Pac-Man's Trek From Arcade to PC

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Ripped from WIRED.COM

 

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Chris Kirmse loves video arcade games.

 

Love might be the wrong word. He's obsessed with them. He's been a part of the loosely organized Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) project since 1996. The group, numbering around 100 people, writes software applications called "emulators," which enable archaic arcade games like Pac-Man and Tempest to run on personal computers.

 

Nicola Salmoria, a reclusive Italian engineer, started MAME, but it was Kirmse who opened the development to thousands of users. Salmoria released the first emulator in January 1997, using the MS-DOS operating system. DOS requires people to type word commands to run programs, which can be confusing for many beginners.

 

The code might have confused some, but for hundreds of engineers around the world, it was a watershed moment. Kirmse was immediately attracted to the project.

 

"Nicola has an unbelievable understanding of the (video games)," said Kirmse. "He knows the ins and outs of almost every piece of arcade hardware. Anyone who worked on the arcade games in the industry might have worked on 10 games, but he's emulated hundreds of games."

 

Fortunately, Salmoria released his code into the open-source community, allowing anyone to alter the program. Kirmse did just that, creating a Windows application called MAME32 that was user friendly.

 

That operating system change was an important step since MAME relies on independent developers who create emulators in their spare time. Ease of use is important because it takes some effort to build 1,500 emulators, the number now available.

 

Programmers create a specific application that reads the data from an arcade game ROM storage system and "emulates" the sounds and visual experience on a PC. Building an emulator is easy, but each video game has a specific hardware design that requires a specific emulator.

 

The MAME community is fluid, with programmers joining and dropping out as their interests wax and wane. Salmoria still reigns over the project, but the group is kept together by a confederation of hard-core enthusiasts like Mark Colgon, who started a central beta testing group for newly released emulators. Like others, Colgon stumbled across the project early on and got hooked. Today, he runs MAMEworld, a site that hosts 40 ongoing project pages and current news.

 

For many, building the perfect emulator is just the first step in bringing long-dead arcade games back to life.

 

"The first thing you notice with emulators is that playing games with arrow keys isn't like playing with a joystick and a button," said Kirmse. "A significant number of people have taken the concept of MAME and hooked that up with arcade machines. That was something I was very interested in."

 

Kirmse first got the idea to build a multipurpose game cabinet while bowling with fellow programmer Tom Bazzano in 1996. They trolled around the eBay auction site looking for joysticks, track balls and motherboards for two years while they slowly built their customized game. When the pair finished, it became an instant hit with their friends and others began asking Bazzano to help them build their own machines.

 

"Inevitably, people were attracted to the MAME game that we'd built," said Bazzano. "Some of the people started building them, and since I'd already built one, people would lean on me for help. The real problem is finding parts and figuring out how to do this, but there are lots of pages out there dedicated to doing just this."

 

For the past three years, he's been building game cabinets for other people. Recently, he and his fiancée began to get the itch for their own console. The couple has collected stand-up arcade games for years -- they have seven scattered in his living room, kitchen, bedroom and garage. Now, space is tight but they don't want to get rid of their collection.

 

"In 1998, we finished Chris' game and I had these arcade games strewn around my house and I had all these tools," said Bazzano. "My fiancée and I are renting, and we're going to build a really good MAME cabinet ... because we don't have enough space."