NFL Blitz

[flyguy1821]

One of my friends bought a "kit cab" that was already assembled, and is having some issues with the speed of play when loading NFL Blitz.  He has Mame 32 running on a Dell 1 Ghz with 256mg ram.  Not sure of the video card specs.  When he tries to load NFL Blitz everything is severely slowed.  There was another post similar to this question but I found the answers inconclusive.  Is this enough info to get a diagnosis?

[JCKnife]

NFL Blitz, among several other games, is not playable emulated on today's hardware.

[flyguy1821]

another question then, why?  Is the game to complex for mame to handle?  Or just the way it is emulated it didn't "capture" the true data.  What other games have this problem

[Scott84]

The game requires a huge amount of CPU power to emulate.

These guys are re-engineering everything and its almost impossible to get some games running to an original pcb.

[Todesengel]

I got the N64 version running up on my emualtor. Works great. but the grass is kinda funky.

[dommer]

another question then, why?  Is the game to complex for mame to handle?  Or just the way it is emulated it didn't "capture" the true data.  What other games have this problem

Mame (or any emulator) attempts to run code that was being executed by dedicated hardware as a software process running on a general purpose processor.  A good rule of thumb is you need 10 times the processing power of the original hardware to insert an emulation layer in there.  This number is a little higher, due to the difference in nature between 3d hardware and a general purpose processor.  Moores law says that processor power for a given pricepoint doubles about every 18 months.  You'd need about 3.5 cycles of Moores Law to get 10x the processing power, which is 3.5*18 = 5 years, 3 months.  Of course, this is a rule of thumb, but it says that we're just about to be able to get some good NFL Blitz love in mame, give it a lil' bit more time, and expect similar delays going forward in other games. 

[Lilwolf]

There is a PC version that is pretty cabinet friendly.

I keep wanted to play it with my 49 way and see if it feels authentic... but I never installed it on my cabinet (don't play blitz all that often) and I don't have the 49 way installed since I switched from a sinister 49 to a happs and have to redo the control panel...

But the PC is pretty pretty.

And to answer your question.  Yes its too fast of a motherboard to emulate on any system.  Even without the 3d portions being emulated (just ignored) it still doesn't run on any PC.

And a decent chance it really wont for MUCH longer then 5 years.  Mainly because all the major processor players are going to multi-core instead of faster core.  And this doesn't help MAME at all.  So you have to wait for a single core to run at 10-15ghz and if multi-cores become popular, this might not happen for a while since there are cheaper ways to get the speed in multi-cores.

[DreamWeb]

The PC version is cabinet friendly??

Oh no way it is not!!

It's a MONSTER to config your controls.  You'll think you understand the logic of configuring the game, but then they'll switch it up on you!

You'll get it eventually... but "friendly" is not a word that can be used when discussing Blitz for your cabinet.

d.

[Lilwolf]

Ok, cabinet doable.

But better then any other option out there.

[SirPoonga]

Actually, it is cabinet friendly, ONCE you setup the controls.  You just need joystick inputs.

When I get my GPWiz49 I will have to reinstall blitz on my cabinet

[Lilwolf]

I'm at work so I can't check...

but I thought one player can be keyboard and one can be joystick.

[SirPoonga]

Yep, i was indicating if you wanted to use 49way joys...

[GGKoul]

Also, FLyguy, Mame is CPU driven.  So there no need for a high end video card to run MAME.

[Scoobie]

When I installed the PC version about 8 months back, all the controls mapped okay...except for the Y for yes.