Why buy a board when you can mame??

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tetsujin
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by tetsujin »

kernow wrote::x :awe:

hahaha, I know your not a fan of the 100 in 1 games are you! :D I was reading the threads over on NG.com

I only really want Neo Turf Masters, Puzzle Bobble and Metal Slugs and they seem to be ok on them?
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by cools »

Why not get a 4-slot and those carts then? :D
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by tetsujin »

well that was my other idea but there are so many boot versions etc and the price of the 4 slot compared to a 1 slot and the 100 in 1 isnt much difference and then I can buy the games I like after playing a few.


Im getting a MAME PCB soon so will wait and do my demoing on that.

Im a big fan of getting stuff on original hardware anyway but I want to make sure I like something alot before I buy it! :D


Re the actual thread, I have Tekken 2, 3 and Tag and I have all these on my PS1/2. They play and look the same but knowing I have the REAL arcade versions and knowing they didnt get any better than this made me buy the PCB, same with MR Driller G, Kung Fu Master and soon to be Tiger Heli if I ever find one!! :D these are the games that I LIKE, and to me are worth he extra money! :D but for someone who HAS not won the lottery I look at MAME or back ups as a good way to try before you buy. If I really like it and I can afford it I will ALWAYS buy the original! :D

Anyway, I am making my Aero City a dedicated NEO cab as I can fit in a Lord. gona remake a 4 button singe play CP with red, green, yellow and blue buttons! :)
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by jpj »

i've had a couple of mvs boots (thanks ebay :roll: ), and it's just not worth it. sound crackled, visual garbage popping up on the screen, etc. ended up in the bin. mvs is cheap enough anyways really. the games your after are like £20-30 each. my four-slot was £65. be patient, and look for good bargains :)

i know a lot of people say pcbs are way too expensive, i can't afford it, etc. but i honestly think that no matter how expensive something is, there will always be people who will buy it. and no matter how cheap something is, there will always be those who steal it

:?
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by Chi »

jpj wrote:i've had a couple of mvs boots (thanks ebay :roll: ), and it's just not worth it. sound crackled, visual garbage popping up on the screen, etc. ended up in the bin.
Same here. With the last one I had I was disappointed with the quality (one or two games not working at all, occasional problems in graphics and sound caused by cheap parts), and then just thought "If I'm going to boot these, I might as well just use MAME" and sold it on.
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by Aypok »

tetsujin wrote:I know its not MAME but what are the 100 in 1 MVS Neo Geo carts like?
It seems decent enough to me. Admittedly, I've not yet tried all of the games on there, but I've not noticed any problems with the ones I have played.

The only reason I bought one is because I'm quite unfamiliar with the MVS' library (Metal Slug is something I've played a lot, but I've not even heard of most of the other games on the system) and wanted to try the games before I bought them (so a few glitches here and there wouldn't bother me). I know I could have tried them via emulation, but I liked the idea of trying them on Real Hardware™. Not that I play through them all the way; that comes when I get the proper carts. :)
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by pubjoe »

Wow! a polite and civilised 4-page discussion about Mame vs Original PCBs! This just isn't right.

Personally, all I ever wanted was a mame machine, but now I've ended up with 40+ pcbs and 3 arcade machines (well 2 and a half). Collecting PCBs doesn't have to be much more expensive than mame ...Just keep 3-5 at a time ...Buy/sell etc. But it is ADDICTIVE.

And like others have said.. Mame can kind of spoil you. Like the rotten kid who has everything but enjoys nothing.

Also, I don't know if anyone has mentioned emulatoritis yet? But there is something about running emulators that turns you into a anal fiddler and when you have a mamecab, you are forever damned with this terrible affliction...

...Common side effects:
Spending all day getting an emulator to work seamlessly with your front-end.
Fiddling with batch files, drivers and various software.
Sticking loads of pedals, paddles and panels all over your machine to play EVERY game.
constantly changing PC hardware.
Downloading & Adding complete romset updates of all those games you never played first time around and never will in the future.
Updating everything repeatedly.
Trying to achieve all the above whilst keeping the machine simple and intuitive enough for your Mother to turn on and have a go (even though your the only one who ever plays it).
Loss of all taste.

I don't know why the above happens, but it does. You end up spending more time fiddling than ever playing the games. PCBs - just plug and play :)

Anyway... I am still a big fan of mame. The advantages are obvious and numerous and I love seeing a good project. I also have a pretty simple, well configured box of my own now courtesy of Xennep - which I'm trying to keep that way. :awe:
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by slapaham »

Wow... you summed MAME up beautifully pubjoe...

