Be Excellent To Each Other

Following the request from MrC I'm looking for nominations to run another MAME challenge.

Last thread is here : viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8757&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Ideally looking for games which are Icade compatible but they dont need to be.

I will provide a zipped file you can simply download / unzip to a folder on Windows to play the titles - I will also either have a link to where you can download the rom's or another zip which just contains them.

Use this thread to post your suggested games to play , and to click the choices in the poll at the top , last time there were 9 players overall if we can get at least 5 or 6 then it should be do-able.

Chances are this will start in just over a weeks time (if we get the people) so probably the 17th / 18th of March 24th / 25th March


Current Nominations :

Paperboy (need to check controls)
Space Harrier
Spy Hunter (need to check controls)
Bomb Jack
Dynamite Dux
Outrun
Afterburner
Mr Do Run Run
Galaxian
Pac Man and Chomp Chomp
Robotron 2084
Smash TV
Commando
Star Wars
Jungler
Thunder Cross 2
Truxton
Burnin' Rubber
Astro Blaster
Vapor Trail
Galaga '88
Scramble
Flying Shark
Robocop
Punisher
Aliens
Aliens v Predator
Beast Busters
Ninja Gaiden/Shadow Warrior
Kung-Fu Master
Flicky
Burgertime
Up.n. down
Donkey Kong
Fantasy Zone
Armed Police Batrider

Paperboy
Space Harrier
Spy Hunter
Bomb Jack
Dynamite Dux
Outrun
Afterburner

Nice choices - although I seem to remember Spy Hunter being a bit of a pig to get running right in MAME (due to the slightly odd analogue controls)

Just wanted something that wasn't just another top down 2D shoot-em-up which is ludicrously hard.

Never actually played arcade version of Dux, but the CPC version was good and the clips I've seen look enticing.

Zaphod is right about Spy Hunter.. I also struggled with the controls for Paperboy too but Dynamite Dux is good fun! I'll second that.

I'll get my thinking cap on and put some noms forward when I think of them.

I played a lot of the Amiga version which looks to have been a good conversion

I have to disagree, I'm afraid. 3 of those are totally pointless on an emulator:

Space Harrier and Afterburner were the graphics whores of their time, made interesting mostly due to the fancy hydraulic cabinets they plied their trade on. Not much game underneath.

Outrun - also very much of its time - racing games don't age well in general.

Spy Hunter and Paperboy......just my opinion, but I thought they were rubbish at the time, especially Paperboy. I have played it on MAME and it was nigh on uncontrollable.

Bomb Jack.....sure

Dynamite Dux.....dunno, might have played it on the Amiga, but I'm probably thinking of Quak.




So, have I got any better suggestions? Maybe not, but I'll have a go anyway......off the top of my head:

Mr Do Run Run ........lovely little game, one of my favourites on MAME, the best of the Mr Do games for me, even love the repetitive music which very much reminds me of my youth something my granddad told me about.

Galaxian........my favourite of the really old single screen shooters. Very much reminds me of my youth something my granddad told me about.

Pac Man and Chomp Chomp.......fun Pacman variant, ideal for high score challenges.

A top-down 2D shoot-em-up which is ludicrously hard. I'm not the expert on this, so no particular recommendations, but surely there has to be one in the challenge list - btw, that was why I was hoping the forum's chief Schmuppet (YOG) would be showing up in this thread.

Space Harrier, no. Harrier is a pure shoot-em-up with a good game underneath. It's a test of reactions, skill and survival.

Afterburner is more of a graphics demo with less of a game underneath. But each to their own.

Afterburner was really that and if you played some of the home computer versions of it you found out that there was not much of a game behind it but Space Harrier did work well an into the screen shoot em up



They do not but Outrun has a certain charm and the music for it really hits the nostalgia button for me



I already mentioned Spy Hunter as a control problem game , however I'm sure i've played Paperboy without an issue (even if its emulating handlebars with just a few direction controls) - it is something I will check and see how it performs on both keyboard / mouse / icade before i let it through as a nomination





see if this jogs your memory

It does indeed jog my memory - pretty sure I played that on the Amiga, but didn't like it, so it was Quak I was thinking of.

