WEBVTT - TechStuff Tidbits: MAME 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.560 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:18.560 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.360 and now the tech aren't you. It's time for a 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.560 text stuff Ted bits and uh. I was listening to 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:30.040 a recent episode of the Besties. That's a podcast that's 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.680 about video games, which has no connection to my show 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.400 or the I Heart network. I just enjoy listening to it, 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.360 And in this particular episode, one of the hosts, Russ 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.879 frush Dick, was chiding another one of the hosts, Chris Plant, 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:49.760 after Plant had talked about the coin operated arcade days, 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.960 and the reason that Russ was giving his buddy a 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:55.320 bit of a hard time was that both Russ and 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.600 Chris are a little too young to have spent a 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:01.800 ton of time in arcades up. So essentially, Russ was saying, 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:06.160 as if you are old enough to remember those days, well, friends, 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.080 I am not as young as Russ and Chris are, 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:13.280 and I spent a lot of time in video game 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.800 arcades as a kid. And that actually got me to 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:21.919 thinking about maime cabinets, because I've I've actually thought about 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:26.479 making one myself. But I've kind of I've been holding 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:32.959 back on it, largely because there's some philosophical challenges that 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.840 I face that I have not yet reconciled. Anyway, I thought, 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.960 why not do a text of tidbits on MAME. I've 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:43.080 talked about MAME in the past, but I thought it 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.720 might be good to kind of run down this because 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.360 folks who are my age, they might have a nostalgic 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:53.720 love of certain classic arcade games, but anyone who has 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:59.600 even casually looked into the the hobby of collecting arcade games, nos, 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.400 it could be really hard to find some of those 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:07.280 classic titles. Some of them are prohibitively expensive. And then 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.799 on top of that, you have to think about things 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:15.120 like maintenance and repair, because these are systems that you know, 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.720 they have physical moving parts, and those things do break 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.680 down over time. So we're gonna take a quick look 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.959 at all of that in today's episode. Well, first, let's 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.960 talk about what old arcade machines had inside them, what 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:33.440 made them special. The brains of your typical arcade machine 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:35.919 was a circuit board, kind of like a mother board 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:40.840 in a PC, and various logic circuits would be incorporated 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:44.240 into these boards and these would be specific to whatever 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.280 title you were talking about. So you can think of 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.959 it in a way as the games are being hard 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:55.640 coded onto circuit boards to work a specific way, and 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:58.960 that's why Pacman is different from Donkey Kong, which is 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:03.120 different from Galagha and so on and so forth. Now, 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:07.440 these circuit boards were coupled with a primitive version of BIOS, 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:14.399 that's basic input output system. So BIOS meant that there 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:19.240 was a means for the circuit board to interoperate with 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.120 the input systems of the game, so the controls the game. 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:28.360 This involves everything from a joystick, maybe a button or 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:31.240 more than one button. Typically you would also talk about 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:35.880 a coin slot so that the machine detects when someone 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.160 has inserted a coin, that kind of stuff. So all 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.680 of those are inputs and the BIOS would be handling 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:46.960 those signals and sending them on to the the circuit 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:52.480 board to have the correct output. Right. The game's output 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.200 was mostly shown to the player through a monitor. That's 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.680 that was typically a CRT or cathode ray tube monitor. 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:05.480 These are those really big monitors, big heavy monitors, you 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.280 know CRT televisions. Maybe you still have one, or maybe 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.280 you used to own one. Um, these are those big, 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.240 heavy things that have a tube inside of them. By 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:19.400 the way, those televisions and the CRT monitors that were 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:24.000 in arcade machines, they're also equipped with powerful capacitors. Okay, 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:29.120 these capacitors can hold on to a really strong electric charge. 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.360 When I say really strong, I mean one that's strong 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:35.120 enough to kill you. And I say this because it 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:40.240 is always good to remember that even an arcade machine 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.400 or an old CRT television that's been sitting in storage 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:49.560 for years could still potentially have plenty of juice stored 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.400 in those capacitors. And if you accidentally cause those capacitors 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:57.520 to discharge, then you could be in serious danger. So 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.520 I say that because I mean I was a kid once. 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.919 I remember, like you'd come across a bunch of old, 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:09.640 abandoned stuff, and as a kid, my number one inclination 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:14.760 was let's break it right because it's just sitting there. Um. 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.520 But when it comes to things like televisions and monitors 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.240 and stuff, that comes with a real danger to it. 