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Hi all. First post on cool forum I have been reading for some time. I have a(possible) technical retro gaming related issue to bring before the board. I bought a Retrobit Super Retro-Cade some time ago primarily for casual play and occasionally rough treatment at parties (where I wouldn't bring any of my precious vintage consoles :-) But I have been trying to figure out something that has been driving me crazy for some time, and I hope that someone else on here might have faced the same issue and found a solution. How do one remove a previously added game from the Favorites list? I kinda hope its an obvious oversight on my part and just a case of me being thick, but in case it might be a bug... Anyone run into the same issue?

I did an analysis and write-up on the arcade version of Asteroids that goes into the details of the game design and physics: Asteroids: By the Numbers. I'm curious what people think about it, especially veterans of the game who are intimately familiar with the mechanics. I thought about going into collision probabilities and survival times against the aliens, but didn't know if there would be enough interest to warrant the time investment. Note that the numbers in the article are estimates based on screen measurements and weren't extracted from the code.

So apparently Namco museum is coming to the switch this summer: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/04/namco_museum_is_coming_to_nintendo_switch_this_summer I have access to most of the games but it will be nice to play some more classic stuff on the Switch. Anyone know or care what the full lineup is?

Arcade/MAME HSC 2019 Round 4: Klax / Arkanoid Arcade/MAME HSC 2019 Round 1: Wizard of wor / Scramble Round 2: Bagman / Magic Sword Heroic Fantasy Round 3: Millipede / Lady Bug Round 4: Klax / Arkanoid Round 5: Polish your armor Round 6: Hurt me a plenty Round 7: Sega Round Round 8: SHMUPS Round 9: Player´s favorite 2 Round 10: Street Brawler Round 11: Nimble as a Ninja Round 12: Neo Geo Round 2 Round 13: Round 14: Moderator favorite Round 15: Street Brawler 2 Round 16: Round 17: SHMUPS 2 Round 18: Polish your armor 2 Round 19: Score after Mllipede / Lady Bug Cynicaster 50 (+18) Leto27 43 (+13) AtariWarlord 37 (+12) zoyous 33 (+8) youxia 30 jblenkle 25 (+14) Floyd Turbo 23 (+9) SBAZ 19 hero2billions 19 (+5) Mangia-boy 13 (+9) roadrunner 11 patbb 7 Round 4 Klax klax.zip Klax by Atari, 1989 MAME ROMset: klax Dip Switches:: Default Setting, Start at Wave 1 Number of credits: 1 credits Remember to play with the recommended settings, and do not use cheats or any kind of enhancements to take advantage Round ends August 25th @ midnight MDT Klax Scoring will be as follows: 10 Points for 1st 9 for 2nd 8 for 3rd and so forth Round 4 Arkanoid arkanoid.zip Arkanoid by Taito, 1986 MAME ROMset: arkanoid Dip Switches Dafault: (Difficulty: easy /Nobus life 20k, 60,, 60k+, Lives: 3 ) Number of credits: 1 credits Remember to play with the recommended settings, and do not use cheats or any kind of enhancements to take advantage Round ends August 25th @ midnight MDT Arkanoid Scoring will be as follows: 10 Points for 1st 9 for 2nd 8 for 3rd and so forth

I was thinking about various arcade/ports/systems of the Era the other day and was wondering what Jaguar games everyone thought could have made money in an arcade back then. To my knowledge actual arcade ports on the jag are: -Primal Rage -NBA Jam TE -Raiden What else do you think would have been suited from the Jags library for the arcade? I'd say off the top of my head: -All the TK games -Ultra Vortek -Power Drive Rally -Super Burnout -Val D'Isere

