Playing Old arcade Games on your PC

I remember when i was little ... i'm one of those kids who are fascinated with any electronic games. I also recall telling my teacher when ask what my hobby was and my answer was playing electronic games. In those days we call it "Permainan Elektronic" hahaha sounds kinda lame today hehehe...

Anyway ....in those days when computers are scarce, between 1980s till early 1990s, my period of childhood, kids in those days frequently visits the "Amusement Center" or "Arcade Games Center". In fact it was very popular that kids sometimes skip from school just to be able to hang out in those places. I remember at one time Police  were ordered to raid these kinda places and detain kids who skipped from schools. Whenever there are policemen, kids will storm out the door of the arcade center. In those days, that kind of place is like an illegal gambling house ... hahaha.

Games like Galaga, Contra, 1940s Series, Double Dragons, Street Fighter (used to be my favorite) are very popular. In the early 90s, games like Raiden, Tekken, The King of Fighters Series (my favorite to this day) are very popular.

With the advance of computer technology, those kinda games has become obsolete in a way. Newer high end game consoles dominates the market. 3D games are the "in thing". But guys like me who gets dizzy when playing 3D games ... especially 1st person shooter 3D games, cannot keep abreast with the games the market has to offer.

Have you ever wonder what happened to all those old arcade games? Have you ever thought that would it be nice if you can play that game again .. for old time sake? Sadly they don't have those kinda games in the arcade center nowadays. But thanks to hardcore old arcade games fans, they came up with a new approach to let us ... the old school arcade gamers to reminisce the good 'ol day.

Enter MAME which stand for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Basically this software is an emulator which emulates a real arcade machine like the above picture. And to top that, it also plays multiple arcade games!!! There are two versions of MAME. There is the command line version and the user interface version. For beginners, it is advisable to download the Graphic User Interface version which you can get it from here. 

Now once we downloaded the emulator, we can now download the games that we want. It comes in a ROM format. There are numerous websites that offer free ROM downloads. You can always google the key word "mame rom". My personal favorite site is Rom Hustler. 

In order to play a game, you need to extract the emulator into your harddisk. Then put the Rom file (in zip format) at the Rom directory inside your MAME directory. That how easy it is. Of course for Neo Geo Games, you need to download a NeoGeo Bios Rom which you can get in any rom sites out there.

Bare in mind though, that the games are copyrighted and it is not advisable to play the games without the owner's consent ... what i'm trying to say is ... play at your own risk ... i won't be held responsible for any copyright infringement ... capisce?