/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Yep.

The king is dead.

"By far the greatest and most important piece of videogaming code ever written."

Those were the words, chums, of this very reporter, spoken about the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (or MAME to its friends) when interviewed by formerly-interesting videogames magazine Edge about it all the way back in October 2002. Created in early 1997, MAME rose from humble beginnings as a Pac-Man emulator created by teenage Italian coder Nicola Salmoria, and immediately started to grow at an exponential rate. Within a few short months the number of games it ran had eclipsed the previous gold standard in arcade emulation, Dave Spicer's Sparcade, and MAME streaked off into the distance without a backwards glance. At the time of writing, the emulator supports well over 5,000 different ROM sets, and over 3,000 distinct games - a very substantial proportion of the entire history of arcade gaming.

It's a little bit surprising, then (to him, certainly), that your correspondent will never be downloading another update of MAME again.

To understand why, we need a little historical background. A few months into MAME's development, Nicola Salmoria had to go off and do his Italian National Service, which naturally put something of a dampener on his opportunities for emulator coding. The helm of the project was taken over by another Italian coder, Mirko Buffoni, in April 1997, under whose guidance MAME ran for several years, growing in size from a few dozen games to hundreds and eventually into four figures. Around this point, the emulator reached the peak of its popularity - millions of people watched sites like Retrogames obsessively for new releases, speculating wildly over which new games might be included (there was no work-in-progress news in those days, and releases arrived out of the blue, met by ecstatic frenzies of excitement), and the program was plastered all over the gaming media, both print and online.

And then it all started to go wrong.

By now, MAME had become far too big for one person to run single-handed, and steadily more people became closely involved at the heart of the project. Eventually, the maintainers coalesced into an official body, known as MAMEDEV, and slowly but surely things started to be done differently. The emulator's nominal purpose had always been to serve as a historical document of coin-op games, rather than as a means by which people could actually play and enjoy them, but under the new management this aim became more and more rigidly adhered to. (No longer, for example, would the "What's new?" text file accompanying each release start off by proudly listing all the new games for which support had been added or improved, but rather reams of tedious technical documentation detailing incomprehensible changes to the source code, with new games being vaguely alluded to somewhere later on, if users were lucky.) In essence, MAME had been hijacked.

No, I prefer kawaks.

For you idiots who do not have MAME

Here
http://www.mameui.info/


Just extract romfolder into MAME folder and thats it be sure to REAUDIT it a couple of times in ALL GAMES and reboot MAME.
If really want to have the absolute best mame get MAME0.99 and then the LAGLESS addon. I am too lazy to track it down-
shmup roms
http://www.mediafire.com/?jnn1nzidmge
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?t5mymmmnyqy

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hgniqzjwmzg
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?njinmzxmfkc
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ztwuvmimmmx
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b1wnjd2duzr
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y5mq10jkjt4
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?z2t4y2zxmjn
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nzxmejmcmq0
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?kmmmmujnoyy
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jytajh25mtm
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y0i4nmzyym0

Psikyo games make me rage like no other

>>5242439
Kawaks only does NEO GEO,CPs1,2,3

Tons of games on other boards..

"Hijacked? By being devoted more closely to its original stated purpose? That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?", some of WoS' huffier readers might be pouting at this point. But a hijack it was. Because MAME's official mission statement had always had a knowing wink behind it. Everybody knew that the real purpose of the emulator was to share these great, largely-lost old games again, in the only meaningful way there was - by playing them. But from the birth of MAMEDEV, users effectively ceased to exist. Technical considerations were now the only considerations that mattered. If a potential change to the program would result in a fractional increase in theoretical accuracy, at the cost of a huge loss of functionality, then it was made.

By way of a minor illustration, a number of years ago an alteration was made to the way that sound was implemented in Asteroids. Previously, the emulator had used samples, rather than strictly emulating the machine's sound output, but the result was that MAME Asteroids looked, sounded and played like coin-op Asteroids. But the developers decided that this was "inaccurate", and instead introduced a crude early version of emulated sound, forcibly disabling the samples at the same time.

Another aspect in which functionality was discarded as an aim was the concentration of the new administrators on pointlessly "emulating" arcade machines which were hugely beyond the abilities of MAME's rather sluggish core code. Designed to cope with games like Donkey Kong, Galaxian and Dig Dug, MAME was never the quickest of emulators, and had long been effortlessly outpaced on more complex games by other multi-game emus like Zinc and Final Burn, never mind dedicated high-level apps like the Ridge Racer emulator Viva Nonno. But present-era MAME is continually forced into embarrassing attempts at running 3D polygon games like San Francisco Rush, in which it struggles to achieve completely unplayable frame rates of 5 or 6 fps even on high-powered PCs.

