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Games Entertainment

Proposed Set-Top MAME Emulation Console 177

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldnt'-that-be-fun dept.
BRock97 writes "An interesting post over at MAMEWorld discusses the possibility of the folks at HanaHo Games (the creators of the ArcadePC and the HotRod joystick) creating a set-top system that would run the MAME emulator and allow the user to play their collection of ROMS on a TV. From what has been posted, it sounds like the unit would be comparable to an XBox (with x86 inards), run an embedded OS (sounds like it would be Linux), and the company would fully support end user hacking of the unit (i.e. boot a DivX player). They would like to hit a target price of $200-$300 and would bundle as many ROMS as they have the right to. The company is requesting feedback." I tend to think MAME is best played in a cabinet (guess thats why I built one ;) but would love to see a mame set top box, but a custom box seems harder than simply using a dreamcast or x-box to do it. Course if they can do this with permission of the original ROM makers, this could be awesome.
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Proposed Set-Top MAME Emulation Console More

Proposed Set-Top MAME Emulation Console

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  • Similar Posting? (Score:5, Informative)

    by webword ( 82711 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:22PM (#5067733) Homepage
    All-In-One Arcade Console [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Similar Posting? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by daves ( 23318 )
      That would make four [slashdot.org] dups [slashdot.org] today [slashdot.org].

      Looks like Taco is shooting for the record books?

      Or is this all that exceptional?
    • Personally, the thing that interests me the most is that the mention of bundling ROMS with it, which would suggest [assuming it's legal], that some of the original companies are willing to liscense them out.

      The other major difference is the price. The arcade in a box (full version), is over US$1k, and this new article is talking about a US$300 price.

      You also start looking at theoretical [HanaHo] vs. already done [Arcade in a Box]. Then there's controls...Arcade in a Box comes with the arcade-like buttons, etc, while it sounds like HanaHo's thinking about USB support, and you'd plug whatever gamepad/joystick/etc it can support, but it'd be seperate from the box.

  • Charge something nominal for ROMs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:23PM (#5067736) Homepage
    What'd be cool is if there was an agreement between the major ROM copyright holders to allow some company to put all the old ROMs on one CD and sell, then split an amount between them. I'm thinking small amounts per CD (1-2 cents per game?) - a disc with 500 games may have to split $10 between the original copyright holders. Perhaps the administrative costs might be too high for some, but they'd be getting *something* instead of people continually 'stealing' their original work. Yes, I've got ROMs for VCS cartridges I bought, and C64 games, and even a few I never bought. If I want more, the only options I have are 'illegal' ones.

    Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please.

    • Bundling (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:33PM (#5067813) Homepage
      Replying to own post:

      What'd be SMART - if they were to do it - is for a company to bundle all its old games together and ship it with MAME. I thought Activisin did something like this, but EA hasn't done it. Yes, it's not MAME, but there are C64 emulators available. If they'd ship all their old classics (Skyfox, Archon, Seven Cities, etc) *with* an emulator, it'd certainly sell. Huge amounts? Maybe not, but the development cost is practically nill.

    • Re:Charge something nominal for ROMs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by orbital3 ( 153855 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:42PM (#5067854)
      Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please. (emphasis mine)

      I agree with this completely, and this is the big reason I very rarely buy those compilation packs of old games. When someone's trying to sell me a collection of 10 old Atari games for $30 and there's only maybe 3 of the 10 I actually care about, that's not very good value for my money. Those old games were fun, but not so much that I'd want to spend $10 on each one... that adds up pretty quick when there's 10 games you want. There just isn't that much gameplay in those old games considering you can go pick up two-year-old PS2 games for $20 that give you ALOT more playtime. I'd easily drop $200 on a legit MAME romset. With 2045 unique games (3596 including clones), that comes out to about $0.10 each. Yeah, there's probably quite a few of those (maybe even most) that I wouldn't care a bit about, but I'm still getting alot better value than what's available now. And that's better for all of them because they'd at least be getting _something_ from me, while right now, they're not getting a penny.
      • Yup, I can't see why they still charge money for Abba/Beatles/Iron Maiden CDs, after all they've been out for ages longer than the initial 3 month sell-by dates! Sure there are those "best of the 1980s" music CDs that have compilations on them, but even those cost more than napster...

