MAME - Your childhood on a thumbdrive

There is a recurring theme in S.I.T.P.L, old tech and new tech, melded together, becoming even cooler and more nerdy than previously conceivable.

IT People love technology but are very sentimental. Some hoard old Sparc stations and SGI workstations not only because they look cool, they are nostalgic about the "simpler times". *sigh*.

MAME ( Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator ) allowed IT people to play every arcade game ever made, on their PC. If it was made, it's out there. It wasn't enough to simply have the emulator on your PC, thats boring, what they really want is to stand up (or sit at the ropey bar-table version) and play it, like being in a "real" arcade. Without the being around other people part.

So, being makers by nature, cabinets were harvested or created and systems pieced together from old desktop computers and abandoned monitors. The great part is, the computing power of a 5 year old desktop is more than enough to run any MAME game if you consider the computing power available in 1984 to run Defender or Crysta Castles. MAME is only really properly set up if you have the entire collection of ROMs. Anything short of a comprehensive collection, even the esoteric outliers and regional versions, is just not good enough.

A MAME project is very much like a 1969 Camaro SS restoration project. It's new and old, it's problem solving and arcane documentation, it's resurrection and redemption. It's bragging rights and also slightly illegal in it's creation.