The amount of days I've wasted on trivial crap (tweaking this, tweaking that) and the lack of time I actually spent playing any of the 6000+ games on my MAME cab - it's like you know me! :lol:

At least with Jamma you're stuck with it (even if it's crap!) and there's not much you can do about it - so you just get on and play, like you're meant to! Worry-gutting about frontends, romsets, etc really kills the fun factor!
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by geotrig »

slapaham wrote:At least with Jamma you're stuck with it (even if it's crap!) and there's not much you can do about it - so you just get on and play, like you're meant to! Worry-gutting about frontends, romsets, etc really kills the fun factor!
until you starrt messing with the geometory and stuff :awe: :awe:
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by DandySephy »

jpj wrote:i've had a couple of mvs boots (thanks ebay :roll: ),
Of 19 mvs games I have, 15 came from ebay. One of them is a bootleg, but was advertised as such (MS5).
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by Xenepp »

I think this sums it up pretty well:

If you like MAME, your a born tinkerer

If you hate MAME, you 'aint

;)

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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by pubjoe »

I tinkle and anally fiddle. But I'm trying to give it up.
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by pubjoe »

:awe:

"Mame turns you into an anal fiddler"

Lol! Just so you know, seeing as your getting worried about me, I was referring to that ...It wasn't a completely random gay outburst!

I literally used to spend 10 times as much time researching/buying/configuring/overclocking/testing my PCs, years ago, than I ever spent using them properly. It's one of the reasons why I got a mac.
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by tetsujin »

well, im on the look out for a MVS one slot now. And Neo Turf Masters. :)
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by msm »

I think mame is brilliant for getting people into stuff like shooters. how did people who are against mame get started on this hobby?
i've only got 3 pcb's but none of them are emulated, everything else i play is a console port or on mame. i'd like to have all the pcb's but it's just not practical for me. tinking about trying to get hold of ibara pcb but worried it might be a slippery slope into buying stuff i already have!
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by gargamel »

Emulatorz are great for:

-Discover or rediscover arcade titles or beginning arcade gaming.

-test game before buying PCB.

-having fun with friends on a particular game you don t own.

-Benchmarking you insanely overclocked CPU :D

-romz can be stored on few dvd, so wife and room space friendly.

-no particular maintenance, a **** PC on Windows ME can play lot of good old arcade games.



Original Arcade stuff is great for:

-"What is the difference between owning a X-please-fix-me/Gaystation 3 and a Cave PCB"

-some PCB become valuable.

-Consoles/PC port were almost never arcade perfect.

-the nostalgia feel by playing the same hardware you played when you was kid.(playing with a real Amiga or playing on WinUAE is the same??)

-you learn how to handle an iron or multimeter and some electronics while repairing your stuff.

-Controls reponse time.Software⇔hardware、no driver or OS layer.

-goodies/posters/Serial numbers/artworks for collectors


It depends of your priorities/room space/time to spend/Money.


But both is the best IMAO.
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by megaultrasuper »

Wow, a lot of the complaints against MAME in this thread have absolutely nothing to do with MAME itself.

It doesn't make you run from game to game every ten seconds.
It doesn't make you have to build franken-panel monstrosities to play every game.
It doesn't make you tweak settings every ten minutes.
It doesn't make you update ROM sets every time a new one is released.
It doesn't make you have to play every ROM.

Those are all problems that the end-users have and cannot be blamed on the program.

I have a MAME cabinet. It is ugly. Very ugly. But I love it.

Look here: Image

I run advancemame and advancemenu on it with a PC monitor that can do native arcade resolutions. I don't worry about boot up screens or hiding the fact that it is a MAME cabinet. Why should I deny it's nature?

I don't run the full MAME romset, just the games that my controls are suited to. So that means mostly classic stuff, shmups, fighters, and beat em'ups. All of which are my favorite kinds of games.

I don't care about boxes, manuals, or art. That stuff is irrelevant to the gameplay.

I have played over 500 hours on this machine on various games. I don't fiddle with the settings every ten minutes or spend hours trying to get a game to barely run. I just run a list of a bout 1000 or so games that run 99% perfectly on it and don't worry about the rest. A few years from now adding them will be much easier so I'll just wait.

Mostly I pick a game and spend some time with it for a few days. I participate in online score competitons, or offline ones with my friends. I play online with GGPO. I think I unofficially hold the world record for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs now, I just need to get around to submitting it to Twin Galaxies.