        </slashdot>

        Perhaps the fact that Williams, Namco and Atari/Infogrammes are still making some money from their back catalog means they don't want to be part of a collective royalty scheme that would give equal weight to obscure (but possibly quite deserving; I would love a modern version of Crazy Climber for example) arcade manufacturers.

        After all, it has taken the might of Sony (helping out with GTA: Vice City) to push through the licensing for recognisable music in a game from multiple artists; dealing with IPs from multiple companies when each would want the biggest share of the royalties would be a real pain to negotiate.

        If one of you slashdot readers can persuade several of the rights holders of the ROMs to provide a compilation legally, you will have my greatest respect; negotiation skills like that are formidable.

        • How are they making money from them? I certainly can't play them, and I can't see how much value there is in games you can't play. If they're simply keeping them around as fodder for copyright violation lawsuits, perhaps you've got a point.
          • How are they making money from them?

            Have you not seen mobile phones playing Pac-man, the set-top boxes, the new console releases (soon), the gameboy advance versions, for pete's sake the threatened Pac-man Movie may be coming out. So Namco is definitely capitalising on their IP, as is Nintendo and to a lesser extent some other companies. I've certainly seen a lot of Atari t-shirts about. So a multi-company compilation would be likely to missing some of the big hitters unless you have good negotiation skills.

    • ever heard of 'abondonware'?

  • Site will go down, here's the info... (Score:4, Informative)

    by zoloto ( 586738 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:23PM (#5067740)
    /. effect soon:

    Subject New Idea.. need opinions! Reply to this message
    Posted by borg357
    Posted on 01/07/03 02:28 PM

    Hello Everyone! Some of you know me, some may not. My name is Richard and I work at a company called HanaHo Games (www.hanaho.com), where I'm a product developer. Over the years, we've created some kewl emulation products like the HotRod Joystick and the ArcadePC among other things..

    I wanta drop the ball on something here, and I need some honest opinions. Over the years at HanaHo, we've gained allot of experience in creating our own embedded PCB's for use in Coin-op markets, and we also have experience in marketing, as well as some really good contacts with various partnerships in the real coin-op business.

    What would you guys think about a console based gaming system (embedded hardware unit) for use for emulation? This would be an incredibly ambitious project, as we would be facing some huge obstacles! But I've been kicking this idea around for a while now.. and here's some details:

    A stand alone game system, that's about the size of an X-box or PS2. It would have the ability to plug in USB game pads, HotRod, X-arcade, Slickstick, or home made joystick keyboard hacks. It would also be able to plug in to a TV or a VGA monitor, as well as direct sound output, and Network support built in. The base system, would simply boot up (within seconds), and play MAME. There would be an optional hard drive, but contain a DVD-ROM player for the games to load.

    With our experience in embedded products, I feel that we could launch such a project, as an alternative to "hacking" an x-box or ps2 to play MAME. Emulation would be the main purpose for this console unit, however, it would be very similar to the way the X-Box works, in fact, given today's chip prices, we might even be able to create something even more powerful than an X-Box.

    The OS would be embedded into the boot-up of the console, and we would have to reply on a team of people, working with, and creating a MAME version for this unit.

    The target price I'm shooting for would be $200-300, and we would of course bundle this with as many ROMS as we can get the rights too.

    There would also be some added bonuses here too.. First off, creating our own game system would solve a lot of ROM licensing issues, and also create and help legitimize MAME, while still keeping MAME as a grass roots movement. The only way this major gamble would work is to have the support of the MAME community. We know very well, that the market is now saturated with consoles and titles by some heavy hitters, but we're NOT after the same market of newer games. In fact, while microsoft is busy sueing everyone offering mod chips, we would fully embrace hacks in our system. This system, unlike X-Box or GameCube, or PS2 would be very very useful in "home-brew" arcade units, as well as the engine in our own line of cabinets we sell. It might even be a significant cost savings as a PC is actually a bit of an overkill for a MAME machine.

    Take a moment.. think about it. tell me what you think..

    Thanks
    --
    -Richard Ragon/Senior HanaHo Evangelist

    http://www.HanaHo.com - HanaHo Games, Inc.

    Hope this helps.

  • ROM rights cost an arm and a leg... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:24PM (#5067747) Homepage Journal
    ...we would of course bundle this with as many ROMS as we can get the rights too...

    Licensing ROMS is a very expensive deal, I wonder how they plan on paying for them? I'm pretty skeptical of this venture getting much further than that post (but I'm still hopeful).

