MAME Hidden Gems - S is for...

A quick run down of the nearly men before I get into the top 3 for 'S'...

Space Fury is a vector shooter in the asteroids style. It has a cool powerup system and looks great, but not only was it released as an unlockable on one Sega's myriad collections, but it also stops calculating the score after level 4, which annoyed me.
Suprise Attack is a game in the style of Rolling Thunder but set in space. Again it has some pretty neat power-ups but doesn't really do enough to stand out in the glut of this type of game.
Super Cross II is a very simplistic isometric motocross game, a little too simplistic to make the cut unfortunately. But it does offer a fun few minutes diversion and the sprites are impressive considering it's age.
Finally, Shock Troopers - 2nd Squad is another game that has seen fairly recent re-release. This evolution of the Commando/Ikari Warriors style shooter is definitely worth a look if you're unfamiliar.


Now, if you're anything like me you'll look at the screenshot below and think:
"That looks like a rather smart late 80's racer, got to be worth a look!"

This game is called Slipstream, just 150 prototypes were made by Capcom and it never entered full production.

According to the very helpful Arcade-History.com this makes it one of the rarest arcade machines of all time.

It's fast, fun, features three game modes and a neat boost gimmick based around staying in an opponents Slipstream. So what went wrong?

It was 1995.

To put it in perspective, that's a year after Sega Rally came out, 2 years after both Ridge Racer and Daytona USA first saw the light of day.

On the day it rolled off the production line, Slipstream was already old-hat. The spite scaling graphics rendering it an impossible sell to a market into which Sega and Namco were unleashing some of the most exhilarating driving experiences the arcades have ever seen.

However, playing the game now, unhindered by juxtaposition to such behemoths, its four brilliantly realised tracks, 9 cars, and OTT boost mechanic make for a game that has aged very well and is a joy to play.

When I played The Super Spy I didn't make it as far as this boss...

So I can't tell you if it's supposed to be a woman or a guy in drag, although looking at the size of those hands...

The Super Spy is an example of a lifeline that has helped me out of a spot with these entries more times than I can remember - A Neo Geo game.

There always seems to be something a bit mental about games on SNK's wildly expensive hardware, and that makes them a perfect fit for this blog.

This particular effort could lazily be described as Operation Wolf with fewer guns, but it reminded me most of the Aliens game released for ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, and the like back in 1987.

As with Aliens, you control the movement from the first person perspective and move predominantly sideways, only occasionally being able to move 'forwards' through doors.

However, in Super Spy, you eventually come to a lift and entering it takes you, literally, to the next level. 

Each floor is crammed with an array of bad guys for you to despatch in a variety of ways.

You start with a pretty effective knife, however the power of this weapon reduces with each use.

You can also pick up a pistol that will despatch most enemies in one or two shots, but uses ammo very quickly. 

At some points a rescued hostage will even give you an insanely powerful but limited use machine gun.

The initial weapons, though, are you hands and feet. And this is what earns The Super Spy a place on this list.

The game features an incredibly in depth combat system that almost seems out of place alongside some of the other, somewhat rudimentary, elements.

It allows you to bob, weave, throw jabs, hooks, uppercuts, straight kicks, and knee bombs. It even has a timing based block mechanic.

It may not sound like much when described here, but when you take the time to fully understand the minutiae of the system it becomes immensely satisfying.

Luckily for me, following its arcade release Sōkyūgurentai made its way to some of the 6th generation consoles, but never outside Japan. 

Sometimes it feels churlish to be grateful that so few people have played these games - particularly when they s wonderful as this... but I'll get over it.

Often described as a spiritual successor to Rayforce, Sōkyūgurentai is a sprite based v-shmup that features a version of the lock-on mechanic that is synonymous with that series.

Considering the lack of true 3D the game has an incredible sense of depth. 

It's in view of this that the lock-on targeting system on each of the 3 available spacecraft is cone-shaped, each slight variation capturing all enemies that pass through it no matter their location on the pseudo 3D plane.

In the vein of the very best V-shmups, of which this definitely an example, the game features some deeply beautiful set pieces and some incredible boss battles.

During the latter, the unusual 4:3 display zooms far away from the action, just so that you can see the enormity of the foe you are trying to take down.

I understand if you're a bit burnt-out on schmups but this one is definitely worth your time. 

Moreover, if you prefer your shooters to be more about the shooting than avoiding a million brightly coloured bullets - then you won't be disappointed here.

