The problem with MAME is it exists in a timelag; what's playable in MAME today is at least ten years old. There are lots of cool games that we won't see working in MAME for years and years. However lots of these arcade games get ported to consoles instead! So in the theme of the high score competitions I'm suggesting we compete for high scores on some arcade game console ports. Since most of these arn't on PC we'll have to largely rely on the honor system for scores though.
For the first game I'd like to suggest Outrun 2 SP, which is available on four platforms in Outrun 2006. PC, PS2, Xbox1, PSP. Not to mention it's playable as backwards compatability on PS3 and Xbox 360. It seems like a game that many people can have access too. I'd have included Outrun Online Arcade but there appear to be some scoring differences. Running Outrun 2006 agianst Outrun Online Arcade, I found that in Arcade passing a car gave 1500pts while hitting the car as you passed it ave 750. In Outrun 2 SP in Outrun 2006, single passes give 750 and hitting them gives 325. I was not able to change this score value in either game by altering the difficulty. If anyone wants to use the PC port, keep in mind that the games internal speed is tied to the framerate which is tied to teh screens refresh rate. Basically, you have to have a refresh rate of 60hz, if you run at 85hz the entire game will run 47% faster. This would make the game a lot harder obviously.
So who likes this idea?
Oh and before you ask, Outrun 2 on Xbox1 has a WILDLY different score system that gives total high scores about twice as high as Outrun 2 SP on any platform. :X