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ARCADE VIDEOGAME EMULATOR DOWNLOADS
There are many different videogame emulators available, although sadly, some of them are now discontinued, which make it possible to play 100's of classic and not so classic videogames from the arcades.Most emulated videogames play just like the games you remember playing, because you are running the original game code which was stored on 'ROM' chips, together with software emulation of the games cabinet hardware.Usually a manufacturer releases many games which use the same hardware/cabinet system, because of this you'll find that some hardware systems seem to have their own style of games, in terms of graphic & sound abilities.Remember the 'ROM's are still copyrighted, and so you should only download and use 'ROM's for games you actually own.Lastly, before you download any of these emulators, remember that the authors have spent 100's of hours producing these emulators for us all to enjoy, for FREE, so don't go complaining that it doesn't play your favourite game, or that the sound is missing, just appreciate what it can play rather than what it can't.You should realise that Mame in particular is about documenting the original hardware, and so accuracy is of upmost importance, this is often at the expense of emulation speed, and so it's well worth trying some of the other emulators available, especially if like me you don't happen to own the latest PC, some of these can be played on PC's as modest as a Pentium 100mhz, and so I've chosen to split them into 2 groups.
If you find your ROMset isn't working in an emulator, then check it with the lastest version of the ultimate ROM manager ClrMamePRO which enables you to repair, rename, and so much more.Of course you may need backwards compatiability, and so DAT files are also available to enable you to produce working romsets for older emulators, as well as check roms for emulators of systems other than Arcade machines, such as consoles, even Fruit Machines.
Firstly, here are some essential, or at least useful files you'll need when using DOS based emulators:
CWSDPMI.ZIP Memory Manager
DOS4GW.EXE 32bit Kernel Extension
UNIVBE.EXE (Freeware version) Vesa Support for older Graphics Cards
SBPCI.ZIP DOS DOS sound card drivers for Sound Blaster PCI cards.
No Sound in DOS? make sure you have the correct drivers, and the 'Blaster' line added to your Autoexec.bat file ie SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5
Suitable for medium to high spec PC's
Many of these emulators have fairly high PC requirements in order to fully run all games sucessfully, although generally this is dependant on the games age, with newer games obviously more complex, than those of 20 years ago.
DAPHNE - Laser Disc game emulator
KAWAKS - SNK's NeoGeo & Capcom CPS2 hardware emulator
MAME - Emulates almost every system ever made, currently in excess of 4000 games!!
NEBULA & NEBULA MODEL 2 - Capcom CPS2 & NeoGeo/NeoGeo CD/Sega MODEL 1&2
ZINC - Emulates Namco ZN1,ZN2,System11/12, PSX based hardware
Suitable for low to medium spec PC's
Many of these emulators will run sucessfully even on much older PC hardware, many on a Pentium or higher, although some run only in DOS mode (Windows 98SE was the last OS to offer a 'real' DOS mode, or you can use DOSBOX).Sadly many of these were discontinued once the games found their way into Mame, and are now very old.I hope eventually to add even more to this section, to form a sort of archive of discontinued emulators, as they are generally much faster than Mame, and are ideally suited to those, who like me are more interested in the old 'classics', or perhaps looking to build an emulation based game cabinet.The first cabinet I ever built for someone, used the Vantage emulator, running on a DOS based pentium 166, and is still working last time I heard!
CALLUS - Capcom CPS1 hardware emulator
GALEMU - Galaxian hardware emulator
JUNO FIRST - Emulates some Konami & Irem games
LASER - Midway 8080 & Scramble hardware emulator
M72 - Irem M72 hardware emulator
RAGE - Capcom & Irem hardware
RAINE - Emulates many Toaplan,Taito & Jaleco games
SHARK - Emulates a few Taito & Taoplan games
SIDEWAY - Emulates many 8080 based games
SPARCADE - A multi hardware emulator
SYSTEM 16 - Emulates Sega's System16,18,dual, games
VANTAGE - Vertical ANTiquated Arcade Game Emulator
Laser Disc Game Emulator - Laser Disc games were technically very advanced games compared to others around at their time, generally using traditional computer graphics but overlayed onto movie footage stored on the laserdisc.Although amazing for their time they only remained popular for a few years, largely due to restraints made on the gameplay, by the format, and the great videogame crash.Some of the most popular games produced in this format were, Dragons Lair, Space Ace, and Astron Belt, all of these and many more are playable using this emulator, infact you can even use many real laser disc players with this emulator, if you have an original game laserdisc.