MAME 0.212 It’s the moment you’ve surely been waiting for: the release of MAME 0.212! A huge amount of work has gone into this release in a number of different areas. Starting with the software lists, you’ll find hundreds more clean cracks for Apple II, the Rainbow on Disk collection for Tandy Color Computer, all the latest Game Boy Advance dumps, and thousands more ZX Spectrum cassette images. Chess computers now support chess piece simulation using the built-in artwork, support has been added for several more chess computers from Hegener & Glaser, Novag and Saitek, and the Tasc ChessSystem R30 is now working. Three Game & Watch titles, Bomb Sweeper, Gold Cliff and Safe Buster, have been added for this release. Protection microcontrollers continue to fall, with Rainbow Islands – Extra Version, Choplifter, Wyvern F-0, 1943: The Battle of Midway and Bionic Commando no longer needing simulation, hacks or patches. In some cases, the dumps have confirmed that the protection had been reverse-engineered correctly and the simulation was correct, but it's still important to preserve these programs. It’s also important for people repairing these systems if the original microcontrollers have failed. There are three important sound-related fixes in this release: FM Towns CD audio playback positions have been fixed, Konami System 573 digital audio synchronisation has been improved, and a special low latency mode has been added for the PortAudio sound module. For more advanced users and developers, more functionality has been exposed to Lua scripts and plugins. The layout file format has been overhauled to better support systems that make creative use of LEDs and LCDs. Disassembler support has been added for the Fujitsu F2MC-16 and National Semiconductor CompactRISC CR16B architectures. And if you've been following along, you might notice that we’ve waved goodbye to a little more of our C legacy with the removal of the [tt]MACHINE_CONFIG_START[/tt] macro and its associated crud. We don't have space to list all the Apple II and ZX Spectrum software list additions here, but they’re in the whatsnew.txt file. You get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page.

Hey all, We are NewWaveToys (the creators of Replicade) and we are back with our second and final Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/529306246/replicade-mini-tempest-arcade-machine-replica-12-t Just like last time, we are going for a truly authentic feel with our Tempest machine, just in 1/6th scale. It is completely licensed through Atari, which allows us to use all the original art as well as the original ROM. If you are interested, please come check us out as there are only 8 days left on the Kickstarter!

Hi, I have restarted my old company: Awesome Arcades. Its now selling Atari styled USB versions of the CX40 joysticks, Desktop arcade controls (So far I've only posted up the 7800 versions (Left & Right hand) and I need to update the photo's as they include built in paddle controls as well. I'll be posting on in the coming days the 2600 version, USB versions and some specialized desktop arcade controls like a dedicated Asteroids control panel for both 9 pin game/computer consoles and a USB version. I have a Missile Command one but I am awaiting the special buttons to make it arcade realistic. So, if you are interested, please stop by the site, sign up for an account and make a purchase, thanks. https://thejoystickshop.com Here are some of the products:

MAME 0.213 It's really about time we released MAME 0.213, with more of everything we know you all love. First of all, we’re proud to present support for the first Hegener + Glaser product: the “brikett” chess computers, Mephisto, Mephisto II and Mephisto III. As you can probably guess, there’s an addition from Nintendo’s Game & Watch line. This month it’s Mario’s Bombs Away. On a related note, we’ve also added Elektronika’s Kosmicheskiy Most, exported as Space Bridge, which is an unlicensed total conversion of the Game & Watch title Fire. If you haven’t played any of the handheld LCD games in MAME, you’re missing something special – they look superb with external scanned and traced artwork. On the arcade side, we’ve added The Destroyer From Jail (a rare Philko game), and alternate regional versions of Block Out and Super Shanghai Dragon’s Eye. The CD for Simpsons Bowling has been re-dumped, resolving some long-standing issues. With its protection microcontroller dumped and emulated, Birdie Try is now fully playable. Protection microcontrollers for The Deep and Last Mission have also been dumped and emulated. Improvements to Seibu hardware emulation mean Banpresto’s SD Gundam Sangokushi Rainbow Tairiku Senki is now playable, and sprite priorities in Seibu Cup Soccer have been improved. In computer emulation, two interesting DOS compatible machines based on the Intel 80186 CPU are now working: the Mindset Personal Computer, and the Dulmont Magnum. The Apple II software lists have been updated to include almost all known clean cracks and original flux dumps, and the Apple II gameport ComputerEyes frame grabber is now emulated. We’ve received a series of submissions that greatly improve emulation of the SWTPC S/09 and SS-30 bus cards. On the SGI front, the 4D/20 now has fully-working IRIX 4.0.5 via serial console, and a whole host of improvements have gone into the Indy “Newport” graphics board emulation. Finally, MAME now supports HDI, 2MG and raw hard disk image files. As always, you can get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page.

