Interface Old Games To Play Over The Internet

[sg6970]

So is it possible to interface two old identical games (pick your titles) separated by long distances to play each other over the internet ? For example...

Guy "A" with Galaga wants to challenge Guy "B" living in another state with Galaga by means of ethernet cable over the internet. Guy "A" would play his first man until his first loss then from your screen you see Guy "B" playing until his first loss and back and forth until the game is done. At the end of the game a record would be kept live on the internet so that high scores could be viewed for that title. Would there be hardware/software compatible to do that ? No Mame stuff, strictly game to game but with new added hardware/software compatible to old gameboards.

 

[kspiff]

Some of the HSS kits support internet connectivity, but I'm not sure they're linked to any centralized leaderboard either (I think it is more so you can setup your own local or web leaderboard).

I've never heard of them adding functionality for multiplayer to their kits, nor have I heard of anyone else doing anything similar. I'd imagine this would be much more difficult to implement on real hardware as opposed to something emulated. You'd pretty much need a board with a decent CPU that can control the machine environment, present the online interface, do data encapsulation, control synchronization, do error checking, etc. Probably would be simpler to do using local servers that talk to custom satellite boards in each machine.

I'm sure it could be done, I'd imagine the interface could even be adapted to do other titles later without as much work, but I don't see anybody putting in that kind of work on a per game basis let alone to create the architecture (and if it were made, I'd probably expect it to be buggy as shit).

 

[dudah]

Spiff nailed all the major points.
I'll add that latency would be another factor.