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.320 So I just wanted to point that out. Anyway, Over time, 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.440 arcade machine companies got a little more sophisticated, and they 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:31.800 created a standardized control boards at least for their own output, right. 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.359 It wasn't like it was standardized across the industry, but 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:39.400 like neo, GEO created its own kind of circuit board 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:43.080 design so that it wasn't making a new kind for 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.880 every single title. And into these you could plug a 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:51.279 wrong chip ROM or r O M that stands for 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:56.080 read only memory, and as that name suggests, it's a 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.520 type of computer memory that allows a device like a computer, 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.039 to a pulled data from the chip, but it doesn't 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.120 allow the device to write new data to the chip. 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.919 You can essentially consult the chip, but you can't change 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:12.680 anything on it. And we usually put stuff on ROM 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:18.000 chips that's necessary for basic computer functionality, like running through 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:23.080 the basic startup steps. You don't want that to get changed, 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.200 so you end up hard coding it into ROM, and 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:31.560 then it's effectively set in metaphorical stone. Now, in the 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:35.239 case of arcade machines, the game itself would be stored 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.279 on the ROM chip. So the important thing for the 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.720 purposes of our discussion about MAIM is that the games 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.120 we're on these physical chips, So we're not talking about 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:50.680 software in the traditional sense. We're talking about hardware, hard 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:55.359 coded chips. You can't just plug and play. So the 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:58.400 big downside to the industry using hard coded ROMs is 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.680 that there was no easy way to port the experience 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:07.000 of playing these arcade games onto some sort of home system. Right. 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:11.120 You couldn't just unless you went out and purchased an 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.800 arcade cabinet. And some people did. I mean they had 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:17.080 the money for it. I didn't, so I never did this. 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:19.120 But they would go out and they buy a copy 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:21.160 of the arcade machine and then they could play the 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:23.800 arcade game at home. That was really the only way 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.680 to do the actual arcade game, because you could not 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.440 just buy a wrong chip and then plug it into 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:36.480 a computer and play. So instead you had to rely 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:40.040 on a port of an arcade game. Porting essentially just 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.960 meant that the person in charge of the port had 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.160 to build effects simile of the arcade game that could 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.200 be played on some home system, whether it was a 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.280 computer or a video game console. More often than not, 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:55.360 they would actually pay someone else to do it, right, 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.320 They would pay someone else to go through and and 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:03.240 essentially recreate the game. So programmers of ports are often 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.320 trying to reinvent the wheel to an extent. They're aiming 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:11.840 to create the same game playing experience, but that doesn't 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.640 necessarily mean they're gonna follow follow the exact same path 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:18.400 as the original game designers did. When they're making a port, 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.360 they're saying, all right, well, what makes this game what 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:26.480 it is? What? How can we create that same output? Uh? 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.200 And it might mean that the port is actually, from 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:36.800 a program level drastically different from the original code. This 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:40.520 also meant that your experience when playing those ports could 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:44.240 vary drastically. You might luck out. It might be that 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:46.520 the port feels more or less the same as you 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:48.920 remembered from the arcade. I mean, obviously it'll feel a 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.360 little different if you're playing it on you know, a 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:53.960 video game console or your PC and you're using a 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.680 game pad. Game pads feel different from arcade controls. But 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.439 otherwise it might feel like it's pretty accurate it or 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.360 you might not be so lucky, and it might be 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.520 that the port is practically unrecognizable when compared to the 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.760 original title. So one early port that became infamous in 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:16.240 the classic video game console days was the pac Man 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:20.800 Port for the Atari twenty so Atari owners like myself 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.480 were eager to have the opportunity to play the simple 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:28.360 and yet compelling game of pac Man at home now 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:32.760 in the arcade, pac Man's graphics, while not like super sophisticated, 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:37.120 look nice like the ghosts look nice, the maze look nice. 