MAME Hidden Gems - R is for...

I had very high hopes for R – Looking down my list of candidates I made way back when I played through the MAME catalogue there was a good haul noted here.

A little research has decimated the field though.

I probably should have realised that Ray Force was the first in the popular series that went on to include Ray Storm and Ray Tracers, and re-releases on the Playstation and Xbox (among others) meant I had to eliminate the excellent top-down open world car shooter Rush and Crash (AKA Speed Rumbler) and Rohga Armor Force (AKA Wolf Fang: Kuhga) in which you assemble your own mech before piloting it into H-Shmup action.

All of these games are more than worth a play, but my self imposed selection criteria means that I’ve had to pick others from my list for this entry.

The second and third choices were easy, and probably would have been selected anyway, but up first is Rabbit, a fighting game that I have to recommend with a rather large caveat – The rom is broken.

The main fault is that there is no sound, but there are other issues too, most notably that sprites occasionally blink momentarily into invisibility.

Another point of note is that it just barely squeaks past my criteria – it is a game with a release on console, namely Sega’s much maligned Saturn. However, as it was a Japan only title, and one that happened very close to the launch of the machine, I’ll allow it. On the plus side, this means that if you fall in love with it on MAME you have the option of tracking down a fully functional version.

In it’s favour though, on MAME Rabbit retains a recognisable but innovative fight system and beautiful character art.

Each of the ten highly original combatants come with a 'familiar', a spirit beast that can be summoned and used in combat.
The great thing about this mechanic is that it has both positive and negative effects – A heavy beast might increase the power of your attacks, for example, but it will also slow you down and shorten your jumps.
It adds a dimension I've not before in the genre and, while it may lack the fireworks of others of the era, it has enough going for it to recommend a play to fans of 2D fighters.

Sega's X arcade hardware was most famous for Yu Suzuki's excellent Afterburner and Power Drift games. But it was also the basis for much lesser known Racing Hero.

If you spot the branching pathed map during the attract mode for the game you would be forgiven for expecting Outrun with motorbikes... and in truth there is an element of that when you start playing, but the USP on this one is the structure of the stages.

Each is broken down into 2 elements: The first is Outrun style, racing through traffic to make a checkpoint before the timer runs out.
Make the checkpoint and you're into the second section. The traffic and scenery disappear and are replaced exclusively by other racing bikes and traditional track markings.

At the end of the two sections you're given the choice of two locations to race next, this is why the map on the scoreboard has that classic Sega look.

I don't know if it was the intention to give the impression that you're running late for a race and the first section involves speeding to make it on time - but that's the feeling I get every time I play this game. It's fast and fun, it looks great and has the full on Arcade feel that only comes with Sega's best efforts.


You won't see too many Tetris style games as I run through the alphabet in this blog, but I could not resist the brilliant Risky Challenge - despite it barely squeaking part my criteria.

The game (under it's original name Gussun Oyoyo) was released on SNES, Saturn, and PlayStation and this could have instantly excluded it from selection - were it not for the fact that none of these releases made it outside Japan.

Using elements that will be familiar to anyone who has played either Tetris or Lemmings, you have to build your little egg shaped guy a bridge to the level's exit using blocks that drop in from the top of the stage.

Challenge is added as the timer runs down and the level fills with water, and also by your guy wandering around aimlessly and doing more to help than hinder as you attempt to save his none existent neck.

I don't generally believe that puzzle games are a good fit for the arcade format, but Risky Challenge is an exception to that in a big way.

Obviously S is up next time, none of you guys have heard of Street Fighter 2, right?

MAME Hidden Gems - P & Q are for...

There are several excuses for why it has taken me so long to get around to writing this blog entry.

I moved house (quite unexpectedly)

As result stopped building my MAME cabinet.

I discovered my new boss has massive hang-ups about people using the internet at work.

I don't have a dedicated games room or even TV in the new house...

There are many sob stories and weak explanations I could offer but, when it comes down to it, on the three previous occasions in the past few months that I’ve tried to write this entry I’ve been stopped by a single unavoidable fact:

It may be where you'll find Pac Man and Power Drift, but the relatively unknown games in P and Q are rubbish.

This all means that you’re going to get just two games today; one for each letter, both of which are really interesting curios rather than fully fledged hidden gems. Both are definitely worth a look though. 

