MAME

In addition to prepping Oracle this weekend, I've been spending too much time on MAME. I bought an X-Arcade two-player joystick for it and I'm hooked! MAME is a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator that lets you play all the great old arcade games on your computer. They're exactly like the old games! You even have to emulate putting in a quarter. I'm overjoyed to be playing Shinobi again (the original from 1987, not the Playstation2 sequel). Back in 1987, Vance and I played Shinobi for an hour at a time at Mazzio's Pizza in Beaumont. Not so many people remember it because by '87 the coin-op arcade craze was fading fast. People had their Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), so why spend money in an arcade? Too bad, because they missed out on Xybots, too. I've found I'm better at Robotron: 2084 now than I was in '82, but I still can't get past the sixth wave. (Robotron comes from the days before arcade games started following what I call the Sega model--Level 1, Level 2, Boss1. Level 3, Level 4, Boss2....)

We used to spend hours playing in arcades, and hearing those familiar phrases is like seeing an old friend you haven't heard from in--ack!--20 years.