The Games

Well I have my cabinet, here are some of my favourite games. Because it's really a PC inside, you can play any game and any emulator. Also, there are 2 joysticks with 4 buttons each so we can play really cool 2 player games!

Mame - The Classics

Obviously, the main program I use is Mame32. I just run it in Windows with no front end. These are the majority of games I used to play in the arcades in Sheffield, like R-Type, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Rolling Thunder, Street Fighter 2, Ghouls and Ghosts and more!

Many of the older games originally had a vertically-mounted monitor, to save money and make the screen seem bigger then it actually was. These games look ok on my machine, but have large black borders on the left and right. However, the classic gameplay still hooks you. Some of these are Frogger, Donkey Kong, Pacman, Moon Cresta, Galaxians and the original Space Invaders.

There are loads of great two-player games as well, some co-operative, some competitive. My friend, Jonathan, likes playin Bubble Bobble - we got to level 99 twice and we accidentally quit out both times before reaching the final level! Doh!

I also like playing Hyper Sports (the button bashing one). It's better then Track and Field because some of the events like clay pidgeon shooting involve timing instead of hammering the buttons, so it gives you a bit of a break.

Also, we can't forget the great beat-em-ups which can be played with 2 players - the classics like Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat and Golden Axe.

One of the best things about Mame is being able to play much older games, or obscure titles you might have missed first time round.

Neo-Geo

An original SNK Neo Geo Metal Slug will set you back at least a few hundred quid, and are incredibly rare to come by. Luckily, it has been emulated perfectly, and you can't beat playing the original version on a full size stand up arcade machine. They used to have a sit-down version in Meadowhall, upstairs, above the Oasis and I have lost count of the 50p's I put into that machine - when I died, I started again from the beginning, trying to one-credit it!

There are loads of fantastic games available for the Neo-Geo, and some classic beat-em-ups. You can play Samurai Shodown, King of Fighters (choose your favourite edition - 2002?), Mark of the Wolf, Last Blade, World Heroes and many more. It was also a haven for shoot-em-ups, with Viewpoint, Ghost Pilots, Blazing Star, Last Resort and Cyber Lip. There's also a great golf game called Top Player's Golf, a racing game called Neo Driftout and a brilliant 2 player bowling game.

Dragons Lair

I have a bit of a soft spot for this title, I know it's not much of a game, you have limited choices and it doesn't have much replay value, but it looks *so* cool! I downloaded the Daphne emulator, and bought the roms of Ebay. The original was a laserdisk, which jumped to the right spot when you made your next move, much like a modern DVD works. The emulator uses these laserdisks scenes which have been converted to MPEGS and acts exactly like the arcade machine. You can also play Dragons Lair : Time Warp and Space Ace on the same get up and some of the more obscure laserdisk titles, such as Don Quihote.

Other Games

Ridge Racer? Tekken 3? Yes please! There's a very good Playstation emulator called ePSXe which will load original playstation games as well as - ahem - *backup* games. So you can play all those classic games which are gathering dust in the cupboards! The emulator actually improves the graphics of the original, makes the games higher resolution and filters the textures so they look even better. Some of the racing games are good, like Formula-1 but the lack of a steering wheel makes them a bit difficult to control.

 

Maybe the next cabinet I buy will have a steering wheel and a gun - then I can play things like Outrun, Chase HQ, Time Crisis, Virtua Cop, Point Blank.... hmmmm, just going for a quick look at Ebay..........

 

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