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What are some great MAME games?

A user named cat

Guest
Posted this over in the emu thread recently but if anyone wants the latest compiled version of MAME (0.164) with no nag screens and support for turbo, direct input and high scores, then here you go.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/dhljfwv433dkmeb/MAME.zip
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
Battle Garegga.
Difficulty is on a good level.

:lol:

Anyway, if you like the general style of Garegga, then you'll probably like Raizing's other games from that period - Battle Bakraid and Armed Police Batrider most prominently. Batrider in particular if you'd prefer a more vibrant colour palette.

On the topic of Cave games in particular, the ones from 1997-2000 all look very good. Dodonpachi and Guwange were mentioned earlier, but Esprade and Dangun Feveron aren't really any worse (and Dangun is just a hilariously awesome game in general).





Espgaluda, I think, is Cave's last game to use this graphical style, and it's really good looking as well, though a bit too grey-brown for my tastes:



Rayforce is certainly a contender for the best presentation ever in a 2D shmup:



Finally, a lot of people really like the graphics in the later Psikyo games. Personally, I'm not that much of a fan of the style, but it's certainly technically impressive:



Did my best to link to videos with skillful play, as well.
 
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I think Garegga is one of the shmups with the most brutal implementation of rank (do well, get fucked); it's a dumb mechanic but makes sense from a coin operated machine perspective. Also the colour palette makes it deliberately hard to see incoming deadly projectiles. It's still a great game and I think the soundtrack kicks ass.

I like Psikyo games in general (and I do think Dragon Blaze has some of the best graphics in shmup history), but their games get a little too formulaic with the randomized first levels, etc. Plus I'm not a fan of their bullet patterns in general. I prefer their earlier games as a rule; Strikers 1945 is a great series.

edit: regarding playing shmups in MAME, I've had huge issues with input lag for many years, even something like one or two frames of lag is very noticeable. However recently having found Retroarch it seems their video timing is very accurate, and I think it's a huge improvement over the past. Maybe it's the MAME core that's improved, maybe it's something else, but it's never been a better time to play these games.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.

:cool:

Batrider in particular if you'd prefer a more vibrant colour palette.

I know. As mentioned by Great Deceiver the pallete was killing my eyes in Garegga. Dark missiles on a dark grey ground. I need to play those game in shorter time spans though, have some problems with sleeping after longer sessions.

As for the non-shmups I replayed Strider 2. Still has some problems with sound from time to time but overall it's playable from start to end. For an arcade game it's really fair even with the boss fights. This time I'm not joking.. The powerup really makes a diffrence and you can finish most fights very quickly if you know the patterns of attacks.

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Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Small irrelevant fact of the day (that popped into my head from seeing all that Strider stuff):

Back in the early 90s I was at a friend's place and he had recently bought a copy of Strider 2 for his Amstrad CPC. After watching him have a go at it, I had one...and proceeded to beat the game in one sitting without ever seeing a "Game Over" screen. Took me somewhere between 40-60 minutes.

By no means is this a feat that compares to anything pulled on an arcade game, but there you go.
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
I think Garegga is one of the shmups with the most brutal implementation of rank (do well, get fucked); it's a dumb mechanic but makes sense from a coin operated machine perspective. Also the colour palette makes it deliberately hard to see incoming deadly projectiles. It's still a great game and I think the soundtrack kicks ass.

I like Psikyo games in general (and I do think Dragon Blaze has some of the best graphics in shmup history), but their games get a little too formulaic with the randomized first levels, etc. Plus I'm not a fan of their bullet patterns in general. I prefer their earlier games as a rule; Strikers 1945 is a great series.

edit: regarding playing shmups in MAME, I've had huge issues with input lag for many years, even something like one or two frames of lag is very noticeable. However recently having found Retroarch it seems their video timing is very accurate, and I think it's a huge improvement over the past. Maybe it's the MAME core that's improved, maybe it's something else, but it's never been a better time to play these games.

Saying that Garegga's rank system punishes you for "doing well" is a bit of a misrepresenation, I think. What it primarily does, is make the game harder when you get more powerful and also when you use your resources - both shooting and bombing increase rank by a decent amount. However, if you define "doing well" as "scoring high", then this isn't really the case - there's no rank increase associated with increasing score or gaining score extends (unlike Batrider, where picking up an extend is kind of the reverse of dying in that it increases rank proportionally to how many extra lives you have in stock), and high value medals actually increase rank much less than low value ones.

:cool:
I know. As mentioned by Great Deceiver the pallete was killing my eyes in Garegga. Dark missiles on a dark grey ground. I need to play those game in shorter time spans though, have some problems with sleeping after longer sessions.

Well, if you actually want to play it seriously and aim for a clear, I'd strongly suggest reading up on how the rank system works. It's pretty complex and you can't really succeed at the game without manipulating it to some extent.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
So I've been (re)playing Mame games and I've stumbled upon a real curiosity.

