Dragon's Lair Fans - Arcade Lifestyle
General Chat => Meetings, Exhibition, Events... => Topic started by: amuzulo on March 07, 2011, 11:33:43 PM
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Hey everyone,
I've been reading this forum for about 5 years now and finally got an account! :) Anyway, I recently became an English tour guide for the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin (http://www.computerspielemuseum.de/). We're trying to cover the history of all computer and video games, so the arcade section has:
- Computer Space (!!)
- Pong (!)
- Space Invaders Part II
- Asteroids
- Centipede
- Poly-Play (!)
Unfortunately, our version of Computer Space doesn't work, although the curator did once tell me that they got it working for about 10 minutes once and it wasn't very fun... Also, note that our version has joysticks instead of the all-button version like Nuno has. :)
Poly-Play was the only arcade machine made in East Germany. You can find more info about it on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play). Also, on request, we can turn on the Pong machine, Vectrex and Virtual Boy. All in all, I think it's just about the coolest job you can have.
Note that arcade machines were essentially banned in Germany since 1984. So, as an American, I'm pretty much their arcade expert. To be exact, a law passed in Germany in 1984 which made gambling machines, arcade machines and pinball machines all equal in the eyes of the law. Thus, you needed to be at least 18 years old to put a coin in a Pac-Man machine... thank you Germany for protecting our youth! Grrr... So basically, places catering to the 18+ crowd all bought gambling machines, because they were cheaper and earned them more money. That pretty much killed off arcade machines in Germany. Most Germans have only seen arcade machines abroad and I would imagine there aren't many Germans on this forum, although I'd love to be proven wrong!
Anyway, if you're in Berlin and want to visit the museum, let me know and if I'm free, I'll come over to the museum to meet you. :) Also, if you have any questions about the museum, I'd be happy to answer them!
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Hi guys,
I was already there and it was horrible. ALL machines (except the non operating CS and Pong) are ripped apart and driven by Mame computers with TFT screens. Even the Asteroids had a TFT inside! I already wrote an angry letter to the administration of the museum but they only answered some bla bla it is better this way because it would be to much work to maintain the original machines. Very bad.
The Pong was terribly restaurated. There was a 90s Grundig TV inside that doesn't fit. They "corrected" that with tape around the bezel. The knobs for the paddles were plastic ones that seemed to come off a cheap hifi. Awful! My heart still bleeds when I think about it.... The tape around bezel method was used on all the machines ... TFTs have no curve ... that's pretty bad. Maybe somebody should invent that ;)
The Space Invaders II had the wrong game installed on the Mame Pc .. I bet they didn't even notice that they chose the original Space Invaders instead of the second part :roll: I managed to quit mame a couple of times pressing the two start buttons at once. Most encoders use that as ESC. :-X
The Centipede was not there during my visit. Maybe they couldn't get the original trackball to work with mame or the wonderful Ultimarc USB trackball had to be refittet in the panel? We will never know ...
The Polyplay (also with TFT of course!) had a C64 Joystick installed ... hard to believe that they were not able to change a broken joystick with a real arcade stick. Instead they used a Competition Pro as replacement. I still don't get it ...
So, don't go there and give them your money.
Cheers, prc
PS: This was not intended to be offending! Anyways I think that that museum has to change it's attitude ... most of us here (if not all ;)) are doing more to keep the arcade spirit alive than those guys showing fake machines to the kids and make money out of it.
PPS: I recognised a sign on the wall reading "Death Race" in the arcade section!!! The cab was not there ... I pray to the lord every night that they are not "restaurating" that one with TFT and mame also. :shock:
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:shock:
Wow.
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I was thinking about visiting the museum, but now that i read this i won't.
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Yeah ... I'm quite excited about their reactions here in the forum. As I mentioned, I got an email in reply to my angry mail, telling me that they had to walk the line between maintenance frindly and showing arcades in general. If they only had left the tubes in place ... TFT is no option FOR A MUSEUM! I told them but they didn't listen to that. They invited me to visit the exibition again and talk to the staff about the problems but I'm only three times a year in Berlin in generell and I think that would be waste of time ...
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at least they are willing to talk about it....