Pachinko Sexy Reaction is quite possibly the first game I ever played on MAME. I’m comfortable listing it as a hidden gem here but it does hold a relatively high profile and certain notoriety in the MAME community.

Pachinko is often described as Japanese pinball, which is nonsense. It’s a ‘game’ with far more in common with those coin waterfall things you find on every pier on the British coast – Pinball requires skill, Pachinko is entirely based on luck.

Rather than coins, Pachinko machines dispense a quantity of ball bearings to the player, who precedes to drop them in the top. From here they drop, hitting pins, bumpers, and scoring points on their way to the bottom. It’s a game as pointless as it is oddly addictive.

In a move that will delight anyone who buys into the spurious stereotype that all Japanese people are sexually repressed weirdos who buy used panties from vending machines during a grope filled commute to work on an overcrowded train… Pachinko Sexy Reaction aims to liven up the core game’s ‘mechanics’ by offering the player some soft-core hentai animation as a reward for achieving certain scores.

Now I can’t be sure if this was originally designed to titillate or amuse, but I can tell you that - through the sheer absurdity more than anything else - these scenes are very, very funny.

They are also surprisingly well drawn and animated.

It’s the comedy factor and surprising production standards that has lead me to recommend PSR here, as a game it is astoundingly limited. It is entirely likely that you will only play it once, spamming the credits button until you have witnessed each of the games bizarre cut-scenes. But playing it once is exactly what everyone (over a certain age) should aim to do with this game.

Quantum is a vector game designed to be played with a trackball – it should be a terrible candidate for MAME.

If you've never seen what vector graphics look like on a dedicated display you’re missing out. The pin-sharp lines and idiosyncratic mapping points are a stunning thing to behold.

When I first saw a Vectrex machine running at the Retroactive event in Leicester last year it went straight to the top of my Christmas list.

Then there’s the trackball. I recently discovered that this method of control is actually one of the cheaper input methods to add to a cabinet – but it should surprise no-one that the vast majority of people use MAME on a PC using an Xbox controller, rather than built into a purpose built cabinet.

So since it doesn’t look or control as it should then why is it here?

Mainly because it still plays great, with the limitations of the 1982 hardware the trackpad controls can be replaced with an eight way stick with very little loss to the fun-factor.

As for the graphics, if you’re playing on a CRT (As you really should for any game released before the turn of the century) they are still sharp and serve the purpose perfectly well.

But more than this, the number one reason for choosing Quantum is probably that it revealed itself to me as the likely inspiration for one of the first smartphone games I played that didn't feel restricted by the input method.

So this is not just a recommendation for Quantum, on MAME, but also a recommendation for Spirit, on Android and iOS (Not to be confused with also-good-but-contextually-irrelevant- Spirits).

Both games have the same central conceit; encircle the items on the screen with your reticule. It's a little like Qix has been set free from the restrictions of the lines.

It’s simple fun to begin with but as the screen gets busier and the types of enemy become more varied in their movements, both games become increasing challenging. Multiplier perks await those who capture multiple icons in a single ‘tail’ but the mechanics remain simple and the gameplay as addictive and any score chaser throughout the game.

Hopefully “R” will be a few days, rather than a few months, away. With the swathes of games I have starting with that initial letter I’m hoping I won’t have to scrabble around for nominations again!

Setting up a boring old cliche...

You wait ages for an update, then two come along at once.

Yeah... Well... Annnnnyway...

Today I had a day off work. I booked this leave a few months ago when the fixtures for the world cup were published, expecting to take a trip up to Bedford, the place I begrudgingly call my hometown, to see some friends and watch England triumphantly qualify for the knock out stages...

Yeah... Well... Annnnnnyway...

So instead I took a trip to the in-laws to finally put some work in on the MAME cabinet!

It took quite a long time to get going at first. With a limited amount of MDF I was worried about cocking up and leaving myself short.

Still, when I cut a couple pieces to size and laid them out to make my base; it finally felt like I was actually getting somewhere.

You'll notice that's some fairly chunky MDF, 20mm to be exact.
I don't have a lot of this, one large piece that I had to cut to make this base, and two other bits that are 15cm wide and about a metre long, so not much use.
You can see at the top of that pic that I've use another piece to prop up the front of the screen to give me the angle I wanted.
There's another piece further back to support the rear - this is necessary because I've decided to leave the top side of the PC cabinet open to help with ventilation.