2YhCQGZ.jpg


Mission Craft, yeah. Made by a company called Sun. If you think that the "company" that made it was somewhere from Asia then you are correct.

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Ohkay...

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Turns out it's a shooter where your choice of "ship" doesn't matter. You kill everyone and everything without mercy. Zerg, Protoss and Terrans all along.

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I'm a one mutalisk killing machine, even building don't have a chance.

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Boss fight :lol:

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The best part is the music. I mean, I knew it wasn't from Starcraft. But then I remember one of the tracks. Ahh yes.




Later on the sound is killed completely due to the emulation problems.

They've copied the bonus elements from Mame arcade games too. The machine is fully playable and it take less than half an hour to beat it. The ending is taken from Blizzard cutscenes of course.



:hero:
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Just discovered this metal slug clone, looks promising enough.



I remember trying to run it some time ago and it didn't worked for me. Tried it this week and it starts with no problems or sound/music glitches. Really good shooter, a reskinned Metal Slug but with a little animals/elementals helping you and every character has some unique ability. Tastetul 2d art direction included.

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Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
Posted this over in the emu thread recently but if anyone wants the latest compiled version of MAME (0.164) with no nag screens and support for turbo, direct input and high scores, then here you go.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/dhljfwv433dkmeb/MAME.zip

Anybody can link to something like this? I lost my MAME. Too lazy to build another one. Teh torrentz don't seem to have a nicely compiled MAME with recentish roms. Ho Underground Gamer, how i miss thee.
 

A user named cat

Guest
Posted this over in the emu thread recently but if anyone wants the latest compiled version of MAME (0.164) with no nag screens and support for turbo, direct input and high scores, then here you go.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/dhljfwv433dkmeb/MAME.zip

Anybody can link to something like this? I lost my MAME. Too lazy to build another one. Teh torrentz don't seem to have a nicely compiled MAME with recentish roms. Ho Underground Gamer, how i miss thee.
Here's MAME 0.176 with no nag screens.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/llu10t6m6uezd7m/MAME.7z
 
Last edited by a moderator:

iZerw

Arcane
Vatnik
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Guys, there is a certain torrent tracker for all your console/arcade needs. Just saying...
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
it's a dumb mechanic but makes sense from a coin operated machine perspective.

I think it is a cool mechanic that came out of a desire to fleece people out of their coins. The idea of a game that punishes you for doing well (more or less anyway) is kinda interesting and i think the unique challenge involved is one of the reasons Battle Garegga is so cherished among fans of the genre.

Too bad i can't play the game since i have shit eyes and the graphics appear to also be part of the challenge.
 
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A user named cat

Guest
Pretty sure he's referring to the Dome of Pleasure. Just switch the words, remove "of" and push them together. Google search, first result. Enjoy. I believe all MAME roms and chd's are free leech too and the sets are all up to date.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Since I play NeoGeo games on Mame as well, instead of splitting hairs I will use this thread for SNK titles as well in the near future. For now I only link to two short documents about the history of the company - one made in Japan in early 90's and second - american postmortem about the death and revive of the company as SNK Playmore.



 
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I have the Neo Geo chime permanently ingraned into my brain. Spent too much of my adolescence playing SNK fighters on arcades.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Drawing pixel art, with a joystick. Talking about having a hard job.


http://videogamesdensetsu.tumblr.co...en-graphic-designers-from-taito-snk-and-other

In 2014, former Taito graphic designer Atsushi Iwata posted a picture of the device he used to create pixel graphics. This custom joystick was connected to a X68000, a computer which was used as a workstation by many Japanese video game companies until the mid-90s (although companies such as Sega and Westone used a PC-98 to develop some, if not all, of their games during this era).
There is one button per function hence the 20 buttons featured on the control panel. The software used by Taito was called Taito Animator.

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While it seems odd to use such a device, it wasn’t that uncommon. Hayato Takano (past works unknown) recently posted a picture of a similar device and added that some developers were still using the X68000 version of this device until 1998 (Windows 95 pretty much became the standard OS in the late 90s and Japan was no exception).
A Windows compatible version was made as well as a PC-98 version.

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A few years ago, Spoon, a member of The Madman’s Cafe, posted a message in which he recounted a story one of his co-worker told him:
The sprite editor used by artists for a number of SNK fighting games (Art Box) was written for the Neo-Geo, and uses the Neo-Geo as the interface. As in, you would use the joystick and the buttons to draw the sprite. He didn’t believe this when he started there, until one of the higher ups showed him by firing up one of the machines and drawing a kickass sprite of Robert Garcia in like 10 minutes”.

I don’t know why some companies decided to use a joystick to draw. It was probably faster than a mouse and less costly than a digital pen, but, as you may guess, it was pretty noisy.


On a related note, another developer (Tonya_Plan) posted a picture of a keyboard used to create graphics (circa 1992).

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oto

Barely Literate
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
2
For me these are the greatest and the best MAME games:

Metal Slug 2 - Super Vehicle
Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash of Super-Heroes
Pac-Man
Street Fighter Alpha 3
 

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