Share Your Favorite, Lesser-known Arcade Gems

mediamogul

If I remember correctly, 'Spy Hunter' is in someway non-functional on lr-mame2003. However it runs well on everything else in RetroPie I've tried. I have a custom mapping for it in advmame to where I have full analog control of the gas on the y-axis of my controller's thumbstick and digital steering on the x-axis. The result plays incredibly smooth like you'd find on a modern Midway compilation.

Capeman

@mediamogul Just tried to add spy hunter the other night, freezes on a volume adjustment screen after the bios and there's no way to proceed on lr-mame2003. Bummer.

mediamogul

@Capeman

Yeah, seems like it's an issue that affects several classic Midway games. It can probably be traced to one particular driver.

caver01

@pjft Chase HQ is certainly one I've never heard of, but I wouldn't call Spy Hunter a lesser-known. I think a Spy Hunter cab was in every arcade I can remember as a kid.

caver01

@Darksavior said in Share Your Favorite, Lesser-known Arcade Gems:

@pjft I had the complete opposite experience when I tried it last night. To my surprise, it's not a libretro emulator so that already put me off. No 1080p output, no crtpi shader, no easy configurable pad. I only tried Arabian Fight (system32) and it was considerably slower than mame2003.

AdvanceMAME has several "smoothing" filters, and default options may not be the best for performance--not by a longshot. display_resizeeffect may be set to options like hq or xbr which do some fancy blitting to smooth shapes etc. For most of us looking for a retro experience, this is unacceptable. It also drags performance considerably. You can edit the .rc config file and set this option to NONE by default, or use TAB in-game and set the option you like. I often set an RGB triad overlay in conjunction with a display_resizeeffect of mean or filter for a decent CRT look, but this is totally subjective. Check here for details on what each setting does.

One thing for certain, AdvanceMAME is superior when it comes to vector, running at your display's full resolution as opposed to the other emulators that take a low-res default (640x480?) resulting in jagged vectors.

pjft

@caver01 I suppose I mostly knew these games from the ZX Spectrum - never had a lot of arcades in my neighborhood as a kid - though I should have been more aware that Spy Hunter would've been quite popular. My bad. I suppose I also never saw one - I did see G-Loc (in the actual plane cockpit cabinet!) and Hang-On, though.

@mediamogul @Capeman I'll need to check. I know that at one point the Midway games did have some problems in MAME2003, but I was under the impression that I had played it on it more recently. Might be my mind playing tricks on me, certainly. Will see. :)

backstander

@pjft
Spy Hunter was one of my favorite's back on my NES and I had the TurboGrafx-16 version of Chase HQ. I couldn't tell you how many hours I'd spent playing those!

I don't know if these are lesser know but anytime I try to talk to anyone locally about these games they would either look at me crazy or have no idea what I'm talking about. Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin'! There was a gas station not far from my friend's house that had the sit down version of Race Drivin'. My friend later got the game for his Atari Lynx. I don't think the Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to emulator those 2 arcade games but if someone know how, just let us know!

Also APB ("All Points Bulletin") which was a day and the life of a rookie police officer trying not to get fired by his boss. My same friend had the Atari Lynx version of that game as well.

caver01

@backstander APB is a good-looking game, although I find it hard to play--I probably just need practice. Also, success might depend on how the controls are mapped, especially on an arcade cabinet.

backstander

@caver01
APB is probably better played with a steering wheel but the Atari Lynx version is quite playable!

caver01

@backstander Yes I have it mapped to one of my spinners. I think it might be a coordination issue with me now. Good thing I am not a cop.

Brigane

@capeman How on earth did you get Ninja Baseball Batman to run properly? I'm having music stuttering and low fps on both mame2003 and fba. I'm using a Pi 2 and Retropie 4.4.2.

Darksavior

@brigane You need a pi3b+ at 1.5ghz to minimize the slowdowns with mame2003/mame2003plus. There's still slowdowns every now and then. I'd say a pi3b at 1.3ghz minimum. A pi2 won't cut it. Fba is slower.

I haven't checked on my pi2, but oc it to 1Ghz and try it on mame2003. That's the best you can do.

dudleydes

@brigane Ninja Baseball Batman run reasonably well in AdvanceMAME on my Pi 2.

Brigane

@dudleydes thank you, I'll check that out 😀

Edit: I can announce that it runs almost perfectly with AdvanceMAME