The PC won’t
be with me until November – So that’s out as a starting point.
The Monitor
is arriving Friday, so that’s out, for now.
Can’t order
the Joystick and Encoder until the 15th, and then have to wait for
delivery. Out.
Without any
of these I can’t start building the cabinet. That’s out too.
So what can
I do?
I can start
selecting my games.
I got
myself a pack of roms, there are approximately 9000 files in the pack.
Granted not
every file is a game, there are Bios files and other technical stuff, but
mostly its games.
What I’ve
done in the past with emulators, what I think most people do, is go through and
pick out the games I get most nostalgic about and play those. Ah Space Harrier, the memories...
But, going
back to how this all started, I wanted to find the games I hadn't played yet, I
wanted to discover new-retro experiences.
So I did
what anyone would do in the circumstances, I Googled it.
‘MAME
Hidden Gems’… ‘Obscure MAME’… that kind of thing… you know what I found? The
same 9 or 10 games repeated over and over – Apparently everyone should play ‘Juno
First’ (You really should actually).
So I did what
anyone would do in the circumstances, I started playing the games. All of them.
I’m still
deciding where to go here – I might run another blog parallel to this one – The
Hidden Gems of MAME – something like that, or I might just include them in
here. But anyway, for now…
I've installed MAME onto the laptop I use for everything. I don’t actually have it
set up like a laptop, it’s stashed behind a unit in my games room, plugged into
the TV, and accessed usually through one of my tablets – I really need a Bluetooth
mouse and keyboard but never quite get around to buying them.
After
firing up M.A.M.E. through the mGalaxy front end on the laptop I then use the excellent ES FileExplorer app on my Nexus 7 tablet to bring up the contents of my M.A.M.E. rom
folder through my home network.
I use mGalaxy because it lists the games as the file names, this makes finding them on the tablet a lot easier.
And then I
go at them, select a game, if it doesn't work at all I delete the file using
the app right away, if it does work I’ll play it for a while (I try to do at least one ‘level’ of
each) and then decide if it’s a keeper or not.
Additionally,
and this is what inspired this blog really, I've been noting down the games
that take me by surprise.
Sometimes
these games have a great core idea that makes them stand out, others are
interesting takes on established genres, but generally these are the games that I've never heard of before, the games that make me feel guilty for having not
played previously. These are the games where quality, originality, creativity, and
challenge are more important than big name franchises or gimmick controls.
Basically, these are
the games that inspired this project.
So, going
through alphabetically I've just reached the ‘Ns’.
I've deleted anything that that didn't work, or was just
plain terrible. There have been over 3000 of these.
Getting on
for a thousand have made the cuts so far. Many of those are well known greats; 1942, Double
Dragon, Marvel vs Capcom, etc.
Quite a few aren't though. More than I expected are those special games I keep on about,
and despite having to trawl through seemingly endless Donkey Kong Clones and dozens
of practically identical, untranslated Mahjong games (Why do they all have you
play against schoolgirls?) these hidden gems are keeping me hugely excited
about building my own cabinet.
So I happily to suffer the pain of Gals Panic - because it turns
out Hyper Duel is just a letter away…
One word: Hyperspin.
ReplyDeleteIf you download and start configuring it tonight, you might just have it cracked by the time your PC turns up in November. It's one of the best front ends I've seen for MAME cabinets and has a massive following in the "Homecade" scene (which I may have just invented).
But if I set all that up now is it transferable to the new PC?
DeleteAs long as you're not switching between 32 and 64bit, it should just be a cut and paste.
ReplyDelete