    --naked [slashdot.org]

  • HOW much??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by darylp ( 41915 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:25PM (#5067751)
    $300 is far too much money for something like this. Put it this way, over here in the UK we can buy a console that looks suspiciously like an old N64 controller which plugs straight into the TV. It holds a large amount of NES games on it. (I haven't checked the number, but there's loads.)

    The price? 30 quid. That's roughly $50.

    Sure, some geekier-than-thou types would get a stiffy from being able to plug Linux into their telly, but the average person won't care whether or not they get their Retro gaming fix from the NES or Arcade versions of games.
    • I was thinking the same thing, but from the post, if people could hack it and make it play divxs...that could be big.
      • make it play divxs...that could be big.

        You need a (relatively) powerful processor to play DiVX. Fingers crossed these things have the neccessary omph! to do it...

        • You could slap on a Sigma Designs [realmagic.com] MPEG2/DivX chip on it.

          That would mean it wouldn't just be a MAME console though, but slap on a DVD-ROM and a decent soundcard and you'd have a Home Entertainment Center or something...

    • Re:HOW much??? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @03:11PM (#5067993)
      Many people use MAME for Neo-Geo games and other such fighting games, which require at least a 400mhz processor and 256MB of RAM. Emulation nowadays is more than just Atari 2600 games and I think Hanaho realizes that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they made it quite a bit better than that, since a 400mhz processor with 256MB of RAM won't even play Mortal Kombat properly.
      • FYI, my home MAME cabinet is running off a P2-450 w/ 2 64 MB sticks. I've also hooked up my VIA Eden (800 MHz, 256 MB of RAM) without much of a difference between the two...

        Games that leave a little to be desired:

        LightBringer (runs a little slow; I think this was a limitation of the hardware being emulated, not the emulator itself)

        Mortal Kombat - load times are long. Very playable once loaded

        Marvel vs. Street Fighter - load times are long. The intro scenes are a little choppy. Very playable otherwise

        Most NeoGeo games - get a little choppy when large parts of the screen start getting updated, but overall pretty playable.
        • I find all of this to be really interesting. I knew that a lot of the people on the official MAME forums were off in their estimates about the system requirements for NeoGeo games because most of them had never tried them on anything less than a 1ghz machine (which almost all of them claim is absolutely required for it), but for some reason, it had never occurred to me that they might be wrong about other games, like Mortal Kombat.

          When I get a new gamepad (I killed it in a year... I'm so proud of myself), I'll have to try out MK and see how it works. Thanks a lot.
          • My #1 advice to those running MAME on older hardware:

            Video card. Get a good one. 3D acceleration isn't important, except for the fact that most 3D accelerator cards build their 3D acceleration on top of a solid 2D acceleration engine.

            Beware of early 3D cards, though; some of these actually made 2D speeds WORSE.

            AGP is good, but not required. Other than that, any decent older 3D card should do the job. 8MB or more of RAM on the vid card is good.
    • Actually, I think a lot of people care about the difference between arcade and NES; the NES was out at a time when there was a big difference in favor of the arcade, and most NES games based on arcade games are pale imitations of the originals, even when they aren't totally different things.
    • 1. Those NES in a controller setups are nowhere NEAR legal.

      2. Arcade games emulated by MAME are far, far beyond what an NES could ever do.

      So, let's sum up: $50 for an illegal, mid 1980's era game unit - or $2-300 for a 100% legal, up to and including games from at least 10 years later unit.

      Hmm, you're right, why would *anyone* want this?

  • Ok with me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by handsomepete ( 561396 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:25PM (#5067754) Journal
    Considering the horsepower that's required to do everything post 1997, Xbox level hardware may not cut it for the folks who like the Metal Slug/Capcom Vs. games/etc. For those of us who just want to sit around and play Burgertime or the Ninja Turtles arcade game, I'm all for it.

    I have a feeling this may cause more problems than it's worth, though. The last thing I want to see is some company decide that this is the last straw and really persue shutting down the mame project. I imagine getting permission from more than a couple companies to distribute rom images will be pretty hard, even if they're offered compensation. I can't get to the thread right now - what do the mamedevs think about all this?

    Has anyone bought that single player X-arcade joystick?
    • Considering the horsepower that's required to do everything post 1997, Xbox level hardware may not cut it for the folks who like the Metal Slug

      I've played Metal Slug (including the newest one) on my 433Mhz machine, with pretty much zero slowdown. Considering the Xbox has almost twice what I have, and doesn't have to run a bloated OS like I do, I think it's more than sufficient for anything but the newest 3D games.

