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There were seven Wonders of the ancient world: the Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Olympia's statue of Zeus, the Collosus of Rhodes, the Mausoleum at Halicarnasus, and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. As any fule kno (because it is written in the first match of Google) a list of these Wonders was compiled and stored at the Great Library of Alexandria. In a more just world this store of knowledge would have become the Eighth Wonder: situated on Egypt's Mediterranean shores, it housed thousands of scrolls, papyruses and tablets, containing the finest thought, philosophy and poetry of the Ancient World.
Stop snoring at the back! I'm telling you this for a reason. You see, we gamers have our own Great Library: the Eight Wonder of the digital world, a timeless repository of gaming knowledge, a seat of learning for grizzled coder and Cube kiddie alike.
They call it MAME.
Yes, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. From the humble beginnings of Nicola Salmoria's bedroom, MAME has blossomed into the one essential primer on videogame history. The latest version plays 2045 unique games, from the hoary delights of Space Invaders, Frogger and Robotron, to the new-fangled joys of Streetfighter, Gigawing and King of Fighters. You will learn - but most importantly you will have fun.
Why is MAME important? Well, we all love videogames so it's nice to know where they came from, and how today's designers are still inspired by the classics of yesteryear. A lot of early videogames were terrible, and are mere curiosities now; but others are timeless and remain brilliant games even today. Many of the original arcade machines have broken down by now, or have been bought up by collectors, and can no longer be played by ordinary people. So MAME is a bit like like a museum curator, carefully tending to priceless antiques so that future generations can enjoy and learn from them. More importantly, MAME means that we are not held to ransome by mechanical failures: it will still be possible to play Space Invaders long after the last cabinet has turned to dust. Imagine a world where you couldn't read the Ten Commandments because the publishing industry no longer produced stone tablets - that's why MAME is important.
MAME has it's critics, though, and most of them are part of the gaming industry. Primarily the issue is copywrite: although MAME itself is perfectly legal, use of the arcade ROMS is probably not. A lot of sites - notably mame.dk - have shut down, or at least removed the ROM images themselves, because of legal pressure. This seems a very heavy-handed way to deal with genuine gaming enthusiasts, none of whom were selling, or profiting from, arcade ROMS - something that is frowned upon by the MAME community. In any case I believe that cracking down on arcade emulation is wrong for a few reasons. First, the people who wrote and designed the games do not hold the rights to the games; instead the companies who subsequently bought the licenses do. Second, games companies have already extracted all the revenue they can from these aged arcade machines - no-one in their right mind is going to pay full price to play a 1979 title nowdays, as the commercial failure of numerous Space Invader clones has shown. Thirdly, MAME is a good way of hooking a new generation on computer games, which in the long run is beneficial to the industry. And fourth, playing MAME is never going to replace the desire for newer, better games. How many Doom players didn't go on and buy Quake? Not many: and that's why iD were confident enough to release the source code for their original masterpiece.
So there we have it, my manifesto for MAME, the eighth Wonder of the videogaming world. And, in no particular order, here are my other seven:
1943: Battle Over Midway (Capcom) - One of my favourite shoot-em-ups ever, and probably the best WWII game in history. And, yes, that includes Medal of Honour.
Outrun (Sega) - The first driving game that captured the thrill of racing at speed. You drove into oncoming traffic with a beautiful blonde in the passenger seat. And only Grand Theft Auto has had better music.
Streetfighter (Capcom) - MAME is capable of playing 40 diferent versions of Streetfighter, from humble beginnings to the cynical franchise milkers. Everyone owns at least one Streetfighter game, but another few dozen can't hurt.
Robotron (Williams) - Two joysticks, a terrifying stream of enemies and non-stop finger blistering fun.
Neo Turf Masters (SNK Neo Geo) - Stupidest name for a golf game ever, but it's the most fiendishly addictive sports game I've ever played.
Space Harrier (Sega) - You shoot things. In 3D. Revolutionary at the time, and still great today.
Miss World '96 Nude (Comad) - Some might question this choice, but the game's subtle blend of Qix-like gameplay and nudity is, in many ways, better than Super Mario Sunshine.
Stop snoring at the back! I'm telling you this for a reason. You see, we gamers have our own Great Library: the Eight Wonder of the digital world, a timeless repository of gaming knowledge, a seat of learning for grizzled coder and Cube kiddie alike.
They call it MAME.
Yes, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. From the humble beginnings of Nicola Salmoria's bedroom, MAME has blossomed into the one essential primer on videogame history. The latest version plays 2045 unique games, from the hoary delights of Space Invaders, Frogger and Robotron, to the new-fangled joys of Streetfighter, Gigawing and King of Fighters. You will learn - but most importantly you will have fun.
