There goes the neighborhood
Tad left an innocent-looking DVD at my house this weekend. I’ve now installed it, and my productivity, ambition, and sleep patterns are all suddenly at risk …
It’s a copy of MAME, the coin-op arcade game simulator that emulates the processors of the early 80s so that games can run exactly as they did on the classic consoles like the Defender machine sitting out in my carport. For example, when MAME presents the game of Defender, it emulates a Motorola 6809 processor and actually runs the machine language code that was stored on Defender’s ROM chips, so every pixel on the screen and every detail of the program’s behavior is exactly the same as the real thing. No wimpy “PC version” or Xbox/PS2/Wii/whatever version, with lots of fancy graphics to distract the player from the loss of the game’s underlying soul and personality. No, this is the real deal.
Tad gave me hundreds of games with it (*), so now I have a complete early-80s arcade in my laptop. It all seems so familiar, right down to the annoying TVPs on the high-score list. Move over Tad, MAG is coming up through the ranks. It’s like Rocky 37, makes me want to chug a glass of raw eggs and go jogging.
* This whole blog post, of course, is just a fictional piece of creative writing. Those games are copyrighted by their respective owners, and guys like Tad and me would never infringe on said copyrights!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 8:10 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on February 13, 2007 at 1:04 pm Tom wrote:
Cool! Do you have Pole Position? If so, be careful — I can just see you pitching your laptop off the table on that one hairpin turn.
on February 13, 2007 at 1:07 pm Tom wrote:
And hey, if you pour orange soda all over your office floor and teach Megan to deftly slice your wallet out of your back pocket with a switchblade, it’ll be JUST LIKE Silver Sue’s!
on February 13, 2007 at 1:35 pm Scott wrote:
Keep the mutants at bay, my friend.
on February 13, 2007 at 3:21 pm Doug wrote:
Not only do I have Pole Position, but I also have several bootleg knock-off versions of it. I’ll look into bolting the laptop to my desk or something.
Ah, Silver Sue’s. Memories. Why if you go here — http://www.highscoresarcade.com/joystik/Joystik1983July.pdf — and scroll to that first photo next to the masthead inside the front cover, that’s Scott standing there in the doorway of Silver Sue’s. And photo by Xorge!
on February 13, 2007 at 7:10 pm tvp wrote:
Ironically, Defender is one of the few games whose high score list survives power-off, so Doug is stuck looking at TVPs until he figures out how to beat my scores. (Or finds the internal reset, but he wouldn’t… Would he?)
tvp
on February 13, 2007 at 7:36 pm Doug wrote:
Ha! Regarding the internal reset, I have a full manual for the original coin-op game out in the carport. But that wouldn’t be sporting, so I’ll do it the hard way, baiter by baiter.
It’s pretty cool the way the “carpet” appears on power-on, and the way all the sounds are exactly the same as the original. I have a very Pavlovian reaction to those details. Makes me wanna sing “Like a Virgin” … or “Betty Davis Eyes.”
on February 14, 2007 at 6:09 am Scott wrote:
…you still have a full size Defender?
on February 14, 2007 at 6:51 am Tom wrote:
I don’t think I’ve EVER had anything make me want to sing “Bette Davis Eyes.” But I will admit that Pole Position reminds me immediately of Grandmaster Melle Mel. And yes, I CAN do the entire Beat Street Breakdown.
on February 14, 2007 at 9:54 am Doug wrote:
YouTube link please, Tom.
yes, Scott, I still have a full-size Defender, but I’m thinking of ripping out the controls and wiring them to the PC. Need to learn some details of how that would work, but that would give me “real” Defender in the house without that big box sitting around.
on February 14, 2007 at 3:05 pm Tad wrote:
Doug, if you’re really leaning that way I can put you in touch with John, who has done it. Off the top of my head, you take a PC game controller, cut the cable, and attach the wires coming from the Defender control panel to. I’m not sure what the pin assignments are at this point, but I think for each switch that can close one side connects to a ground and the other to a pin with a signal that goes on/off depending on if the switch in question is closed/open.
