MAME cabinets

The 80’s was an era which many of us can look back with memories of its classic arcade games and a place to chill out together with friends and consume time on the arcade games. I’m sure many of you cant forget classics like Gunsmoke and Pole Position. All the arcade games we remember, are today nowhere to be found. One can say this is also a growing experience with the Pinball tables as there is only one company still producing them. Poker and slot machines have pretty much flooded the amusement arcades.

Perhaps you are one of those who would like to fire up the classic arcades again, if so there is wonderful news. MAME which is an Arcade emulator, lets us experience the classic arcades with our computers. The games are not recreations but instead dumped from the original machines which makes the gameplay near identical. The are loads of titles available for MAME and most a fully playable and emulated. Thanks to the MAME community we all can enjoy its classic arcade games as in the good ol’ days. Playing the old games again is great but its not as authentic as it was on the real arcades. With a MAME cabinet, its a different setup and nearest to the real thing as it gets. In more detail, a MAME cabinet is a cabinet which reminds of a real arcade cabinet and have the same components. What is a Frontend? A frontend is a software that contains emulators and lets you use the arcade controls to launch them. Frontends makes it easy to install other programs and emulators like Spectrum or Visual Pinball. You could even have a Jukebox on your MAME cabinet. The possibilities are endless. With most Windows versions people have found solutions to hide the desktop and boot images which is another way to forget that a PC is inside the arcade machine. Its a lot of work building a MAME cabinet. You can try you’re luck and find an old Arcade machine to build on, maybe recycle the parts as well.

Arcade parts are easy to locate, just look around the net. CRT TV’s are a good thing for a display as they come in big sizes while are cheap. By using a graphic cards s-video connection it sends out a more authentic arcade display which you don’t see on PC monitors. If you life in the US Wells Gardner produces arcade monitors which have superb quality. These are perfect for the many arcade and MAME cabinet gamers who dont want to use computer or LCD screens as displays. For those located in Europe there is another solution as we can use CRT Scart TV’s in combination with an ArcadeVGA card to display the games native resolution.

Thanks to the MAME emulator its possible to experience the great arcade video games.