  • Go For It (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RailGunner ( 554645 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:25PM (#5067756) Journal
    Since most "home" translations of popular classic games left a lot to be desired (Atari 2600 Pac-Man, anyone?), why not release a set-top box so people can easily relive their youth by playing classic games?

    And yes, I know how easy it is to get MAME up and running, but face it. If you're reading slashdot, chances are you're in the top 5% of the technically inclined and setting up an emulator is *easy*. But, if you're mom and pop AOL who don't even know what type of sound or video card they have, let alone the processor speen and RAM, well then it becomes a more daunting task.

    Though I have to wonder how much of a market there will be for this... considering how many publishers have released collections of their old games for the latest consoles already..

  • Permission? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SealBeater ( 143912 )
    Why would they need permisson of the original rom owners to do this? It's not like they needed permission to make the joysticks. Anyway, I think this would actually be a good idea, but one, is mame legal to sell? Would there be any issues with that? Also, I could see this coming in handy for cabinet builders, instead of specing out a computer, just grab this, grab some roms, and go to town. I am sure you could just insert this in the place of a computer inside a cabinet. They just have to make sure that its powerful enough to run all the cpu intensive roms, like Mortal Kombat 4 and the like. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

    SealBeater

    • Re:Permission? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:37PM (#5067832) Homepage
      Because they want to include as many roms as possible in the system itself. Clearly just to make and sell the unit isn't an issue, but what's a unit without games you can purchase for it/games that come with it?

      • what's a unit without games you can purchase for it/games that come with
        it?

        Uhh, every console that's on the market now? I don't recall my dreamcast
        coming with games (not that that mattered). Neither did my PS2 or the Gamecube
        I bought for christmas. I am pretty sure my co-worker's X-Box didn't come with
        a game either. Besides, it's not like anybody who spends 5 minutes looking
        can't get every MAME 0.62 rom out there in a few days.

        SealBeater

        • Re:Permission? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by len_harms ( 455401 )
          Thats a fairly new thing belive it or not. Up until the PlayStation came out, all consoles came with at least 1 game. Maybe not an AWSOME game, but at least a playable one. They usually also came with 2 controlers.

          If I remember correctly the original PlayStation had 0 controlers and 0 games in the box. They did this because an extra 30 bucks put them past a certian 'price point'. Plus they can charge 30 for a game, then 25-30 per controler. They are make even more money on something you will definatly want. The sentiment at the time was who would buy a console that didnt even come with a game. Aparently a lot of people...

          Also if you just bought a system and it didnt come with 2 controlers and a game you got fairly hosed. There are some pretty good bundle packs out there.

          Also keep in mind not everyone has a smoking conection into their house. On a 56k modem downloading the whole mame set would take about 17 days. If your going full blast at it. Its that big. And thats being generous that you get 5k per second and no disconects.

          I think the biggest challange will be for them to get the price point of the hardware down. Then secondly getting permision from the game companies. The game companies should jump at it. They probably havent made money on some of these games in years. If they ever broke even on em at all. If they include a dvd with all the roms on it will be gravy...

          The next problem may be MAME itself. Its licence does not allow for distribution of roms with the exes.
  • As I do not have the kinf of money to create my own cabinet, a MAME box for my TV would be awesome. I have a computer, and several good controllers, so $300 would get me a Radeon All In Wonder and everything else great about my PC like DivX, Quake, and alternate EMU's :)
    However, If HannaHo were to produce specific controllers for games like Tron, Robotron, 720, Millipede, Ikari Warriors/Heavy Barrell, etcetera....I'd be hard pressed to NOT purchase the system.

    HannaHo, are you listening?

  • Why? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 )
    I have MAME on my XBox right now. Go buy an XBox and chip it. Just run the ROMs right off the HD.

    No need to design some whole new system to do this stuff.

    • New system would make sure coders get $$$. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Viewsonic ( 584922 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:39PM (#5067840)
      Unlike stealing a bunch of ROMs are you are doing on your XBox.

      • Re:New system would make sure coders get $$$. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by glesga_kiss ( 596639 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @03:49PM (#5068231)
        Argh! Piracy is not stealing, not that old argument again. If it were stealing, the courts would have decided long ago that there are no need for anti-piracy laws, because the anti-thieving laws already cover it.