Laser Disc ROMS & MPEG Laser Disc Images
Download - Courtesy of MameFans (Requires Membership?)
Taito, Jaleco, Capcom Hardware Emulator - Originally designed as the Rainbow Islands emulator, it evolved to cover many of the Taito games, both old and new, as well as some from other companies.Although many of these games are in Mame, this emulator offers very good speed performance, allowing those with older hardware to play many of the newer games, that you may not be able to in Mame.
Multi Game Emulator - This emulates many of the early classics, such as Moon Cresta, Space Invaders etc, and also quite a few of the mid 80's 'shoot em ups' which were popular, such as Slap Fight, Nemesis, Salamander, Vulcan Venture and others, all with excellant speed.
8080 Game Emulator - This emulates many of those 70's videogames based around the 8080 processor, and of course all in glorius monochrome (Black & White), as well as a few early 80's colour games.If you played the original games in the arcades, you may well remember that some of them appeared to have colour graphics, well actually this was achieved, simply using coloured acetate strips, overlayed onto the mono display.
This has now been ported as an SDL emulator for the Dreamcast
Download - Courtesy of DCEmulation
Multiple Arcade Emulator - This has evolved from it's beginnings in early 1996/1997 as a result of merging many single game emulators into one, into what is now the biggest emulator of all, emulating in excess of 4500 romsets.It's main purpose is to document the original game hardware, of eventually all known videogames.Many people contribute to it's development, by writing drivers for games, which can be integrated into the main emulator core.I have followed it's development from it's 1st release, and I must say some of the excitement seems to have gone, as many of the games I wished to see emulated, have been, so gone are the days when I'd sit up until midnight waiting for a release.That said, there are still a few games, that I'm hoping will get emulated one day, but at the moment, many of the development team seem to be concentrating on newer systems, which of course can not be termed classic games.
This emulator has been ported to many different systems, including game consoles
Latest official release: v0.116
Download - Windows Command Line & DOS (Binaries & Source)
Download - Windows GUI Version (MAME32) or you can download from the official Mame32QA site (requires FilePlanet account)
Download - Other System Ports
Download - Archived Older Versions
Support Files
Download - Sound Samples
Download - Artwork (Backdrops, Overlays, Bezels)
Mame FAQ - this contains extensive information on MAME, and answers many of your questions on it's use.
Taoplan & Taito Game Emulator - This emulator designed for use under Windows, allows you to play some of the best in 80's 'shoot em ups'.Sadly, long since abandoned.
Capcom CPS1 Game Emulator - If 'beat em ups' or the fight game genre are your thing, then this is for you, allowing you to play some of the best games of the late 80's and early 90's, including Final Fight & Street Fighter.Capcom didn't solely produce 'beat em ups' though, there are also games such as UN Squadron, and Mercs.Personally I found many games released after the CPS1 system too repetitive, consisting almost entirely of fight type games, with nothing very original, but then by the late 90's things started to improve again, with some highly original if not wacky games, particulary from Namco & Sega, such as Crazy Taxi, Alpine Racer and Final Furlong, and what was Prop Cycle all about.If you want to play Capcom games, then this is probably the fastest emulator around, with games such as Final Fight playable on a late Pentium system.
Download - v0.42 Windows Version
Download - v0.42 DOS Version
Galaxian hardware emulator - This emulator demonstrates how different companies were able to put existing hardware to good use, as all of these games were made to run on the Galaxian hardware.It's also a very good emulator for older PC's, many of the games are playable on anything from a 486 upwards.
