Now that Model 3's been emulated, what's left...?

[MrThunderwing]

I posted a little thread about this on my Scud Race Facebook page awhile back, but I thought I'd re-post it here just to see what people think:

For me, the accurate emulation of Model 3 games (specifically Scud Race, Daytona 2, Star Wars Trilogy Arcade and Sega Rally 2) represented the last of the great arcade games from my youth that I wished I could play at home, but didn't think it would ever happen (or games that I owned on a home system that just were nowhere near as good as their arcade counterpart). Now though, between Supermodel, MAME, Model 2 Emulator and Vivanonno pretty much every game I ever wanted to own when I was kid is available in, more-or-less, arcade perfect form, which is pretty unbelievable when you think about it really (Seriously, my mind was blown only a few years ago by being able to play the original arcade versions of things like Golden Axe 2, R-Type, Raiden, Aliens Vs Predator and Outrunners, then even more so when I was able to emulate the proper arcade versions of Daytona USA, Sega Rally, Indy 500 et al - so you can imagine how gob smacked I was the first time I played Scud Race and Daytona 2 at home at 60 fps with sound and working FFB enabled steering...). Even newer arcade games that I really wanted, like Outrun 2 and Afterburner Climax, have surfaced through very nice home conversions.

So this got me thinking awhile back as to what's left out there in the arcade that I'd still like to see converted? And in all honesty, I can only think of two games and they're both fairly recent recent ones: Chase HQ 2 (the new 2007 version) and H2Overdrive. (in fact the software that runs the Taito Type x2 board that Chase HQ 2 runs on is just PC based hardware, I believe it's a core 2 duo system, and a few arcade games that use that hardware, inc Super Streetfighter 4, have leaked onto the Internet and are fully playable on PC, so presumably if Taito wanted to port it to home systems it'd be pretty simple.

Anyway, I'm getting off the point a bit there, what I was wondering is what arcade games are still out there that have yet to make it to a home system that you would like to see either get converted or emulated?

What's left that, for you, still remains as an unconverted piece of arcade gold?

[kuran]

I think we have the technology to emulate the new Chase HQ game, but the game just hasn't been dumped yet I think? (Even though it is Windows-based..)

I wish MAME would eventually come to include all the evolutions that were made in Supermodel, Type x2 emulation, and support them natively without the need of keeping a different program and file structure for each system.

Is MAME development dead in the water?

[MrThunderwing]

No, I think MAME development is very much alive and kicking, there are pretty regular updates over on the main MAMEworld site. Like you rightly say, the platform that the new Chase HQ runs on is a windows based (I believe it's a version of XP), so the games that have been leaked onto the internet aren't really being emulated as such, they're just PC games with arcade-y bells and whistles on.

[kuran]

I'm a huge fan of Chase HQ and all its clones, was the 3d version any good?

Is it basically similar to RayTracers for PS1? That was Chase HQ in 3D with mechs for PS1.

To stay on-topic, I would really like to see Sega Lindbergh emulation, most notably for House of the Dead 4 and Virtua Cop 3.
I'd love to buy a lightgun peripheral for modern PC's, if you have any recommendations that would be great.. My girlfriend loves playing House of the Dead 2.

[kuran]

I'm a huge fan of Chase HQ and all its clones, was the 3d version any good?

Is it basically similar to RayTracers for PS1? That was Chase HQ in 3D with mechs for PS1.

To stay on-topic, I would really like to see Sega Lindbergh emulation, most notably for House of the Dead 4 and Virtua Cop 3.
I'd love to buy a lightgun peripheral for modern PC's, if you have any recommendations that would be great.. My girlfriend loves playing House of the Dead 2.

Also want to see Hyper Neo Geo 64 emulation with proper sound, is there any dedicated emulator for this? Mainly because I'm a real sucker for the original Beast Busters (Amiga version... :p) and have always been curious for the rare sequel.

[Bart]

What sort of media does the Linbergh use? Encrypted DVDs or an encrypted HDD? All I've heard is that the protection consists of a custom USB device. I can't imagine it being all that difficult to emulate if the program code was available un-encrypted. I would guess they're using OpenGL, since it's Nvidia hardware running on Linux.

[PUNKSTER93]

Emulating 2000-2005 arcade games

i wish that somebody can emulate wangan midnight maximum tune including emulating the card system, that will be awesome and i'll get the G27 immediately if they could emulate that game and make it work 100% but of course it'll take years to make it 100%

[Doivid]

For me I would like to see a Namco System Super 22 emulator created.

