MAME video arcade center?

[matthew13l]

Just an idea I was throwing around in my head.... But what would be the feasibility of setting up a MAME video arcade center? Obviously the ideal situation would be to have a hundred different classic arcade cabinets, but that's not always the easiest option. You could have some classics that just can't be reproduced with a MAME setup, and some pinball machines, but then have several MAME cabinets to emulate everything else.

The other benefit is that the developers get to make money of licensing you the right to use the ROM's.... However I doubt they would ever do this, even if they could make money off the royalties.

What do you guys think? I wish somebody would open a huge arcade on the west coast. Arcades have been gone for too long and need to make a comeback, in my opinion.

[CheffoJeffo]

First -- welcome!

Licensing is a much bigger issue than you may think and the MAMEDevs have already said no to commercial use for MAME.

On the topic of licensing, you may be interested in the following:

Licensing the classics is a labor of love.  I spent over a decade doing it, and paid millions of dollars in royalties and licensing fees.  The biggest problem is that the big Japanese companies feel their IP is worth much more than the reality.  As an example, I had to pay a deposit of $150,000 just for the Street Fighter Family to Capcom, and $75,000 to Taito for a small subset of games.  Not only do you have to pay enormous up front deposits, they also want crazy per copy fees.  Our best deals were $1.00 per game, but that adds up very quickly on a machine that ships with 86 titles on it.  We had been making some progress but then Global VR screwed up every relationship when they acquired UltraCade.  The dream of a sub $100 "all in" pack is not a reality, nor will it be for some time.  When I was putting together iROMs, I had several deals in place that would only cost $0.10 per ROM, but it required a deposit of $500,000 and a guarantee of $2M in revenues which didn't seem achievable. 

Hopefully, the publishers will realize that there is money to be made with reasonable online distribution pricing.  It took the record industry 20 years to realize this model would work, and companies like Apple investing millions to push it through.  Had we continued with UltraCade, we may have been able to make more progress on this front, but the UltraCade product line was abandoned by Global VR.

There are still enough original cabs out there that it may be more cost-effective to restore and maintain them.

[matthew13l]

Thanks for the information! Now that brings me to another topic... I am 21 years old, so I missed practically the entire arcade era. When I was young and went to arcades (usually the local nickel arcade), the popular ones were games like X-Men, Simpsons, Cruisin USA (a new hot game at the time) and Area 51. My understanding is that the rise of video game consoles in the 90's killed off the arcade industry. And since I wasn't around for the whole arcade era, I don't exactly understand why it died off. I mean, didn't you guys go to arcades partially because of the experience? The ambiance, the people, the food, etc? I loved going to the arcade and playing 6-player X-Men with five complete strangers. Or teaming up with someone at Area 51 or some other co-op shooter. I'm actually a very introverted person, but when it came to arcades, it was the more people the better.

[RayB]

Developers don't own the IP, the Manufacturers do (they are the equivalent of "publishers" in the console world).

We went to arcades to play games you couldn't play anywhere else. Arcade games always had the latest tech, best graphics, best sound.

Arcade Centipede, 1980:


Atari 2600 Centipede, 1982:

(TWO years after the arcade and it looks like crap!)

Now, a home PC game is a million times more advanced than an arcade game. There's no point in hauling your ass out to a place with inferior games. The only exception is big "motion rides" and controls you can't easily duplicate for home use, but heck, now even a Wii controller is more advanced than what you'd get in an arcade.

This is just progress. Arcades, GM...