Why buy a board when you can mame??

[emphatic]

I remember talking about having a cover molded for the JAMMA connector (before these turned up on eBay) and some people here laughed at me. Who's laughing now?

Edit: http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic. ... 82&p=98325"

[theMot]

I must be missing something but why do you need a cover? For better grip?

[pubjoe]

Basically yeah. I put one on my jamma connector recently. Mine was a very tight fit so it helps ease insertion tremendously.

[Rossyra]

[pubjoe]

Also, pulling it off was a two-hand job.

[Rossyra]

[pubjoe]

Ideally, three.

[Rossyra]

[pubjoe]

[monouchi]

Yeah, would love to find a jamma loom cover that fits the E2 jamma connector.
Damn those sharp edges.

[KmanSweden]

Mr Dremel?

[monouchi]

Mr Dremel?

Nope, the E2 jamma connector are way too big for those covers.

[garou81]

What a great thread, I personally obsess over the imperfections in mame like input lag even though I cant tell the difference. I have recently decided to go the mame route after a string of bad luck with pcb's. Imho anybody saying mame is too much hassle will eventually change their tune when they find themselves trying to fix a 15+ year old piece of arcade hardware that cost hundreds of dollars.

[Phexe]

I mix and match. I love having original pcb's but hate how flaky some are (had a Golden Axe, Knights of the Round and a Double Dragon fail and was quoted 2x-3x the cost of the board to look at it), so I've sold off a lot of my originals and kept about 10 or so of my favourites (excluding my MVS Stuff).

I also run a GroovyMAME cab via Windows 7 (would be linux, but I like having Ultra SF4 / GGPO / Model 2 etc). I was into HyperSpin but I feel the layouts go overboard to hide the actual gameplay (not to mention that Flash is more like a virus than a program), so I'm just running a my own custom frontend that displays the logo's when you move through the list and when you stop on a game it plays a fullscreen MKV of the game so its sort of like a 1000 slot MVS.

[Molloy]

My solution to choice paralysis is to only load a handful of games into MAME. I've never bothered downloading the entire romset.

[darkcrono]

me too, i see people having 3000+ games, with slot, pachinko and so on... I prefer having 500 at most...

[ninn]

I always see guys with mame-cabs sinking too much time in the menue system. Not configuring it, but acutlly scrolling thru it (aka "choosing a game"). With a flashy menue system you take significant more time to choose between games, which is very odd.

I am observing that behaviour for about 5 years. always fascinating when someone chant choose a game, instead of just playing one to try out.

[pubjoe]

Today I just like paying for stuff.

I like the process of researching and buying. I like that I've made valued consideration on what I'm getting.

It's getting old fashioned but there's something nice about paying for a singularly packaged piece of media and then enjoying it. I do the same with everything these days. ...Which surprises me to be honest. Paying for anything which can be gained more easily for free used to seem absurd to me. Especially when it makes no odds to the developers - as with mame.

Just psychological really.

Mame will always be a wonderful tool though. I think whenever I use it I get confused about what I want out of it. I always obsess over it being a perfect database and forget to just enjoy a game or two.

I like having a cab-PC for things that aren't possible with pcbs. Like GGPO. But PC configuration and arcade machines are an awkward mix. I always feel as though it should be tidily packaged and easy-to-use or it has no place in an arcade machine, which sidetracks me to obsession.

[Smoothism]

I think MAME is great for playing old school early 80's games like Bally/Midway titles or Atari ones, you may find boards for some of them yes but they're in most cases in the last days of their life, or literally you can't find them. MAME for preservation is ideal.

I have thousands of roms but I already know what I want to play most of the times, I don't usually spend more than a minute deciding which game I'll play. You can also lost yourself looking for obscure games you never heard about and that's fun too.

Don't interpret me wrong, I would love to have enough space for a cab, I think everybody wants to own original software but sometimes that's not possible. If I could I would buy at least 30 boards I loved when I was a kid but the storage problem is there again, I'll try to buy at least a couple of them and a supergun to play them in my 21" Trinitron CRT but that's it. MAME just allows me to enjoy and discover the enormous arcade games world. I play with a decent Hori V3 SA stick and have a 24" monitor that can be easily rotated for vertical shooters, with a good graphics card you can see the games with awesome quality TBH. It's not the same, I know, but hey it's not bad at all.
The problem of having too many games it's not a MAME exclusive, there are tons of multi game boards out there.

I just collect Neo Geo games, I own about 50 games between AES and MVS kits/carts. With a bit of luck I'll buy in a near future an Atomiswave and a Deathsmiles kit if I can find it, a tiny board but full of fun IMO.

I really envy you guys with your Egrets, Astros, Naomis... If I could...

[Mendel]

I recently bought a mametopia board on this forum and I agree what it does very well is play pre-jamma games. I don´t need to get all those adapters of specific game to jamma along with the original pcbs.

That said, it still has some audio skipping here and there so its not 100% perfect substitute for any original board. I am probably still going to buy some pcbs if and when some game important to me is available for reasonable price. And I do intend to keep most if not all of my current original pcbs.