Paying for Mame?

[Darth Sensei]

I went to Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, MI for the first time on Saturday.

http://marvin3m.com/

I had fun, but I was mildly disappointed. They didn't have near the number of vintage games that I expected.

Don't get me wrong, the atmosphere was nice, and the counter person was friendly.

However, I went there to play games such as Pac-man, Ms. Pacman, Galaga, Galaxian, Tempest, Robotron, and most of all Asteroids. Most of the games I expected to see weren't there.

In fact, many of these games were emulated by an Ultracade machine. It's basically Mame which licensed some Roms and it was put into an old Killer Instinct 2 case.

I played some games on it, but I kind of felt "cheated." I know there wasn't room for all those games, but it still bothered me. It played Street Fighter 2 and that was fun and felt "genuine." Robotron used the two joysticks and that was good too. However, I had to play Asteroids with a joystick. :roll:

When it came down to it, I could have had most of that experience with an X-Arcade hooked up to my computer at home. Why am I paying for Mame?

Anybody feel the same way? Feel free to disagree with me also.

Dave

BTW, who has a classic video game museum and doesn't have Pac-Man? :roll:

[Captain Wrong]

I agree with you 100%.

As a sidenote, I've been dissapointed with the last few Coin-Op auctions I've been to as there's been a steady increase of homemade MAME boxes up for sale. We're not even talking the "official" Ultracade ones with licensed ROMS, but someone who hollowed out a old cabinet, stuck a PC in there and downloaded a ton of ROMS. Aside from the fact that this is pretty blatantly illegal, the built quality of these things has been pretty low as well.

[davidbrit2]

Ultracade is a neat idea, but it does a very poor job of replicating the original video scan modes. It also has a couple stability and interface issues.

[Raccoon Lad]

The arcade next-door to my apartment has one of those machines. I LOVE being able to play Ghouls'n Ghosts anytime I want, but I HATE that the machine's set to 50 Cents per play, and the joystick kinda sucks too.

[Flack]

It's all give and take. In your home, I can certainly see buying (or building) one of those MAME cabinets (I know I'm working on mine). They make perfect sense when you're dealing with space/money limitations.

In an arcade or at an auction though, I want to see the real deal, not an imitation.

Flack
50 cents? Next thing you know, payphones will be more than a quarter too!