USA vs.The rest of the world The US was the birth place of the coin-op and so unsurprisingly it is the biggest resource of everything coin-op related. It does not matter what your looking for you can find it cabs,boards,parts,art work and printing services and a huge amount of help and advice(you would have to use your own judgment regarding that of course.) They also appear to have auctions on a regular basis which look very interesting in deed!,its sounds crazy but if i ever won the lottery the first thing i would do is fly to the US and visit one of those auctions (and go on a mad spending spree) Of course all of this is now accessible thanks to the power of the Net!.
COIN-OP FORUMS Coin-op related discussion forums are a good place to find information and to meet up with other collectors they require only a simple amount of info from you to before you become a member.Im a member of several forums including JAMMA+ and Digital Press. Just remember to follow the forum guidelines (posting into the correct area on the forum,no spaming,no explicit material,etc.). If you post to a forum and nobody replies or responds to your post don't start repeating your question to try and get yourself noticed as this will be classed as spam!,if anybody can help you with a problem or answer your question then they will. Remember a lot of guys work and so only look on the forum during the evening or even weekend. Becoming part of a forum is no different from being in a room full of people, everybody expressing their opinions or asking questions it makes interesting reading even if you decide not to post to the forum yourself.But just like any other discussion or debate you can get many opinions and on rare occasions get conflict (this is normally crushed by the forum moderator) .There is a diverse amount of people out there 90% of which are fine but you do get the occasional p**ck or someone who thinks that the entire forum depends on there knowledge like they are a god or something!. I generally i personally only post on a forum for a real valid reason as i can get easily offended when people try to correct me or treat me like a noob! ;)
BUILDING A COIN-OP WEB-PAGE Im very new to computers myself but after a short time of surfing around the net i decided that making a web would be an interesting idea,i just had to do it! but i knew nothing!. Lets get one thing straight!,it does not matter what help or advise you need with a good search engine you can find what your looking on the net and in making a web page there is a lot to learn. Once finding web space to build the page there are other issues such as learning HTML code,validating the code,security issues(protecting code),stripping page images down to save web space,etc,etc. Once the web page starts to take form things become a little easier but a lot of time can be spent changing and updating pages,i don't think my web page will ever be 100% as i want it to be but i do enjoy working on it.
OTHER ARCADE GAME FORMATS There are of course other arcade systems out there,Neo-Geo being the most popular you also get LazerDisc games and Play Choice 10 (which are really 8-bit nintendo games plugged into an arcade cab). But if your new to the hobby you will discover these other systems in your own time, many of you will remember the Neo-Geo home console with those expensive games. The arcade Neo-Geo is also by SNK and is in the form of a mother board in which the game cart is inserted, these mother boards can be found with multiple cart slots so the player can choose between several games to play. Other systems you might see are Capcom`s CPS1 & CPS2 for example,similar in principle a mother board unit in which a game cart is inserted. Apart from the obvious improved cosmetic appearance to the CPS systems there is also something here which a lot of newbies do not know about. A Suicide Battery!
SUICIDE BATTERY Yes its true!,some manufacturers used a battery to hold vital code in a Ram for example,this code is used to decrypt vital data being relayed from the game ROMS to the CPU. The battery dies the vital code in the Ram is erased at power off never to return.Capcom and Sega are the two main culprits for suicide batteries but there are a few other manufacturers who have used batteries on a few of their boards. I will not get to deep here but later will provide a very useful link for anyone who wants to know more..
MAME The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (M.A.M.E) is something you will hear a lot about,along with diverse opinions. So here is mine!... The Mame program allows you to run original game code from console,arcade and computer games (i imagine behaving as the microprocessor and executing the code.).The arcade game code is held in the game `ROM` chips and can be downloaded in compressed form and read.(if you own an Eprom reader/Burner). Piracy is a crime there is no doubt!,obviously if people are playing modern console games on their computer then there is an obvious copyright infringement there. Some old computer and arcade games are still around these games have changed in appearance a little due to modern advances but still are under license from the original game designers.Pacman is still around!,he is in a 3D platform world but NAMCO or MIDWAY still have legal holdings on him. Some game designers or companies obviously do not exist anymore but the situation remains the same. This is the general view shared by many coin-op collectors, if an arcade game board is purchased (working or faulty) the game code on that board has been paid for and therefore the Rom code for that game can be downloaded in order to repair that board. But if you have the main MAME program and are downloading game ROM images but do not own the game board then you are not entitled to own the game code it is software piracy.
I think that really about it for `2CENTS`(for the time being at least!.)
Don't forget! these pages are just my opinion with a few hints thrown in i do not expect everyone to agree with what i have said,but if anyone has any comments or any extra info to add i will insert it into the box below.
