MAME vs HARDWARE
- Thread starter NeoGeo64
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This sort of thing usually comes down to some yes/no discussion about inputlag. If you can live without the idea of inserting a cart in a real neo geo there's really no difference anymore nowadays. Especially if you go the groovymame route and play on a CRT.
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mame is all i play now. all my hardware is packed up and locked away. and i personally can't tell much of a difference between emulation and actual hardware. not enough to annoy me any way. as long as it looks and plays the same, which it does for me, i'll carry on playing on mame.
ShootTheCore
Genam's Azami Sharpener
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Real hardware is all I play now. All my emulation equipment is sold off or packed up. I personally can tell a substantial difference between emulation and actual hardware - the emulation annoys me in every way. As long as my real hardware continues working, I'll carry on playing on the real deal.
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Wachenroder
Galford's Poppy Trainer
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Yeah im sort of with you on that. Emulation does bother me but i always weigh the pros and cons.
I dont have an NES, GAMEBOY, GAMEGEAR NGPC and have no interest in getting another one of those ever again so im fine emulating those. i doubt i'll ever be into collecting arcade pcbs so im fine emulating those. Pretty much everything else i can feasibly play on original hardware so thats what i do.
as for MAME....I cant stand fiddling with settings so i avoid whenever possible
The different opinions are mostly due to different setups/emulators. You can't just talk about "teh emulatorz" or " teh mame", that's like saying you're driving a car and it sucks so all cars suck without specifying make/model and what you're doing with it. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between neo hardware and a proper groovymame setup (which means crt/rgb) in a blind test.
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I've never liked MAME. There's too many forks and variants of it, there's too many damn settings to configure, even then it very rarely works properly. What bothers me the most is MAME is a massive collection of little "emulator cores" for the hundreds of different CPU, sound chip and graphics chipset configuration found in arcade games. MAME even handles 3D games. How can a program like that maintain accuracy when emulators for just one console still struggle to attain perfection?
Not to mention software emulation, by nature, can never be completely accurate. When CPU X has to impersonate CPU Y along with sound chips and graphics chips, it takes a disproportionate amount of computing power to perform. Software emulation can never be perfect until modern systems become fast enough to emulate at the transistor level. Until then, everything today that is "100% playable" will always be an approximation. Considering ROM files are useless until the code they contain is executed by the correct machine, it should be a no-brainer that hardware should come first. Using original carts on a RetroN5 is no different from ROMs and emulators on a PC and is therefore pointless.
Not to mention software emulation, by nature, can never be completely accurate. When CPU X has to impersonate CPU Y along with sound chips and graphics chips, it takes a disproportionate amount of computing power to perform. Software emulation can never be perfect until modern systems become fast enough to emulate at the transistor level. Until then, everything today that is "100% playable" will always be an approximation. Considering ROM files are useless until the code they contain is executed by the correct machine, it should be a no-brainer that hardware should come first. Using original carts on a RetroN5 is no different from ROMs and emulators on a PC and is therefore pointless.
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oliverclaude
General Morden's Aide
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That's an important point. The right set up always takes time and patience -- also at least a basic level of, let's call it software skills. Some games need special treatment, extra adjustments. Theoretically there's no 100% accuracy, nor is everything lag-free, but with a perfect set up you won't ever notice.
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I would say its around 85 - 90% if your judging on pure hardware comparison and about 95% on the playability side or things. Don't get me wrong though, MAME is by far the closest NeoGeo emulator to real hardware. That also means however that it is not the fastest (if you are running it on a low spec hardware) but I think this is not an issue these days.
There are little things in relation to wait states, sounds, palettes and other quirks of the originall HW which MAME does not handle. Some protections are also not accurate in the way they initilise and work (compared to the originals) but are enough to allow the games to run.
There are little things in relation to wait states, sounds, palettes and other quirks of the originall HW which MAME does not handle. Some protections are also not accurate in the way they initilise and work (compared to the originals) but are enough to allow the games to run.
JoeAwesome
I survived Secret Santa, It wasn't Easy.,
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I get it. STC wrote a 3rd grade level "contrast" portion to Bogard's idea.
Remember when changing a few words to a quote was acceptable plagiarism in elementary school?
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heihachi
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I love playing on the original hardware, and no emulation can beat the charm of the real thing imo even if emulation comes really close to 100% accuracy. That said, original hardware can be expensive and hard to find so its great good emulation exists. If I didnt have disposable cash I'd have no problem sticking to mame or kawaks.
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^
I love my GroovyMAME setup in the super neo 29, at the moment I have the monitor set vertically and the shooters run perfectly. Wouldn't know it wasn't a PCB when they're loaded. You really do need to run a suitable ati radeon card and crt emudriver though, also mod the card's bios for 15khz output only.
I love my GroovyMAME setup in the super neo 29, at the moment I have the monitor set vertically and the shooters run perfectly. Wouldn't know it wasn't a PCB when they're loaded. You really do need to run a suitable ati radeon card and crt emudriver though, also mod the card's bios for 15khz output only.
ShootTheCore
Genam's Azami Sharpener
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Hey-I strive for fourth-grade quality writing when I post on these forums. I'm just not as resplendent as you concomitants with your luxuriant four-dollar words.