        And as you can't buy these ROMs anywhere, how are you depriving someone of any income? Even if you were paying for them, who would the money go to? Not the original developers, I can tell you that much!

        Can you say "victimless crime"? No one is hurt, so frankly I couldn't care less. I base my life around what is morally correct, not what is on the lawbooks.

        • Can you say "victimless crime"?

          "Shoplifting is a victimless crime - like punching someone in the dark!"
          -- Nelson Muntz

          Tim

    • because it isnt legal.

      that's the big 'why'.

      why take a loan when you can rob a bank?

      (sure, the risks getting busted by chipping your xbox and downloading roms are lower than getting jailed for bank robbery..)
  • If someone manufactured this, then vendors would have to weigh the sales aspect. Radio Shack would say "do we want to support piracy yet affirm technoloogical innovation?" I love running MAME on my internal motherboard, but bringing it into the real world might not work for the corporate brass who want to increase their stock sales.
  • How hard is it to emulate 15 y/o hardware?

    I realise that a lot of the emulated machines aren't that old, but I really think that it shouldn't cost that much. Couldn't a $15 pentium from a local salvage store and a decent PCI video card do the same thing?

    If I'm paying $300 for something, it should be cool enough to deserve it.
    • Who says they're just emulating 15 year old hardware? A lot of us emulate games from the late '90s, such as the Neo-Geo games like The King of Fighters 2000, Metal Slug 3, or Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Those games require, at minimum, a 400mhz processor and 256MB of RAM. Add a TV-Out card to that and a small form factor and $200-$300 with a gamepad and a custom box is pretty much the minimum price.
    • It all depends on what you're trying to emulate. Pac Man [klov.com]? Donkey Kong [klov.com]? Sure, you can even get away with a 486 (if you use the right Emulator, such as VAntAGE [geocities.com], but if you're looking to play something like, S.T.U.N. Runner [klov.com], which isn't exactly young, you can't. I've got an Athlon 1GHz, and barely make full frame rate.

  • What I don't understand... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is why everyone thinks gaming companies are willing to sell old roms for cents on the dollar. The games are being recycled on to mobile platforms that are as powerful as the consoles of old. I've got the original Phantasy Star on my Gameboy, and Hang On on my cellphone. I paid 30$ and 15$ for these, respectively.

    Why would Sega (as my example) say "Sure, throw all these games in your little console and send us 5 bucks!"?

    There's much more money to be made off of these old roms. They'll end up bundling ROMs from companies that are out of buisness only.
    • Depends on the customer base. Selling, say, 1000 post-console games at $10-$15 won't make much money. Selling 100,000 (bigger numbers probably apply) to an all-in-one package would probably make more cash. If you could dump it in there with some EMU's for a bunch of different hardware: NES emulator, SNES emulator, Sega Emulator, MAME Arcade Emulator - you could sell different games as packs (as is often done with old games anyways).

      I'm not sure how many people would buy "Hang On" for a cellphone, but I'd imagine a certain number would find it rather sweet to own the "Capcom fighter collection", or "Zelda Suite" etc etc.
  • What I still don't understand is why companies that make games don't release large emu packages. Imagine how badass it would be if nintendo released, say, 30 of their 1st party titles for NES on a single disc for Gamecube w/ an emu to run it all. I'd pay for that.

    Or, an alternative solution, why don't we just concentrate on xbox mame [otakunozoku.com]? I own all three modenrn consoles, and my entertainment cabnet is pretty full as it is :)

    • I'm guess it's because releasing 30 games for $40 could really hurt their bottom line, since one of the main thing that drives new game sales is that you've played through your existing games already. If you've got hundreds of hours of gameplay for $40, what's the incentive for you to buy more games?

      I'm not saying I agree, but I imagine that's what's preventing Nintendo from putting every Super Mario game onto a single disc. You might never have to buy a game again.
    • Imagine how badass it would be if nintendo released, say, 30 of their 1st party titles for NES on a single disc for Gamecube w/ an emu to run it all.

      OK, so it's only about 15 first-party NES games in Animal Crossing (that I know of), and you have to work a bit to get them (but Universal codes makes it 15 minutes of work MAX), but what you want is already out there. Plus, you get an entire game beyond that.

      The Sonic collection is pretty damn neat too, even if it is only 7 games.

