Cruis'n USA requirements !!!!! ?

[Lem0nRuski]

Is this for real ? I just downloaded Cruis'n USA MAME rom ultra 64 type.
and I ran it on my comp which is a high end machine with geforce 4600 card and it runs like a slide show everything is sloppy and hardly moving.
Is this due to incorrect settings or rom faults ??? or do I really need P4 - 4 GHz or Athlon XP 4000+ recommended ?

aswell how do you guys get the controls working for games like terminator 2 arcade shooter. I mean I caliberated the stuff but I can't see the target on the screen. aswell I would really love to be able to use my mouse for stuff like that. I checked the several control options in mame properties, still doesn't help.

[Damian]

No machine sold at the present time is fast enough to run that game full speed.

[Lem0nRuski]

I don't understand why thought. Do real arcade games require genuine platforms that can be only simulated by a very fast pc ? Because obviously the hardwere and FPS capabilities of modern graphics processors and CPU's dwarf those of the 1996, what the problem then ?

[Silverhaze]

It doesnt quite work like that....

Dedicated chips and stuff like that on the original boards need to emulated and since mame does it faithfully you are going to lack in speed. Especially with a game like that.

3D isnt it??

Now try running a game on your PC in software rendering and see if it runs as good as a game with hardware rendering.
Then think about all the other processes your CPU has to be doing at the same time and you will start to see whats up.

The Yak would be a better person to explain all this since he knows about the hardware particular games run on and whats tough about them.

[ivwshane]

That was a good analogy SH.

And the same can be said for home consoles as well. However you might be saying to yourself, "but what about the x-box? it basically a PC right?" well, yes and no. The key difference between home consoles and PC's is that consoles chip architecture allows the video proccessor to communicate directly to the memory or the main cpu, same goes for all the other components, ie hard disk, sound cpu. That direct link is alot fast then even the fastest systems with the fastest graphics cards because the graphics cards still have to travel through an agp bus and the information the videocard is proccessing then still needs to be proccessed and sync'd to the main cpu, basically there is alot of overhead.

[release]

apart from which... crusin usa is mediocore at best.

If you want to play an older 3D arcade racer try Rave Racer or Ridge Racer 2 with Vivanonno. It runs full speed and is much more fun than cruisin'.

The roms are readily available on irc (EFnet #roms4share) and emuchina

and the emulator can be found on http://vivanonno.vg-network.com

[Silverhaze]

Ahh nice reminder there!! Ive been playing some games on my girlfriends lovely AthlonXP over the past few days.
Got 85% speed on Cruisin World but I'd love to play some of those Vivanonno emulated games.

Hopefully I have at least 1 rom and the emu on my old PC so I should be able to transfer it over!

[RabidYak]

Emulation isnt like running a game on your PC and Console. All games are pretty much tailored for the hardware that they are designed to run on, you dont stuff a Mega Drive cartridge into your SNES and expect it run. Since the general point of emulation is to run software on different platforms to one it was originally made for, the machine doing the emulation actually has to perform all the funcions of the original platform. The way this is almost always done is by writing software which actually recreate these components when it is run, so you then actually have the original platform running on your PC to run the software on. The more complicated the components in question are, the more difficult and demanding they are to emulate.

So when you use SNES9x or ZSNES to play Mario Kart, you are not playing these games on you PC. You are playing these games on a SNES in code form which is running on your PCs's processor.

Cruisn uses a 50mhz TMS series processor, the DCS sound system and an a funky way of generating its graphics (code to CPU, CPU to bliiter chip, bliiter chip to video memory, video memory to screen). Latter TMS chips and the DCS sound systems are both helluva complicated components that need thier fair share or processing time to emulate (as demonstrated by the T, X and Wolf unit games). The real catch that totally knackers it on current machines though is the way the graphics is generated. Wheras games using conventional tilemaps and stuff would just run slower and choppier on an incapable machine, games that use this method almost become an unplayable slideshow because the 2-way communication between the CPU, blitter chip and video memory isnt occuring at the rate that it should.

MAME's purpose is to document and emulate games as acurate to the original hardware as humanly possible, hence it does everything properly via your CPU. Even if MAME did pussy out and use hardware acceleration, it wouldent make any difference to Crusin since it has no actuall 3D hardware to ram through the graphics card anyway.

Not that your missing much anyway, Cruisin is a torturously bad game anyway. There are plenty of better arcade driving games emulated, go and play one of those instead.