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:40.720 Pac Man looked nice. Everything was The sprites were good, 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.000 things moved on a good clip. You had fun sound 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.640 effects and music too. It really was the combination of 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.680 all of these different elements that made pac Man such 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.080 a fun game to play in the arcade. But the 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:58.920 Atari twenty port was, by contrast, ugly playing. The game 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:03.120 was unwieldy, it didn't sound good at all. The ghosts 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.200 flickered in the Atari port because the Atari wasn't able 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:10.040 to handle a a solid pac Man and four solid 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:16.439 ghosts moving around simultaneously. In fact, the ghosts collectively had 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:21.319 to share a single sprite, a sprite being a graphical 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.640 element that can actually move uh compared to the play 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.160 field of a game. And so the way the game 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:32.559 compensated for the fact that it couldn't support four simultaneous 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.600 ghosts on screening, it would only display one at a time, 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.920 and that would alternate between the four of them, so 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:43.040 like you would see a ghost for a frame and 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:45.400 then the next frame you would see Ghost number two, 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:47.720 and in the next frame you'd see Ghost number three, 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.160 and in the next frame you see Ghost number four, 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:51.880 and then the next one it would go back to 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.720 ghost number one. So you're getting twenty four frames a second, 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.640 you know, essentially really more like thirty frames a second. 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:03.839 So they were flickering pretty fast, so you could see them, 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:07.600 but they had that flicker and it was distracting. It 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.440 didn't look at all like the original arcade machine. The 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.080 only way you could have avoided that is if you 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.080 had only had one ghost, you would have one solid 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.280 pac Man and one solid Ghost, because the ghost wouldn't 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:23.240 have to share that sprite with you know, it's fellow ghosts. Now, 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.439 this gets more complicated, but we're not here to talk 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:30.080 about the Atari's limitations really, but the point being that 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.760 while pac Man for the Atari wasn't very good, in fact, 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.640 I would say it was pretty bad, Atari sold more 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:41.760 than seven million copies of it. Now, unfortunately, Atari manufactured 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:46.240 twelve million copies, so while they sold seven million, that 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:51.480 meant five million were sitting around unsold. Uh So, even 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.760 though pac Man was the best selling Atari cartridge in 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.640 the company's history, it didn't perform to what the company 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:02.280 was expecting, and ultimately would become one of many massive 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.240 mistakes that would lead to the Great Video game Crash 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:11.360 of anyway, that's an example of a really bad part. 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:13.840 But even a good part of a game often doesn't 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.360 feel quite the same as the original arcade cabinet, and 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.360 a lot of different factors can contribute to that, including 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:25.000 the brightness and color contrast of the display, the responsiveness 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.560 of the controllers, even the style of controllers can really 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.959 make a big difference. Playing Galiga on an arcade cabinet 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:36.079 just feels different than playing it with a game controller, 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:38.200 even with a really faithful part of the game. I've 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.840 got a version of Galagha on Xbox right. That was 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.959 one of the games that I I purchased, and from 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:52.480 a gameplay perspective, everything except the controls is perfect. Like 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:57.120 it looks and sounds and behaves exactly the way the 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.600 arcade machine behaved. But because I'm playing on a game 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.280 pad like a game controller as opposed to the classic 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:08.000 joystick and button combo of the arcade, it's still not 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.400 the same. Now, arcades had a fairly brief time in 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:13.360 the spotlight here in the United States. It was a 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:15.480 little different. In other places in the world, like Japan, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.280 the arcade culture was healthier for much longer and still 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:23.319 exists over there. But here in the United States, Uh, 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.600 the the heyday of the arcade is long in the past, 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:29.840 and a lot of different factors led to most arcades 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.760 closing down. When we come back, we'll talk a bit 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:45.080 about those factors. Okay, just before the break, I talked 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:49.320 about how arcades started to close down in the United States. Well, 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:51.160 there were a lot of different reasons for that. One 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.400 of the reasons was the rise of the home video 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:59.719 game system. Now, that did have a big blip in 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.720 ten three with the collapse of the industry, that also 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.520 affected the arcade industry as well. It wasn't just the 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:10.280 home video game market. But then you know, the system 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.760 Nintendo Entertainment System came in really turned things around here 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:18.200 in the United States, and uh, the home video game 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:22.280 market recovered and then flourished on a level that it 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:27.000 hadn't even approached back in the first age of home 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:31.240 video game systems. But that was just one factor that 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.720 led to arcades losing relevance. Another was that in order 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.520 to keep an arcade interesting, owners had to add new 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.080 games fairly regularly, right, people would get tired of playing 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:47.520 the same games, But buying a new game to feature 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:52.440 in your arcade was expensive. So as arcade attendance was 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:56.000 on the decline, keeping things going would eat into revenues 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.760 more and more. Right, if you didn't add new games, 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.800 you would lose even more players over time. If you 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.400 were buying new games, you were spending a good amount 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:08.480 of your revenue just to try and hold on to 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.240 the customers you already have. You weren't really seeing a 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:16.080 lot of places get new customers, so it was it 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:20.680 was essentially treading water, and ultimately it would lead to 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:24.320 a situation where it just became impossible to be profitable 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:28.080 and run an arcade, and most of them shut down. 