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Emulators
The key piece of software in this project is the emulator, that is the program that perform the functions of the hardware in the original games machine.
MAME
The most famous is MAME a.k.a. Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (www.mame.net) capable of emulating thousands of arcade games from classics like Space Invaders and Pacman to more recent arcade gems such as Metal Slug and Evolution Soccer.
The main purpose of MAME is to document and preserve the games and is not a commercial venture so there are no games (well maybe one or two) as such on the site. The games need to be obtained separately as ROM files, these are copies of the data on the ROM chips on the original arcade board and saved as a ROM set. To make things more complicated the ROM sets need to be compatible with the version of MAME being used due to the MAME software and emulation being continuously improved. There is a very large community of MAME users who can help with getting MAME working.
We are running the Windows command line version of MAME (mame.exe) so that the Windows user interface is not required. As running each game by typing in commands is unsatisfactory another program called a front-end is required. We use MAMEWAH (see below) as it can be operated directly from the arcade controls without access to a computer keyboard.
Other emulators
DAPHNE
This emulation program runs laserdisc games such as Dragons Lair and Cliffhanger (www.daphne-emu.com). This in addition to the ROMS requires MPEG copies of the laserdisc images to run and is capable of being operated from the MAMEWAH front-end.
Front-end
MAMEWAH
The front-end is the graphical interface that selects and loads the various games as well as ensuring loading the correct emulator preferences. There are several front-ends available including MAME32 which combines MAME with a windows front-end. However we chose MAMEWAH (http://mamewah.mameworld.net/) as it can be operated using the arcade controls and hides the Windows operating system completely.
It also has advanced games list filtering options, operates a number of emulators, displays game screenshots and plays random MP3 files. At the time of writing MAMEWAH supports the current version of MAME and can be displayed at arcade resolutions as well as normal windows resolutions.
Other Utilities
The Arcade VGA card from Ultimarc is capable of generating most arcade resolutions on an arcade monitor or RGB input capable television. However the card needs to be told what resolution is most suitable for which game. The AVRES program included with the card extracts the games lists from the MAME program and compares this with the available card resolution and sets up MAME (through the MAME\INI\ files) to set the best arcade resolution.
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