The Power Of Mame?


kev187

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Hey Everyone

I have been running emulators since my 1st computer (and imac 266mhz G3) back in 99.

I have had so many variations of mame.

How powerful will mame for Pandora be?

On my GP2X Mame works pretty well, it handes games up till the early 1990's pretty well.
On my macbook pro core duo 2.4ghz MameOSX run games well up to the early 2000's, including mid-late 90's 3D games (Tekken, Street Fighter EX, Virtual whatever)

So what level of performance can one expect from Mame on the Pandora? Will it play games like Street Fighter 3, Raiden DX?

Or just wait and see? I am a big fan of 2D fighter and shooters, some of the best came in the late 90's.

I am looking forward to the pandora & having access to all my existing emulation collections. I still play on the Gp2x regular!
 
This is a question I'd love to have answered also.

I really hoping with some tweaks and good optimisation we see early 90's games fully playable.

I'm talking about Mortal Kombat 2, NBA Jam, Super Street fighter 2, Narc, and Primal Rage.

If these were fully playable that would be a great thing. Funny I have an Xbox 360 with homebrew on it to test it. Mortal Kombat 2 does not run full speed and the Xbox 360 is a 3.2GHZ CPU: P. But it's a quick port and not optimised like Mame 4 all is for the GP2x and WIz.

Fraxis, hopefully can work his magic and get some of these early mid 90's games running really good. Look at the Wiz version fantastic. I can't wait :)

Sorry to ramble on guys just so excited about MAME on the Pandora :)
 
I just recalled a 2D platformer game I played once. It was for 2 players and you used yo-yos as weapons, I think you could get weapon upgrades. Played it on a ferry many years ago, mid 90s. Anybody know what that game is called?
 
Hey Craig, how do some CPS 1/2 games run? And also, do you think it would be possible if you could record some of that? If not, no biggie. Just thought I'd ask.

Thanks.
 
Awakening said:
I just recalled a 2D platformer game I played once. It was for 2 players and you used yo-yos as weapons, I think you could get weapon upgrades. Played it on a ferry many years ago, mid 90s. Anybody know what that game is called?
It wouldn't be Spin Master (a.k.a. Miracle Adventure), would it?
 
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Phawx said:
Hey Craig, how do some CPS 1/2 games run? And also, do you think it would be possible if you could record some of that? If not, no biggie. Just thought I'd ask.

Thanks.

There are already videos of them, they run perfectly and some are widescreen.
 
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Prometheus said:
Awakening said:
I just recalled a 2D platformer game I played once. It was for 2 players and you used yo-yos as weapons, I think you could get weapon upgrades. Played it on a ferry many years ago, mid 90s. Anybody know what that game is called?
It wouldn't be Spin Master (a.k.a. Miracle Adventure), would it?
That looks very likely, I think I recall those shuriken as a weapon upgrade. Thanks :)
 
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Games that use z80 and/or 68k CPUs will substantially benefit from the optimized ARM cores used in the current GP2X and Wiz versions of MAME. Unfortunately that probably doesn't apply to that many games made beyond a certain point. I doubt there will be many other ARM or Pandora specific optimizations. I also doubt that MAME has an ARM backend for its recompilers, so games that benefit from these on PC will have to use the slower interpreter cores instead. Of course this can change in time.

I would guess that a Pandora's CPU at 600MHz averages around 10-20% of the single core performance of your laptop's CPU. Video performance probably won't make a huge impact. If the game emulation heavily uses floating point then it'll probably perform worse.

To answer your question, I doubt there's much hope for late 90s games in MAME. There are some other options that might stand a better shot at CPS3.
 
djmaddis said:
craigix said:
Mortal Kombat 2 seems full speed to me, isn't it almost full speed on the Wiz?

MK 1 already running. MK2 should run fine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRcCz7RWid4&feature=player_embedded (1:47)

I hope so, but you do realize that MK2 used a different sound chip which made it more demanding emulate the game properly. " Mortal Kombat II was the first arcade game to use the Williams DCS sound system. All Mortal Kombat arcade games to follow would use this sound board, dropping the original Mortal Kombat's inferior Yamaha sound board. " source Wikipedia :)

Craig, I could not get MK2 to work on my Wiz but MK1 seemed fine. Could you please post a vid of MK2 running that would really make my day :)
 
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I'm guessing Metal Slug 1/2/3 and ultimate MK3 are out of the question at this point? ;)
 
I'm pretty sure there was a video of Metal Slug on MAME at some point and it seemed to work pretty well. But if not you can just use the Neo Geo emulator, GnGeo, for Metal Slug.

Edit: here's the video:
Metal Slug is at the 6 minute mark
 
ImmaculateChimp said:
How about that old 4 player Simpsons beatem' up arcade game, will that work on Pandora?
p.s. I have absolutely no experience with Mame..

Yes! that game was amazing! played it at an old pizza parlor. not a clue if it would be a mame game though... i don't know, can anyone check it out on this link?


EDIT: nevermind, i found it. just google - "the simpsons arcade game mame" and you should be able to find it from there. not sure if it would work on any of the mame emulators thoug. i've always had troubles trying to get MAME4ALL to work...
 
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ImmaculateChimp said:
How about that old 4 player Simpsons beatem' up arcade game, will that work on Pandora?
p.s. I have absolutely no experience with Mame..

Yep the Simpsons will work well :)
 
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joshwaan2k said:
ImmaculateChimp said:
How about that old 4 player Simpsons beatem' up arcade game, will that work on Pandora?
p.s. I have absolutely no experience with Mame..

Yep the Simpsons will work well :)

do you know if it works on the gp2x wiz? and what emulator do you use for it?
 
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What about splatterhouse, I haven't kept up with franxis mame but i'm sure i read it was a no go :(
I would definately pay for mame just for this game on pandora :)
 
I'm interested in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. I think it would be the peak of MAME that's capable on Pandora.

With my laptop (single core AMD Neo CPU): 800mhz drops frames but is playable, 900mhz will run full speed with a couple frames dropped during activation of super moves, and 1ghz never drops frames. An overclocked pandora may just be on the edge of it running smooth.
 
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