MAME - How close to the real thing?

Johnny Cutt

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I'm relatively new around here, and I'm sure there has been similar posts at some point here at the KLOV forums - but for those who have played/own MAME cabs...

How accurate is the emulation? When played through a proper cab with the right monitor, can you tell a difference in comparison to the same game in its true form?
 
BYOAC is a better forum for MAME questions, but the majority of games in MAME are close enough to be enjoyed. But there are plenty that pale in comparison to the real deal, Gorf for example. Definitely worth checking out though, I love my MAME cab, but I also love my dedicated machines.
 
BYOAC is a better forum for MAME questions, but the majority of games in MAME are close enough to be enjoyed. But there are plenty that pale in comparison to the real deal, Gorf for example. Definitely worth checking out though, I love my MAME cab, but I also love my dedicated machines.

Thanks for the info - There are a handful of games in particular that I'm wondering about - maybe you have some if not all of these you could weigh in on?

Super Street Fighter II Turbo
Open Ice 2 on 2
NBA JAM TE
Both TMNT games

Basically the 90's Jamma era. How do these hold up, look and feel-wise?
 
Thanks for the info - There are a handful of games in particular that I'm wondering about - maybe you have some if not all of these you could weigh in on?

Super Street Fighter II Turbo
Open Ice 2 on 2
NBA JAM TE
Both TMNT games

Basically the 90's Jamma era. How do these hold up, look and feel-wise?

90's JAMMA is pretty well covered.

You'll need some pretty good PC hardware to run a few, like Gauntlet Legends and NFL Blitz, for example.

See here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.480

Check out the last 2 or 3 pages of that thread for my benchmarking with an overclocked core i7 rig.
 
It depends on the games you plan to emulate really. You can simulate the playfield fairly accurately but if you've played the originals in an arcade before you can't simulate the feel of the game. My MAME cabinet is what lead me to start collecting the originals because while I could display the game properly I just couldn't get the feel of the game or the controller types were too different to play every game accurately.

What I've come to terms with in MAME is that if I plan to simulate games I need to pick a specific set of games rather than trying to simulate the entire list. There's too many controller types to create a really clean control panel to support them all. Then you have games like Space Invaders Deluxe where the game looses all of it's color when you turn off the bezel art because it turns off the backdrop as well. Games like Battlezone and Sea Wolf lose their immersion some too by not having the periscope shrouds to look through. For me, I chose to do button/joystick games and opted out of the trackball/spinner/flightstick type stuff. My MAME cab(s) are simply to catch what I don't have the floor space to support and coming from the arcade generation they may look the same but they don't feel the same to me.

Just my thoughts...
 
90's JAMMA is pretty well covered.

You'll need some pretty good PC hardware to run a few, like Gauntlet Legends and NFL Blitz, for example.

See here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.480

Check out the last 2 or 3 pages of that thread for my benchmarking with an overclocked core i7 rig.

I have a Core I3 with a 560TI video card and Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy is still one of the games that has stuttering sound problems within MAME for me. I've tried several .CHR file downloads hoping the performance issues would be worked out but still no luck. Ended up getting the dedicated cab with the Dark Legacy upgrade kit and then the green went out of the monitor. Just not meant to play that game I guess! :)
 
Your video card won't help you with MAME - it's all emulated using your CPU. Anything that has voodoo based graphics (i.e. Blitz, Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy, etc) takes a lot of CPU power to emulate. Even at 4ghz they are far from the real hardware. I had read somewhere that to get those running pretty close to perfect you would need to be at around 5ghz.
 
As others have said it depends on the game. Many play good though. Also with other emulators on some of the newer 3d games you have the options to render them at higher res so they might look better.

I play both my real arcades and ones off the computer using an xgaming arcade stick setup.
 
Nice. I'm assuming these cabs are trying to simulate some sort of glide technology since that was popular during the time with 3dfx. Who knew that would be a problem over a decade since the company flopped.
 