  • What do you mean a custom box seems harder?! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:37PM (#5067834) Homepage Journal
    Steps for getting an Xbox to play Mame games:

    Find grey-market chip for your xbox on the 'net
    order it
    wait
    open up your Xbox, solder it in
    burn the right CD, with all the games you want to play


    Steps in using a dedicated MAME console:

    Use it.

    Yeah, seems so much harder.

    Seriously this thing seems a lot simpler. I already have an x-box, but I might be more intrested in this, since for *me* this will be a lot simpler. And I lost the urge to dick around with computers just for the 'fun' of of it a few years ago.
    • Steps for getting an Xbox to play Mame games:

      1. Get a licence
      2. Compile MAME
      3. Sell it

      Steps in using a dedicated MAME console:

      1. Develop hardware
      `?????
      5. Advert/story on slashdot
      6. Profit!
    • open up your Xbox, solder it in

      solder it in?????

      the Xbox mod I got was set it on the correct location and mess about for a little bit until the green light came on (yes you do this HOT!) then tighten the screws.

      no soldering, and it takes ZERO technical effort...

      Yes I have an X-box.... although I'll never buy a game for it.. I'm happily playing all the mame roms and Divix's on it.... now to get that lame X logo off of the enclosure.....

      I AM one of the consumers that Microsoft fears... I'll buy the hardware and never EVER buy or play one of their games.... not interested in that... that's what my PS2 and Gamecube is for.
      • Don't remove the lame X. Just find a way to add mame after the X.

        I so far have refused to buy an Xbox. However, I did see one game recently that was rather tempting. The game was Steel Battalion from Capcom. Thankfully though, this one game is $199, so I can't afford it anyway.
  • Would to have emulators for the 8 and 16 bit consoles on there two. Possibly it could check the headers of the files on your cd and launch the appropriate emulator. I've thought about buying one of the linux pc's, throwing in a tv out and couple game pads to do this myself in the past. I'm sure I'm not the only one here whose gaming space is a bit cluttered by older consoles that don't get as much use. Replacing those consoles and the dozens of carts for the with a box and a couple cds would make for a nice space improvement.

  • MAME doesn't allow distribution of roms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Virtex ( 2914 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:41PM (#5067852)
    They would have to get the permission of the MAME developers as well. If you read the license that comes with MAME, it forbids distribution together with roms.
  • I'm wondering how they're going to handle the problem of vertical games on a home-TV based game box. I haven't tried MAME at NTSC resolutions, but don't you lose quite a bit when you have to compress down to fit the screen?
    • Turn the TV ;-)
      • I know you're being funny. But to address it seriously, for any good size TV, that is physically not very realistic. Additionally, the yoke (or something) gets out of alignment when a TV is placed on its side, and you get some big colored splotches on the screen.

        Although, I must say, it'd be interesting to see 'veritcal' and 'horizontal' home console gaming. ;)
      • This may dupe ADC's post, but I just built a MAME cabinet with an old 20-something" TV and can tell you, from experience, that turning TV's is 'bad'. I originally wanted to built a cocktail table, but had to settle on building an upright because the tv couldn't be moved much more than 15 degrees past the horizontal without color splotching. I think it has to do with how the CRT paints the screen, but I couldn't tell you technical details. All I *can* tell you is turning the TV isn't an option, you'll need to get a monitor if you want to be able to rotate the whole screen.

        --trb
    • With the right video card and a VGA to component adaptor, you can get the card to put out frequencies to drive an HDTV-ready set. The discuss this to no end on AVSforums for home-theater PCs.

      I once had Tempest running on my XBR set (sideways) at 720P, and it was much sharper and better quality than I could get with a VGA to NTSC converter. Unfortunately for me, I bought the wrong converter and it didn't work well for the higher HDTV modes.

  • Chances are... 0.0% (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:43PM (#5067860) Homepage Journal
    "Course if they can do this with permission of the original ROM makers, this could be awesome."

    Nintendo is still making money off of selling trading cards with classic games imbedded on them. How many incarniations of the Classic Gaming CD (which contains 10 games, taking up less than 10% of the disk) have you seen? Care to by the sequel?

    No, they're gonna have to shell out for the permission to use those ROMs.

    • Check your facts (Score:4, Informative)

      by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @11:05PM (#5070172)
      Hanaho has been legally distributing quite a lot of roms, with full permission of the copyright holders, for some time now.

      See: Capcom, for one. There are also quite a few arcade roms that have been put into the public domain over the years.