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.080 There are still arcades out there. I don't mean to 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.840 suggest that they're all gone, but they aren't nearly as 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.880 popular or as numerous as they were back in the 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.920 glory days of the eighties and even into the nineties, 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.280 because there was like an arcade renaissance in the nineties, 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.880 largely helped by the emergence of a little game known 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:52.640 as Street Fighter too. Anyway, this also meant that those 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:56.480 classic arcade games were in danger of being lost to time. 0:15:57.120 --> 0:15:59.600 We had the various ports, right, Like a lot of 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:04.000 these game teams had ports on different home consoles, but 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:07.040 the original versions of the games were still sitting on 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:11.000 these ron chips inside arcade cabinets, and the world was 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:15.160 moving on. That also included other technologies as well, like 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:19.320 the CRT For example, it became far more common for 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.640 companies that were in the business of making monitors and 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:27.920 displays to switch to manufacturing displays that use LED technology, 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.760 for example, and one by one the companies that were 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:36.120 making CRT s shut down those manufacturing lines. So today, 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:39.000 if you hunt down a classic arcade machine, you can 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.720 still find them and you can still purchase them. But 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.120 when you do it, you also know that if your 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:49.880 monitor breaks, if that CRT set goes bad, it could 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:52.000 be really tricky to find a way to repair or 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.880 replace it. It's just it's getting harder and harder to 0:16:55.040 --> 0:17:01.480 find parts or replacement monitors. So there we have the 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.240 stage set. Right, We've got a technology that is in 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:08.480 danger of going entirely obsolete, and if it does, it 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.399 takes with it hundreds thousands of games, some of which 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:16.800 are real classics that lots of people love, but now 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.520 let's talk about Nicola Salmoria. He is a programmer from 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.280 Italy and Nicola became interested in this idea of using 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:31.560 software to mimic or emulate the hardware of arcade machines. 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:36.600 That's what an emulator does. An emulator is able to 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:42.000 mimic something else so that you can get a particular output. 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:44.639 It doesn't have to be video games. A lot of 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.280 people just equate emulator with the world of video games. 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.440 An emulator really is just a way to use software 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:57.000 two replicate what hardware would do when you no longer 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:01.960 have access to the hardware. So the the way that 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.320 this worked, I mean you couldn't just plug a RAM 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:07.199 chip into a circuit board and then you're able to 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:09.840 play the game. Right, even if you went out and 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.480 you bought a RAM chip of a classic arcade game, 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:16.119 you don't really have an easy way of playing it 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:18.199 because you don't have the rest of the circuitry that 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.960 that RAM chip interacts with in order for the game 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:25.480 to work. However, if you were able to create software 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:30.359 that could mimic how that particular arcade machine worked, and 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:34.000 then if you were able to make a copy of 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:37.400 the code that was stored on the RAM. This is 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:39.840 called creating an image. If you were to create an 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:43.399 image of the data that was stored on that RAM, 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.199 you might then be able to create what amounts to 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:52.119 a virtual arcade machine. The software is handling everything that 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.119 the hardware would have handled, and as far as the 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:59.639 code on the RAM is concerned, it's in a an official, 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:04.159 you know, legitimate arcade machine and it will create the 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:06.840 output that you need. You also have to build all 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:11.720 the the systems that will allow that output to have 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.199 a meaningful expression, right because I'll put has to go 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.679 to something like a display and speakers. So there's a 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:20.760 there are a lot of steps here. It's not just 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:25.879 to make the the WROM work. It's so that the 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:30.480 modern technology we're using to access the code that's on 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.560 the ROM can interoperate with it. So this is really complicated. 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.520 It's not just oh, I found a way to create 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.280 code that makes this ROM chip think that it's in 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:45.199 a Donkey Kong machine. No, it has to involve the 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.960 support for the various controls you're using, Like are you 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:53.560 using a game pad versus a classic joystick and button combo? 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.040 These are really tricky things and that's kind of what 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.959 Nicola was really tackling in those early days. This is, 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:06.199 by the way, is around nine six UH. So the 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:09.359 software would serve as sort of an abstract layer representing 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.359 all the circuitry of an arcade machine. And Nicola first 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:17.320 focused on pac Man games, a bunch of games that 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.720 were in the pac Man family of games, and in fact, 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:25.040 he originally called the name of his project multi Pack. 