Without my MAME cabinet I never would have gotten into a hundred different classic games. I can go on the arcadecontrols forums and see that somebody thinks that PHOENIX is a great game. Well, I scroll down my rom list and there it is. I give it a test play, and I mean a real test play, not 30 seconds of apathetic-ness, and decide if I like it. If I do then it's the game of the day and I spend the rest of the evening on the stool hunched over in front of it.

Do I pretend I'm playing the real thing? No. I don't know what a real PHOENIX machined played like, I only have what I have. And it is a lot of fun. I don't live in the past. To me PHOENIX is a brand new game and the MAME cab is the way that I first played it so I will become emotionally attached to it.

You know, I really like Defender. It was one of the first games I played on my cab, before I even made the new control panel. I was playing it with Mortal Kombat controls. I was just standing there playing it during the daytime with the lights turned off and the blinds dawn, and had been playing the game for several hours (usually lasting less than 5 minutes per game) when I finally died and just stood there (I didn't have stools yet) and stared at the attract sequence. It hit me. I'm playing an arcade game in my living room. I had completely forgotten the fact that it was a MK cab or I was running MAME. The old game had absorbed me.

I recently played a real dedicated Defender cab. I hated it. The controls were horrendous to me. I didn't like the lines of the cab and the speakers gave completely different sound. I especially didn't like paying to play it. I guess I was really spoiled about that!

My point is that MAME has an allure all to it's own. We play on PC monitors a lot, in cabs with controls sometimes radically different from the original and are often custom made. There are many of us out there that don't worry about authenticity and try to get what fun out of the games we can while trying to save a buck or two. And after playing MAME for a while you become used to it and the idea of an emulator just fades into the background while you enjoy the game the same way the PCB guys do. Our gaming experience may be different, but it's no less valid.

Would I buy PCB's now after becoming attached to so many games? Nope, unless it was a game that wasn't emulated very well that I felt like I really wanted to play, and even then I'd probably settle for a console version. And if there is no console version? Well then, I guess I won't be playing that game anytime soon.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Just please know my arcade gamer brethren, that there are many people out there who enjoy MAME, the MAME experience, and the potential it holds. Don't look down on us.
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by cools »

You're lucky then :)

In essence, correct me if I'm wrong - you play a ton of different games regularly. I've found that way to be unfulfilling. No hate for anyone that plays that way, I've just discovered that my own enjoyment stems from dedicating time to single games. I've played 60-70 hours of Raiden DX and I still can't come close to finishing training mode. Probably close to a hundred hours of NewZealand story and I'm only now making it onto world 5.

The financial and selection limitation suits me far more than play on an emulator does.

(Can't stand Defender myself, and have even more hate for the original controls, but objecting to pay to play? :cry: )
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by megaultrasuper »

cools wrote:You're lucky then :)
(Can't stand Defender myself, and have even more hate for the original controls, but objecting to pay to play? :cry: )
Well, I guess it feels kinda weird to pay to play a game I can just go home and play for free. And when I'm out of money I'm not used to not being able to play anymore! I just kind of stand there and stare dumbly at the screen as the counter goes down. The same goes for when I try to hit the pause button. :lol:

As far as playing a lot of different games all the time, I don't really do that. I was conservative on my 500 hours mark. I just know that's what advancemenu told me a while back. That doesn't count the times I've reset the counter or played different emulators. I've probably put 20 or more hours into a few dozen games or so since I've had the cab. I'll usually spend a week alternating between a 3 or so titles with my roommates and friends.

Now 70 hours or more of one game? Only a handful.

Super Street fighter 2 Turbo
Ghosts n' Goblins
Galaga
Do Don Pachi (by my roommate)
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
1944
19xx

Can't stand Defender? Neither can I! That's why I love it. Most **** game of all time!
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Re: Why buy a board when you can mame??

Post by pubjoe »

I've been thinking about this lately, since I've been buying a few PCBs for the first time in ages. For me, the answer is very simple at this moment.

Time is a greater obstacle than money.

I don't have lots of money, but regardless, time is always far more precious. 5000 free games have no appeal without 50,000 hours to play them. I might as well buy the few games I'm actually going to play, and they won't lose 80% value in 3 months like console games do either. Don't get me wrong, I love mame, and in a cab today, it's better than ever. But **** it. I can't be arsed with it at the moment, and it certainly won't save me time.

In future I plan to buy or trade for the odd PCB every month or three, this way an arcade cabinet is like the best console ever. I hope I stick to that though.*
* As I change my mind on this all the time. :palm: