Death to nerds.. so ended a recent commentary on the state of MAME.
Exaggerated and overblown? Yes. Factual? To a degree, likewise.
Hey, wait a minute, I’m not meant to agree with the article, am I? Why not? We don’t make it any secret that as a team our focus is on accuracy, and that our target audience is not primarily gamers.
The article makes some fair points, but also contains a large number of inaccuracies. Its a piece written from the point of view of a gamer, wanting to use MAME.
An analogy is made on the subject of ‘How MameDev would preserve a butterfly’ Apparently as nerds we would simply stick a pin through its heart and stick it in a glass case. Many it seems don’t want us to preserve a butterfly, they want us to genetically modify the said butterfly, give it super powers, house-train it, even make it do their homework for them. As developers, and historians we don’t want to do this, we want to show the butterfly exactly as it was, detailing every last part of it in immaculate detail. We let it live, we let it fly, we allow others to know exactly what to do to prevent this species of butterfly from becoming extinct. We’re not interested in the super-butterflies. It would be wrong of us to corrupt history for the sake of people who want to have more fun in the present. We’re emulating arcade hardware, not creating the next Marvel Superhero.
The other argument put forward quite often is that the excitement has gone from emulation and that there’s no longer the craving for a new release that existed some time ago like when Defender first became playable. Defender was only made once, as was Pacman, Donkey Kong and all the other classics. We can only emulate them once, we can’t just pick classics that didn’t exist out of the air and emulate them to create that very same buzz again. We’re working with history, history we are taking the responsible for documenting but are incapable of actually changing. It might make the history books more exciting but 16th century battles weren’t won with Nuclear Weapons. Even with that said development has been exciting and continues to both surprise and amaze me.
It must be said that if I look back over the last 20 releases (representing over a years worth of progress and the blood, sweat and tears that go with it) that every single major release has at least one game I’d want to put in an arcade of my own.
0.99:
Osman / Cannon Dancer – The closest Strider had to a true sequel.
Joe & Mac Returns – Classic Data East single screen platform action.
Lethal Enforcers – Konami’s classic gun game, aged badly but now emulated
0.98
X-Men (6 Player Version) – The ‘proper’ version of Konami’s X-Men, as it was meant to be played.
Slipstream – Interesting but relatively unknown racing game from Capcom
0.97
A.D. 2083 – Classic 80s shooter from Midcoin.
Hyper Crash – high speed car crashing action
Space Position – Simple 80s racer from Sega / Nasco
Photo Y2k – Spot the difference game.
0.96
Boogie Wings – One of Data East’s best shooters
Rohga Armor Force – likewise
Diet Go Go – More classic platform action from Data East
Choky Choky! – Strange vs. pang variant from Korea
Crackdown – Highly original title from Sega, plant bombs and make your escape
0.95
Search Eye – Very challenging ‘find hidden objects’ style game
GP Rider – Motorbike Action from Sega
Gain Ground – Highly original 3 player title combining shooting and strategy.
Calorie Kun vs Moguranian – 80s action
0.94
Power Drift – Sega’s Y Board fully emulated including crazy rotation effects. Some of Sega’s finest games
Galaxy Force 2 – see above
Twinkle – Maybe Semicom’s finest hour, a perfect modern version of Pacman
XESS – The New Revolution – 3 Semicom titles in one, all enjoyable.
Puzzloop 2 – Sequel to one of the most addictive games of all time, adding several new gameplay elements
0.93
Raiden Fighters – Seibu’s masterpiece, considered by many to be their best Shoot ‘em Up
Battle Balls – A fine puzzle game from Seibu that slipped under the radar.
0.92
Golden Tee 97 – Highly acclaimed Golf game
Join ‘Em – 80s game with a very unique concept
0.91
Action Fighter – Vertical shooting / driving game from Sega with many vehicles.
0.90
Crystal of Kings – Modern Golden Axe style game
Thunderblade – Sega’s chopper game, a classic.
Laser Ghost – Blast the paranormal with your plasma guns.
0.89
Cotton – Cute horizontal shooter, first in the series
Professor Pacman – Mental challenge, watch the steam rise from your ears.
Bonk’s Adventure – Kaneko’s arcade release based on the popular PC-Engine series
B.C. Story – Prehistoric sports in the style of Track ‘n’ Field
0.88
Sonic Boom – Very tough shooter from Sega
Field Combat – Interesting Jaleco game, highly strategic
QB-3 – Like a vector based Robotron
Space Raiders – Simple shooter from Universal, like Galaga with added perspective.
Fix Eight (bootleg) – Walk and shoot, colourful, explosive and highly enjoyable
0.87
Recalhorn – Cute platform game from Taito
0.86
Virtua Fighter – Without a doubt one of the most important games of its time
0.85
Zupapa – Made in 1994 but not released (why??) finally released in 2001
0.84
Knightmare (prototype) – One of several Gottlieb games emulated around this period, this really should have made it past prototype stage.
0.83
Argus (Gottlieb) – Another one of the Gottlieb games, you play a ‘Superman’ like character and must protect the innocent civilians.
Video Vince & the Game Factory – and another.. this time you’re building arcade machines. What more could an arcade gamer want?
Wiz Warz – and another.. good shooting fun, reminds me a bit of Tempest crossed with Robotron
0.82
Dynagear – Crazy platform shooter from Sammy, similar to the more popular Metal Slug series
Neratte Chu – One of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played,
Brave Blade – A shooter from Raizing running on 3d hardware. Graphically not as impressive as their earlier 2d releases but still crazy shooting fun.
Ghost Lop (prototype) – Another game shelved, I can only presume to make way for the more popular (but vastly inferior) fighters that flooded the NeoGeo platform, original, challenging and above all fun.
