The main attraction at the Arcades has been its Arcade games. I'm sure many you remember classics like Space Invaders, Gunsmoke and Raiden. Unfortunately these games and their Arcade cabinets have pretty much vanished these days. Desktop computers are now so powerful with its CPU, graphics and online gaming capability as well as consoles that Arcade gaming is becoming retro. But for many of us the old Arcades are still not forgotten. MAME is an emulator that plays the many Arcade games. To this date there are more than 1500 games which are playable. The emulation is near perfect as the roms are dumped from the real arcade boards. The emulator is not only available for computers but also the consoles, one of them like the the XBOX.
There is a big interest and community which appreciates the option to play their favorite Arcade games, almost like in the old days. Still many would agree its not the same thrill with a keyboard or joy pad. However with a MAME Cabinet it can be a great Arcade experience. A MAME Cabinet is like a real Arcade. One where there are Arcade controls, marquee and coin doors. Most of the time people use PC's but hidden inside the cabinet and there are even ways to hide the Windows desktop. There are a decent amount of frontends to choose from. A frontend is like a piece of software which helps you launch the games. With the right configuration, you can program them for other emulators too. Maybe you want to include games for C64, Amiga and Sega or like to have a Jukebox with your favorite tracks. Whatever you like its all up to you! It is quite some work building a MAME cabinet. You might try you're luck and find an old Arcade machine to try and restore it, maybe keep some of the parts too. Still there are plenty places to get the parts if you were to build a cabinet from scratch. Just have a look around. As for the display you can easily use a PC monitor, even better would be to use a graphic cards s-video output and connect it to a TV. To play most the games with their native resolution you would need an Arcade monitor. There is one exception if you are based in Europe where there are CRT Scart TV's available you can use this together with an ArcadeVGA graphics card via the Scart RGB connection, this combination turns your TV into an Arcade monitor. For any setup, there is always the MAME emulator where we all can play all the best Arcades.
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Article written by Koral Wilkins. Look here to find details regarding my Arcade MAME cabinet
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