I still don't think Space Harrier works well in emulation with a joypad/keyboard but accept your and Chinny's point that there's more to it than Afterburner.

Also - does Mr Do Run Run have more chance of getting in if I give it multiple recommendations and mention it again and again? Maybe even start up a few sock puppet accounts to re-recommend it?

Disagree, The analogue stick on an Xbox controller is made for Space Harrier.

I think we should have a "go through a ghost that isn't blue without dying" challenge on Pacman. I can do that you see.

Aha - you mean plugging in a wired 360 controller into the PC? I think I have all the necessary bits to do that, so I might give it a go.

No , however Mr Do! is one of my favourite games and although I played it and Mr Do's Castle / Mr Do! vs the unicorns I never really played Run Run so its in with a chance.

BTW my process for this will be to go through and test each game to make sure that :

The emulation works on both PC and Mac (bonus points if it works in MAME on the ipad as well)
That there is a score which you can get a screengrab of when the game is over (no black screen or forcing you to get to a high score table)
Control is okay for both joystick / joypad / keyboard (and again bonus points if its do-able with a virtual stick on the ipad)
Roms are available via an online website that i can direct people to without spamming them with nasty pop-ups.

From that i'll probably just pull some of the remaining ones out at random and then make sure that we dont end up with too many racing / shooting / platformers

I've done that - and many many years ago i had a book with patterns for Pac-man (I can really only remember the first one) - at one stage it required you to follow a route which took you through the Red ghost (I think)

Do give Run Run a spin, unlike Castle/Wild Ride it takes all the core elements of the origianl game and improves on them - it oozes charm.

I've been trying to learn some patterns for Pacman but they're very tricky. Not only do you have to remember them all, but you've got to be very precise with what you're doing.

I even spent an evening putting clingfilm over my TV so I could draw a pattern on it to follow.

[confused face]

It's just a USB controller. I have 2 and they just plug straight into the USB ports on the PC like any PC joystick.

Put the TV under a glass coffee table.

Maybe he's got a wireless one?

I think the 'confused' is more that most people have wireless USB 360 controllers which do not connect to the PC (even with the charge kit) you need a little USB wireless device to make them work

I'd like to do this as a form of classic game education. none of this nostalgia stuff for me.

Looks like I need a wired xbox remote to properly participate right? Do I need anything else?

I bought one of these wireless devices off eBay for a couple of quid. It's not official, but it works.

I did have to faff about with the drivers as I recall though.

Ah. I have a wireless for my Xbox but two wired for my emulation PC. Although he did say "wired" in his reply.

As others can testify, when I ran out of batteries the other night I moaned like hell about having to play Halo with a wired controller that I hadn't worn in nicely.

I just happened to still have a wired controller from when I bought the first 360 back in 1842. I didn't realise you could just plug it straight into the PC (I haven't used the PC for games since Half Life 2).

Yes, it just works. However you may need to tell MAME to use it mind.

Yep, it's working now (my ageing Windows needed some extra drivers from MS first). I installed a version of MAME32 - no idea how up to date it is but got it working with Mr Do and the 360 controller in no time....blimey, the wonders of modern technology. Next up is finding a working version of Space Harrier.

If you have a slower PC then older versions of MAME actually run better. Think mine dates from 2008!

My PC is 2008 vintage, the MAME32 appears to be version 0.81 from 2004 (first of April 2004, to be precise - maybe I have a joke version). Anyway, the Space Harrier roms found so far don't show up in the "available" list.

Robotron 2084

Smash TV

Commando

We had two of those at our student hall of residence a family reunion my granddad told me about.

The first Star Wars game was also ace, so gramps tells me, but not really suitable here because it really needs the dedicated controller the arcade machine had ( maybe a mouse would do the job? No idea).

I was going to suggest Star Wars because you can use the mouse to play it.

