MAMEing the Pinball Wizard

Remember those old video games, the ones that grabbed your attention and wouldn’t let go? I’d probably be a millionaire by now if it weren’t for:

• Dragon’s Lair
• Funhouse
• QIX
• Dig Dug
• Tank Battle (Q-Star by Sears)
• PitFall
• Lode Runner
• Marble Madness
• Pinbot
• Vanguard
• Defender
• Asteroids
• Can’t remember the name of it
• Diablo 1/2
• Pirates!

 

Your results may vary, but you can probably make a list, too. I’d almost forgotten about those games. I ran across a cheap copy of Dragon’s Lair a couple years ago. It just wasn’t the same, though. So each game becomes story, becomes myth, and vanishes from memory.

 

MAME is a game emulator that can run the old ROMS from these games on your PC.

MAME32 is the emulator software for Windows. Once this is installed, you just have to find ROMS. That’s not so easy. Most ROMS are still copyright of the original game manufacturers. Sooo, you should drop the whole thing right now, and never download ROMS from the Internet.

ROM World seems like a good resource for video game ROMS. I prefer the pinball emulators, so I don’t know much about video game emulators

Pinball Emulator: Ok, let me explain this with an example. Funhouse L-9.

Funhouse ROMS This is the original site that Williams used before they sold their pinball division. Again, you should forget this whole idea, and probably look at a bright light to blot out this information from your brain. Theoretically, you would download all three zip files. ROM, Sound, and sound (special)

VPinMAME Here is the emulator. It provides the score board, sound, and flippers. now you need the tables.

AJ’s Tables Search through the database for Funhouse 1.0. This is the table art and physics for our game. there are links here to most of the files you need. Since AJ has a download limit, I steered you to the sources, so you could download more tables. Pretty sweet, eh?

Alright, now you have all the pieces to recreate your classic pinball game. install everything, make sure that all the paths are correct, and try it out. Don’t worry if it takes a few tries to get it working, this is a medium level computer project. I can’t really give you step by step instructions on installing vpinmame because I always have to kick it around to get it working.

Here are the instructions from vpforums.com http://www.vpforums.com/modules.php?s=&name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_cat=2#5

Oh, and there are readmes with each of these downloads that provide invaluble information, so RTFM