If "repro" isn't an issue for you, then you should have no issue with MAME, right?

pookdolie

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If "repro" isn't an issue for you, then you should have no issue with MAME, right?

I'd like to take this out of Figzig's thread, because it's really not about him. (For the record, I think those System 1 games of his, repro or not, look great. Kudos, FZ.)

So, per the title of this thread - thoughts?

MAME is an imperfect reproduction/emulation of arcade PCBs. Most reproductions are imperfect.

Is it hypocritical to despise MAME while touting reproduction parts and cabs?

Is the real issue that you can't sell MAME? *ducks*
 
No. There's a large difference.

MAME's intention is to accurately preserve the operation, electronically, of the game. Its primary purpose is not for enjoyable playback, and as a result you may notice that it's absolute garbage for that - Vsync tearing, hiccuping audio (when you try to solve the tearing), laggy input... A hardware reproduction of a board is NOT an emulation of the board, and that's the entire point.
 
No. There's a large difference.

MAME's intention is to accurately preserve the operation, electronically, of the game. Its primary purpose is not for enjoyable playback

Red herring, IMHO. The practical day-to-day use by a majority who employ MAME is for "enjoyable playback" more than "accurately preserve the operation, electronically, of the game".

and as a result you may notice that it's absolute garbage for that - Vsync tearing, hiccuping audio (when you try to solve the tearing), laggy input...

"Absolute garbage" - hardly. Although not perfect (already mentioned) it does just fine with many games.

A hardware reproduction of a board is NOT an emulation of the board, and that's the entire point.

If you can practically tell the difference with the human eye in terms of gameplay, then I agree that MAME isn't equal to a hardware reproduction in terms of gameplay. But the hardware alternative is still a repro.
 
In this group, Mame is a bad word because we tend to think of Mame as someone whose destroyed a good cab to "Mame" it.

The actual program Mame is a good thing in most people's mind.
Repro'ing a marquee to replace one you can't find is perfectly fine and has nothing to do with tearing apart a classic to add a computer to it.

You are looking at it completely wrong.

I would guess no one has an "issue" with Mame itself. It's the bozo's who destroy a good cab to frankenstein it that they have issues with.

A reproduction marquee that looks exactly like the original is perfectly fine and fits into the "Vintage Arcade Presevation Society" mantra here on KLOV.
 
The brain and heart of an arcade are the PCB and the code on it. MAME attempts to transplant the code.

A reproduction cabinet still uses the original PCB. I will never understand this outcry against restoration/reproduction. These things were made to be played. With play the parts wear. Those parts are then replaced. The game then continues to get played. If the game is unplayable, what is the point of having it original?

Unfortunately we live in a time where can no longer buy OEM parts for these things. Vendors have to create reproductions. Back in the day if the cabinet broke an op could just order another cabinet. Look at Stern pinball today, if something went wrong in shipping and your backbox broke, they would not ship you an entirely new game, they would ship you a backbox and you would transplant the parts over to that backbox.
 
EXTREMELY well said and spot on!

I'll add that some of us have rescued "mame'd" cabinets and done our best to restore them. To do so usually means acquiring reproduction parts because all the original guts were removed.

In this group, Mame is a bad word because we tend to think of Mame as someone whose destroyed a good cab to "Mame" it.

The actual program Mame is a good thing in most people's mind.
Repro'ing a marquee to replace one you can't find is perfectly fine and has nothing to do with tearing apart a classic to add a computer to it.

You are looking at it completely wrong.

I would guess no one has an "issue" with Mame itself. It's the bozo's who destroy a good cab to frankenstein it that they have issues with.

A reproduction marquee that looks exactly like the original is perfectly fine and fits into the "Vintage Arcade Presevation Society" mantra here on KLOV.
 
I would guess no one has an "issue" with Mame itself.

mikejmoffitt might disagree. (Above.)

A reproduction marquee that looks exactly like the original is perfectly fine and fits into the "Vintage Arcade Presevation Society" mantra here on KLOV.

True, but I see some hypocrisy when it comes to what percentage of emulating or reproducing something is acceptable in the reproduction...

A reproduction cabinet still uses the original PCB.

Not always.

These things were made to be played. With play the parts wear. Those parts are then replaced. The game then continues to get played. If the game is unplayable, what is the point of having it original?

So you're all for MAME as a replacement for a PCB or PCBs?
 
