Hi and misc. thoughts and ?'s

[aj6500]

Hola, I've been lurking a while and posted a few.  I thought now would be a good time to ask a few general ?'s and whatnot.  This may seem a little disjointed.  It's 4:30 am and I have been relaxing w/coors sinc I got off work a couple hours ago.  So ignore the drivel.

1. I don't have a mame cab, I don't even have mame loaded on my laptop.  I should probably appolgize for that now.

2. I do have a jukebox I built, which is why I only have a laptop.  The wife was not exactly pleased to find I had not used my old P2 for my juke and the athalon was locked into a full size cabinet.  Everyone thinks the juke is cool(and loud), so I'm ok w/it.  I'll buy a new pc once the new house is done.

3.  I have new house going up in the next few weeks (hopefully, what a painfull process that has been.  I'll take kidney stones before I build another house) with about a 1900 sf basement.  Why is this important?  Because the basement will hold 1.  my new office, 2.  my home theatre room, 3. small storage, and most importantly, my new bar room which I've been jonesing for since I sold the last house and it's huuuuuge bar.  the bar will take about 2/3 fo the space.  The bar will be a full wet bar with a pool table, foosball, jukebox, and some full size games.   I want a couple newer ones or mames, a YDKJ mini on the bartop, and a couple classics, and dragons lair.  Must have dragons lair.

4.  I have a brand new clothes dryer in my living room, fully wrapped.  Not really relevant but I think it's funny.  That house can't get built fast enough.

5.  I found this site and mame in general just trying to find a cabinet to build  house of the dead 2 game in.   I thought I was being fairly unique in building my own cab.  i found out I was wrong.   I dearly want an arcade shooter.  Any good arcade shooter is at the top of my list.  My local arcade has a sweeet shooter that picks up your body movements to allow you to duck, peek around corners...  It's great you can stay protected, peek through a crack in a door and shoot the bad guys.  This kicks serious --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules--.  After you die it shows reaction time and about 5 other stats like bravery intelligence...  I love this game.  My knees don't (being good at sports in high school sure starts to hurt once you hit 26).  It really picks up every movement, very very impressive.

6.  So I want to build a shooter using a dreamcast, as well as a soul calibre, also using a dreamcast.  I had no idea all the original games could be played on the pc.  I still plan on the dreamcast cabs, but I might put both into one cab, if I can find one I don't want to restore.

7.  I finally bought my first cab (see got Gorf, now what) for postings on it.  My wife is going to shoot me if I put this in the living room next to the drier.  I think it should hide in the garage until the move, she never goes in there.  She knows my plans, but our house is getting kind of full.

So, howdy.  That's my plans in a nutshell.  I do have a few general ?'s.  I don't mean for them to be rude to mame lovers, but i have no experience with mame, so I'm only asking for info.

1.  Why is mame so slow?
I remember a few years ago when microsoft released it's first arcade classics bundle.  It had dig-dug, pole position and a few others.  I thought, boy pole position is old, and the machine it played on had to have all the computing power of a pocket calculator.  It will easily play on my pentium whatever I had at the time.  So i loaded it and it was completely un-playable.  And i mean completely.  So now we have increadibly fast computers that can play 3d games at super high resolutions, but I've read they can't play games like cruz'n USA.  It still seems to me the PC's shoud be more than powerful enough.  What is the limitation?

2.  What's the deal w/golden tee?  
It's a golf game, but seems to be really popular.  Am I missing something that makes it a standout at arcades?

3.  How do you determine a game/cab's value?  As I said I bought a Gorf cab for $25.  I haven't picked it up yet, so I don't know if there is anything other than the cab.  Did I get a good deal?  If I restore it to fully working, what would the value be?  I've seen games go on ebay for $1000+, but see auctions listing them for a couple hundred.

4.  How popular was Gorf?  I think it and Tempest were getting to be a little obscure about the time I started hitting the arcades, so I don't know if I've ever played either.  I vaguely remember playing a cockpit version of Sinistar and doing very badly on it.  The cab I bought looks to be in about perfect condition, so I think I'm going to keep it gorf and try to find a couple jamma cabs for the others.

5.  Are there ever auctions around the denver Colorado area?  I'd love to pick up a few games cheap.  I don't really care about which ones as long as they work.  I've been having trouble find any cabs or games for sale around here.  I'm not actually in Denver, but I'll drive the 100 miles for a good deal.

That's about all I can think of in my present state, so thanks for any info/thoughts you can supply.

[paigeoliver]

I saw AT LEAST $80-$100 in parts alone on that Gorf cabinet. The control panel, marquee, coin door, and monitor glass/bezel alone would bring that much in on ebay.

The speed of MAME is differnet for each game, and a lot of it is related to your computer. If you have 30 system tray programs, and have all the processor heavy options enabled on MAME, then it is going to run terribly.

Now what the PROBLEM is, is that MAME isn't just running the GAME, it is running the HARDWARE that the original game ran on (and the GAME runs on top of that). Cruisin USA emulates terribly slow, but had it been written for PC in the first place it would probably run fine on a Pentium 100 or so.