The 1980s were about more than stars, bars, hammers and sickles. Particularly if you were between the ages of 6 to 16 during the passage of that decade, the ‘80s had nothing to do with the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction or, incidentally, Islamic Afghan Freedom fighters. The ‘80s were about dropping quarters into arcade machines like a drug addict, preparing to fight other kids for the next opportunity to play and absorbing the sometimes blatant propaganda programmed into every machine.
It was a golden era. There’s no denying the nostalgia evoked by mentioning titles like Spy Hunter, Pitfall, 720, Altered Beast, Choplifter, Rampage, Galaga, Commandos, Karate Champ, Shinobi, Defender, Double Dragon, Punch Out, Hat Trick, Ikari Warriors, Marble Madness, Out Run and Zaxxon.
Like many of the aforementioned games, there are absolute classics like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. that have not only stood the test of time but have spawned incredibly profitable franchises for their owners throughout the computer age.
Over 2000 titles were produced in the 1980s for coin-op arcades and restaurants. Only a few will never be forgotten. Unfortunately, many others may be remembered in the subconscious for their racist, militaristic, consumeristic and just plain ignorant undertones—sometimes overtones. Among these are YieAr Kung Fu, Tapper(bartender game by Budweiser), Vigilante, Us vs Them, Speed Freak, Arabian and Gang Wars.
If you have that nostalgic urge, you can convert a portion of your PC into an arcade temple of every game ever made for coin-op use without so much as a dent in the average hard drive space of late model computers. It’s called “emulation” and these emulators allow you to run the original game code under a modern Windows, Unix or MacOS environment.
Emulators aren’t limited to professional arcade systems. You can download emulators for Atari 2600, 5200, 7800 systems and Commodore 64 and Nintendo and a host of other 80s console systems. However, after covering just about every aspect of gaming emulators, I can say with conviction that the arcade coin-op emulators offer the most entertainment and the best overall reproduction of the originals in terms of colors, speed and sound.
The first problem I encountered when exploring emulation was that my nostalgic memories are much, much more beautiful than actual console games. Just about every Atari 2600 game is uninhibited garbage in terms of visuals. Only Space Invaders and Pitfall are forgiven because they are major breakthrough games that are still fun despite 4-bit graphics. Commodore 64 games suffer because their emulators are unstable. This was highly disappointing because the quality rivals the more professional coin-op games of its time and my fondest PC memories involve spending, literally countless, hours at the South Florida Science Museum’s Commodore 64 room. Dozens upon dozens of great games were stockpiled there and only a few computer geeks, myself included, became de facto managers of 16 machines. No crowds, no strangers, no fights.
So I stray far away from the point and probably could stray for hours on memories where 20 of 26 years were spent programming, repairing and playing on computers.
The first thing you need for your arcade nostalgia trip is the best arcade emulator. In the case of coin-op games, you must go to www.download.com and search for MAME32. Download and run the program. [Ed: WinZip is an essential prerequisite. Search and setup this first.]
After successfully downloading the emulator, it’s time to start downloading the pieces for your temple. You must run 3 programs simultaneously: Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer and MAME32. After these programs are running, do the following:
1. Find your MAME32 directory under Windows Explorer.
2. Using Internet Explorer, go to www.classicgaming.com
3. At the Classic Gaming site, go to the Game Vault, select “arcade games”
4. Choose a game. Download it. When Windows asks what you would like to do with the file, select “save”. Save it to the “ROM” directory under the emulator directory. DO NOT UNZIP.
5. Go to MAME32. Find game name. Right click. Play.
That’s all.
In no time at all, you’ll be running all your arcade originals. Before you run out to create your arcade temple, there is a question of legality.
All the games at Classic Gaming are games that are no longer in circulation. The companies either no longer exist or they can’t make any money off the old titles. Noticeable absences involve Pac-Man and several Nintendo games. These titles are still making money almost 20 years later and, therefore, illegal to possess without proper ownership.
You’ve been warned. Piracy is evil and wrong. (Am I grinning in this closing statement?)
