Growing up in Northern New Jersey, there were few things to do outside your own home worth two shits and a whistle. One sleet ridden Winter in 1996, my freinds and I lost the only genuine arcade in the Glen Ridge/Bloomfield/Montclair area. For a bunch of ten-year-olds who lived video games, this had might as well have been a death sentence. Sure, we had our Nintendos and Playstations, but nothing can replace Street Fighter or Time Crisis.

The place was run by a neat-freak Korean manager who would wipe down all the sticks, buttons and knobs every day, so the place was never that greasy or stinky. New games came in regularly, and there was always the welcome din of pinball chimes and laser blasts. We formed a petition to save the arcade and told all our schoolmates about it, but nothing could change its dire fate. When it closed, our choices were down to the paltry selections offered by the local Pizza Hut, movie theater, Chuck-E-Cheese, or seediest of ghetto arcades (where we'd probably get molested and killed).

I've tried MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) before, but due to the somewhat... curvy learning curve, I never got far. I'm definitely not new to emulators, but MAME was always a bit out of my league. Recently I decided I had the time and patience to decipher it, and with a simple Googling and a few torrents, I was the proud owner of the greatest arcade in the world, sans the atmosphere. This article is for all the newbies out there, the good intentioned chaps who stuck their toe in the water and found it too cold to jump in. For those already in the loop, consider this a thank you note to the geniuses who provide the public with a source of perfect arcade game emulation. So just what do we heart so much about MAME?

Lossless Translation: whenever a home console gets a port of an old arcade game, their biggest hurdle is trying to get the little bastard to run smoothly. "Why?" you may ask, "didn't these games run perfectly on much older, less advanced hardware?" The answer is a resounding yes-- sort of. Truth is, though the hardware inside the cabinets was about as advanced as your dad's dusty KayPro, every bit & byte of it was made for a specific task: running said game. That's why when you got lag in Metal Slug back in the day, you knew you were really pushing pixels. So how come the Xbox 360 can't run Street Fighter II without a ten gallon barrel of programming elbow grease and a few dozen hiccups? Because the 360 is multitasking. Don't ask me how MAME does a better job on my computer while I'm running Firefox Beta 2, BitTorrent, eMule, and WinAmp. It's just one of life's mysteries. I question my existence, religion and authority on a daily basis, but not MAME.

OSo Flexible: No matter what your operating system, you can find a MAME for you. There are binary, Win32, Mac and Linux versions available for download. You can even find versions for the Xbox, Dreamcast, digital cameras and mobile phones. It's an open source program, so whoever desperately wants it to run on their operating system can dig into the source code and program one for theirs, however I've been told that some aren't as stable as others.

Gamera Obscura: since I've been on a healthy MAME diet, I've come across games I never would have under normal circumstances. Not only the ridiculous games that no self respecting arcade owner would carry, but also overseas hits and diamonds in the rough. I've also played games that were just plain rare to find, but spectacular. Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Samurai Shodown II, and Last Blade 2 are some of the best fighting games in the world, but try playing them today without MAME.

Custom Soundtrack: playing "Sly Spy" to the soothing sounds of Sufjan Stevens is not just rife with alliteration, it's also something that made my night. It's the kind of situation that killed the arcade. One of the atmospheric downsides for many was that you could only stand to be in the middle of the noise for so long before you started bleeding from your ears-- I know all the parents at any arcade birthday party situation ran for the hills once inside. The home console came along, and with it came the option of silence from the bleeps and bloops, even though most of us can't play without them. Oop, track's over. Time to play "Burger Time" to Be Your Own Pet.

Endless Quarters: the other day Alex and I almost beat Metal Slug. We got damn close, but he had to go home. It was one of the funnest experiences of my life. Sure, by arcade standards it was cheating, but three minutes into the three hours of ridiculous 2D co-op carnage, we didn't care. We were having a good time, beating one of the biggest quarter consumers ever conceived using teamwork and button mashing. Having trouble bonding with your father or son? Start up a game of Final Fight, pop in your infinity credits, and turn off your cell phone. Don't stop until you kill the cripple with the crossbow and the credits roll. It's cheaper than Six Flags, a strip club, and therapy.

