Internet Archive starts digitally preserving ROM collections, based on MAME 0.151 definitions, as a 42GB gigatorrent and individual downloads for the curious.


A Second Christmas Morning: The Console Living Room

26 December 2013

 

For a generation of children, the most exciting part of a Christmas morning was discovering a large box under the tree, ripping it apart, and looking at an exciting, colorful box promising endless video games. At home! Right in your living room!

The expansion of videogames from arcades, boardwalks and carnivals into the home was a vanguard mounted by companies with names like Coleco, Atari, Magnavox and Odyssey. For hundreds of dollars, you could play as many games as you wanted, for as long as you wanted, on the same TV you watched shows on. The change from the fireplace to television as center of home and hearth began in the 1950s and the home video game sped this process up considerably.

Naturally, these home video games, running on underpowered hardware and not-made-for-the-purpose video screens, were scant competition in the graphics and experience department compared to arcade games. But as they improved, consoles and computer gaming dented and some would argue destroyed arcades as a nationwide phenomenon. Only a small percentage of arcades now exist compared to their peak.

Sadly, the days of the home videogame console being a present under a tree followed by days of indulgent game-playing are not the same, replaced with massive launch events and overnight big-box store stays.

Until today!

In an expansion of the Historical Software Collection, the Internet Archive has opened theConsole Living Room, a collection of console video games from the 1970s and 1980s.

Like the Historical Software collection, the Console Living Room is in beta – the ability to interact with software in near-instantaneous real-time comes with the occasional bumps and bruises. An army of volunteer elves are updating information about each of the hundreds of game cartridges now available, and will be improving them across the next few days. Sound is still not enabled, but is coming soon. Faster, more modern machines and up-to-date browsers work best with the JSMESS emulator.

...

A busy week. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and looking forward to the New Year! Now, on to the newest emulators..

cmpro 4.012a - http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/

nemulator 3.3 - http://www.nemulator.com/downloads.php

MESSUI 0.152 r26739 - http://messui.the-chronicles.org/index.html

Wine (dev) 1.7.9 - http://www.winehq.org/

RomVault 2.1.19 - http://www.romvault.com/

PCem 0.8 - http://www.tommowalker.co.uk

Emu Loader 7.4.3 - http://emuloader.mameworld.info/downloads.htm

jpcsp r3426 - http://www.jpcsp.org/

MAME and MESS 0.152 - http://mamedev.org/release.html

JKCEMU 0.9.3 - http://www.jens-mueller.org/jkcemu/

WolfMAME 0.152 - http://wolfmame.marpirc.net/

MAMEUIFX 0.152 - http://mame32fx.altervista.org/home.htm

MAMEUI 0.152 - http://www.mameui.info/

Romulus 0.022 - http://romulus.net63.net/

Speccy 2.2 - http://fms.komkon.org/Speccy/

Gambatte r550 - http://sourceforge.net/projects/gambatte/files/

GroovyMAME 0.152 - http://code.google.com/p/groovyarcade/downloads/list

Pasofami 2.15 (newer version) - http://www.geocities.jp/pasofami77/download.htm

Mewui 0.207 (0.152) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/mewui/files/

MameInfo.dat 0.152 - http://mameinfo.mameworld.info/

QMC2 0.42 - http://sourceforge.net/projects/qmc2/files/

BML3 mark5 1.1.0 - http://s-sasaji.ddo.jp/bml3mk5/download.htm

MESSUI r26776 - http://messui.the-chronicles.org/index.html

WinArcadia 22.23 (Windows): 27 December 2013
AmiArcadia 22.23 (AmigaOS 3): 27 December 2013
AmiArcadia 22.23 (MorphOS): 27 December 2013
AmiArcadia 22.22 (AmigaOS 4): 9 December 2013
Super Bug Advance 1.3 (GBA): 11 September 2009

AmiArcadia and WinArcadia are multi-emulators of these machines:

* Emerson Arcadia 2001 console family (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand,
Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy,
Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) (1982);
* Interton VC 4000 console family (Acetronic, Fountain, Interton,
Prinztronic, Radofin, Rowtron, Voltmace, Waddington, etc.) (c. 1978);
* Elektor TV Games Computer (1979);
* PIPBUG-based machines (Electronics Australia 77up2 and 78up5, Signetics
Adaptable Board Computer, Eurocard 2650, etc.) (c. 1977-1978);
* Signetics Instructor 50 trainer (1978);
* Central Data 2650 computer (1977);
* Astro Wars, Cat and Mouse, Galaxia, and Laser Battle coin-ops by
Zaccaria (1979-1982);
* Malzak 1 and 2 coin-ops by Kitronix (c. 1980);
* Chaos 2 computer (1983);
* Dolphin trainer (1977);
* PHUNSY computer (c. 1980);
* AY-3-8550/8600-based Pong systems (c. 1976-1977);
* Ravensburger Selbstbaucomputer aka 2650 Minimal Computer trainer (1984);
and
* MIKIT 2650 trainer (1978).

Features include: ReAction GUI, load/save snapshots, windowed and full-
screen modes, CPU tracing, trainer, drag and drop support, graphics
scaling, automatic load/save of configuration/game, keyboard/joystick/
gamepad/paddle/mouse/trackball support, autofire, turbo mode, gameplay
recording/playback, PAL/NTSC modes, sprite demultiplexing, help windows,
source code, debugger, frame skipping, redefinable keys, save screenshots
(4 supported formats), ARexx port, network play (IPv4 and IPv6), real-time
monitor, locale support, game selection sidebar, text-to-speech, printer
output, undithering, support for ZIPped games, clipboard support, palette
editor, tone retuning, high score management, force feedback, sprite
editor, 3D, assembler, CALM support.

The supported languages are currently English, Dutch, French, German,
Greek, Italian, Russian and Spanish.

Changes since V22.22:
* Interton, Elektor: improved sound emulation.
* Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/
http://amigan.yatho.com/

Shmupmame 4.2 - http://shmupmame.wordpress.com/download/

QEMU 1.6.2 and 1.7.0 - http://wiki.qemu.org/Index.html

Pokemini 0.5.4 - http://code.google.com/p/pokemini/downloads/list

Pantheon 1.642 - http://bgrandovec.hostzi.com/Content/Download.htm

Yabause 0.9.13 - http://yabause.org/

jpcsp r3423 - http://www.jpcsp.org/

RomVault 2.1 - http://www.romvault.com/

MESSUI r26659 - http://messui.the-chronicles.org/index.html