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Ok, that's good indeed, but the monkey on my back tells me that they won't change anything in their concept ;) Maybe we schould sneak in at night and change all monitors to tubes again, put in the original pcbs and go in as a visitor group the next day to tell them how great the exibition is :D
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:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
Even the Asteroids had a TFT inside!
(http://www.deviantart.com/download/127408066/puking_emoticon_by_sheep0creator.gif)
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I think at least they're trying. I wish there was something like this where I lived.
Perhaps it is an opportunity for those of you that can, to offer to help them to restore their machines to their former glory. Since one of their staff is now a member of the board this shouldn't be too hard to organise.
They obviously don't realise just how important it is for these machines to be original. Perhaps 90% of the general public who will visit the place don't care either.
But let's be positive about this and try to help.
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Well Amazulo says he has been reading this forum for 5 years now, so he could have called in for help a bit earlier. He would also know what is required to do a proper restore of a classic arcade machine if he has been reading some of the excellent restorations reported here.
The really bad thing is that machines are being butchered by installing MAME and TFT's (!!!) in them. Although MAME-ing can be considered OK for home machines and only as a last resort, it is not acceptable for a museum IMHO. And I'm not even beginning about the TFT's.
If I think about that they removed the original vector monitor on that Asteroids and probably ditched it, my stomach turns around...
It's like getting a Rembrandt and letting a child restore it with some crayons....and a knife....
A museum should always strive for restoring their pieces to originality. I've never seen a classic Rolls Royce with 2010 turbo-diesel engine on display in a museum....
If they are not capable of doing that, they were surely aware of people in this community who could have helped...there are even other museums they could have contacted ( http://www.classicarcademuseum.org )
I would have much rather seen those machines at collector's who do know how to do a proper restore.
IMHO, this little sentence says a lot:
Computer Space doesn't work, although the curator did once tell me that they got it working for about 10 minutes once and it wasn't very fun
Well duh...it's not about wether it's fun or not and if anyone, a museum should judge the machine for what it is: A MONUMENT.
The very first coin-operated arcade videogame ever. And not only that, but also one of the most beautiful cabs ever produced.
Maybe our navy can send in a helicopter to rescue those poor machines....uhh, better not ! :D
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I'm absolutely the same oppinion!! Their main interrest seems to be to entertain the visitors. I think a museum should care about more things than just make and keep the machines playable ... their job should be to preserve and present the machines in their original state!
The mess continues in the consoles section. They have an Atari2600 playable on a 16:9 wall-mounted Lcd ... why??? I mean a lot of the characteristics and soul of the old machines can only be seen in their natural surroundings. They have to get a bunch of 80s Tvs to show the stuff in all it's former glory.
The idea of presenting the games playable for the sacrifice of being original is so totally wrong for a museum ...
And there is more: look at this quote from their website, filed under Preservation/Research!:
For the museum regards long-term conservation and long-term availabilty via emulation as an important point of research, from our point of view it is of further priority to collect necessary software (operating systems, emulators, applications, hardware drivers).
Preservation via emulation??? Why not spend the efford on keeping the original stuff running???
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........They have an Atari2600 playable on a 16:9 wall-mounted Lcd ... why???
Are you sure the did not take out the original 2600 hardware and slam in a micro atx with a iSCD and Stella ;D
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I'm not sure, no ... :o ;D
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........They have an Atari2600 playable on a 16:9 wall-mounted Lcd ... why???
Are you sure the did not take out the original 2600 hardware and slam in a micro atx with a iSCD and Stella ;D
I bet they did because if you're going to output the STANDARD HF antenna signal into a modern day big-screen LCD it's going to look like crap.
Unless they had the 2600 modded by Mr.Atari to have a composite video output.....
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........They have an Atari2600 playable on a 16:9 wall-mounted Lcd ... why???
Are you sure the did not take out the original 2600 hardware and slam in a micro atx with a iSCD and Stella ;D
I bet they did because if you're going to output the STANDARD HF antenna signal into a modern day big-screen LCD it's going to look like crap.
Unless they had the 2600 modded by Mr.Atari to have a composite video output.....
With the effort (or lack of) they have put in it so far - I think they just kept it at looking like crap with a HF antenna signal. :(
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Or....... the dtv variant...
