MAME is a truly wonderful emulator - it brings many happy memories back to me from my countless trips to Brighton pier (armed with a pocket-full of 10p pieces). Without MAME, these games would be lost for me - and there are many games I wouldn't have played had it not been for the arcade emulators.
Where are these old machines now?
Sadly, I'd guess that most have been broken up to make new machines or are rotting in warehouses (I read an article in our local paper about an aquaintance of mine who had got his hands on 'one of the last five'* cockpit Star Wars machines). I haven't been to the arcades for ages, but I'd guess that most of your old classics have been pushed off the side of the pier to make room for today's silicon wonders.
* (I don't for a moment believe that there are this few, but I know there aren't that many, either).
So is anybody losing revenue?
Not much, I'd guess - jeez, now that I've gotten good at the old classics, I'd be more likely to shove my money into them if I ever saw the original cabinets.
There's also that rare breed, the machine collector. All power to him - there's something special about having the real thing in your living room and he won't begrudge you the emulator [I'm very proud to own a cabinet myself].
As for the retrogames 'fad', companies really shouldn't rest on their back-catalogues - and it shows a real lack of effort from the ca$h-greedy underbelly when this happens...
Okay, so you have the intellectual property (say Space Invaders). You have two options:
Option 1: You can cash in and release the Space Invaders directly onto the PlayStation. It's easy, it's cheap and you can work the game-geeks up into a lather by saying that you're running the original code.
Option 2: You can take your intellectual property, lace it with all the tweaks and hooks that the game community has learnt since 1982 and release an updated version. Jeff Minter's Tempest updates are a classic example of how this can be done very well. Frogger 3D is an example of going about this in all the wrong ways. [I look forward to Virus 2K and Sentinel]
If (say) Namco were to accuse me of stealing from them for playing PacMan on my PC rather than buying their compilation - then they ought to put the effort in to make me want to buy it. Sure, if their museum series updated on the originals in an intelligent way, I'd probably get really into them - but they don't. They're unashamed cash-ins. Half of the 'classics' presented are weak and the 3D interfaces are shoddy attempts at evoking nostalgia. However, I'm sorely tempted by the Bubble Bobble collection - it's a well programmed attempt of two solid games at a reasonable price, just a shame they didn't include Parasol Stars and the recent BB update.
I have a different reason for feeling happy with using PC-Engine emulators. With undoubtedly boundless wisdom, NEC decided not to release any of the fantastic PCE hardware in Europe. Sure, I could have imported at substantial cost but IMHO, if they weren't prepared to put faith into the market here, then I've no sympathy at all for them. End of story.
Lastly (this has been too much of a rant already), as games developers, we are very justified in using these emulators to push the state of the industry. There are many games from a long time ago that do a lot of things right. We can learn from these (and also their mistakes) and push our games along lines of evolution which simply fizzled out for no good reason.
I've no great problem in revealing that 'Snowball Fight' was based on an old Atari game called 'Food Fight' (available on MAME). It's by no means a copy, it uses some of the great ideas presented in that game - but also enough of my own to be justified. That was an example of a clever game theme which just failed to thrive throughout time. Very little (nothing?) is original - it becomes a question of how you mix things.
If you're in any doubt about how these ideas can be successfully rehashed, I'd estimate that good retro examples can be found for at least 12 of the 19 Edge compo entries (that's a conservative estimate).
Hmm, gone on too long already... Does anybody disagree?
James (~mrfrosty)