Ahigh wrote:
Plot out Donkey Kongs earnings on a chart, and you'll see that as soon as the colecovision came out, that game didn't earn as much in the arcade. And colecovision wasn't even that good a port, really.
Not one home version of it really was close. Both the NES and Coleco versions lacked a level. Frankly, I thought those two ports were complete filth. I thought the Atari 1200 XL version was better for its having all the levels. Still there were some noticeable faults in it.
Ahigh wrote:
I'm not accusing anyone of playing mame as a replacement to going to the arcade and supporting new coin-op development. But I know for a fact that I do that myself.
I do go to arcades still, but what I'm honestly missing are the shooters like Raiden III- my only encounter with that game came from the PS2 import. If a retro compilation comes out with any games I like on it, I buy that.
Ahigh wrote:
But so long as I continue to make coin-op games, I will attempt to do all that I possibly can to make things more difficult to emulate under Mame. I expect that any other coin-op developer would do the same if they stopped to think about the long-term effects of emulation on the success of coin-op games in general.
I think the CPU speeds of newer arcade machines will take care of that. Chihiro is 733 MHz. Sega Lindbergh (3 GHz) and Taito Type-X (2.5-2.8 GHz) I can't see being emulated for a good while. Even with MAME around, the games will still enjoy a good exclusive run in arcades since no computer currently on market can handle them with MAME. I don't think there's a computer out there that can take Rush or most other 3D polygon racers at a playable frame rate.
Ahigh wrote:
But in all the debates about Mame, I rarely see any consideration for how Mame affects the demand on new coin-op products. As much as I love Mame myself, I wish there was no such thing.
So far as an "arcade-perfect" port of San Francisco Rush: no such thing exists. You'd need a lot of hardware to achieve it. Taking out the force feedback alone turns the entire game experience to a lame excuse for an arcade driving game. Just ask any operator who sees the effects on earnings from a non-working force feedback steering wheel.
You're not getting the tilting cabinet of an After Burner or Power Drift playing in MAME either. Playing PD in the arcade with the deluxe sitdown version is a blast- when my arcade had that 12 years ago, I gave it more than a few handfuls of tokens. Now R-360 looks cool, but I have to admit I'd likely get nauseated on that. These things do kick the experience up a notch.
Now MAME is nice to have for older titles that you have a snowball's chance of seeing in arcades or in an official console port.
Today most arcade titles hit the consoles before MAME like The Pro said. Psyvariar? Giga Wing Generations? Castle of Shikigami 2? PS2's got 'em.
That new After Burner 4 on the Lindbergh interests me and I hope some place nearby gets it. When Out Run 2 hit, I rushed to the arcades to play it every week or two. The fact that the first one was in MAME didn't quell my desire for this one. Lately I've been playing Target Terror here in my nearby arcade.
I do have a few PCBs myself- mainly some shooters like Grid Seeker, Darius Gaiden, Gekirindan, and the more recent Ketsui, especially since these are games I've had no luck finding in nearby arcades.
Rather than MAME affecting demand for new arcade products, I think it's the lack of arcades in some places. I watched three Putt-Putt Golf & Games locations in my area go kaput over the last several years- probably due to mismanagement. The owner of the last surviving location wanted to retire, so he sold it out to some younger couple. Unfortunately these new folks let the once-prosperous location go downhill. There are some arcades near me now- but noticeably fewer. I think the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox would be a bigger rival to the present-day arcades than MAME.
