Disappointing

[jcrouse]

Reviewers,
     I am not trying to be negative here at all. I realize you put a lot of effort into these evaluations and I respect that. That being said, I have tried a few of the games that got great reviews here, Airstrike, Jets & Guns, Platypus and BreakQuest. I must say I was EXTREMELY disappointed in how well they work in a cabinet. The game play, after launching a game and the graphics were AWESOME, however that could be said about any modern computer game, really. Most of them, FarCry, Half-Life, Sports Sims and what not almost all have configurable controls. The problem with the recommended games I tried was just like any other game, menu navigation. It's a shame that some of these games can't be more cabinet friendly and simpler. An opening screen is OK if it provides the user with options like Start, Options and Exit. However, to be cabinet friendly, IMHO, they need to start with the 1 or 2 key and exit with the ESC key. I do have a trackball on my upright but was really hoping after reading a couple of the reviews that the experience would be a little better. For my own use I don't mind but I want things to be as simple as possible for guests that may have no computer experience what-so-ever.

John

[captainpotato]

I haven't tried "Turbo Sliders" (the game I reviewed) on a cabinet, but it should work well. Mind you, unless it's networked, there won't be much point

A room full of cabinets with that game on would be fun One day perhaps.

[SirPoonga]

That's true, but it will be really hard to find a windows based game that doesn;t require the mouse for navigation.

BTW, Turbo Sliders is all keyboard for the most part.  Can't even use a gameport to control the cars.  Which means this game is actually BETTER on a cabinet than a normal user computer because most cabinets use a keyboard encoder, no ghosting when playing multiplayer on same machine!  I've ran into this with two players already on my home pc.

[Howard_Casto]

I've got to agree with the original poster.  If it don't work on a cab then there isn't any point in even reviewing it.  I havn't visited this forum in quite a while, but I'm in the process of "correcting" all of these reviews and takign off points for lack of compatability. 

A good example is typing of the dead.  I added a comment giving it a new score of 0/5.  I mean it's a typing tutor, you can't play it on a mame cab period! 

People in the future please THINK before you review a game.   And for the record you should NOT post a review until you have tested it on a mame cabinet and tested the remapping of the controls.  Any menu issues or hardcoded key problems should be noted and taken into evalution on the final score. 

And example could be made of guilty gear XX # reload.  I'll bet the orignal posters didn't even know about the remapping issues.  Also if you run the game at 60 fps on a tv, it crashes! 

A good example of a game ready for reviewing is lego star wars.  Every single button can be remapped, only digital controls are required, and all menus are navigated via the gameplay keys, so the remapping is actually useful. 

A bad example of  games that shouldn't even be reviewed, with the utmost respect for tiger and his opinions, are virtually everything he decided to review.  Nearly all of them have hard-coded menus and and/or menus that require the mouse and not only does he not take off major points for these issues (afterall, the game can be great, but if you can't play it on your machine, it's crap to you) but sometimes he doesn't even mention them!

Again, the review of the game itself isn't what I'm objecting to, it's just that at the least, mame cab compatability should be 2.5 out of the 5 points scale, and games that aren't playable at all on a cab shouldn't even be reviewed. 

Afterall, the point of this forum is to guide people with mame cabs towards pc games that are not only fun, but actually playable on their mame cabs.


Sorry to vent, it's just that I was excited when this forum first started, and I'm seeing it die mainly because it doesn't stick to it's own goals.