Why is MAME important? Well, we all love videogames so it's nice to know where they came from, and how today's designers are still inspired by the classics of yesteryear. A lot of early videogames were terrible, and are mere curiosities now; but others are timeless and remain brilliant games even today. Many of the original arcade machines have broken down by now, or have been bought up by collectors, and can no longer be played by ordinary people. So MAME is a bit like like a museum curator, carefully tending to priceless antiques so that future generations can enjoy and learn from them. More importantly, MAME means that we are not held to ransome by mechanical failures: it will still be possible to play Space Invaders long after the last cabinet has turned to dust. Imagine a world where you couldn't read the Ten Commandments because the publishing industry no longer produced stone tablets - that's why MAME is important.
MAME has it's critics, though, and most of them are part of the gaming industry. Primarily the issue is copywrite: although MAME itself is perfectly legal, use of the arcade ROMS is probably not. A lot of sites - notably mame.dk - have shut down, or at least removed the ROM images themselves, because of legal pressure. This seems a very heavy-handed way to deal with genuine gaming enthusiasts, none of whom were selling, or profiting from, arcade ROMS - something that is frowned upon by the MAME community. In any case I believe that cracking down on arcade emulation is wrong for a few reasons. First, the people who wrote and designed the games do not hold the rights to the games; instead the companies who subsequently bought the licenses do. Second, games companies have already extracted all the revenue they can from these aged arcade machines - no-one in their right mind is going to pay full price to play a 1979 title nowdays, as the commercial failure of numerous Space Invader clones has shown. Thirdly, MAME is a good way of hooking a new generation on computer games, which in the long run is beneficial to the industry. And fourth, playing MAME is never going to replace the desire for newer, better games. How many Doom players didn't go on and buy Quake? Not many: and that's why iD were confident enough to release the source code for their original masterpiece.
So there we have it, my manifesto for MAME, the eighth Wonder of the videogaming world. And, in no particular order, here are my other seven:
1943: Battle Over Midway (Capcom) - One of my favourite shoot-em-ups ever, and probably the best WWII game in history. And, yes, that includes Medal of Honour.
Outrun (Sega) - The first driving game that captured the thrill of racing at speed. You drove into oncoming traffic with a beautiful blonde in the passenger seat. And only Grand Theft Auto has had better music.
Streetfighter (Capcom) - MAME is capable of playing 40 diferent versions of Streetfighter, from humble beginnings to the cynical franchise milkers. Everyone owns at least one Streetfighter game, but another few dozen can't hurt.
Robotron (Williams) - Two joysticks, a terrifying stream of enemies and non-stop finger blistering fun.
Neo Turf Masters (SNK Neo Geo) - Stupidest name for a golf game ever, but it's the most fiendishly addictive sports game I've ever played.
Space Harrier (Sega) - You shoot things. In 3D. Revolutionary at the time, and still great today.
Miss World '96 Nude (Comad) - Some might question this choice, but the game's subtle blend of Qix-like gameplay and nudity is, in many ways, better than Super Mario Sunshine.
Collecting old arcade boards sounds like quite good fun, but it could easily turn into a life-substituting hobby. I'd quite like to build a dedicated MAME cabinet though, despite the risk of it becoming an inverse babe magnet.
†HÊ_MÅÐMÃÑ wrote:
> i was thinking am i the 8th wonder of the world? AS a bad key
> presser?
Is this some kind of young person's argot? Please advise.
†HÊ_MÅÐMÃÑ wrote:
> i was thinking am i the 8th wonder of the world? AS a bad key
> presser?
Is this some kind of young person's argot? Please advise.
i was thinking am i the 8th wonder of the world? AS a bad key presser?
Interestingly, a friend of mine is buying all the old arcade boards of the games he likes and then just plugs them in to his controller board to play them on his home tv. Of course, some of the rarer boards are worth thousands of pounds, so it's unlikely you would get everything you wanted that way, plus they would take up a lot of storage space!
No se porque hablamos en Espanol, pero gracias para las respuestas. Quiza hay un posibilidad a las empresas vender su juegos al junto.
What I'm trying to say in my rather crappy Spanish is: why can't Sega (or whoever) sell their arcade images as a set for legal use. People aren't going to pay for games individually but a bundle of Outrun, Golden Axe etc might sell if the price was right. This would resolve the legal issues and allow people to play games, and the emulation scene to go about its business without the threat of court action.
Of course with the wide availability of most ROMS many people simply wouldn't pay. But given the easy availability of pirated software, the gaming industry seems to be surviving quite well on honesty. I also think that selling or giving away old arcade games is pretty good publicity - there are dozens of dormant franchises that I'd like to see revived, and MAME seems capable of building demand amongst the uninitiated.
What I'm trying to say in my rather crappy Spanish is: why can't Sega (or whoever) sell their arcade images as a set for legal use. People aren't going to pay for games individually but a bundle of Outrun, Golden Axe etc might sell if the price was right. This would resolve the legal issues and allow people to play games, and the emulation scene to go about its business without the threat of court action.