(Of course, it's nice to know that these games are supported, or rather will be in about five years' time when PCs are fast enough to run them halfway-properly, but it's an odd thing to devote your time to now. Especially since most of the titles concerned have arcade-perfect console ports anyway, unlike the lost-to-posterity games from the early days of arcades that drew so many people to MAME in the first place and gave its existence some kind of point other than pure piracy.)

The most disturbing aspect of the new regime, though, was the open contempt in which MAME's users were now evidently held. Major upheavals in the game's interface went undocumented, and requests for information rudely refused. Anyone who wasn't capable of interpreting the source code themselves, it appeared, was no longer welcome to use the emulator. "Remember," ran several condescending responses on the official forum, "MAME is a historical artefact, not a games machine."

Another instructive example of the attitude of the emulator's current developers appeared very recently over on the official MAME messageboard. The small add-on file "hiscore.dat" is one of the core factors in MAME's appeal. By a simple method, it adds a highscore-saving facility to games which lacked it in the arcade (ie those ones where the highscores you'd just spent three gruelling hours of battle achieving were lost forever every time the machine's power was switched off).

Highscore saving was one of the greatest single boosts to MAME's functionality and popularity. It transforms the simple old coin-ops from essentially pointless exercises in repetition into something where you always have a target to aim for, adding long-term appeal to the short-term buzz of the five minutes you spend playing the game. You need only pay a visit to console gaming forums when a new "retro" release has come out to see the fury of fans if the publisher has been too cheap or stupid to include a highscore memory-save facility. And yet, the leading members of the MAMEDEV team are as keen as mustard to throw out this wonderful, long-implemented functionality - rather than making it optional, even - for no other reason than that it's "not accurate".

What we're dealing with here, chums, are nerds. Nerds have already ruined mainstream videogaming, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory around the middle of the PS1 era and lumbering the rest of us with a crushing weight of dull, plodding, endless fantasy RPGs or dry, joyless sports sims, which the occasional fun, entertaining game must exhaust itself trying to crawl out from under. Now, in a tragedy whose dimensions shouldn't be underestimated, they've put a stranglehold on the once-thriving world of emulation.

MAME has become the emulator equivalent of Windows - bloated, slow and unloved, but so overwhelmingly colossal that nothing else can hope to make a dent in its all-encompassing, suffocating monopoly. All the joy and love that used to characterise it are being sucked out piece by piece, by the sort of people who would try to "preserve" a butterfly by sticking a pin through its heart and sticking it in a glass display cabinet, where people could look at its corpse, but not watch it live and fly and do what butterflies were made to do.

This reporter's had enough. The latest release of MAME features a spectacularly un-necessary overhauling of the configuration system, the end result of which is that every last option and control setup for over 3,000 games, painstakingly built up over six years of using one interface, must be thrown away and recreated from scratch. (And that without the benefit of even the merest scrap of information as to how the new system actually works. Mind you, it can't be long before the whole idea of configurable controls is thrown out as well - after all, you can't reconfigure coin-op controllers, can you? That's not "accurate", is it? Get rid of it!)

It's the last straw for your emulation-loving correspondent, viewers. MAME 0.99 is the last one which will ever be installed on this reporter's PC, or talked or written about. Another figure will be added to the long lines of those shuffling away from the once-great emulator with sad looks on their faces, fondly recalling better days when new releases added functionality rather than removing it, and when new titles were supported that were actually games rather than solely being pieces of abstract technical showing-off by the developers that won't be playable for a decade (playable support for a fun new game is something that hasn't featured in a MAME release for months).

Death to nerds.

Arcade games were always shit.

>>5242470
>Arcade games were always shit.

Really now? Do you really mean that

>>5242480
Pretty much only low life white trash, niggers and mexicans played them where I am from.

>>5242480

Why wouldnt I be?

I think I made myself pretty clear.

>>5242488
And where are you from?

>>5242457
People who play JRPGs kill arcade emulators. You heard it here first.

>>5242496
Southern California.

>>5242488
Guess those low life white trash, niggers and mexicans had better tastes than the rest of the place where you are from.

>>5242470
>Arcade games were always shit.
You disgust me.

>>5242503
So you are a low life white trash, nigger or, meixcan?

>>5242510
I am neither those type of folks they only played Street Fighter and KoF anyway.

>>5242509

You have never played a genuine arcade machine in your entire life.

This is all you need to read, right here. From http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:Features

>Can I play two-player games over the Internet?

>Officially, no. Empirical evidence shows that network play tends to attract the wrong kind of people. Network play is also seen as a novelty feature with no development value, so none of the main developers are interested in implementing it.

>Do not ask for such a feature to be implemented, and do not ask us for any support using 3rd party programs. Specifically, do not ask about a well-known but license violating build that starts with a 'K'. That such a build exists and openly flaunts their violation of the MAME license only serves to reinforce the assertion that this feature attracts the wrong crowd.

Relentlessly stupid.

>>5242517
1994-2001 was just my imagination am I right?

When will MAME ever emulate POLYGAMEMASTER board?

