Millercade: Front-end choice

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Front-end choice

I went with MaLa for my front end. I tried many others, and MaLa was by the far the most powerful and also the most inuitive to configure, especially if you get all thier plug-ins like GameList Editor, LEDwiz, Layout Editor, Mature Alarm ;) and others. Game list are edited with automated right-clicks, layouts can drag-and-drop, and it can be customized with multiple emulators (or any .exe), multiple layouts for different menus, sounds, movies, pictures, and 3D models.

I liked "3D Arcade" in concept, but if you have 100's of games, who wants to spend 10 minutes "walking" around a three dimentional first-person arcade looking for the game cabinet you want to play, and if you set it to use lists or wheels instead of the 3D-Arcade, then what's the point of having "3D Arcade" if you disable the 3D part of it? Emulaxian was an awesome front-end in the making, but it's handicapped being merged with the very complex 3D Arcade.

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Arcade Museum: Milestones In History

1958, William Higinbotham invents the first ever video game called "Tennis For Two" on an oscilloscope.
1962, Space War, the first ever computer game, is made.
1967, Ralph Baer makes the first ever TV based game called "Chase."
Sept 71, Nolan Bushnell makes Galaxy Games (a clone of Space War), the first released coin-operated video game.
Nov 71, Computer Space (also a clone of Space War) is released. The makers go on to found Atari.
1972, Atari releases pong, the first commercially successful game.
1974, Tank is the first game to use ROM chips, and the first to have recognizable objects, not just dots and blocks.
1975, Midway releases Western Gun, the first to use microprocessors instead of TTL in its electronics, and also the first Japanese game exported to North America (having been originally made by Taito as a TTL under the name Western Gun in 1974).
1976 Sega released Heavyweight Champ, the first One-On-One Beat'em-Up.
1976, Outlaw is the first VIDEO arcade light gun game, where the sensor is in the gun instead of on the target, and the CRT screen is the detected light source, not the gun.
1976, Atari employee Steve Jobst designs Break-out. He later goes on to found Apple Computers.
1976, Atari releases Night Driver, the first 1st-person perspective game.
1978, Taito releases Space Invaders, which goes on to become the first arcade block-buster success. It was so successful it caused a coin shortage in Japan until it's mints could quadruple the country's coin supply.
Jan 1979, PT Mahjong is the first released arcade mahjong game, followed in Nov by PT Reach Mahjong, the first cpu based.
1979 Warrior is released, which has no milestone history except for being sometimes mistakenly touted as the first one-on-one fighting game.
1979, Lunar Lander becomes the first vector-graphic arcade game.
1979, Football is the first game to use a trackball controller, and the first to offer a scrolling playing field.
1979, Space Raiders is the first video game with 3D graphics.
1979, Warrior is the first one-on-one fighter game.
1980, Defender is often credited as the first to have events taking place offscreen unseen by the player.
1980, Ripoff is the first two-player cooperative video game.
1980, Namco releases Pac-Man, which is the best selling game of all time.
17 June 1980, Atari's Asteroids and "Lunar Lander" were the first 2 video games to ever be registered in the Copyright Office.
Nov 80, Battlezone is released, becoming the first "virtual reality" game.
July 1981, Space Fury, the first color vector game, is released.
October 1981, Tempest is released, introducing Skill-Steps, allowing an experienced player to step ahead of basic levels and begin on more challenging levels. Sometimes also quoted as the first color vector game, it's just the first color vector from Atari.
1981, Nintendo releases Donkey Kong, one of the first platform games, and also the origins of Mario.
1982, Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom is the first game to use scaling sprite 3D effects.
1982, Moon Patrol is the first game to use parallax scrolling backgrounds.
1982, Zaxxon introduces the isometric 3D perspective.
1983, Dragon's Lair is the first game to use video images.
1983, I-Robot is the first commercial 3D-polygonal game released.
1983, Journey is the first digitized sprite game.
1984, Lode Runner became the first (and still one of the few) coin-operated video games to be ported from a home console video game.
September 1984, Karate Champ is released, and while not the first One-On-One fighting game, it was certainly the most influential..
December 1984 Kung Fu Master is the first side-scrolling Beat-Em-Up.
1987, Namco releases Yokai Douchuuki, the first game to use 16-bit graphics, taking full advantage of the 16-bit processesors introduced in 1984.
1987, Xybots is the first over-the-shoulder viewed 3D-maze oriented shooter, fathering a whole generation of FPS games to follow.
1994 Killer Instinct is the first arcade game to have a hard disk.
05Feb 97 M.A.M.E version 0.1 is released, dedicated to the preservation of the arcade video game rom sets already at risk of being forgotten.
1998 Dance Dance Revolution, the first dancing game, hits the arcades.
1999, Rush 2049 is released, the last arcade game to bear the Atari logo. Atari closes its coin-op product development division, solidifying the end of the arcade video game hayday era.
2008, I built the Millercade :0) to re-live the 80's arcade hysteria!