[Silverhaze]

Name a few of ya favs then bro!!

[RabidYak]

Chase HQ, Outrun, Outrunners, Ridge Racer and Super Off-Road all immediatly come to mind.

[Silverhaze]

Some good suggestions there. I used to cane ChaseHQ in the arcades but I've never played Outrunners. I will have to do so tonight.

I only got up to the end of the M's before my poxy zips died. Oh I now only have 1 of the 5 still working now by the way

Super Off Road though! Arg I was never really sure if I liked that or not. I loved the concept but in practice it seemed a little loose round the edges. The controls seemed a bit off and little bumps in the road would send you flying all over the place while the computer cars sailed past.
I prefered the more smooth surfaces of Indy Heat or something like Super Cars 1 & 2 on the Amiga. Wonder why a decent driving game like that with weapons and stuff never made it into the arcades??
I know there are a couple but they arnt a patch on SC or Death Rally on PC.

Shame Ridge Racer isnt in mame otherwise I'd have it. Wont be playing that over the weekend but I'll replay the others tonight.

[RabidYak]

Bouncing around all over the place is half the fun of Super Off-Road. Once you get the hang of hitting the ramps right and getting round corners at a decent speed its not much hassle to play at all. Playing the arcade version in MAME takes away most of the challenge though. You can just pump loads of credits in to get the cash to upgrade your car to the maximum level strait away and its considerably easier to steer with a pad then it was the steering wheels on actuall machines.

Strange that theres not been much in the way of weapon-using driving games in the arcades. Lucky and Wild, SCI and Stun Runner are all that comes to mind and those arn't exactly the type of game in question.

On a semi-related note, have you seen the pics of the Gamecube Mario Kart game that are doing the rounds? Looks pretty decent, hopefully it will be the reasonable modern sequel that Kart 64 wasent. Hopefully i'll have some spare wadge for it between the ludicrous amounts of cool games that Lucasarts are releasing in the next 6 - 12 months.

[adidas]

On a semi-related note, have you seen the pics of the Gamecube Mario Kart game that are doing the rounds? Looks pretty decent, hopefully it will be the reasonable modern sequel that Kart 64 wasent. Hopefully i'll have some spare wadge for it between the ludicrous amounts of cool games that Lucasarts are releasing in the next 6 - 12 months.

I loved Mario Kart 64. It was a great party game when we were too drunk or stoned to do anything else but sit in front of the N64 and laugh.

I'm still waiting for more price drops on the GC. I might get one someday.

[Silverhaze]

OH MAMA!!

Mariokart are you serious??? Please post those pics if you can!!!

Decent Kart racers are my all time favourite kind of game. The only ones worth a mention are Mariokart, Mariokart64, Crash Team Racing and Diddykong.

The lack of a sequel to MK64 was the only thing apart from cash keeping me from a cube!

[Super Kipper]

Driving games with weapons eh? How about....... uh........... The Battle Road! Rockin'!

Mmmmmmmm Mario Kart.

[Silverhaze]

Mention that game again and die!!

[RabidYak]

Mariokart are you serious??? Please post those pics if you can!!!

http://www.nintendo.com/e32k3/mariokart_feat.html

Still, my anticipation for this was blown clean out the water when I saw scans of the Rouge Squadron 3 feature from the latest issue of shitty american gaming rag EGM earlier.

http://www.theforce.net/games/index.shtml#20710

[Silverhaze]

I just have one thing to say about those shots. Other than my dissapointment at their size.

HOLY MACCARONI!!

[RabidYak]

Gotta laugh at the fact that Yoshi's co-driver is that wierd egg-spitting thing from Super Mario 2, its like they deliberatly picked the most obscure mario character they could find to relaunch it as thier big thing or something.

I can just image kids sitting in front of thier TVs looking at all thier favorite and well-known Nintendo stars and wondering what the fuck a pink monster with a big nozzle that shoots eggs is doing racing with Mario and Donkey Kong.

[Silverhaze]

Haha good old Nintendo.

Didnt they do that with Kirby? Hes not exactly the most well known character and all of a sudden he was battling in those fighting games and had an adventure all of his own. Stop me if Im wrong here.

[RabidYak]

Kirby has had a load of his own games, even one of those crap character-themed console pinball things. Not entirely sure how that started, although I do remember a Kirby gameboy game that went down well in the early-mid 90s.

[Silverhaze]

Yeah I remember that