Control the Situation: one thing sorely lacking from console ports of arcade games is the ability to choose your controller and layout. The complaint I constantly hear is that one Street Fighter has a different layout than another Street Fighter. While older arcade games had four attack buttons, later ones had six. MAME is built for control customization. By simply hitting TAB you can change the general control layouts (so every game's keys/buttons are bound the same) or you can bind them for the game you're currently playing only. Once you get your bearings, doing this becomes second nature. In fact, that's a good description of MAME itself. If you already have game pads or joysticks laying about, I highly suggest buying an adapter. They are about $10 on eBay, and you can get one for your PlayStation, Xbox, or N64 controllers. They can fit two per adapter usually, so it's good for playing with freinds. If you have a 360 controller with the usb charger cord, you're good to go. It's all a matter of preference. If you have the space and the money you can get X-Arcade's joystick module, but for the casual MAMEr I suggest a dual shock and an adapter. The analog stick is great for fighting games, the buttons feel right, and it's a safe bet you have a PlayStation 2. Some people build a cabinet, but if you're new to it all, I don't suggest jumping into a project that technical. Wouldn't you much rather sit on your ass and play anyhow?

Unrivaled Community: seriously, who else would compile every classic arcade game for free, devote entire online databases to them, go through three revisions just to get a game right, risk the blue screening of their computer, and give you a ridiculous selection of programs to run them on? The same types of people that make Wikipedia and Digg the places to go for information and news, the people that make game modifications in their spare time, the people who contribute to forum after forum with no reward but a kudos and a post count. These people care about their subject, show it the attention it deserves, and spread the word. You tend to see this community spirit for open source programs. The fact that there are people out there who wish to preserve these sections of my childhood, these works of art-- gives me another reason to wake up in the morning. It's this spirit that made me do something about flip-flopping game reviews instead of just bitching about it. You can call this "Spirit of the Internets" what inspired me start the anti-fanboy in the first place, and what keeps me posting to this day. The hope that the world of games I live in and love won't turn into what Hollywood has become: soulless characters, empty plots, bad acting and vindictive, unreliable reviews.

MAME's proven itself the best gaming solution out there because of its variety, versatility, price, ease and community. There's no reason everyone out there shouldn't have it. If they can make a version to run on an Amiga, it can run on your rig. If you are having trouble understanding the little nuances of MAME, you can find help on Google, or you can learn the bare essentials from the MAME cheat-sheet below.

• Download the program from any of the links in the above article. If you didn't read it all the way through, shame on you.
• Install/unpack MAME. Put it on the drive with the most space. You'll need it for the roms.
• To find roms (game files), I find the best places are either RomNation or RomWorld. They both have the same library, but RW has the fastest process (and the most popups). You can also search for MAME on eMule and get a huge list of roms, sometimes bundled with a decent emulator. I highly suggest downloading them all and sorting them out in the end. Look for ones marked "DVD#_ MAME ROMS PLATINUM COLLECTION". It's your best bet if you want every game known to man.
• Install roms. No need to unpack them, simply drop them into your /roms folder. Open your MAME client and "audit all games". This will scan all the roms you have in that folder and tell you how many work. When it's done, you should have a list of all your available games in the MAME client.
• I could leave you here, but I'm too nice. At this point, to better tell apart the games in the window, download an icon pack. Mamu's are the best and most comprehensive. Guess which folder they go in. (/icons, dummy)
• If you want to use a controller instead of your keyboard, plug your adapter in, wait for the drivers/etc to load and the controller to self install, then restart MAME. Select a game and view its "properties". Under "controllers" check "enable joystick input". Once in-game, hit TAB and bind away!
• You should be fine from this point. Tell your freinds about MAME and this article!

All article images compiled & captured by yours truly. Trust me, the header was a huge pain in the ass. Don't steal any of them, please. This whole article, in fact, quite obviously cost me a good night's sleep, so please link to the post or the site if referencing it.