MAME cabinets & wrecking classic cabs to build them = different issue than using MAME to replace a board in a cabinet otherwise dedicated to a game. Sorry for the confusion...

So... you started a whole new thread to start a fight?

Nope. Why - is there a problem posing the question?
 
I would take a solid original over a perfect reproduction anytime. Some scrapes and cigarette burns are OK, thats exactly how I remember them. I also remember them with messed up controls and monitors, which are the two things I really want correct.

I appreciate that the whole game was there through the era if that makes sense. There is no better find than a clean survivor.

MAME got me back into the hobby, and I'll always have a couple MAME cabs to play the games I like, but don't necessarily have enough room to own. Its also fantastic for checking out games you're not familiar with when they come up for sale/discussion.
 
I'm not really interested in the tug O war, because I already made a personal opinion, and frankly I don't care what you guys think about what I do in my own home.....(just glad there are passionate mame developers out there who do make close approximations of fun game play...)

But what I'm curious about is this concept of FPGA.
How is emulating hardware, different than emulating software. isn't it still an emulation, meaning a facsimile of the real product?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array

I'm always curious to learn something new and technical in the hobby, so I'm all ears. thank you.
 
In this group, Mame is a bad word because we tend to think of Mame as someone whose destroyed a good cab to "Mame" it.

The actual program Mame is a good thing in most people's mind.
Repro'ing a marquee to replace one you can't find is perfectly fine and has nothing to do with tearing apart a classic to add a computer to it.

You are looking at it completely wrong.

I would guess no one has an "issue" with Mame itself. It's the bozo's who destroy a good cab to frankenstein it that they have issues with.

A reproduction marquee that looks exactly like the original is perfectly fine and fits into the "Vintage Arcade Presevation Society" mantra here on KLOV.

EXTREMELY well said and spot on!

I'll add that some of us have rescued "mame'd" cabinets and done our best to restore them. To do so usually means acquiring reproduction parts because all the original guts were removed.

Agreed on most points above except that we should also add, these aren't reproductions of ROMs or attempts to re-code games either, right?

From the MAME main page:

"MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with images of the original arcade game's ROM and disk data, MAME attempts to reproduce that game as faithfully as possible on a more modern general-purpose computer. MAME can currently emulate several thousand different classic arcade video games from the late 1970s through the modern era."

MAME is much more than just en emulator though. I have a good friend who is on the MAME team and their goal is not to just emulate the games but preserve the code that the games run on.

This comes in EXTREMELY handy for those of us that want to compare potentially bad EPROMs, PROMs or even produce new ones to get a game running.

In addition to the standard classic arcade games (Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Galaga) MAME is very easily able to emulate on most any modern hardware today, they're emulating and preserving other important games such as the laserdisc games from the 80s and modern games as well.

MAME is totally awesome. Maiming a perfectly good Q-Bert cab or unconverted Tron, Omega Race or Jungle Hunt cab just hits us where it counts because the collectors/restorers in us want those games to be preserved. And where preservation is paramount is in the code.
 
No. There's a large difference.

MAME's intention is to accurately preserve the operation, electronically, of the game. Its primary purpose is not for enjoyable playback, and as a result you may notice that it's absolute garbage for that - Vsync tearing, hiccuping audio (when you try to solve the tearing), laggy input... A hardware reproduction of a board is NOT an emulation of the board, and that's the entire point.


You're doing it wrong.
 
MAME is totally awesome. Maiming a perfectly good Q-Bert cab or unconverted Tron, Omega Race or Jungle Hunt cab just hits us where it counts because the collectors/restorers in us want those games to be preserved.

I agree 100%...

...having said that, how about ripping off a worn but decent CP to replace it with a nearly-flawless repro?
 
I'd rather have a terrible MISS PUCKMAN marquee on my game than have MAME on it... Just not right. But build all the MAMEs you want from scratch, just don't expect to sell them for 4k.
 
If you take a Chevy 350 out of a 1960's Corvette and stick it in to a reproduced Corvette frame/body/etc..... is it still a 1960's Classic Corvette?

If you take a Hank Arron baseball card and reproduce it to exact specs... is it worth nearly as much?

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with Fizgigs Reproductions... I just don't agree calling them Restorations. They are not. Take the Corvette example above. I bet that finished product with a 2012 body rolling a 1960's drive-train is BADASS... but it sure as hell isn't a restoration. It's a reproduction.