Although the System Super 22 games have already been emulated in Mame it would be good if these games had their own stand alone emulator like how Ridge Racer 1, 2 and Rave Racer have with Vivanonno(a truly excellent emulator I might add...apart from Sega Model 3 of course, lol). Also so the FPS can be much higher to make the games more playable. The System 22 has games such as Air Combat 22, Time Crisis, Dirt Dash and Tokyo Wars, all fun games which are hard to find in arcades these days.

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=538

[MrThunderwing]

I'm a huge fan of Chase HQ and all its clones, was the 3d version any good?

Is it basically similar to RayTracers for PS1? That was Chase HQ in 3D with mechs for PS1.

To stay on-topic, I would really like to see Sega Lindbergh emulation, most notably for House of the Dead 4 and Virtua Cop 3.
I'd love to buy a lightgun peripheral for modern PC's, if you have any recommendations that would be great.. My girlfriend loves playing House of the Dead 2.

You know, the daft thing is I haven't actually played it, I've just seen a few YouTube videos of it. I'm just assuming that Chase HQ 2 does for the original Chase HQ gameplay-wise what Outrun 2 did for the original Outrun, so I just really want to be able to play it at home based on my nostalgic love of the original (likewise with H2Overdrive, I've only seen videos, but owing to the fact that I loved Hydro Thunder so much on the Dreamcast I'm sure I'd love it- plus I love the fact that one of the levels is set on the river Thames and in the London Underground). Despite the fact that I haven't played either of those games I'd be more than happy to purchase them on PSN or Steam if they came out as digital downloads for around the 10 quid mark. Some sort of HD remake of RayTracers would be great as well.

FYI, did you know that House of the Dead 3 and 4 are coming out on PSN? No word on Virtua Cop 3 though. The original Xbox version of House of the Dead 3 was great, especially if you used the Silent Scope light gun with it, which could double up as a shotgun. It's pretty much the only reason I didn't get rid of my old cathode ray TV set once I upgraded to an LCD TV, and why the old beast of a CRT is currently taking up so much room in my bedroom (complete with a second much smaller TV and second Xbox that's linked to the first one for two player Outrun 2 fun)

Here's a link to a quick Chase HQ 2 vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ji56mwU ... re=related

[isamu]

Mr T, you hit the nail on the head my friend. I too, am still blown away and eternally grateful that we have these wonderful emulators to use at home that allows us to play so many amazing arcade games. Bart, Nik, El Semi, Hap, the VivaNonno guy, etc...these are the gentlemen that have been responsible for me having an absolute BLAST with these arcade racing games. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined I'd be able to play Model 3 racing games at home with an FFB wheel *this* soon!

Ville Linde was the guy that was originally working on Model 3 emulation, but he disappeared off the face of the Earth for some unknown reason. Then came along that Russian guy who showed some promise with preliminary results for the Makron/Demul emu, but nothing ever came of that either. Then finally Bart came along and nipped this sucker in the bud!! So glad he did too, as I feared M3 emulation would be lost forever if Ville didn't continue with it. We're so lucky to have him as well as guys like NiK and Dr Groni bring us the ability to enjoy this awesome piece of iconic Sega hardware.

On that note, I don't often talk about what I would like, because some people like to misinterpret that as begging, and that's frowned upon in this community. But if you ask me honestly, sure of course there's still a lot of things I'd love to see happen in the emu scene.

1)First off, more than anything I'd really REALLY love to see Sega Chihiro and Linbergh hardware properly emulated someday. Being that I'm a huge OutRun 2 fan, I'd give anything to be able to play the actual arcade versions of both OR2 and OR2006 at home with proper force feedback. Believe it or not, the PC version doesn't even have ffb and the controller support is garbage to say the least. So this to me is wish #1 !!!

2)Naomi emulation has been rather quiet lately and I haven't heard much progress there. I would love proper full speed emulation of all of Sega's Naomi 1 and 2 driving games. I have never played ANY of Sega's Naomi racing games except for a small few minutes of Ferrari F355. I really want to play the Initial D games, F355, that Sega Kart game, and there's a cool driving simulator as well I want to play. So this is definitely wish #2.

3)Finally I just want to see true, proper force feedback support in MAME. There are soooo many great driving games in MAME's catalog that it seems like they're just going to waste without the ability to play them properly FFB adds so much to the enjoyment of a driving game. I hardly ever play any racing games in MAME because of this. The only exception is a recent bout with Ridge Racer 1 and 2 recently. But FFB is definitely missed there. Howard Castro is working on MameHooker that should eventually allow us to experience force feedback in MAME in a sort of rudimentary way, so that is at least promising

Other than those three things, I am fairly content and happy with what we have right now