This is something I've been meaning to for the last 3-4 years. I've been slowly collecting all the necessary items but in the last 3-4 months I sprinted towards the end. I've always wanted to build my own MAME-type home arcade and have a bunch of games ready for me to play with. I knew I wanted to use MAME because I've been using since it was first released eons ago. The monitor I also knew that I was going to use a LCD monitor; at least 19" and certainly a 4:3 screen for the classic look. So step one for me was getting that monitor. A couple of jobs ago, I had a HP 20" L2035. I couldn't find one locally so I ended ordering one from eBay for $50 plus shipping. A couple of years ago I came across some fellow selling Dell Ultrasharp 2007FP 20" monitor. I bought six of the guy and met him at the IKEA parking lot. The Dell one has been awesome, it has composite, SVHS, VGA and DVI inputs! The resolution is an awesome 1600x1200 resolution and they are quite bright. It's also half the weight of the HP model. At this point, I've more than recouped my money by selling three of the Dell monitors and the HP model. Needed to clear some space in our cold cellar. I gave a Dell monitor to my buddy who was also building an arcade (more on that below). Since then I've been using these monitor to plug in my 7800 and get a super-crisp image. The emulator Back in 2017 I also bought a Raspberry Pi 3. I was torn between using a lean Windows 7 OS with either an open motherboard or a small ATX case. I could have done the Win7 system in my sleep, but also wanted to learn about the Pi3 so that ended being my choice. My biggest problem ended having to upgrade the power supply to one that could draw 5A as it turns out running a HDMI cable needs a bit of "juice". The 2.5A that came with it wasn't good enough. I ended up using the RetroPie set up and got the ROMs where people get ROMs. The controls In the meantime I got arcade buttons and a joystick from eBay. Ended up using those parts to build a 7800 controller. Had some buttons left over from a project to build a Track&Field controller. To test this set-up I ended up getting a cheapish arcade USB jostick; https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B078H7MSFC/ref=pe_3034960_233709270_TE_item . That allowed me to test the configuration and just build a POC. That was pretty much my set up for the last two years. HAPP competition joysticks was going to be my pick based what I used in the past; wasn't too fussy about buttons. I was happy with the ones I used for my 7800 controller so I ordered more of those. The cabinet The cabinet was an adventure. I wanted to get something that had been pre-cut so I could assemble it, but just as I finally decided to go ahead, the place I wanted to use to order it sold their CNC equipment and closed their doors! This happened in the week or so I mulled it over. Ordering from the US was crazy expensive and the places in Canada just didn't fit the bill. Most of them wanted to sell you completed one or bundle all the gear. I wanted to use my stuff which already had. So that left scanning Kijiji for months for an arcade cabinet. After a while there was a fellow who wanted to sell a pair of empty cabinets. A generic cabinet and a NEO GEO one. I reached out to my buddy who had mentioned a while ago he was thinking of building one and luckily he agreed to go 50-50 with me. Initially I wanted the NEO GEO one, but seeing the size I went for the generic one. I think my friend was happier with the NEO GEO one as well. So that worked out. I gave him a Dell monitor to help him get his project started as he had one of those 1000 arcade game HDMI plug-in monsters. It did come with a 19" CRT but it had some bad screen burn and after asking my dad to take a look at it (he was a TV repairman for a while) he said that it wouldn't be worthwhile fixing it. The cabinet had to be cleaned up. Holes, dents, scratches, a couple of broken sections. I think I put like 8 layers of paint on the exterior. The control panel had been reconfigured so many times, it looked like swiss cheese. I put a new thick metal plate and set up my own layout. Street Fighter 2 six buttons was not a requirement for me. The plexiglass was darker and scratched, so with a LCD it would not be as bright as a CRT, I decided to replace the front plexiglass with something transparent. The theme Ultimately I wanted to be able to play my favourite arcade game; Double Dragon. So two joysticks and three buttons for each player for simultaneous action. Next was the theme: Double Dragon, Galaxian (for the colours and graphics), Bubble Bobble (funny characters and colour scheme), Centipede (I like colour scheme), Ms. Pac-Man, or Superman. The DD look I just didn't like; Galaxian was a bit too retro, Centipede wasn't going to go since I wasn't going to put in a trackball, Bubble Bobble just seemed silly, Ms. Pac-Man has been overdone. Superman was the one! Not common, I'm a DC comics fan, I always liked the game and the colour scheme was great (a blue Superman and his red variation, using the primary colours only!). Got red/blue joysticks, buttons to match the Superman colour scheme and blue t-moulding to replace the one it had before. Replaced the single speaker with two outward-facing stereo speakers and added an amp. Added LED lights to the marquee; they are not bright but since it sits in the basement it's good enough with the darker room. Rewired the power input with a fuse and attached to a power strip. Added a power button at the side and high so that it's convenient to turn everything on/off at once. Luckily the monitor remembers its state, so it turns on automatically even when completely unplugged. The powerstrip had a couple of USB plugs for the Raspberry and the LED lights. The graphics were an adventure. I had the panel and monitor overlay printed on glossy paper at Staples and obtained the art online. Ordered the marquee online and also ordered the side graphics at the end from another place (vinyl). Wished I had bigger side graphics but I didn't want to spend a ton of money. One of the problems with this project is that I've been doing it in spurts and with the graphics printed at Staples, I ended up guessing (accurately I might add) the dimensions for the overlay and panel. Got real good at cutting plexiglass towards the end. I used 3 48" sheets after a couple of failed experiments. Had a bad experience with a generic two-player USB control board, which lasted me less than week of use. Ended up buying two separate boards for each, one of them with LED light capabilities. That combo has worked best and no (zero) delay, and after a few weeks still working well. I still need to put in some finishing touches and once I had it one for like 4 hours at which point the monitor was complaining about overheating! So I'll probably have to put in a fan and set up some ventilation holes for cold air in and the hot air out.

