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MAME is cool, and its been cool for a long time. I've got a question though: Is MAME just about emulation of historical arcade machines, or is it constantly upd

MAME is cool, and its been cool for a long time. I've got a question though: Is MAME just about emulation of historical arcade machines, or is it constantly updating emulation for arcades from the present decade?

chungy 2y ago
MAME is about the emulation and preservation of basically everything electronic. Arcades, computers, consoles, calculators, LED Tiger games, you name it. If it has a CPU (sometimes, even if it doesn't have a CPU), it's fair game for MAME. There are no hard cut-offs, but contemporary systems are rarely implemented. MAME's focus on accuracy to a low-level degree means that most modern systems would be painfully slow to emulate.
- 6SixTy 2y ago
  Contemporary arcade games are usually just a PC in a box with external arcade specific hardware making up everything else. Probably better to hack the game into thinking it's running on the right hardware than the other way around at this point.
  - bitwize 2y ago
    Case in point: I was at an arcade the other day where they had a Beat Saber VR setup. At one point they reset the machine, which displayed a Dell UEFI boot-up splash, followed by some version of Windows 10 initializing, connecting to some arcade VPN, and then booting the game. At my wife's friend's ice cream shop which has its own attached arcade where a day pass gets you all the games you want, there are virtual pinball tables which I've seen boot similarly. It is, indeed, just a PC with a custom software stack built on top of Windows. Some old-style arcade machines you see in the wild these days are really just PCs, or maybe ARM SBCs, running a library of ROMs via MAME, legally or illegally!
Lammy 2y ago
Modern arcade machines are mostly Windows Embedded. There are cracking scenes for many popular niches/franchises.
- jsheard 2y ago
  There was also the in-between era of arcade hardware based on home consoles, like the Triforce platform (derived from the GameCube) or Chihiro platform (derived from the original Xbox). For those the easiest approach is to extend console emulators to also support their related arcade platforms, or hack the arcade games to transform them into standard console games, rather than having MAME reinvent the wheel.
  - HelloNurse 2y ago
    Chihiro and Triforce might have had significant games, but arcade hardware based on home consoles runs much older: Master System, Playstation, Genesis, Neo-Geo, Playstation 2, NES, Dreamcast, Playstation 3, Saturn, have one (or more!) arcade counterparts.
jandrese 2y ago
MAME emulates a ridiculous number of systems now. For example, check out a list of just the ones that require some additional setup steps: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php?title=System-Specific_Setup_and_Information https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php?title=System-Specific_Set...

chungy 2y ago

MAME is about the emulation and preservation of basically everything electronic. Arcades, computers, consoles, calculators, LED Tiger games, you name it. If it has a CPU (sometimes, even if it doesn't have a CPU), it's fair game for MAME. There are no hard cut-offs, but contemporary systems are rarely implemented. MAME's focus on accuracy to a low-level degree means that most modern systems would be painfully slow to emulate.

6SixTy 2y ago
Contemporary arcade games are usually just a PC in a box with external arcade specific hardware making up everything else. Probably better to hack the game into thinking it's running on the right hardware than the other way around at this point.
- bitwize 2y ago
  Case in point: I was at an arcade the other day where they had a Beat Saber VR setup. At one point they reset the machine, which displayed a Dell UEFI boot-up splash, followed by some version of Windows 10 initializing, connecting to some arcade VPN, and then booting the game. At my wife's friend's ice cream shop which has its own attached arcade where a day pass gets you all the games you want, there are virtual pinball tables which I've seen boot similarly. It is, indeed, just a PC with a custom software stack built on top of Windows. Some old-style arcade machines you see in the wild these days are really just PCs, or maybe ARM SBCs, running a library of ROMs via MAME, legally or illegally!

Lammy 2y ago

Modern arcade machines are mostly Windows Embedded. There are cracking scenes for many popular niches/franchises.

jsheard 2y ago
There was also the in-between era of arcade hardware based on home consoles, like the Triforce platform (derived from the GameCube) or Chihiro platform (derived from the original Xbox). For those the easiest approach is to extend console emulators to also support their related arcade platforms, or hack the arcade games to transform them into standard console games, rather than having MAME reinvent the wheel.
- HelloNurse 2y ago
  Chihiro and Triforce might have had significant games, but arcade hardware based on home consoles runs much older: Master System, Playstation, Genesis, Neo-Geo, Playstation 2, NES, Dreamcast, Playstation 3, Saturn, have one (or more!) arcade counterparts.

jandrese 2y ago

MAME emulates a ridiculous number of systems now. For example, check out a list of just the ones that require some additional setup steps: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php?title=System-Specific_Setup_and_Information https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php?title=System-Specific_Set...