consoles to act look like arcade games?

[Shieldwolf]

Has anyone made an emulator or program that makes console emulators act more like arcade games? Instead of press start it says insert coin. Just wondering.

[Dave_K.]

Has anyone made an emulator or program that makes console emulators act more like arcade games? Instead of press start it says insert coin. Just wondering.

Ummm, I think what you are looking for (at least for the Dreamcast) would be called the MGCD.  Its a piece of hardware (not an emulator or software) that makes the Deamcast play a select number of games (mostly Naomi ports) with "Insert Coin" type msgs.  Here is an example on ebay right now.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3246808453&category=13718

Personally they are not worth it (unless you are one sick dude who wants to charge friends to play).  Do a search on "mgcd" and you will probably find lots of discussion theads on this.

[hooded_paladin]

Has anyone made an emulator or program that makes console emulators act more like arcade games? Instead of press start it says insert coin. Just wondering.

a quick edit (if you have the source code and the skills) of an emulator would make it so you have to insert a coin before each press of start ...
but yeah other than those weird Dreamcast things, you aren't gonna get anything realistic, because people can't actually change the game ROMs.

[eightbit]

Has anyone made an emulator or program that makes console emulators act more like arcade games? Instead of press start it says insert coin. Just wondering.

You could configure it so that the start button was the quarter switch. I don't know why you would though, most console games don't lend themselves to being pay per play very well.

[Howard_Casto]

Well that wouldn't make it any more realistic because then you wouldn't have to press start.  The poster is talking about adding real coin input and having the games detect coins, show an insert coin message, ect....

Long story short with the exception of the dreamcast games above this isn't gonna happen.  As the others have said, this would require altering the internal code of the game rom, which I don't think anyone is willing to do just for a puny insert coin message.

In order for a front-end to do it it would have to grab frames and super empose an insert coin message at 30+ fps full screen.  This is hard enough, but then it would have to be rigged to figure out when your game is over, when it's time to continue, ect... So really I see no way this could be done without some interaction with the rom, and as I said, ain't gonna happen.  

[Shieldwolf]

Excatly Howard
Thanks for the help.

[shmokes]

You might be able to do something along the lines of a play choice where quarters unlocked the emulator, maybe even for a given period of time, if your aim were actually to try to make money off it, but your games would still say "press start" etc.

[Shieldwolf]

I'm not trying to really charge for it. I just thought it would look kind of cool.

[null]

a quick edit (if you have the source code and the skills) of an emulator would make it so you have to insert a coin before each press of start ...
but yeah other than those weird Dreamcast things, you aren't gonna get anything realistic, because people can't actually change the game ROMs.

You can actually bust open a dreamcast cd image and play with the files, there are also plug-ins for photoshop to edit dreamcast images. Maybe I'll dust off my dreamcast isos and give it a shot...

[Shieldwolf]

that would be sweet