I have owned SF II and TMNT and I couldn't tell the difference between mame and the real thing. In fact that era of games is probably emulated better than anything else.

In fact in most games you can't tell the difference between mame and the real thing, however there are certainly exceptions, like Gorf and anything that uses 3D graphics.

Thanks for the info - There are a handful of games in particular that I'm wondering about - maybe you have some if not all of these you could weigh in on?

Super Street Fighter II Turbo
Open Ice 2 on 2
NBA JAM TE
Both TMNT games

Basically the 90's Jamma era. How do these hold up, look and feel-wise?
 
Great responses - Thanks everyone.

I have an NBA Jam cab that was converted to a Badlands somewhere along the way, complete with both steering wheels plopped onto the CP.

I'd like to gut this cab, keep the original monitor intact and use that for a MAME set up.

For more of the sprite based 2D games like NBA Jam TE and TMNT, it sounds like those could be rather indistinguishable via MAME with an original monitor, no?
 
Your video card won't help you with MAME - it's all emulated using your CPU. Anything that has voodoo based graphics (i.e. Blitz, Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy, etc) takes a lot of CPU power to emulate. Even at 4ghz they are far from the real hardware. I had read somewhere that to get those running pretty close to perfect you would need to be at around 5ghz.

Not completely true. In the case of the i5 family where the GPU is embedded in the CPU, the addition of a discrete graphics card does make a difference in that it offloads some of the work done by the i5's onboard video. That frees up some valuable cache and heat overhead for the cpu cycles.

In other cases, there are some resources shared between the onboard graphics and cpu (think: onboard RAM) that are also freed up with a discrete graphics card with ample graphics ram. Again, more overhead available for the CPU to crunch the mame process.
 
Recently running MAME via Hyperspin on an i7 laptop and now I can play games like Strider 2, Radiant Silvergun, etc. with no real issues so far. It's awesome.
 
A valid point for those who are working with embedded GPU's. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of discrete vs discrete. A $500 video card vs $30 isn't going to make Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy or any other 3D intense games emulate with any noticeable difference since the majority of MAME's processing power is CPU driven.

Not completely true. In the case of the i5 family where the GPU is embedded in the CPU, the addition of a discrete graphics card does make a difference in that it offloads some of the work done by the i5's onboard video. That frees up some valuable cache and heat overhead for the cpu cycles.

In other cases, there are some resources shared between the onboard graphics and cpu (think: onboard RAM) that are also freed up with a discrete graphics card with ample graphics ram. Again, more overhead available for the CPU to crunch the mame process.
 
90's JAMMA is pretty well covered.

You'll need some pretty good PC hardware to run a few, like Gauntlet Legends and NFL Blitz, for example.

See here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.480

Check out the last 2 or 3 pages of that thread for my benchmarking with an overclocked core i7 rig.

An i7 seems like massive overkill for MAME...LOL. None of the 90's arcade games are graphically intensive like Crysis or Metro...ha ha.
 
An i7 seems like massive overkill for MAME...LOL. None of the 90's arcade games are graphically intensive like Crysis or Metro...ha ha.


Yes, and no.

You need a chip running with at least 2 cores running at 4.5ghz to get all the games that are possible to run with anything that MAME can do (fully playable) right now. The i7 gets you there when overclcocked.

But the i7 also has 8 cores, of which 6 aren't needed. So in that respect, yes, it's wasted processor.

But for OTHER emulators, like PCSX2 and so forth..... :D
 
Yes, and no.

You need a chip running with at least 2 cores running at 4.5ghz to get all the games that are possible to run with anything that MAME can do (fully playable) right now. The i7 gets you there when overclcocked.

But the i7 also has 8 cores, of which 6 aren't needed. So in that respect, yes, it's wasted processor.

But for OTHER emulators, like PCSX2 and so forth..... :D


I am still happy with my i5 2500k, best bang for the buck. I haven't gotten the chance to play around with the new Ivy Bridge processors yet, but I may upgrade next year if necessary.
 
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