You can play with keys but you'll do better if you have a joystick of some type and an Xbox controller is 'cheap-ish' and going to be the easiest to source.

I'll add the original Star Wars into the list , yes it plays well with the mouse but i do think its okay with keys or joystick

I'll be up for this.

How about Jungler as one of the games?
No tricky controls, and is still fun to play and easy enough to pick up.

Thunder Cross 2
Truxton
Burnin' Rubber
Astro Blaster
Vapor Trail
Galaga '88
Scramble
Flying Shark

All work well with the most basic of controller setups.

I'm up for anything that's not got crazy controls (I think keyboard, mouse, or basic wired joypad should do the job for all the games) and isn't really old and rubbish.

Excellent, had a look at a couple of last years games and they worked lovely on win8 (I know *spit*) and this looks like great fun so I hope it happens! Sorry I can't really come up with any to suggest, all I remember is stuff like time crisis and Sega rally and Manx tt and that. All too modern and requiring, like, whole tilting motorcycles which might be a bit much to ask...

I liked Kung Fu Master, but I'm well aware that no-one else did.

And we did it before.

Yie Ar Kung-Fu instead?

I did - and I cant remember if i've ever beaten the final boss but i've been to him a lot

Also, as for some of the mid 80s Sega games.

After Burner - It is possible to achieve some modicum of skill at this game, I absolutely ragged the arse out of the Saturn version (which was a very faithful arcade port), and you do get better with practice, but ultimately the game will just cheat to kill you. There's certainly no way on earth you could ever complete it on a single credit, for example. Not a good choice for a MAME challenge IMO.

Space Harrier - This on the other hand is an awesome game and won't cheat you, although it does get a bit stupid on the later levels. I think there's possibly some mileage in this one for a MAME challenge.

Out Run - As above, and fairly easy to quickly complete once you get good at it (under five minutes), and the music is timeless. Can be a little bit fiddly to configure the controls but I've had it working properly before in MAME. Would be a good choice I think.

I'm keen to give Space Harrier another chance, but I can't seem to get it working in MAME32 - could it be that it needs a particular BIOS file or something like that?

MAME can be fussy.

I'll boot my emulator box tonight and tell you the precise version I am running. I spent ages finding a version where Mamedev hadn't degraded the performance so badly nothing would run, but also had good compatibility.

OK, cheers!

Just checked. I'm running MAME 0.97 which IIRC was the fastest version that ran on my hardware. It is ancient but it runs most games and Zaphod helped me choose it if I recall.

Space Harrier runs, but mine complains of a "bad ROM". But I have never seen any issues with it.

Thanks for the tip - I downloaded 0.97, but Space Harrier still won't run. I'm clueless, but again, thanks all the same. Btw, I can't for the life of me remember where I played it before - must have been either some equally ancient version of MAME a decade ago or a conversion, no idea.

Quick question for Zaphod - if I wanted to put up a score from the ipad version of MAME, would a digital pic be OK? It doesn't seem to have a screen grab option. Since I installed the PC version of MAME I've had a quick go at a couple of familiar games but my scores were much lower than on the ipad. That's despite using a 360 pad (for me, the best controller ever) on the PC and a Nintendo Classic controller with the ipad (which feels a bit small in my big clumsy hands).

Doesn't the 'home+power' button do a screen grab? Yes it does!

Does it? I'll give that a try right now.............bugger me, you're right - it even makes the camera shutter noise and dumps the pic straight in the camera roll. Nice tip Sir, thank you!

Just tried Star Wars on the PC with a mouse - it's certainly playable but I find myself wanting to invert the controls - is that doable? Even if not, a lovely blast of nostalgia.

I know this has already been answered by using the screengrab function but just to confirm i'm happy if you want to take pictures of the score and upload them (so for example if TheVision uses his GPWiz and takes a picture of the high score table) , just make sure the score is readable

OK, cheers, that's good to know - might be less of a faff getting pictures onto the PC from the camera rather than taking the long way round with a memory stick and the wife's Mac.