Inside the game itself, there is a menu with a list of possible actions and inputs. You pick an action, hit the control on the control panel that matches (while connected through the game port) and it will recognize the state change and register that input for that action. Register each switch on the panel with each possible action on the menu, and you’re done.
tvp
on February 14, 2007 at 3:53 pm tracy wrote:
do you have centipede? can you rig up a special console that has the roll-ball thingamajig controller?
on February 14, 2007 at 5:12 pm Mr. Bruce wrote:
I’m so sorry Megan. bp
on February 14, 2007 at 9:28 pm Megan wrote:
I suffer, Bruce, I suffer. And so far I haven’t even been able to find a decent old-school joy stick so I can play River Raid!
on February 15, 2007 at 8:13 am Doug wrote:
Speaking of high scores, here are a couple of things I received via email yesterday.
From George, proof that I can beat Tad’s Defender scores:
http://www.mahugh.com/images/blog/2007/02/15/Dougfender.jpg
I know, I know, this is on a full-size machine — it’s the thought that counts, Tad. This photo was taken by George in June of 1982, on the day I met George and Scott (and started recruiting them for my blog).
From Tad, a Donkey Kong score to try to beat:
http://www.mahugh.com/images/blog/2007/02/15/TadDonkeyKongScore.jpg
Tad, there aren’t enough hours in the day to try to compete with you on games in general. I need to pick my spots.
on February 15, 2007 at 8:48 am Megan wrote:
Well, I ordered a joystick online. The lamest, oldest school looking one I could find. Let’s hope I can figure out how to work it.
I hate technology.
on February 15, 2007 at 12:32 pm tvp wrote:
My kind of thread I guess.
Centipede and Millipede are included. In fact, let’s say you think of some game, maybe even an obscure one, well, just assume it’s there. (Cuz it is.)
As for proof Doug can score higher, I don’t think we needed any.
My hi-score on a legit Defender is a paltry 7 million which is less than a third Doug’s World Record–a record which stood for one week.
Since that’s just a stamina issue, and we can both play Defender indefinitely, those of us who could do it would usually pick a score (like a million) and see who could reach that score in the fewest number of ships to find out who was “better.” At my best I think I could beat Doug about one out of three tries. At HIS best, it was just unreal.
I used to hang with a core of friends who were all unreal.
tvp
on February 15, 2007 at 1:42 pm Doug wrote:
> I used to hang with a core of friends who were all unreal.
That is so true. I wish I had taken more pictures, and more notes, in those days. The freak gallery of people who were winning all those tournaments and running up all those high scores would make an amusing screenplay:
Tall skinny Mike (all 6′10″ of him), and Munoz (the only one of us who had figured out how to have a girlfriend), that smiling little Chinese guy with the Pac-Man patterns book (she-ron or something like that), Matt, Black Al and White Al, the employees at Arnold’s (remember the chubby girl we all wanted?), Dave and the other teenage runaways who were always coming in after midnight tripping on acid … the list goes on and on. In that crowd, Tad and I didn’t seem weird at all.
> which stood for one week
Suck me dry!
on February 16, 2007 at 5:00 am Lynn wrote:
I was once married to this guy named Russell. Pong and River Raid were obsessions of his. Are you into Slot cars too?
on February 16, 2007 at 5:55 am Scott wrote:
Wait….you mean there was a time when it was all even more of a freak gallery? Whoa.
on February 16, 2007 at 8:03 am Xorge wrote:
I miss the freak show…
on July 25, 2007 at 3:35 pm Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion » Build your own MAME box wrote:
[…] about it goes into little detail on that front. I tried to run MAME a couple months ago after Doug wrote about it, but didn’t get much of anywhere (I didn’t really have time at that point to dig into […]