Insert Coin To Play...
Turn tfour computer into an arcade with an emulator By
■ rcade-style retro is pretty fashionable in
Blgaming circles lately. Microsoft has
released several games that can turn your PC
into a virtual coin-op arcade, and Midway has
done the same thing for consoles. These
aren’t rewritten programs, they’re exact
copies of the games that appeared long ago
in arcades and bars everywhere—called
games unless you’ve got the game soft
ware to plug into it. In arcade machines
the software is usually hard-wired onto a
ROM board, like a game is hard-wired in a
Nintendo cartridge. In fact, unless you
own the ROM board you're not even sup
posed to make copies because the soft
ware is copyrighted.
emulators. They work by fool
ing an original program, like
Pac-Man, into thinking your
computer is actually the old
game-cabinet hardware from
the 1980s. The only differ
ence is that your computer
doesn’t have a coin slot.
Hop on the Net and
A resourceful gamer can
find 2000 games if they
know where to look or
how to search—just as a
resourceful music lover
can find a Metallica song
to. er... sample.
These copyrighted
games, however, haven’t
been manufactured for
years. The webmaster of a
site carrying several hun
dred arcade ROMs says,
“The only reason I don’t
carry all the games that
MAME can run is because
aownioaa an arcade emula
tor.” These programs work like the com
mercial collections above, but are devel
oped by volunteers for fame and glory—
not money.
The emulator that allows you to play
the most games is MAME (vintage
gaming.com/mame.phtml). The initials
stand for “Multiple Arcade Machine
Emulator.” MAME will let you play over 2000
arcade games—classics (and some not-so
classics)—from the 70s, '80s and '90s.
An emulator only emulates hardware.
It’s a bit like having the arcade game cabi
net but no program to run on it. Even with
MAME installed you won’t be able to play
there s not enough space
on my server. A smart surfer who knows
how to use search engines could find every
game available in less than a day, and
download them all in a few hours.”
The MAME developers themselves
won’t tell you where to get the ROMs,
either. You’ll have to rely on your search
engine skills to find what you want at
underground sites (see box). Of course you
didn’t read here that good keywords to try
are “ROM” and “arcade.”
Save your quarters for the laundromat
and download MAME instead. You'll have
the world’s most well stocked arcade right
on your desktop. •
RELATED LINKS
Sells several collections
of classic arcade games for the PC, as
well as for the PlayStation, Dreamcast
and Saturn consoles.
Return of Arcade and
Revenge of Arcade collections offer
some classics specifically for PCs run
ning Windows.
Emulation doesn’t end with MAME.
Arcade games aren't the only games
people play, console gamers have plen
ty of choices as well:
Does a great job of emulating the
Atari-2600.
Emulates what was one of the most
advanced gaming consoles available in
the 1980s.
Plays games for the Sega Genesis.
Emulates the Nintendo 64.
The only emulators available for
PlayStation games are
and Connectix Virtual
Game Station
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