Of course with the wide availability of most ROMS many people simply wouldn't pay. But given the easy availability of pirated software, the gaming industry seems to be surviving quite well on honesty. I also think that selling or giving away old arcade games is pretty good publicity - there are dozens of dormant franchises that I'd like to see revived, and MAME seems capable of building demand amongst the uninitiated.
Me gusta MameX. Esta muy bien. No hablo bueno Espanol.
MAME again. Every so often someone seems to do a post about it, so it's amazing that so many people still don't really know about it.
Now that P2P sites are so popular it's easy again to get the roms you need if you're one of the people not worried about copyright on dusty old games and mame.dk etc are still providing updates of the emulator, so MAME won't die anytime soon.
With more and more homes getting broadband too, the likelyhood of them being able to download nearly all the games at once is more likely than it ever was and since most PCs have CD-Writers it goes without saying that a lot of people are 'benefitting' from this.
The interesting question, though, is regarding the copyright licence and whether we should be free to download really old arcade games as they were all those years ago. Surely it would encourage people to get into gaming and get newer games from the same designers. That, of course, is open for discussion.
Now that P2P sites are so popular it's easy again to get the roms you need if you're one of the people not worried about copyright on dusty old games and mame.dk etc are still providing updates of the emulator, so MAME won't die anytime soon.
With more and more homes getting broadband too, the likelyhood of them being able to download nearly all the games at once is more likely than it ever was and since most PCs have CD-Writers it goes without saying that a lot of people are 'benefitting' from this.
The interesting question, though, is regarding the copyright licence and whether we should be free to download really old arcade games as they were all those years ago. Surely it would encourage people to get into gaming and get newer games from the same designers. That, of course, is open for discussion.
Good post but I must admit that I was one of the people yawning at the back of the room at the start of it.;)
There were seven Wonders of the ancient world: the Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Olympia's statue of Zeus, the Collosus of Rhodes, the Mausoleum at Halicarnasus, and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. As any fule kno (because it is written in the first match of Google) a list of these Wonders was compiled and stored at the Great Library of Alexandria. In a more just world this store of knowledge would have become the Eighth Wonder: situated on Egypt's Mediterranean shores, it housed thousands of scrolls, papyruses and tablets, containing the finest thought, philosophy and poetry of the Ancient World.
Stop snoring at the back! I'm telling you this for a reason. You see, we gamers have our own Great Library: the Eight Wonder of the digital world, a timeless repository of gaming knowledge, a seat of learning for grizzled coder and Cube kiddie alike.
They call it MAME.
Yes, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. From the humble beginnings of Nicola Salmoria's bedroom, MAME has blossomed into the one essential primer on videogame history. The latest version plays 2045 unique games, from the hoary delights of Space Invaders, Frogger and Robotron, to the new-fangled joys of Streetfighter, Gigawing and King of Fighters. You will learn - but most importantly you will have fun.
Why is MAME important? Well, we all love videogames so it's nice to know where they came from, and how today's designers are still inspired by the classics of yesteryear. A lot of early videogames were terrible, and are mere curiosities now; but others are timeless and remain brilliant games even today. Many of the original arcade machines have broken down by now, or have been bought up by collectors, and can no longer be played by ordinary people. So MAME is a bit like like a museum curator, carefully tending to priceless antiques so that future generations can enjoy and learn from them. More importantly, MAME means that we are not held to ransome by mechanical failures: it will still be possible to play Space Invaders long after the last cabinet has turned to dust. Imagine a world where you couldn't read the Ten Commandments because the publishing industry no longer produced stone tablets - that's why MAME is important.
MAME has it's critics, though, and most of them are part of the gaming industry. Primarily the issue is copywrite: although MAME itself is perfectly legal, use of the arcade ROMS is probably not. A lot of sites - notably mame.dk - have shut down, or at least removed the ROM images themselves, because of legal pressure. This seems a very heavy-handed way to deal with genuine gaming enthusiasts, none of whom were selling, or profiting from, arcade ROMS - something that is frowned upon by the MAME community. In any case I believe that cracking down on arcade emulation is wrong for a few reasons. First, the people who wrote and designed the games do not hold the rights to the games; instead the companies who subsequently bought the licenses do. Second, games companies have already extracted all the revenue they can from these aged arcade machines - no-one in their right mind is going to pay full price to play a 1979 title nowdays, as the commercial failure of numerous Space Invader clones has shown. Thirdly, MAME is a good way of hooking a new generation on computer games, which in the long run is beneficial to the industry. And fourth, playing MAME is never going to replace the desire for newer, better games. How many Doom players didn't go on and buy Quake? Not many: and that's why iD were confident enough to release the source code for their original masterpiece.