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.560 But he saw that there was a need to create 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.560 a means to preserve arcade games in general, not just 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:36.160 pac Man games, but all arcade games. They all had 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:40.080 a risk of going obsolete and just being lost to time. 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:45.080 So he started to develop his software so that it 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:49.359 could essentially trick the ROM code of different types of 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.120 games into thinking it was in a physical arcade machine, 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:57.520 and uh began to expand well beyond the pac Man games, 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:01.960 and in that stage he this project was only working 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:06.280 for the ms DOS platform, So in other words, the software, 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:11.399 the emulator software he was designing, was only compatible with 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.800 MS DOS machines, so we're not even talking about Windows 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.600 at this particular stage, though that would follow, and as 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.800 he was adding more and more support for early arcade titles, 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:25.919 he decided multipack just isn't an accurate descriptor anymore, and 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:28.159 he gave it a new name. This name was the 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:33.119 Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator or MAINE. These days we just 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.639 call it MAIN. We don't even suggest that you should 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.879 break it out as if it were an acronym. And 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.840 that's because it it now encompasses way more than just 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:47.639 arcade machines. But I'll get to that now. So Maria 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:49.959 didn't tackle all of this on his own. He actually 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.760 made his project an open source project. Now that means 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:56.000 that other people were free to look at what he 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.720 was doing, to look at his code, and to contribute 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.040 to the project, to build onto it. That meant that 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.400 with more people you could focus on adding emulation support 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:10.280 for more titles. Uh. And in fact, that's one way 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:13.240 you can look at the progress of MAME, and it's 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.000 to see how many number, how many supported titles rather 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:23.920 would be involved from version to version, because like lots 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:28.920 of software, you look at MAME as generations of software 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:32.199 and and different You know, what's the latest version of 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:35.840 MAME um And that's one way you can look at 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.080 the history of MAME. But there are lots of other 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:42.000 ones too. And again, it wasn't just title support that 0:22:42.080 --> 0:22:46.439 was important. It was also important to add to the 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:49.760 support from various control systems that required a lot of 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:52.280 work from the main community as well, and then support 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:57.560 for the various operating systems, because obviously it didn't just 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:01.600 stick to MS. DOSS is compatible with lots of operating 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:05.440 systems out there now. So when you really boil it down, 0:23:06.520 --> 0:23:08.879 the goal of MAINE is to create as many ways 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:12.760 for modern systems to recreate the experience of playing specific 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:17.320 games from the past as possible. And that includes folks 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:20.919 who want to build their own main arcade cabinets, which 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:25.560 might include classic style joysticks and buttons, or it could 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.240 include someone who just wants to be able to play 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:31.119 classic games on their PC using a game pad as 0:23:31.119 --> 0:23:35.199 their controller, or one of a hundred other systems. Now 0:23:35.200 --> 0:23:37.359 we're gonna take another quick break, but when we come back, 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:43.200 I'll talk a bit about the complications of MAINE, because 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:47.040 it it does get complicated. We're not talking about the 0:23:47.040 --> 0:23:50.960 technology side, but the business side. I'll explain more when 0:23:50.960 --> 0:24:02.840 we come back. Okay, let's talk about business a bit here. 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:06.000 First of all, Main itself is free software, and there 0:24:06.000 --> 0:24:08.920 are a lot of different flavors of MAIN if you're 0:24:08.920 --> 0:24:12.200 familiar with Linux, you know that there are all these 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:17.119 different distributions or distros of Linux where all the distros 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:23.160 are using Lenox as the foundation, but they have different 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:25.840 user interfaces. Well, the same thing is true with Maine. 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:28.920 You can really just think of Name as the underlying 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:34.399 guts of emulation UM and it's not really user friendly. 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:38.080 It's not really easy to navigate. And just like pure MAIN, 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:40.720 so the versions you typically find out there in the 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:44.000 wild have different user interface systems built into them to 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:47.800 make it easier to navigate Name. And here's the other 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:54.359 important bit maime itself. The emulator doesn't include games. It 0:24:54.560 --> 0:25:00.000 is supportive of thousands of games, but it doesn't act 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:03.560 actually include the games themselves. It's kind of like if 0:25:03.560 --> 0:25:06.160 you were to go out and just by a video 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:10.480 game console and there are no games included on the console. Well, 0:25:10.520 --> 0:25:12.639 you've got a device that can play games, but you 0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:14.119 don't have any games to run on it. You have 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:16.679 to go out and then get games for it. The 0:25:16.800 --> 0:25:20.320 same is true for Main, So to get games you 0:25:20.400 --> 0:25:25.760 have to get hold of ROM images, and technically the 0:25:25.840 --> 0:25:29.199 only legal way to do that is to either you know, 0:25:29.320 --> 0:25:34.240 get official permission from whatever entity holds the intellectual property 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.720 of that specific ROM, or you have to purchase a 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:43.159 copy of the ROM so you can do this. For example, 0:25:43.240 --> 0:25:45.880