For some reasons, recent MAME versions doesn't work on my computer.
I still have Final Burn Alpha, so that's ok.

>>5242623
Maybe because you are running on a 32bit OS and you are downloading the 64bit versions?

>>5242623
Maybe it's because they're shit.

>>5242425
in japan still remain some kind of "If you not pay, you are criminal." even in antique games.

so, some gamers, to play the arcade games at home, buy the arcade board (the cpu what have the game and i dont know the name) to home.

>>5242696
Arcade boards aren't eternal, even in Japan.
I understand that there's people buying Gradius PCB only to keep it bubble wrapped, but that's called collecting, not gaming.

>>5242696
Yeh they even say using emulators makes you a criminal.

If anyone is interested here are some art books of some Stgs mostly CAVE.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2jymwzwmwjz
http://www.mediafire.com/?umkzz5zlimb
http://www.mediafire.com/?z22zldhyod4
http://www.mediafire.com/?okrzommyzyy
http://www.mediafire.com/?zjczmdjulym
http://www.mediafire.com/?dmeyjjvxzu0
http://www.mediafire.com/?jlfzlobi1tj
http://www.mediafire.com/?4mjkzltmqyy
http://www.mediafire.com/?dgwnytjhtyz

Get the OSTs here

http://forums.ffshrine.org/showthread.php?s=5bf2e01efbf7d3e3a03deb4289409579&t=40557

I have a custom mame machine at home. can anyone give me a recommended list of shmup games to put on it (and maybe download links)

>>5242470
die in a fire, bitch

>>5242880

No. Continue being a faggot waste of society, and I'll continue global peace.

>>5242849


>>5242446

>>5242986
>global peace
Go to your 15 year old revolutionary organisation.

>>5242590
It has done for a while. The Knights of Valor games are surprisingly popular.

>>5243042
>Go to your 15 year old revolutionary organisation
Fine, I will. And promote global peace.

ESP Ra.De
My first love.

>>5243065
Still my favorite Cave game.

>>5243061
>stupid sexy lockon.jpg
...oh, I thought it was just me. Phew.

Does that mean I'm still straight?

>>5243086
Gundam protagonists aren't like real men, so it's fine.

I like Magical Drop.

>>5243042

I'm 28 you life newfag XD

Are there any old good shmups where the player's ship has swords or other melee weapons.

>>5243109
Who doesn't?

>>5243136
Brave Blade

>>5243136
Radiant silver shit

>>5243065
Holy shit, I was just playing this.

Died on stage 5. Again. Is that level even meant to be possible?

Fuck year MAME

I still play Dangun Feveron and Dodonpatchy sometimes... I've never found them on an arcade ;_;

oh, and fuck yeah, aero fighters, sonic wings, etc.

>>5244210
ESP Ra.De isn't even that hard by Cave standards.

>>5244268
Most people on /jp/ seem to have trouble with Touhou's normal mode.

I want Rivet to have my babies too...

>>5244268
It is if you're too shit to get to second loops of things. Compare something like the first loop of DDP to ESPrade. No competition there.

>>5244265
aero fighters=sonic wings

>>5244320
then I got confused... the other was a game where one of the characters was a big breasted woman flying on a cloud. I can't remember the name... I played those long time ago.

No dimahoo yet? I am dissapoint.

What do you all think of this?

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=26325

>>5244354
>Mars matrix above progear, giga wing and most of all, Rayforce/gunlock

>>5244354
>Only 11 Cave games? Come on, we can be less diverse than that.

>>5244351
The one where you could play as the guy with arrows and the witch with bats?

>>5244354
as always, hell yeah Garegga

>>5244409
there was a little girl with glasses on a robot or something like that.

>>5242526
Can't you just use GGPO to play (some) games on-line, though?

>>5244484
Some, but it's library is much smaller.
Mostly fighters.

>>5244522
Yeah, that's why I used that "(some)".
I know it's just a useless hope, but being able to play Twinkle Star Sprites or any co-op shmup would be awesome. Hell, the fact that they have Metal Slug X means that it's not restricted to fighters only.

Cave's danmaku > all touhou moe loli shit

>>5244835
>implying Cave hasn't gone the loli shit route for the last half decade now

>>5242716
Thanks, much appreciated. Going to take me an eternity to dl it all on my shit connection ;_;

>>5242696
I think its more because playing on actual hardware on a candy cab will always be vastly superior to any kind of emulation

>>5244867
Reported.

>a game where one of the characters was a big breasted woman flying on a cloud

That's Gunbird. The team that developed the original Sonic Wings left Video System to form Psikyo, which is why there's a certain resemblance between Sonic Wings and Psikyo games (especially the early ones).

>>5245167
thank you very much, brb looking for rom.

Can someone recommend a good place to download roms for MAME? All the ones from Google have shit selections.

>>5245246
romnation.net

>>5245308
Which emulator can play twinbee yahho?