(http://retrotat.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/atari_10_in_1.png) (http://retrotat.info/2009/02/atari_tv_games_10_in_1/) (http://retrotat.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/atari_paddle.jpg)
(http://retrotat.info/2010/02/atari-paddle-dtv/)click pics
Im sure that has composite out ;D
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Geez, they should have included Kaboom ! (The activision clode of Atari's Avalanche) on that Paddle thing !!
Mmmm, well if Ully's Breakout PCB is not fixable, he can always throw in one of these.....
Minor note: He'll have to move the monitor from vertical to horizontal, but who cares ?! :roll:
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Geez, they should have included Kaboom ! (The activision clode of Atari's Avalanche) on that Paddle thing !!
Mmmm, well if Ully's Breakout PCB is not fixable, he can always throw in one of these.....
Minor note: He'll have to move the monitor from vertical to horizontal, but who cares ?! :roll:
As far as i can judge from the story from this museum, the people of the museum don,t care ::)
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Hmmm, I think the DO care actually, BUT they think it's all good what they do, because they can show the cabs to the people, the people can play it and the mission to bring games history to the public is accomplished. Big mistake ... they just don't know better. Maybe to few people have complained yet.
I'm still excited to hear a statement from them here in this thread ... it took a few days (if I remember right) before I got my email replied so if we are lucky someone responsible gets in touch with us here ...
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Hey everyone,
First of all, I just want to say that I'm quite heart-broken by the discussion here. Second, I've only really gotten involved with the museum itself about a month ago, so I wasn't involved in the decisions to remove the original hardware and replace it with MAME. Also, I guess you could say I'm personally more of an "expert" from the software point of view rather than the hardware side. Since I'm new there, I'm also not sure how much how much I can say, so I'm going to pass this along to people more involved than me to comment. You also have to remember though that Germany really doesn't have a tradition at all of playing these games and the museum administration is doing the best they can. Computer games have always gotten a bad reputation in Germany and it looks like this museum is finally giving this medium the positive attention that it deserves.
Best wishes,
Chuck
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You also have to remember though that Germany really doesn't have a tradition at all of playing these games and the museum administration is doing the best they can. Computer games have always gotten a bad reputation in Germany and it looks like this museum is finally giving this medium the positive attention that it deserves.
i couldn't disagree more!!!
arcade games in germany = no tradition? who's saying that?
computer games in germany = always bad reputation? since when?
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Hmmm, you are a tour guide and they haven't told you that the machines are modified? I wonder what you tell the visitors when you show them the Asteroids. One of the main facts of the machine is that it's vector but there is no vector monitor installed. Don't you speak about the technical facts?
Another point: you tell people here that in germany computer games had a bad reputation and we don't have a big tradition in videogames??? Ridculous. That's a plain lie. Did they tell you that?? You should check your sources on this point.
Things are worse than I thought .... :evil:
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I was thinking about visiting the museum, but now that i read this i won't.
Thats my decision now !
I will NOT visit this "Museum" that is not really a museum ..
All of us here have more really "historic" and authentic games in there gameroom ..
Who wanna see my "Museum" ?
5 Euros is the entrance .. children under 9 are free ..
All games original. All can be used, only one Mame-Machine .. but NO TFT's ..
If your eyes are not "15Khz ready" stay out !
Didi
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I can understand the meaning, and i am totally sure that the intentions are the best,
Mame is ok in my book, sure, if there is no hardware available, or whatever reason, but TFT's
Please Come ON ! , in a museum that supposed to be a place to see "treasures" that is a NO-GO.
just my 2 cents..
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Absolute no-go this is. Like going to a car museum and seeing them as plastic kit cars.
I won't go in there even if they offered money.... the hurting would just be way too much ....
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You also have to remember though that Germany really doesn't have a tradition at all of playing these games and the museum administration is doing the best they can. Computer games have always gotten a bad reputation in Germany and it looks like this museum is finally giving this medium the positive attention that it deserves.
I don't wish to sound rude, but obviously you don't know what you are talking about, and I guess you cannot be blamed for that.
I played tons of arcade games in Germany back in the early 80s, they where everywhere, in public places, in arcades, in pubs. It's true there weren't as many dedicated games as in the US as we had a lot of generic cabs, but the games were there!