0.81
Scooter Shooter – competitive split-screen shooter
0.80
Mad Alien – What do you get if you combine Space Invaders with Monaco GP? Something like this.
0.79
Scramble Spirits – Vertical Shoot ‘em Up from Sega.
Mastering those games alone would take years, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say MAME development is more active than ever, remembering that these releases were each no more than a month apart; a phenomenal achievement without even considering the pages of fixes made and other new additions which haven’t been listed. As things stand the industry is rather dead, I can only dream of an arcade with such a great selection, I’d be in there every day for sure.
So, what is the problem here? Greed? Pokerom syndrome? An attention span lower than a goldfish? I honestly don’t know. Maybe this makes it easier to understand why we can’t take such complaints seriously. Its VERY rare we get complaints from hardware owners, and if we do they’re usually legitimate complaints which we work hard to correct. Remind me, why should we take these ‘gamers’ these ‘MAME fans’ seriously? All they seem to want to do is demand, take, and complain. Blind, lazy, and stupid? Complaining for the sake of complaining? You tell me.
The article also claims we’re breaking the playability of games for the sake of accuracy, in some cases, maybe things have become less playable, 720 degrees springs to mind, but the article cites Space Harrier. Space Harrier is a strange selection to make for this argument, the game is emulated better than its ever been and with a minor adjustment to the controls in the configuration menu (reducing the auto-centre speed to 0) its as playable as its ever been. For somebody who claims to have devoted so much time to reconfiguring games I fail to see the real issue here.
3000 configuration files? You’re doing something wrong from the offset if you have that many config files. Does somebody really want 3000 different button configurations for 3000 different games? It seems highly unlikely. Modification of the default configs and some basic templates for different genres should be all that’s really needed in any situation.
Hiscore.dat, I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t believe it has a place in the official MAME several times. It creates false bug reports for us, and doesn’t accurately document the fact that these games did NOT save their hi-scores. If you turned the machine off the scores were lost. Its hardly a key feature of MAME, and is one we’ve seen abused in illegal ‘for profit’ cabinets.
MAME supports a handful of 3D games with insanely high system requirements? Yes, it does, but if you don’t like them, ignore them. Why shouldn’t we work on something just because its not going to run at full speed? Time and time again we’ve said MAME is not about playing the games, issues like this should make it very clear that we’re genuine when we make these statements. The article picks up on this as if it was a bad thing, to the people working on MAME however such comments are merely praise.
We hold our users in contempt? A lot depends on the users, it’s hard to lump them together but many do seem lazy, obnoxious, demanding gamers with no understanding of the project who willingly buy illegal DVDs full of ROMs and help drag the name of the project through the dirt. Obviously, if you cause us problems, and are rude towards us we will treat you likewise. We don’t really welcome MAME32 questions, online play questions, demands for games to be emulated etc. Why should we? Gamers are NOT our target audience, we take much more pride in MAME being useful to those repairing PCBs and such. Those too ignorant to even take note of the posting rules (which appear at the top of every forum page over at mame.net) shouldn’t really be too surprised when they don’t get the answers they were looking for. Would you ask Microsoft for Linux support?
Remember, we’re doing this for free, because we love the project, we enjoy it. We are not doing this for financial gain, do you see any ‘Send Paypal’ buttons all over this site? No, money is not the motivating factor here unlike the site the article comes from where it appears necessary to have a ’send me money’ button.
Adding 14 byte files to Romsets? See above, gamers aren’t our target audience, we want MAME to be as useful as possible to PCB owners, and it is our duty to accurately support what is on the PCB.
MAME is a monopoly? Only if the users make it one by ignoring every other emulator.
Do I honestly believe the author of the article will never download another MAME build? No. Would it bother me if the author of the article never downloaded another MAME build? No.
I’ll finish off by stating that MAME is MAME, and MAME will always be MAME. We have our goals, and creating an accurate reference is of a far higher priority to us than creating a ‘games machine’ There are other emulators which are more gamer orientated, use them instead of demanding we add their features to MAME. To read comments like ‘Zinc is great, Zinc does exactly what I want, Zinc has 3D acceleration, but I don’t use Zinc because its not MAME, add Zinc features to MAME’ is maddening and no doubt de-motivating to those working on other emulators. Those other emulators exist for a reason, one of the primary reasons is to do things MAME doesn’t do, things that aren’t on our agenda, and don’t fit with our long term plans for development. MAME was never meant to be ‘one size fits all’ in terms of user features. Why has nobody created a standalone emulator for the 3DFX based games which require insane amounts of CPU power in MAME? Maybe because they know as soon as they do people will just say its not good enough, because its not MAME regardless of how much more playable it is. Don’t like MAME? Don’t use it, and don’t complain.
In conclusion, this may seem like an attack on the users, to a point it is. As developers we’re quite happy with MAME, the way in which it progressing, maturing, and becoming a reference piece. We are satisfied with the direction in which the project is heading, and we are not willing to compromise our goals just to keep people using MAME to play games happy (and I strongly suspect they would complain anyway if the track record is anything to go by, proof above due to the number of them complaining we don’t emulate anything worthwhile) Those who sit in silence, and those who appreciate MAME for the technical document it is I have no problem with. However there are the vocal few who criticize everything we do and attempt to dictate what we do as if it were their own project and we were working for them. They can complain until they’re blue in the face, but they will not influence the direction of the project.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy games as much as many others, but don’t confuse MAME with a games machine, it isn’t.
Death to nerds? Where are you going to find other developers willing to stare at tables of numbers for 3 weeks solid?
Death to the gamers who are too short-sighted and self-indulgent to realise the true technical value of MAME.