So there we have it, my manifesto for MAME, the eighth Wonder of the videogaming world. And, in no particular order, here are my other seven:
1943: Battle Over Midway (Capcom) - One of my favourite shoot-em-ups ever, and probably the best WWII game in history. And, yes, that includes Medal of Honour.
Outrun (Sega) - The first driving game that captured the thrill of racing at speed. You drove into oncoming traffic with a beautiful blonde in the passenger seat. And only Grand Theft Auto has had better music.
Streetfighter (Capcom) - MAME is capable of playing 40 diferent versions of Streetfighter, from humble beginnings to the cynical franchise milkers. Everyone owns at least one Streetfighter game, but another few dozen can't hurt.
Robotron (Williams) - Two joysticks, a terrifying stream of enemies and non-stop finger blistering fun.
Neo Turf Masters (SNK Neo Geo) - Stupidest name for a golf game ever, but it's the most fiendishly addictive sports game I've ever played.
Space Harrier (Sega) - You shoot things. In 3D. Revolutionary at the time, and still great today.
Miss World '96 Nude (Comad) - Some might question this choice, but the game's subtle blend of Qix-like gameplay and nudity is, in many ways, better than Super Mario Sunshine.
Stop snoring at the back! I'm telling you this for a reason. You see, we gamers have our own Great Library: the Eight Wonder of the digital world, a timeless repository of gaming knowledge, a seat of learning for grizzled coder and Cube kiddie alike.
They call it MAME.
Yes, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. From the humble beginnings of Nicola Salmoria's bedroom, MAME has blossomed into the one essential primer on videogame history. The latest version plays 2045 unique games, from the hoary delights of Space Invaders, Frogger and Robotron, to the new-fangled joys of Streetfighter, Gigawing and King of Fighters. You will learn - but most importantly you will have fun.
Why is MAME important? Well, we all love videogames so it's nice to know where they came from, and how today's designers are still inspired by the classics of yesteryear. A lot of early videogames were terrible, and are mere curiosities now; but others are timeless and remain brilliant games even today. Many of the original arcade machines have broken down by now, or have been bought up by collectors, and can no longer be played by ordinary people. So MAME is a bit like like a museum curator, carefully tending to priceless antiques so that future generations can enjoy and learn from them. More importantly, MAME means that we are not held to ransome by mechanical failures: it will still be possible to play Space Invaders long after the last cabinet has turned to dust. Imagine a world where you couldn't read the Ten Commandments because the publishing industry no longer produced stone tablets - that's why MAME is important.
MAME has it's critics, though, and most of them are part of the gaming industry. Primarily the issue is copywrite: although MAME itself is perfectly legal, use of the arcade ROMS is probably not. A lot of sites - notably mame.dk - have shut down, or at least removed the ROM images themselves, because of legal pressure. This seems a very heavy-handed way to deal with genuine gaming enthusiasts, none of whom were selling, or profiting from, arcade ROMS - something that is frowned upon by the MAME community. In any case I believe that cracking down on arcade emulation is wrong for a few reasons. First, the people who wrote and designed the games do not hold the rights to the games; instead the companies who subsequently bought the licenses do. Second, games companies have already extracted all the revenue they can from these aged arcade machines - no-one in their right mind is going to pay full price to play a 1979 title nowdays, as the commercial failure of numerous Space Invader clones has shown. Thirdly, MAME is a good way of hooking a new generation on computer games, which in the long run is beneficial to the industry. And fourth, playing MAME is never going to replace the desire for newer, better games. How many Doom players didn't go on and buy Quake? Not many: and that's why iD were confident enough to release the source code for their original masterpiece.
So there we have it, my manifesto for MAME, the eighth Wonder of the videogaming world. And, in no particular order, here are my other seven:
1943: Battle Over Midway (Capcom) - One of my favourite shoot-em-ups ever, and probably the best WWII game in history. And, yes, that includes Medal of Honour.
Outrun (Sega) - The first driving game that captured the thrill of racing at speed. You drove into oncoming traffic with a beautiful blonde in the passenger seat. And only Grand Theft Auto has had better music.
Streetfighter (Capcom) - MAME is capable of playing 40 diferent versions of Streetfighter, from humble beginnings to the cynical franchise milkers. Everyone owns at least one Streetfighter game, but another few dozen can't hurt.
Robotron (Williams) - Two joysticks, a terrifying stream of enemies and non-stop finger blistering fun.
Neo Turf Masters (SNK Neo Geo) - Stupidest name for a golf game ever, but it's the most fiendishly addictive sports game I've ever played.
Space Harrier (Sega) - You shoot things. In 3D. Revolutionary at the time, and still great today.
Miss World '96 Nude (Comad) - Some might question this choice, but the game's subtle blend of Qix-like gameplay and nudity is, in many ways, better than Super Mario Sunshine.