for casual game playing, my goal is to preserve, as accurately as possible, the games that I grew up with and that shaped the modern video game industry. While browsing eBay recently, I discovered an arcade cabinet for sale. It included pretty much everything except a game, which was perfect since I wanted to put a PC into it anyway. This is what it looks like:
As you can see it is set up for two players, with an 8-way joystick and 4 buttons per player. Also of note is the 29" Hitachi arcade monitor (which can rotate 90 degrees to accommodate vertically oriented games) and the 100 Yen coin slot. That's right -- this machine is originally from a Japanese arcade and is still configured to accept Japanese coins. Cabinets like this are not too hard to find. In fact, you can order one right now from Arcade Infinity for about $350. This particular unit is called the SNK Neo Candy 29 and was originally designed to play Neo-Geo arcade games. In the coming weeks I will be modifying the cab to interface with a PC, accept 25 cent US coins, and generally customize it to create an arcade emulation machine that is as close to the real thing as possible. For now, though, a few pictures of the original machine as of it's arrival on May 8, 2003:
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