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Overwhelmed is putting it mildly

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pinballdude:
OK. Thank you so very much for great discussion. I am a person who appreciates the history of these games and how things like the acquision of the roms work.
So if I have x amount of Nintendo games, can I ask where to get those roms?  And "somewhere" I have an old Atari 5200 as well as 2600.
By the way, I appreciate that the forum asks that things be kept legal. OK by me. I just asked the wrong question.
You gave me the WHY of things. The statement about FE tells me something I did not consider...that the video for the FE was just an ad for it.
I'm supposed to ask questions, right?  How else to learn?
Hope everyone has a great weekend!!
Terry

Nephasth:
If you really want follow the straight and narrow, when it comes to NES games you can buy a CopyNES from retrousb.com and copy the rom files off your NES carts... But people usually find what they're looking for, so...

Gatt:

--- Quote from: pinballdude on January 21, 2012, 02:58:44 pm ---About rule #5...Not to start a flame war but, when I look at a demo video of Hyperspin and it shows all those gaming systems running  all those games...can that in any way not be illegal? Aren't frontends promoting (in a roundabout way) using illegal roms? Whe I said everybody is doing it, I meant all those Craigslist ads for 60+ games in one cabinet for $700. Heck I saw an ebay listing for a 4 player video game for upwards of $5000 with 35,000 (yes, thousand) games.
I'll admit I am new at this and didn't read before posting. But I am just trying to get an education.
By the way, I know a coin op operator where I can prob get a cheap cabinet. I'm not too good with tools.
Terry

--- End quote ---

It's not in the companies best interests to fuss at the existing niche market,  so long as the niche market remains user-unfriendly enough so that the average joe isn't able to get it all together.

You see,  alot of those same companies will use MAME in order to create all of those rereleases you see.  Either they'll use it as a reference to get their program working,  or they'll just use what they need out of it.

In fact,  in honesty,  you can see that Micosoft Arcade was influenced by the emulation communities efforts.  So it's really a win-win all around,  they ignore the emulation community (mostly),  and the emulation community ignores them if they borrow code or ideas.

Plus,  honestly,  they're just as big geeks as any of us here.  IIRC,  there's even a MAME cabinet in Blizzard's offices,  though I think it's permanently turned off because they thought it would send the wrong message.

leapinlew:
The main questions you want to ask yourself is:

What types of games do I want to play?
This is the most important question. You'll notice lots of guys building different types of machines with different controls and monitor orientations. If you check my signature, you'll see some of my machines. You might be asking yourself "but if I am using MAME, can't I build 1 machine to play everything?" the answer is yes, if you are willing to make sacrifices. The answer to "what types of games do I want to play" for me was 3 different types of games. Machines looking mostly original was also important.

I have a Donkey Kong cabinet. It's monitor is setup vertically (on it's side) and it has a 4 way physical restricted joystick with 1 button. This accurately plays about 30 games. This cabinet is my favorite as it plays all the classic 80's games I love. It looks exactly like a Donkey Kong machine with a 19" arcade monitor. The joystick is important to consider, but I really don't know any way to tell you which joystick is the right one for you. What I did was took my favorite joystick and use it for all my 4 way games. This plays Ms. Pacman, Frogger, Galaga, Dig Dug, etc.

I have a mortal kombat II cabinet that has two 8 way joysticks and a 25" arcade monitor setup in a horizontal fashion. It plays hundreds of games, but the main ones are Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Ghosts'n'Goblins, etc.

The 3rd cabinet is a spinner cabinet that plays tempest and a few others.

You'll notice some people put all these controls on 1 cabinet. Called a frankenpanel. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but you'll need to decide how you want to build. If you put all your controls on 1 cabinet, some people think that it's not as nice looking or functional. If you want multiple machines, it takes up more space, costs more, and requires more maintenance.

How much do you want to spend
Plan carefully, put together a budget, and plan on exceeding it. It's usually cheaper to convert than build. Also consider the cost of any tools you may need.

Build or convert?
You can build a machine from scratch, or you can take an old machine and convert it. Converting is a great way to get started. Find an old arcade game for free or cheap. Put in a monitor, controls, and configure MAME. You'll have a working machine very quickly, but more importantly, you will have gained the skills to decide if you want to build another one and will most likely learned a few lessons.

What controls to use?
Everyone here has walked this path. You will too. If you know you only want to play a few different games, find out what controls they originally used and that will most likely be the feel/look you're looking for. Try out plenty any controls before committing them to a control panel. I used to have no preference on controls, and now because I've built my own arcades, I'm very specific.

Get Saints book
The guy who runs this forum: http://www.amazon.com/Project-Arcade-Build-Your-Machine/dp/047089153X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327237502&sr=1-1

Good luck

Crazy Cooter:

--- Quote from: pinballdude on January 21, 2012, 11:33:27 pm ---So if I have x amount of Nintendo games, can I ask where to get those roms?  And "somewhere" I have an old Atari 5200 as well as 2600.

--- End quote ---
No.  There should not be ANY discussion publicly or privately on where to obtain rom images.  This has been made clear over the years by the site owner.  The only exception are the ROM's available through the mame devs because they have exclusive distribution rights by the owners.  Those are available on the mamedev website.

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