Arcade/MAME HSC 2019 Round 3: Millipede / Lady Bug Arcade/MAME HSC 2019 Round 1: Wizard of wor / Scramble Round 2: Bagman / Magic Sword Heroic Fantasy Round 3: Millipede / Lady Bug Round 4: Neo Geo Round 1 Round 5: Polish your armor Round 6: Hurt me a plenty Round 7: Sega Round Round 8: SHMUPS Round 9: Player´s favorite 2 Round 10: Street Brawler Round 11: Nimble as a Ninja Round 12: Neo Geo Round 2 Round 13: Round 14: Moderator favorite Round 15: Street Brawler 2 Round 16: Round 17: SHMUPS 2 Round 18: Polish your armor 2 Round 19: Standings After Round 2 (Bagman and Magic Sword Heroic Fantasy) Cynicaster 32 (+16) Leto27 30 (+20) youxia 30 (+14) zoyous 25 (+14) AtariWarlord 25 (+11) Floyd Turbo 14 (+11) hero2billions 14 (+11) jblenkle 11 (+6) roadrunner 11 (+2) patbb 7 Mangia-boy 4 Round 3 Millipede milliped.zip Millipede by Atari, 1982 MAME ROMset: milliped Dip Switches:: (Bonus 01X / Millipede head: easy / Bettle:easy / Lives: 3 / Bonus life: 15000 / Spider: Easy / Starting score select: off ) Number of credits: 1 credits Remember to play with the recommended settings, and do not use cheats or any kind of enhancements to take advantage Round ends August 11th @ midnight MDT Millipede: Scoring will be as follows: 10 Points for 1st 9 for 2nd 8 for 3rd and so forth Round 3 Lady Bug ladybug.zip Lady Bug by universal, 1981 MAME ROMset: ladybug Dip Switches Dafault: (Difficulty: easy / Lives: 3 ) Number of credits: 1 credits Remember to play with the recommended settings, and do not use cheats or any kind of enhancements to take advantage Round ends August 11th @ midnight MDTT Lady Bug: Scoring will be as follows: 10 Points for 1st 9 for 2nd 8 for 3rd and so forth