I do agree though that computer games tended to have a bad reputation at least among older generations.
To be honest, and please don't get that personal, I don't understand why the museum didn't hire a guide who was there at the times that he is talking about to visitors.
To me the whole approach is a complete failure, most of the collectors I know did a better job with there collections than this "professional" museum.
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For me the games can be put out of the context of the cabinet in certain cases. We should not forget that the games were presented different in the USA, in Europe and in Japan. Of course, a complete original working cabinet is the best option for a museum, but to let people play and experience the games itself, Mame+LCD is fine. As long as the controllers are good, you can experience the game very well. Some games even look better on LCD, I like wide-gamut blockyness very much for the classics. Even vector looks great on 1600x1200 displays. With later 256-colour palete games the characteristics of CRT are much more needed. They started to make games more photo-realistic, and dithering looks bad on LCD.
On consoles I'm even more into emulation. The original hardware does not mean much for me. It's just about the software with consoles. LCD TV for it: fine. The problem here is more in the implementation. Most expositions use stinking-bad kitchen/trailer trash TN LCD TV's, with tons of backlight bleed, colour shift, weird pixel polishing and stuff. A nice IPS/PVA screen, correct aspect, blocky mode (no fancy GPU scaling), DVI/HDMI connected display to a computer with emulators is perfect for old console games. Just hook up some classic controllers for accurate gameplay.
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It looks like I've mostly been misunderstood here. When I mentioned that arcades don't have a tradition, what I meant to say about arcades is that due to the 1984 law, they didn't go on to become a part of popular culture as much as in the USA for example. Personally, when I first moved to Germany, I looked online to try to find an arcade nearby, and was shocked to find that there appears to not be any more in all of Germany! Where I grew up in Harrisburg, PA, I'm pretty sure within a half hour I could still reach about 5 arcades that are still in business. It's really sad how things developed in Germany.
When I said that computer games have a bad reputation, I meant that the German press generally covers them in a negative light, focusing on violence and addiction rather than the positive aspects of these games (read Jane McGonigal, for example). Also, most Germans tend to equate coin-operated games with gambling machines due to the legal history here, which is very unfortunate. Also, I've generally come under the impression that these games are considered for kids here. I'm playing a racing game on my iPhone and someone I know comes up to me and says, "Oh, you're playing a kid's game!" Grrr.
It's hard not to take all of this criticism personally. The arcade section is just one part of the museum, so it's not possible to have tour guides who know all the topics of the museum equally well and from both the software and hardware sides, at least at this time. Remember that this museum only opened in the beginning of this year. In any case, I contacted the museum director/curator and he said he'll reply here tomorrow, since he's away on business today.
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Remember that this museum only opened in the beginning of this year.
I always thought that it was just a re-opening? To my understanding the museum exists for quite some years but didn't have an actual location for some time. I own a video tape of a 3SAT TV broadcast called "Generation Pong" from 2001 about the history of video games which features a Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, is that a different museum? At least it has Mr. Andreas Lange and they feature the Polyplay (still intact), ridiculoulsy stating that it was the only surviving one.
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First: I want to say that I admire it that you still talk with us here, we burnt you pretty badly. Please don't see this as personal attacks, it's just that you reached those 0.1% of the population that gives a lot about those old pieces of wood with ancient electronics in them :)
Also: I welcome every initiative that is trying to preserve classic computers/videogames/arcade games. That most of us don't agree on the way it's done, is very obvious and doesn't need to be repeated.
Not sure when you moved from the US to Germany, but I'm not too sure about the law actually being to blame for the demise of arcades in Germany.
For starters: arcades weren't really that big and as much around as in the US. Ever. The "scene" in Europe was mostly tourist places for proper arcades, and snack-bars,movie theaters etc. for one or two machines. The arcades that I used to know from my youth are mostly actually still around today because they are at those tourist places. Lots of those machines were also at "arcade" at camping sites and other holiday parks.
I think in Europe, the UK had (has?) the "best" arcade scene. (Part of the) British tend to be less negative about gambling in general, so this probably helped. (I remember Ladbroke's tried to get us to gamble on sports matches, didn't work here).