Building up my pieces one at a time felt a little like Sudoku.
When I had the base and the supports I knew how high the back would need to be, when I knew that, I knew how high the tallest part was, with that information added to angle of the screen I was able to work out how big the front panel would have to be, and so on, and so forth.

Eventually, through this gradual building up of dimensions, I was able draw out the shape of the side panel on one of large pieces of MDF...

Sorry, that's quite hard to see. But hopefully you get the idea.
If you can see it you'll spot that there's a rather steep slope down from the marquee to the lowest point of the back. (Just to the right of the saw blade).

I'm concious that I want to keep this unit as small as possible, but I must admit I don't like the look of this.

So, for now, I'm not cutting that side down at all, later on I'll test out some angles until I find a happy compromise, but for now.

Taking shape nicely, I hope you'll agree?

Next thing was to do that again, three more times... okay... I confess... Five more times.

With all my larger pieces of MDF (by area) also being the smallest (by width) I was always going to have to double up to make the side panels a decent looking thickness.
I had cut one and used it as template for another before I realised I'd forgotten that the sides were going on the outside of the base - and so needed to be 20mm higher at the bottom. So. Bugger.

Luckily I had enough MDF, and so, soon after I had 4 near identical side pieces ready to be screwed and glued together in pairs:

The screws are too long at the moment but they're only there while the glue dries, I was a bit careless with their positioning too so I'll probably fill the holes and move them when the time comes.

And that, to be honest, was as far as I got. 5 Hours work in total, so pretty slow going, but really happy that I finally have a 'thing'!

Setting me up, knocking me back...

My god has it really been five months!?

I know this blog doesn't exactly have an army of loyal followers waiting with baited breath for each new entry - but I still feel guilty for not filling you few fine fellows in the the status of the project.

Apologies for that.

To get to the point, the project has been held up twice since the last update.

The first delay was self imposed as I decided to wait for a component that I hadn't originally planned for, but which would, and indeed still will, make building my cabinet far easier and maybe even improve the quality of the finished product. This delay took me to early March.

The second delay was out of my hands, and is the reason the project hasn't progressed. It occurred exactly a week after the first delay had been resolved.

Not long after getting back to work after the Christmas break I asked my boss if it was okay to use the internet briefly to check my Freegle posts, the conversation naturally lead to what I was looking for and when I said MDF her eyes lit up.

Turns out her finance is a painter/decorator and has had a stack of MDF clogging up her hallway for months, over Christmas they had argued about it and he'd finally agreed to throw it out.

It took a while to sort out picking it up from her, both of us have small cars,  live in different towns, etc, etc... But finally, in early March, we handed over the MDF in the car park at work and, for the price of  very uncomfortable 20 mile drive home, my garage was finally stocked with this:

A week later, that wasn't my garage any more.

We got a phone call from the landlord explaining that she had decided to sell the house and could we please find somewhere else to live ASAP, thanks.

As a result of all this my 23 consoles, 2 TVs, a scary amount of cabling, and basically the entire contents of my games room are in boxes in someone else's loft.

The MAME Cabinet project, all the components, MDF, and everything else, is in my girlfriend's parent's garage.
It isn't entirely inaccessible, but it is incredibly inconvenient, to the extent that I haven't been able to get over there at all to even look at it.

And with that my tale ends. The project is on hold, but definitely not cancelled.

There are upsides for me, if not for the project.

I now live here:

Have a view that looks like this:

And have discovered a love of mountain biking through narrow, unsuitable bridle paths in the nearby woods in my spare time.

As for the MAME Hidden Gems side of things. I think that may be more of a psychological block.
I have my laptop hooked up the TV and could easily be playing and writing these up - but I'm not, even though I probably should.

All of my gaming is currently taking place on a 3DS I bought a couple of months back.

Where I used to get a game of something or other in pretty much every day, since I moved both my 360 (the only console I didn't box and store) and my Steam account have lain dormant.

I put it down to not having a dedicated space, the cottage is beautiful but tiny and very open plan, we also only have one TV now.

Well. I think that about catches us up.
We're only staying in this house temporarily and using the savings we're making on rent to hopefully buy a place early next year.
I hope to get some hardcore time in the in-law's garage long before then though. so hopefully it won't be 5 months before the next update. I certainly aim to get a Hidden GEms post up in the near future.

Thanks everyone for your patience.

Setting the scale...

Some of you may have seen that I posted a couple of early design mock ups for my cabinet on google+ earlier today - cheers to everyone that gave feedback.