As for MAME. I have no problem with MAME at all... though I encourage those looking to create a MAME cab to use generic JAMMA cabinets...
 
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Agreed on most points above except that we should also add, these aren't reproductions of ROMs or attempts to re-code games either, right?

From the MAME main page:

"MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with images of the original arcade game's ROM and disk data, MAME attempts to reproduce that game as faithfully as possible on a more modern general-purpose computer. MAME can currently emulate several thousand different classic arcade video games from the late 1970s through the modern era."

MAME is much more than just en emulator though. I have a good friend who is on the MAME team and their goal is not to just emulate the games but preserve the code that the games run on.

This comes in EXTREMELY handy for those of us that want to compare potentially bad EPROMs, PROMs or even produce new ones to get a game running.

In addition to the standard classic arcade games (Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Galaga) MAME is very easily able to emulate on most any modern hardware today, they're emulating and preserving other important games such as the laserdisc games from the 80s and modern games as well.

MAME is totally awesome. Maiming a perfectly good Q-Bert cab or unconverted Tron, Omega Race or Jungle Hunt cab just hits us where it counts because the collectors/restorers in us want those games to be preserved. And where preservation is paramount is in the code.

Yep...agreed.

I have MAME running on a laptop, and I've used it several times when adjusting colors on monitors. I'll have a game running on the laptop in MAME and compare the color representation there to the actual game I'm working on. It has been very useful in that respect for me. I've also used it to try out the gameplay for a potential game that I may be interested in adding to the collection.

Like many here, I just don't like to see good cabinets gutted of working wiring, control panels, PCB's, and all the artwork stripped off so someone can stick MAME inside and expect a huge profit on CL or eBay. I fully understand that's a legitimate business model, but it does run contrary to the goal of VAPS and arcade preservation. That's a tough one to balance for me philosophically, because I'm very pro-business.
 
Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with Fizgigs Reproductions... I just don't agree calling them Restorations.

Agreed - it's ridiculous. In any other hobby, the notion would be laughed at.

And I have no problem with people reproducing or emulating a PCB via MAME in their cabs if they can't get a working board...but seeing folks jump all over MAME as a PCB-substitute while praising other reproductions seems hypocritical.

(Original games turned into MAME cabinets = separate issue.)
 
If you want controversy here, then I think the real question is this:

At what point does a part on a game NEED to be replaced as part of a restoration?

I don't give a rats ass what other people do, but personally, if a control panel overlay is really nice, I leave it alone. If it has tears, is ugly, and there's a screen printed repro availabe, then I'd replace it.

I'll throw some examples out there..

I kind of thought about leaving the vinyl sideart on my Paperboy alone, but it had box cutter cuts across it, was badly faded, and the vinyl in general wasn't adhering to the particle board well. Since there's a proper repro, I said f it and peeled it off.

With B'time, I bought the repro bezel. While my original isn't peeling, it's badly faded. I would probably keep the "original" piece, but install the repro for looks.

With Ms Pac, I appreciate the original patina, battle scarred, used look, but.. my project is so faded and ugly that it's really an eyesore. I would like to do the proper stencil/repaint. Where would it stand in terms of perceived value then? If done right, I think it would be worth more than the ugly, worn, faded, with hasp holes in the front. If I slapped vinyl decal sideart on, I would perceive it as worth considerably less than a proper stencil/repaint.
 
Is it hypocritical to despise MAME while touting reproduction parts and cabs?
Yep, probably... But I think your talking about a very small part of the collecting community... i.e., religious purist zealots like myself...

MAME's intention is to accurately preserve the operation, electronically, of the game. Its primary purpose is not for enjoyable playback
Interesting point...

So... you started a whole new thread to start a fight?
It will hardly start a fight... It'll just turn into yet another MAMEers preaching to the choir kumbaya love-fest... I know, how novel...

but seeing folks jump all over MAME as a PCB-substitute while praising other reproductions seems hypocritical.
What folks are jumping? Again, I think you're talking about a very small minority in the community... It used to be said that KLOV was anti-mame. That is hardly the case, as you will see as this thread progresses...

And why is it that, generally speaking, you MAMEers are so defensive on MAME... Who cares that someone is bashing it? And why alaways the pitch for MAME? WE know it exists, thank you;)
 
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