I like arcade games. I like the 1980s. I like movies. So one day in class, I thought, "What if I made a movie about 1980s arcade games?" And thus, High Score was born. It is set in 1982 and follows a preteen girl, Tiffany Willis, and her best friend, Dave Bryant, who live in uptown NYC and are both huge video game fanatics. Tiffany gets tons of scores on games both at the arcade at the mall and the local arcade down the street. She's a legend at the latter, always gathering up a crowd of people watching her play. She gets her Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and Intellivision fix at the game store nearby. When the arcade is holding a tournament at the end of the year, Tiffany is determined to win. So she and Dave prove they're the best by setting the high score on every arcade across their country. I am setting up my basement to be the Meril Valley Mall's arcade, and Flash Forward Arcade will be shot at, of course, Funspot. I'm writing the script and playing Tiffany! Follow the progress at PlotBot! http://www.plotbot.com/screenplays/high_score/ Questions about the film can be put in the replies! See you soon!

Arcade/MAME HSC 2019 Round 1: Wizard of wor / Scramble Arcade/MAME HSC 2019 Round 1: Wizard of wor / Scramble Round 2: Player´s favorite 1 Round 3: Something is bugging me Round 4: Neo Geo Round 1 Round 5: Polish your armor Round 6: Hurt me a plenty Round 7: Sega Round Round 8: SHMUPS Round 9: Player´s favorite 2 Round 10: Street Brawler Round 11: As Nimble as a Ninja Round 12: Neo Geo Round 2 Round 13: Round 14: Moderator favorite Round 15: Street Brawler 2 Round 16: Round 17: SHMUPS 2 Round 18: Polish your armor 2 Round 19: Round 1 Wizard of wor wow.zip Wizard of wor by Williams MFG, 1980 MAME ROMset: wow Dip Switches: Default: (lives 3 for 1 credit / Bonus life after 3rd level) Number of credits: 1 credits Remember to play with the recommended settings, and do not use cheats or any kind of enhancements to take advantage Round ends July 14th @ midnight MDT Wizard of wor Scoring will be as follows: 10 Points for 1st 9 for 2nd 8 for 3rd and so forth Round 1 Scramble scramble.zip Scramble by Konami, 1981 MAME ROMset: scramble Dip Switches: Default: (lives 3 ) Number of credits: 1 credits Remember to play with the recommended settings, and do not use cheats or any kind of enhancements to take advantage Round ends July 14th @ midnight MDT Scramble Scoring will be as follows: 10 Points for 1st 9 for 2nd 8 for 3rd and so forth

MAME 0.210 It’s time for the delayed release of MAME 0.210, marking the end of May. This month, we’ve got lots of fixes for issues with supported systems, as well as some interesting additions. Newly added hand-held and tabletop games include Tronica’s Shuttle Voyage and Space Rescue, Mattel’s Computer Chess, and Parker Brothers’ Talking Baseball and Talking Football. On the arcade side, we’ve added high-level emulation of Gradius on Bubble System hardware and a prototype of the Neo Geo game Viewpoint. For this release, Jack Li has contributed an auto-fire plugin, providing additional functionality over the built-in auto-fire feature. A number of systems have had been promoted to working, or had critical issues fixed, including the Heathkit H8, Lola 8A, COSMAC Microkit, the Soviet PC clone EC-1840, Zorba, and COMX 35. MMU issues affecting Apollo and Mac operating systems have been addressed. Other notable improvements include star field emulation in Tutankham, further progress on SGI emulation, Sega Saturn video improvements, write support for the CoCo OS-9 disk image format, and preliminary emulation for MP3 audio on Konami System 573 games. There are lots of software list additions this month. Possibly most notable is the first dump of a Hanimex Pencil II cartridge, thanks to the silicium.org team. Another batch of cleanly cracked and original Apple II software has been added, along with more ZX Spectrum +3 software, and a number of Colour Genie cassette titles. That’s all we’ve got space for here, but there are lots more bug fixes, alternate versions of supported arcade games, and general code quality improvements. As always, you can get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page.

