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I've had a spare 1ghz AMD computer kicking about my bedroom now for a while and decided to put it to good use, to remember my childhood days of putting all my pocket money into cool arcade games. Didn't have PlayStations in them days!
M.A.M.E. is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This wonderous piece of software emulates many different types of arcade machine and, with the proper ROM dump, will allow you to play the arcade machine on your PC. Not a clone or a rewrite, you're playing the exact same arcade game. No crappy, lame, remakes here!
Anyway, this is just a quick site to show how I put an old computer to good use.
What do you need for your own MAME Cabinet?
Well, many folks use old arcade machine cabinets made from MDF but I wanted this to live in my bedroom, so wanted something a bit more furniture-like. So for my 'cabinet' i'm using a £50 Argos wardrobe that i'll modify. Arcade machines have those nice clicky joysticks and buttons. Computers don't have them. Ah... but companies like X-Arcade sell kits which come with nice micro-switched (aka: clicky) joysticks and buttons. But how does the computer link the joysticks with MAME? A nice little bit of circuitry. X-Arcade do one but i'm using a cheaper one called I-PAC (nothing to do with Compaq/HP or PocketPC's!). This connects to the keyboard/USB port on the computer and the joysticks and buttons get connected to it. What it comes down to is this: when you press up on the joystick, the circuit board tells the computer you pressed (for example) the 'W' key on the keyboard. Sneaky, but inventive!
So... time for some pictures and explanations.
Click the links up top to move between the different sections...
© 2005, Ronnie Tucker