John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

I have a small single-player tabletop Mame cabinet that I really like. It runs on a cheap little Eee PC netbook that I picked up a few years ago for a couple hundred bucks, and since I'm a mild-mannered software developer by day I of course had to write my own custom front-end launcher software for it. It's not quite as flashy as some of the front-ends you can get online, but it has the benefit of looking and working exactly the way I wanted it to and it gives me some satisfaction to know my cabinet is one-of-a-kind.

Anyway, the question I have for you guys is about your approach to building a game list for a Mame cabinet. I've noticed that most Mame cabinets I've seen have people bragging about how many thousands of games they have loaded onto them. THOUSANDS! I don't think I've played a thousand games in my life, and I kind of doubt that there's that many games in existence that I would even like, let alone want a copy of in my living room.

On my cabinet I have a list of about 30 or so games that I really love and desire to play regularly. If there's a game on the list that I find I don't really want to play very often then I remove it. I like to keep my selection list neat and trim and completely devoid of games that I don't love. It's my Mame cabinet after all, and I like its game list to reflect my personal taste.

Am I alone in this philosophy? Has anybody else ever given it any thought? Having tons of games for the sake of having tons of games has just never appealed to me. I don't have a problem with people who prefer to have lots and lots of games, I guess I just don't really understand the appeal.

I always felt the primary appeal was to preserve every video game ever made for the last 30 years. What's a Mame cabinet but a museum display piece for the next generation who wanted to see what their Grandparents enjoyed?

And I've always felt its not the LIST of games, its the list of CABINETS.

How many have Mame cabs and if just for a moment cringe when they see black lines on a classic vertical game like Pac-Man?

Whereas you take a 19 inch CRT tube, turn it to the side, strip it and place in a vertical Mame-

Sweetness.

I have THREE Mame cabs in my game room. Some would say over kill. I disagree.

For starters, you got horizontal, AND vertical screens to contend with. That alone begs for two cabs,

Then you got different consoles, controls ect ect.

Not everyone has the space for 30 odd cabs.

But imagine multi-Mame cabinets.

All racing games in a wheel/pedal cab
All vertical shooters in one cab.
All track ball games (horizontal) in one cab
All track ball games (vertical) in one cab
All six button fighter in one cab
All horizontal 2-3 button / 2 sticks in one cab,

Drill in a few 1 1/8 holes to accommodate a few spinners-

Toss in a cocktail cab converted to mame-

And bang!

A mini-arcade, seven/eight cabs strong.

Plug in a few usb-opti-guns, into your horizontal cabs and your laughing.

Make no mistake, if I had the option I'd go with originals like our host, but Mame is the future, and the past. To say nothing of space saving.

Mame is still akin to 'hanging fakes' in an art museum. But its a pleasant start and frankly only the professionals know the difference.

I guess that's the key difference, then. I'm not worried about the preservation of all the world's video games locally in my living room. The primary purpose of my machine is to PLAY. And when it comes down to it, there's only a handful of games that I want to play all the time. Adding in a thousand other games that I don't want to play would turn my cabinet into a museum, but that's not what I want.