This may have been posted already but I didn't see it in our forum. I came across this 6 part article on the history of Atari's Night Driver that also has some interesting history on Dave Nutting and Jamie Fenton. Dave Nutting: https://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-pre-history-of-night-driver-part-4.html Jamie Fenton: https://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-pre-history-of-night-driver-part-5.html

If you've got any interest in visiting the world's largest arcade packed with classic games, you won't want to miss this event on May 17-19, 2019 at Funspot in Laconia, NH. Funspot was famously featured in King of Kong, and it looks like the tradition of a gathering on (or around) Memorial Day weekend will continue! I understand that there will be a low key 2-day tourney, hanging out with other gamers, and also beer and hot dogs in a beautiful lake town setting, which has a beach if weather cooperates. You will not be disappointed if the only thing you do is buy $20 in tokens and just play arcade games that you probably haven't seen in a long time. Here's the list: http://www.classicarcademuseum.org/gamelist.php More details from the host/organizers can be found here https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?p=3956181. If you can, I really suggest that you be there!

I'm so...SO happy right now. I've had this project on the backburner for over half a year, and tonight I finally got around to modding & wiring the components and mounting everything on a "test control panel". I'm happy to report: I've successfully modded an NES-04 controller into an arcade stick. Tested it with Contra, and it works perfectly. Sanwa joystick, Suzo-Happ buttons, Cherry microswitches, if anyone's curious. I'll update this thread from time to time with updates on the control panel/body design and build.

So the Atari VCS has had a tone of Arcade ports to the system and has tones of games that could have been arcade games in their own right(Yars Revenge, Keystone Kapers). What I am wondering is are there any arcade rom hacks that can turn a 2600 into a home arcade and if someone wired up a coin mech would accept coin credits? I had the idea that home consoles can be arcades in their own right given arcade sticks a cabinet and monitor and given flash carts you can cycle between games without having to switch out any cartridges. Given flash carts can run hacks and modded games has anyone tried this? Is this a dumb idea to begin with? If you had a 2600 arcade cabinet what games would you think would you most like to see modded?

So a Dave & Busters recently opened by me and for those who don't know it is a chain of Barcades / Restaurant where you can take your kids out and drink alcoholic beverages(seriously there are tones of kids and parents drinking). Anyways what I saw was mostly all new / newer arcade games. It looks almost completely different from an classic arcade where the "traditional games" are gun games or driving games and what is left are mobile game ports using ridiculous slap buttons. I only saw one fighting game and it was the DC injustice but without a joystick and only the large slap buttons to do your moves. There was no skee-ball but there were a small assortment of carnival style games. I went to another arcade that was in a bowling alley and it was all the same things. except they had skee-ball but it cost ~$1 per play. What they do seem to have is a rfid card that you load credits in and tap your rfid card on a small screen that reads the amount of credits the game costs. They absolutely have no Atari Games or traditional arcade cabinets with a joystick style game. No more are the joystick games or classic arcade buttons no more are any hardcore skill games. In someways I get it but it seems as if decades of arcade games are just gone from any new arcade. I remember arcades always used to have the older games, in the 90s they still had the games from the early 80s. Gone are the arcade tokens a tradition reaching almost a century back is gone in a modern arcade, they will only appear as a novelty in the gambling coin push games. If that doesn't make you feel old I don't know what will. What are your thoughts on this and modern arcades? Has the Classic Arcade come to an end? Post any pics of classic arcades to keep it's spirit alive. But hey maybe I am just jaded and becoming an old curmudgeon.

What is your thoughts on FPGA arcade board replacements? For those who don't know a FPGA is a special chip that can be programed to actually become other chips so it can emulate hardware in hardware which can come close to a perfect re-implementation or replacement if done right. Unlike MAME you can make the chip run at the same speed and act and load the ROM in the same way and have the same exact bugs and you can update the outputs to more modern outputs like Displayport, HDMI or just regular VGA. There are current projects that have re-implemented some games and there are even replacement boards on the market. I know there is a Williams multi FPGA board and a Berzerk FPGA. There also is the MiST FPGA project that is implementing arcade chipsets with some that are Works In Progress. What are your thoughts on this? Is this okay to preserve faulty boards like Berzerk that may not survive much longer. Which boards or games do you think are in need of an FPGA implementation? What are your thoughts on this in general?