      Nintendo is not the end-all and be-all of video games (even if they did make some of the funnest :)

  • Sooo.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:44PM (#5067868)
    If it's allready running Linux, does that mean we have to change our usual plans and try to get windows to run on it?
  • I have all my ROMs on my HD, can download anytime, send them anywhere... and guess what, my laptop has video audio output...

  • MythGame (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Yebyen ( 59663 )
    It's worth noting that MythTV [mythtv.org] (PVR software) already has a "MythGame" addon, which is a mame frontend. MythTV is designed with control from an IR remote in mind, so it would make a really good candidate as software for a set-top box. Now, if you'll excuse me, *unpauses CSI*.
    • ahh yes, i was checking for such a comment before i posted the same thing. it seems like a set top box should do more than just one thing (like play games).
  • Oh, the irony. Or something.
  • Isn't this the perfect application of Via's fanless Eden platform?

    I'd thought of doing something similar myself, except that mine would also be an MP3/DVD player. The Via was the setup I was considering doing this with. Don't think I'll bother now - I have a Shuttle and it's easily transportable from upstairs to the TV. Add a wireless keyboard/controller and you're done.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • ...since, in my opinion, only those who are geeky enough to install evolution-x modchip and xmame (uploading all their pirated ROMs) are potential customers.

    And they would prefer XBox - not only it runs xmame (and you can copy all your roms from your PC), but it also run Splinter Cell, Halo and many other games you might want to play some day.
    • The market is the people who want to be have the support and blessing of the parent company to poke around inside the hardware and see if they can get them to maybe pop toast or act as expensive alarm clocks without having to worry about the DMCA or RIAA or ABCD or FBI, et al breathing downn their necks or lawyers knocking on their doors. I for one don't think procurring and installing "mod's" that have to be purchased from a guy in a long trenchcoat in the back ally -- or from lick tsu tang inc. shipped on a slow boat from china with a hefty price tag and no warranty....

      I for one like to be able to poke around without getting all McGuyver...I am to old for that anymore.
  • I just saw this mame cocktail cabinet at a Tampa distributor. Scroll down to the bottom of this page;

    http://www.homegameroom.com/catalog/newvideo.htm
  • Seriously I have wanted to do this since I first tried MAME, but MAME is continually evolving and I think will continue to push hardware limits. Since I don't have the money for a full-on gaming quality machine I have been giving serious thought to nabbing an old 100mhz pentium off of ebay and slapping a TV out video card (or heck, just hooking it to my TView VGA-2-NTSC convertor and making up a settop Stella player. Maybe up the power a little for a NES or (dare to dream SNES) emulator. I don't know why, but having grown up with Atari playing games on a PC monitor still just doesn't cut it, and playing console games on a monitor is just sick and wrong. :)
  • ... slashdot's themselves ... is that considered ... mastochistic?
  • Yes, yes, yes !
    $200-$300 dollars seems a bit high,
    but I'd gladly sell my X-Box, my PS2, and my DC to
    get my hands on something that was both hackable and
    hacker friendly : ) Where's the waiting list ? Where do I sign up ? If I plunk down $100 now, can I beta test ?
  • These price quotes are from mini-itx.com [mini-itx.com]:
    • VIA EPIA 800 - $110.71
    • 256MB PC133 - $46.53
    • Cubid 2688R Mini-ITX Case - $94.67
    • Toshiba Slimline 8X DVD - $136.38
    Total: $388.29

    Plus, if you really want to soup up your machine you could add:
    • Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM HD - $133.17
    • Geforce 4 PowerPack Pro/450 w/TV-out 64MB - $120.34

    Now, this particular site probably marks up a little not to mention that you could find all this stuff on sale. Moreover, most of the above (including the VIA board and case) are available at brick-and-mortor shops today. In fact, I've been eying a VIA board over at Fry's for the past month or two.

    All in all, I really don't see the value-add that this would offer. With the GeForce card, one could probably play most PC games too.
  • Here are two requirements that would completely make this console:

    1. Use an embedded, realtime or low latency operating system. Gamers want responsive controls and audio/video. Using a low latency Linux kernel should be more than enough, and it should be fairly easy.

    2. Hardware should be silent or at least very quiet. They last thing gamers want is to plug in a game system that sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

    Also, let me throw in a few more suggestions:

    Concentrate on MAME, and MAME only! Embedded set-top boxes work best when they do one thing really well, and suppley a simple interface.