Komami & Irem games - This as the name suggests, emulates the game Juno First, but it also emulates many other Konami games such as Track & Field, Hypersports, RType 1 & 2, and some others, including a few Irem games.
This emulator requires the following Sound Samples:
Midway 8080 Game Emulator - This emulates many of the early 'bronzeage' games from the 70's, which ran on hardware based around the intel 8080 processor, games such as Sea Wolf, Boot Hill, Gunfight, Space Invaders and more, all in lovely monochrome display.
This emulator requires the following Sound Samples:
SNK NeoGeo & Capcom CPS1 & 2 Emulator - This emulator is designed for emulating both of these more modern game systems, although the NeoGeo system, considering the age of it's technology has lasted incredibly well, proving there was still life in 2D games.I must admit I'm not a big fan of fight games, but I guess they appeal to the newer generation of gamers, and that's what the Capcom systems in particular are most recognised for, whilst the NeoGeo system gave us everything from sports games to Shoot em ups, but perhaps the most popular was the Metal Slug series.
Capcom CPS2 & SNK NeoGeo, and the Sega Model 1& 2 Game Emulator - These 2 emulators, are designed for emulating the new generation of hardware systems, in particular the Sega Systems, which powered such games as House of the Dead.
Capcom & Irem Game Emulator - This is was produced by the same team that later gave us the NeoRage emulator.Plays some classic mid to late 80's games, such as R Type, Image Fight, In the Hunt and more.
Namco System Emulator - This emulates many of the recent 90's Namco Hardware, which finally made polygon games the new standard in gaming, following on from their introduction in the late 80's.Many of these systems were based around what was better known as PSX (Playstation) hardware, and so there were some familiar ports to the console over the years, one of these was infact it's 1st game, Ridge Racer.
SEGA SYSTEM 16 Emulator - This emulates not only system 16 games, but also some system 18 games, and those with dual processors, such as outrun.Although these games are in Mame, this emulator offers much better performance, although some games require sound samples.Available for download here are the last versions available, the Windows version is an update only, and requires being installed into the folder containing your exisiting DOS version.
Download - v0.82 DOS version
Download - v0.80 Windows version (Update only, requires extracting into above the directory of the above DOS version)
This emulator may require the following sound samples (Kindly provided by Till @ SYS2064).They will open up as a list in a new window, simply close that window when finished.
Due to these samples having been named to avoid confusion with the roms, please rename the sample files to the romset name
Irem M72 hardware emulator - This DOS emulator, runs many of the games included in RAGE, and of course Mame, however it's very fast, running full speed on even a Pentium, and offers excellant sound support.The only problem, if you can call it that, that I've had, is trying to get it to run from a Frontend (Game Launcher), but of course there are dedicated frontends for this emulator, my personal choice being Start M72.
Download - v0.33
Vertical ANTiquated Arcade Game Emulator - This amazing DOS emulator supports 80 different games, and will run then full speed even on a 1st gen Pentium (actually even on a fast 486!), so is an ideal way of making use of the sort of PC that would normally be thrown away these days, and don't worry, if you don't have one, I'm sure you could get a FREE computer that would be suitable from your local Freecycle.It's designed to emulate arcade games which used vertical monitors, which is most of the classics we know and love, so why not use it, instead of Mame™ to build yourself a game cabinet?.For more information on using and setting up Vantage, visit the VAntAGE section of PC2JAMMA @ Mameworld.
Download - v1.12
Vantage also requires sound samples for the following games, which I have packaged together into a single zip file, which should be extracted to the SOUNDS sub directory of your Vantage install.
dkong
dkongjr
galaga
galaxian
invaders
phoenix
zaxxon
Download VAntAGE sample pack - 1.7MB
You can also download a ROM pack for Vantage containing all 80 supported sets from the ROM archive