I agree with you that the "general public" doesn't even see the difference between an amusement machine and a gambling machine, and put them "in the same corner".
However, the people who around 40 now, and have grown up with videogames tend to be much less negative about them.
Anyway, all that considered, I don't see how that "justifies" the mame-ing and TFT-ing of those classic machines.
Also, how about the rest of the machines in the museum. I'm sure there are C64's, spectrums and hopefully some Atari machines running there ? Are those being emulated too ?
I'm interested to know if the museum still has the original hardware around (hopefully) and if they would be willing to actually restore the machines to original state, maybe with help of some of us here in any way or form...
Let me end to say that I totally disagree with Blanka, but that's not the first and the last time, and everyone has his right of an opinion.
If you seriously say that vector games look BETTER on a TFT you either never have SEEN a real vector game, or you simply just don't get it.
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First: I want to say that I admire it that you still talk with us here, we burnt you pretty badly. Please don't see this as personal attacks, it's just that you reached those 0.1% of the population that gives a lot about those old pieces of wood with ancient electronics in them :)
Also: I welcome every initiative that is trying to preserve classic computers/videogames/arcade games. That most of us don't agree on the way it's done, is very obvious and doesn't need to be repeated.
Not sure when you moved from the US to Germany, but I'm not too sure about the law actually being to blame for the demise of arcades in Germany.
For starters: arcades weren't really that big and as much around as in the US. Ever. The "scene" in Europe was mostly tourist places for proper arcades, and snack-bars,movie theaters etc. for one or two machines. The arcades that I used to know from my youth are mostly actually still around today because they are at those tourist places. Lots of those machines were also at "arcade" at camping sites and other holiday parks.
I think in Europe, the UK had (has?) the "best" arcade scene. (Part of the) British tend to be less negative about gambling in general, so this probably helped. (I remember Ladbroke's tried to get us to gamble on sports matches, didn't work here).
I agree with you that the "general public" doesn't even see the difference between an amusement machine and a gambling machine, and put them "in the same corner".
However, the people who around 40 now, and have grown up with videogames tend to be much less negative about them.
Anyway, all that considered, I don't see how that "justifies" the mame-ing and TFT-ing of those classic machines.
Also, how about the rest of the machines in the museum. I'm sure there are C64's, spectrums and hopefully some Atari machines running there ? Are those being emulated too ?
I'm interested to know if the museum still has the original hardware around (hopefully) and if they would be willing to actually restore the machines to original state, maybe with help of some of us here in any way or form...
Let me end to say that I totally disagree with Blanka, but that's not the first and the last time, and everyone has his right of an opinion.
If you seriously say that vector games look BETTER on a TFT you either never have SEEN a real vector game, or are you simply just don't get it.
Absolutely +1, just my english was not enough good to word my thoughts.
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+2 and more....... (later)
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Let me end to say that I totally disagree with Blanka, but that's not the first and the last time, and everyone has his right of an opinion.
If you seriously say that vector games look BETTER on a TFT you either never have SEEN a real vector game, or you simply just don't get it.
Did I say better? I said great. Compared to all scan-line CRT's, Vector looks better on a TFT, especially with the special OpenGL rewrites of Mame. Total awesomeness off course reserved to a real vector tube.
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Hmmm, six days later and still no official spokesperson was here to get in touch with us ... anyway, as long as there are enough facebook-friends, stupid magazine guys and twitter follower who don't know better, say only good things about the "museum" why care about a few geeks spread all over europe (or further away)? I would give a rats ass, too ;)
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O.k. Here I am finally. I am the director of the computer game museum and as such responsible for what most of you blame. Sorry for being so late, please don't take that as a sign, that we don't care - we do.
Where to start? First of all I appreciate your feedback in regards to our presentation of the arcades, which are indeed one important part (of other) of the video game culture. Secondly I understand your critic well. In our first permanent exhibition, which we opend 1997 and operated for four years, everything was presented interactively on original machines, which was somehow an ideal kind of presentation (in spite it took some time to switch the show on in the morning ;) ). But we had only 5000 visitors a year. Nowerdays we had 12.000 vistors in the first four weeks, which is a difference, which must be considered. Thirdly we try to advance our show permanently. It is not that uncommon, that an exhibition is not finished for eternity when it is opened, all the more, if it is a technical complex exhibition. There are a lot of conditions which have to be taken into account, e.g. the budget, which is available to produce the show, is not the most unimportant. Sometimes some patience is needed. Personally I am not satisfied with our presentation of arcade culture, too and we work on advancing it.
