system11 wrote:The goal of emulation is to be as close to the original as possible. Since making it identical can never be achieved, and since even if it were to be achieved the original and emulation would be identical anyway, emulation can never be superior.
Yes it can, because like I said, it adds crucial features. You don't seem to understand how much saved states or replays mean to a competitive player. They make a
world of difference. That's how much better MAME already is.
system11 wrote:Let's touch on that 'nothing better about arcade' part briefly.
1) Feel / authenticity (playing on a cab does feel different even to a supergun)
2) Input lag
3) Display lag
4) Sound lag
5) Having to boot an entire operating system instead of waiting a few seconds or less for the game to boot
6) Problems with LCD screens and low resolution sources
7) Emulation bugs
8) Impossible without special graphics cards and a proper arcade monitor, to run games at precisely the same frequency
9) ...which is also approximated based on a PC system clock
and so on. Arcade hardware is the purest and original form of a game, therefore it is the ideal. Anything else is just 'good enough based on practical circumstances like money or space'.
Points 1), 3), 4), 6), 8) don't make sense because you can gather the right equipment to make it all play right, and isn't even as expensive as PCB setup. You can also make all those points go wrong on PCB with a wrong setup.
Point 5) : more than compensated thanks to time saved being able to switch games in less than 10 seconds, restart your run instantly, use throttle to skip through whatever you want. So this is actually a point against PCBs, which waste a lot more time by far.
Point 2) : this is where the PCB seems to have its one, very small advantage.
Point 7) : what ? Well emulated games don't bug. I don't get bugs. Oh by the way, PCBs do bug sometimes.
Point 9) : the imprecision, if any, is so tiny it seems entirely irrelevant to me.
Summary of points where MAME beats PCB :
1) Reasonable price range.
2) Less spacy.
3) Easy to switch games.
4) You can throttle to skip parts you don't care about, gaining a lot of time.
5) You can easily record and playback replays. This is a
major, major feature.
6) You can use saved states to practice. To a competitive player,
this is such a major feature that PCBs become a vastly inferior mean of practicing. PCBs will waste tons of time replaying easy levels, not allowing you to repeat small hard sections many times in a row. As a result, you will require at least five times more play time to reach the same legit results (you can still play your scoring runs on PCB after practicing on MAME if you are too fetichist to consider MAME legit). To a non competitive player, saved states are still a very major feature, as it allows them to play whichever part they feel like playing whenever they want to play it.
7) You can easily use any type of controller. This is another
major advantage.
8) You can easily remap your key bindings.
I didn't even have to think to come up with those 8 points, and I could probably easily come up with a few more. I don't need to find any more though, because at this point it is already plain to see which version beats the other by an overwhelming margin.
If MAME cost me 1000€ like a PCB setup would, and PCBs were free, I would still buy and play on MAME. Because I am so grateful to MAME developpers, I have donated 150€ to MAME related / dumping projects. I also donated you 20€ because I really love this forum. It's not a money problem.
Impossible without special graphics cards and a proper arcade monitor, to run games at precisely the same frequency