I asked you to choose your favourite from these two:

And the overwhelming majority went with A, we have a lot of marquee fans out there!
I understand why too. It's a very evocative design, as reminiscent of arcades as sticky floors, the Space Harrier intro, and an alcoholic tramp scrounging for change in the coin drawers.

But here's the problem:

That's my games room and, assuming I find somewhere to put it in there, design (A) just won't fit the style.

So I went back to the drawing board (or tablet and and sketchup to be precise) and came up with design (C):

And I'm really happy with it. It's kind of a homage to the classic arcade cabinet design with a more compact, personal spin.
I was going to use the marquee on design (A) to house some electronic gubbins and I lose that with this design, but I have enough space up there to fit the sexy power button that +Dave Whiffin is going to send me so that's something at least.

This flurry of design activity came about as a result of finally taking the cover off the monitor and a decision I have had to make as a result:

I will be leaving the plastic surround on the front of the screen.

This has not been an easy choice to make, the difficulties of attaining a quality looking finish will not be easy with a mix of plastic, softwood, and MDF... but every difficulty I have encountered with CRT monitors has come as a result of removing it from structural security of the pre-formed housing.

Off the back of this I've been able to get some decent measurements, and thus the designs I produced today.

It has also enabled me to formally layout my controls to scale:

As much as it tempting to go for the classic arced layout to mimic the shape of ones fingers, this design give greater versatility, as illustrated by using the upper four buttons as right joystick controls. I'll be aligning those four buttons horizontally with the joystick for same reason.
The only other thing to do was position the whole set on the board, which I've done for maximum movement space and I've left lots of hand-rest space at the bottom too.

That's all I have for now, one of these days I'll actually get out in the garage and start building the damn thing.


#MAME #Arcade #Retrogaming

Setting the volume to 11...

So, yesterday my replacement amp turned up, pretty decent delivery time from China, so I set about putting into the system without destroying it... or my PC... or my house.

This, you may remember, is the amp in question:

First up I should thank a guy called +Paul Huinink whose Youtube video helped me to figure out how to wire my head phone jack to the three pin connector.

Having figured the sound input bit out (with Paul's help) and fiddled around with getting the three wires wrapped around the pins whilst simultaneously watching Match of the Day - after that, everything else was pretty simple.

Here's a video (Yeah, video, I'm stepping up my game with this blogging shenanigans!) of the test rig I set up. (You'll need sound, obviously.)

Link to video

Not sure what's with the the PC needing two attempts to fire up - think it might be a safety feature as it's only done it when the case is open.
You can see that I used the PC for power only and took the sound from my Asus Transformer tablet, it was just more convenient for this test and as the amp is wired to a standard 3.5 headphone jack the sound can come from anywhere.

Having proven the concept to myself and managed to not burn the house down I set about installing the thing inside the PC cabinet.

I had a rummage around in my tub-of-random-stuff that lives in the garage and came up with these.

I then pulled the front off the PC which revealed a honeycomb plate, ideal for my purposes.

First thing I did was insulate the back of the pcb in typically lo-tech fashion (gaffer tape) and I also used the cable ties as plastic washers by wrapping one tight around each screw between the PC cabinet and the PCB.
The bolts turned out to be superfluous - the screws I found may have been varying lengths, but they were exactly the right diameter to hold fast to the board without fixing from the other side - which was a bit of result really as it was enough of a fiddly bastard already.

Eventually it looked like this:

You can see the cut cables from my test power source in the foreground. There was a small connector block in my tub-of-random-stuff so I decided to put it to good use.
I also found some sticky back tabs with holes for cable ties so, after a bit of tidying up, it looked like this:

Both the headphone plug and the speaker wires run out through an open pcb slot in the back of the machine.

Unfortunately, I'm getting a bit of interference with this set up. Seems to be when the HDD is getting a bit of a workout. I tried putting the PCB in different locations but it made no difference.

The problem  mainly manifests at start up and shut down, so it's not a biggy - just an annoyance. 

Because of this I may remove the component from the case and reposition elsewhere in the cabinet when it comes to the final build, but for now...

Link to video

I should add that the noise on that video is some idiot rubbing his finger against the microphone, not the interference I mentioned above!

I'm really happy to have all this together and especially to have implemented the sound without the need for an additional power source.

So as far as components are concerned I'm all ready to go, I just need to find the time to get started on the woodwork - and the inclination to get out in the freezing garage to do so.

#mame #arcade #Retrogaming