But let's come to the more principal points, which are raised. The question is: How much alteration is allowed for what purpose? We are aware of this question and that it is crucical for a museum to set up its policy in this regards. But even in the wider museum community it is not a decided question specially in regards of technical artefacts. For collectors it is more easy to say, only originals are counting, because originals are what they collect and what gives a collection value. But museums are also commissioned to preserve their collectibles for future generations and I wonder what your strategies are to preserve your collectibles over the next decades in a working state. I am not claiming that we have the final answer yet, but emulation is definitely an option for us.
An other principal point which is touched here is the question, what is the original in the digital age? Blanka already mentioned, that even arcades games where produced in several version. This question is even more difficult to answer when you think at the home consoles, which very much depend on the TV. But these very much varied naturally. Also the different controllers which were and are available are influencing the feel of the game significantly. Please don't misunderstand me here: I am not raising this questions as an excuse rather to point to their significance. The recent state could be considered in trying out different strategies and we are more flexible in that as you might be aware.
e.g. we have collaborated with the Berlin Humboldt University two years ago. A class of the computer scientists has renovated our SU 2000 Cybermind arcade from the scratch (for those of you, who can read German: http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/jml/lehre_ws0910.html). It is exhibited in our new show as well, but could be only switched on occasinally, because it is still not robust enough for permant operation (in spite quite a few skilled people invested a serious ammount of time for the resatauration).
So we are somehow in the process of figuring out, what the best strategy and I appreciate to discuss that with collectors as well as with other players in that field.
Last but not least I want to pick up a more concrete point, that have been made here several times. Yes, I will try to exchange at least one of our TFT monitors with an CRT (which unfortunately all were broken in our acrades). And I regret very much, that our Tempest monitor broke during it was showed back then in our first exhibition. I agree that the vector optic is special and that it can be simulated not that well on TFTs. To be able to show our vistors the look of vector screens, I have decided, to set put the Vectrex it in a glass display in our wall of hardware, which can be opened, so that the Vectrex can be played. Of course this could be considered as work around , but doing a project of our size allways means to live with compromises. It is important one try to advance it and I assume that discussion is helping us in this regards. So far for today,
Andreas
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But let's come to the more principal points, which are raised. The question is: How much alteration is allowed for what purpose? We are aware of this question and that it is crucical for a museum to set up its policy in this regards. But even in the wider museum community it is not a decided question specially in regards of technical artefacts. For collectors it is more easy to say, only originals are counting, because originals are what they collect and what gives a collection value. But museums are also commissioned to preserve their collectibles for future generations and I wonder what your strategies are to preserve your collectibles over the next decades in a working state. I am not claiming that we have the final answer yet, but emulation is definitely an option for us.
For me personaly emulation is not an option. Not that the emulation wasn't perfekt. It is so good that I'm pretty sure that I would not recognize that it's not the original gameboard working. BUT it's still not the real thing. It's as simple as that. I'm into classic arcade and I want to play the classic arcade-cab as it was back in the days. I don't care how good emulation is ... from the preservation point of view this should be no option. I think it's a shame even to put efford in maming original cabs for a museum. Your attention should concentrate on REALLY preserve the "technical artefacts" ... that is what museums are for! Why is it not possible for a company that even earns money and is even state-aided ...
An other principal point which is touched here is the question, what is the original in the digital age?
I think I will not comment that statement ... really ...
Btw. places like Funspot with dozens of classic machines in it's original state operating 24/7 show that it IS possible to keep the cabs running and working. The amount of efford is the key. If there is not enough capacity to maintain the cabs then better keep them off. It's a slap in the face for every collector comming to your museum (not meant offensive!) and see those machines beeing mamed for "preservation" reasons. Sorry but I can read in your post that you really think that what you do is at least ok. It is not in my oppinion.