We have seen them a lot lately, people making multi-cades, where people have machines made with multiple titles in one machine, even original machines have been converted in this manner. its not uncommon now to find a machine, most likely with the artwork from the original, but with new internals and controls, and a board with many different games on it. My question is, how do you feel about people taking original arcade machines and converting them into multicades?

(Not sure if this belongs more in Prototypes or here; a mod can feel free to move if they like) Eat your heart out DDR and Dance Evolution. This was one of Atari's laserdisc projects, although I hadn't seen it on any games list before this. Unearthed by the Strong National Museum of Play: https://arcadeheroes.com/2019/02/27/arcade-history-the-atari-dance-machine/

MAME 0.207 It’s almost the end of February, and more importantly it’s time for MAME 0.207 to be released! We’ve added two Nintendo Game & Watch titles this month: Fire (wide screen) and Snoopy Tennis. If you’re at all interested in plug-and-play TV games, this is going to be a huge update, with all the newly-supported JAKKS Pacific titles, including Disney Princess, Dragon Ball Z, Nicktoons, Spider-Man, and Wheel of Fortune, as well as a number of matching Game-Keys. The other big batch of additions this month comes in the form of a whole lot of e-kara cartridge dumps from Japan. For younger players, we’re steadily filling out the V.Smile software list, with eighteen newly supported titles. The VGM software list has been updated with the latest video game music rips, and we’ve added some more original floppy dumps and clean cracks to the Apple II software lists. With the latest improvements to the MIPS R4000 CPU, WD33C93 SCSI and SGI Newport graphics emulation, it’s possible to install and run IRIX in MAME. This is a milestone achievement, and wouldn’t have been possible without some amazing dedication and collaboration on the part of the contributors and team members involved. With the addition of graphics and mouse support, Windows 1.0 runs on MAME’s Tandy 2000 emulation. MAME continues to add additional variants of supported systems, including the HP 9825T and the Esselte Modulab educational system. Newly supported arcade games include an earlier prototype of Rise of the Robots, bootlegs of Ghost Chaser Densei and The Glob, and additional versions of Raiden Fighters 2, Guardian Storm, Pasha Pasha Champ, Lethal Enforcers, and X-Men. General usability improvements include friendlier Apple II disassembly, the restoration of key map support in SDL builds (Linux/macOS), and better initial window positioning on Windows. You can get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page.

MAME 0.206 Welcome to 2019 – we’re starting the year with a bang! MAME 0.206 is an absolutely huge update when it comes to new dumps and newly working software, especially when it comes to TV games. As far as we know, MAME is the first V.Smile emulator with working controls and the most compatible, with almost all dumped titles fully playable for one player (the second joystick isn’t working yet). A number of JAKKS Pacific games based on similar technology are also working in this release. And from Japan, you can now play the Popira and Dance Dance Revolution Family Mat rhythm games, as well as Super Dash Ball. The Namco Nostalgia and Taito Nostalgia games are now playable, too. Game & Watch coverage is steadily expanding, with Black Jack, Lifeboat, Manhole (new wide screen), and Rain Shower added in this release. Black Jack is particularly notable as it hasn’t seen re-issue or emulation before now. On the arcade side, San Francisco Rush 2049 and its Special Edition have been promoted to working, and we’ve added alternate versions and bootlegs of several supported games. Heihachi_73 has tested the Aristocrat Mk V slot machines, and dozens have been promoted to working. If you enjoy spinning the wheels, why not give some a try? If you’re aware of the effort to preserve original Apple II software in the new low-level WOZ disk image format, it should come as no surprise that MAME is on board. We’ve started documenting these dumps in a software list, and we’ll continue to add dumps as they become available. If you’re a fan of Acorn computers, you might want to try some of the newly supported BBC Micro ROM slot expansions, including banked ROM devices, RAM expansions, and real-time clocks. A few additional Electron expansion devices have been added, too. Of course, these are just selected highlights, and there are plenty more bug fixes and emulation improvements in this release. There are also some incremental improvements to MAME’s system and software selection menus. You can get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page.

If you were making an Atari 2600 Arcade what joysticks would you use? What style of arcade quality sticks would you use to be the most playable for the games and the most authentic to early Atari / US based arcade games? I was thinking the IL Eurostick or the Happ Competition pro do any of you have any other suggestions?