Today, you can play almost anywhere: at home, you can mount it on an Xbox 360 console, a Nintendo Wii, the Playstation 3 or a game on a PC. Around you can be entertained by games on your mobile phone or from a portable console like the Nintendo DS or the PSP.
But many years ago, playing beautiful video games was not something that could be done so easily, it was almost a luxury that not all children could afford.
Collects were collected and people went with friends to the arcades or bars (which today only have video poker) queuing to play their favorite video game.
The Videogames in the arcades were almost all of the Arcade genre and there was not much to understand or reflect, you took the joystick in hand, you were driving a fighter or a spaceship and went on in the paintings killing the enemies.
Today, these old and always fun arcade games can be played on PC through the MAME emulator (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), a free and open source program that has existed for a long time and which is still developed by fans of the genre today.
This would not be a complete blog if it did not contain an article on the famous MAME, an emulator easy to use on PC, which allows you to play old but always beautiful and unforgettable video games such as, for example, Street Fighter 2, Final Fight, Shinobi, Toky, Samurai Shodown, Bubble Bobble, Fatal Fury, Pang, Gals Panic, Golden Ax, R-Type, Mortal Kombat, Puzzle Bubble and many others.
Since looking on Emule or on the Torrent network for Mame32 and games (roms) also leads to unpleasant results, I tell you how to do it without running into strange sites.
The download of Mame can be made from the official website mamedev.org .
From there you can click on "Last Realease" and download the binary for Windows (not the sources) from the list below, depending on whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit PC.
After downloading it, you can run the .exe file and extract all the contents of the archive to a folder of your choice (to be created new).
Before starting to use Mame you need to search and download games that are available free .
There are many sites for free download of Roms or games.
After downloading a rom in the .zip format, it must be copied, as it is (without decompressing it), to the Roms folder inside the directory where the Mame was extracted.
Now you can start the mame.exe file to start playing.
At startup, in the first start screen, there is the list of games that have been copied to the roms folder, among which you can choose one and press Enter to play.
These roms are faithful reproductions of arcade arcades so at the beginning, the hardware emulator shows that the video game is on and then, the game, requires the insertion of the coin with the typical " Insert Coin " writing.
The coin is inserted with the F5 key, the mode a player starts with the 1 key, CTRL on the left is the main button, AlLt is the second and so on then the bar and the letters ZXCV, the keyboard arrows move the player and ESC exits the games.
All the keys can be remapped and modified in the mame's initial configuration menu but, at the beginning, you need to get a little familiar, try the various keys by seeing what they do and follow the instructions here.
You can also use a gamepad or joystick to play more comfortably.
If, when starting Mame, the bottom of the prompt is red when a game is highlighted, the ROM is not likely to work; if it is green, it should go instead.
The Roma of the Rom World site work almost all and you just have to try them.
Some games start in an instant, others load a little more because they require hardware emulation but, in general, always within a reasonable time.
The screen, at times, can flash a bit with the appearance of strange messages but there is nothing to worry about, after a while they disappear, just let the setup finish until you get to the initial game screen.
MAME is a great program that allows you to go back to the roots of the video game and rediscover the taste of the past.
Some old arcade games are fun because they are fast and immediate, simple but more engaging than some complicated and difficult to understand games today.
In another article, how to play the old Dos games for PC, from the 80s and 90s.