PS: Before you mame the Tempest P L E A S E !!!!! write me an email, I will take the cab, even buy it and/or give you another one for it. I hope you know, that Tempest is a holy grail for so many of us.
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Thanks for your point of view here, Andreas ;)
I'm (or I'll be) in the same situation than you... I've more than 50 games, almost classics & collector cabinets. I'm finishing the building of a huge game room that should become ...maybe not a museum, but a kind of time machine, where you'll be able to play, discover or rediscover the best games from the beginning of Arcade era 8) And of course, I want most of my games playable...some of them will be 'mame' powered, no other choice...
...If the emulation is perfect, the controls/game play are right, the cabinet is THE one... then I'll reach my goal! To offer an experience of the games from the past... nowadays! The debate is already open, right here (https://www.dragonslairfans.com/smfor/index.php?topic=614.0)
Btw. places like Funspot with dozens of classic machines in it's original state operating 24/7 sow that it IS possible to keep the cabs running and working.
Not really... I went there, and some of their games are using computer... Dragon's Lair for example ::)
The amount of efford is the key. If there is not enough capacity to maintain the cabs then better keep them off. It's a slap in the face for every collector comming to your museum (not meant offensive!) and see those machines beeing mamed for "preservation" reasons. Sorry but I can read in your post that you really think that what you do is at least ok. It is not in my oppinion.
Not agree... in that case, do nothing and close 99% of all the museums around the world that use copy or reproduction...
I agree such techniques used in the museum are not the best one (using LCD for instance), but at last, he tries to DO something for the community and the people...
... from the preservation point of view this should be no option.
That answer is just too easy... and so easy to write ... because who wouldn't have a 100% original stuff up & running... but with a big amount of games, without a full time technician and $€£... it's simply almost not possible.
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Your attention should concentrate on REALLY preserve the "technical artefacts" ... that is what museums are for! Why is it not possible for a company that even earns money and is even state-aided ...
Thanks for the feedback PunkRockCaveman. I totally understand, that for a collector only the original counts. But still I wonder, what your approach will be let's say in 30 years, when the PCB have died and no substitute is available. Would you waive playing the game or would you start considering emulation?
Because this question makes only sense on the assumption, that ICs and microchips will die some day, I would also take on the opportunity to ask you about your experiences regarding that matter. In the preservation community it is assumed broadly that ICs and microchips last around 4 decades - relativly independ of their use and storage conditions. I am very intersted what is the emprical knowlege here...
(btw: we are not state-aided. we received a public funding for the production of the exhibition, but now we are on our own resp. depend mainly on our visitors)
Andreas
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A solution that deserves to be trying when using a LCD display connected to a real arcade board : SLG3000 scan line generator.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YLXgzxS8cEc/TQYuyWBAFvI/AAAAAAAACXI/E7gC6BvKdNs/s320/IMG_0756.JPG)
Here's the details :
SLG 3000 is another comunity based product. It´s purpose is to generate scanlines for VGA standard 640 x 480 using modern display.
Thus SLG3000 is perfect to get arcade feeling for games coming from the 15Khz times.
SLG3000 without case
SLG3000 with case
Case Only
Features
- second version with improved pcb desin
- No external PSU is needed
- Plug between your VGA Source and display
- 2 VGA female plugs
- DIP settings for even and odd lines
- DIP settings for different resolutions
- adjust scanlines continuously via potentiometers
- optional Screw terminals for on and off switch
- on and off switch
without / with the interface :arrow:
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZT1D2p32ng/TeUD0MOrY7I/AAAAAAAACos/VyDjrLBELi4/s1600/large.jpg)
Not too bad IMO ::)
All the details here (http://arcadeforge.de/?page_id=745#pcbwithcase).
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Ops! The input signal must be also VGA, so you cannot hook it a 15Khz board :-[ ...
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Hello,
I just want to confirm, that we are offering meanwhile like promised an original Donkey Kong cabinet (with MAME inside) with an original raster monitor. Our visitors are now able to compare different preservation version by their own.
Also I am still intereted in your experience, how long the originals boards last.
Andreas
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I just want to confirm, that we are offering meanwhile like promised an original Donkey Kong cabinet (with MAME inside) with an original raster monitor.
the white german version or the original nintendo cabinet?