  • LOLROFLMAOAFK MAME Emulation Console IS SO BIG (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    LOLROFLMAOAFK!!!
  • Ok, just a few opinions/perspectives from someone who is an actual member of the "MAME community" referenced in the Hanaho post.

    First off, $300 is not too high for this sort of thing. This is not intended to compete with PS2 or GameCube, this is not going to be a mass market thing. The fact is Hanaho makes money selling $200 joysticks and $1,000 cabinets, and X-Gaming does also. Enough people will pay for this sort of thing for it to be profitable if it's truly as easy and quick as Hanaho says it will be, and truly as customizable. Lots of us have built PC's specifically for use with MAME and spent more than $300 to do it - *and* we have to deal with booting Windows and using the Windows (or Linux, or whatever) interface whenever we want to play. Something that would boot *in seconds* into MAME, and would load all ROMs and play them without a hitch, that's worth $300 to me and I'm sure a lot of other people. It would be a far more elegant solution to making your own MAME-based arcade cabinet than sticking a PC in there like we pretty much all do now, or you could just hook it up to your TV.

    It would *have to* be upgradable though, at least as far as CPU and memory. That shouldn't be a major problem, though, as 99% of the games MAME supports will run on a slow CPU, and they'll all run on a faster CPU, so only those of us interested in playing KOF99 or Metal Slug X would really need to worry about it. Basically, build it with PC architecture but make the OS completely dedicated to MAME, and make it small and cheap (for a PC) and boot lightning quick. This thing would be easily profitable. There's far more value to running about 80% of all old arcade games (some of which are actually not that old - only a year or so in some cases) than to running 100% of all NES games (as someone else brought up, regarding those cheap Chinese NES emulators you can buy). We're talking thousands and thousands of games here, arcade-perfect; games you had to pay between a quarter and a buck to play when they were new, and still would if you managed to find them in a real arcade today. The relevant term here is "arcade-perfection" - nobody ever talks about "NES-perfection".

    As for the ROMs, few developers are interested in licensing these things because many of them still make money from their older games. Look at Namco with their Namco Museum series, or Midway with their Midway Greatest Hits (not to mention their updates) - they still consider these IP that are worth protecting. It is technically piracy to run these on a MAME box without owning the original game, though nobody really cares that much to do anything about it and many of these publishers I've talked to actually find MAME a very impressive piece of software despite their legal misgivings. Capcom has been more flexible and actually does license their games to Hanaho. It's possible some other companies may follow suit if an actual MAME box were to come out but I doubt it would be worth it - I'd rather keep the costs of the box down than have a few extra licensed games.

    Anyway, get to work, Hanaho! If it does all you've said it will and is at least CPU and memory-upgradable, I'm sold.
  • Pace Micro [pace.co.uk] of Saltaire, England are a major manufacturer of set top boxes. A year ago they entered into an agreement with Sega to add dreamcast technology to their STBs [eetimes.com]. Pace are now all but tits-up [yahoo.com] (although that is mostly to do with the Football League, ITV digital, Enron and Worldcom).
  • version .63 of MAME just came out today. Downloadable, of course, from http://www.mame.net [mame.net].
  • Forget lame-looking 2600 consoles -- I'd like to see emulation of the walkup boxes. I'd like to play the arcade Altered Beast (my jenny just wasn't the same) and definately Crystal Caverns (castles?) with Bently Bear. Of course, this box would need a roller to control Bently as well as centipede, but a guy can hope!
  • and would bundle as many ROMS as they have the right to.

    Let me wager a guess at how many that would be.. perhaps zero??
  • Isn't this what Dreamcast Emulation [dcemulation.com] is all about?

    Well, not all about. But somewhat. A large part. Mostly. Kinda.

  • I love Linux, but I don't think it's right for this project. The only reason to run Linux on this thing is that you like Linux and you haven't thought of the alternatives.

    What MAME needs is an OS that doesn't get in the way. There's no need for any processes other than MAME to be running, so no multitasking. We want fast, direct access to graphics and sound hardware. We want DOS. It's no coincidence that the core MAME source is written for DOS.

    If a free OS is required, I'm given to understand that MAME runs fine under FreeDOS [freedos.org].

    DOS MAME aleady contains code to underclock certain video cards to TV scanrates. ArcadeOS [mameworld.net] is one MAME frontend that can also run at these scanrates.

  • grumble (Score:2)

    by Eil ( 82413 )

    I just want to note, in an overtly bitter tone, that I had this same idea 2 years ago.

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