In an age where it seems every form of entertainment has been digitized and made available for download on the Internet, these remain some of gaming’s rarest experiences. We did some research on games that fall into all three of these categories and came up with a list of 11 intriguing arcade rarities that you’d have to leave the house and search for to play. Then there's a third category of games that can technically be emulated by MAME or other emulators, but which can't be truly experienced without the highly specialized controllers or display hardware built in to the original cabinets. For others, there's no known digital ROM dump of the original hardware, usually because that hardware is only available in a few extant prototype boards floating around. For some of these unemulated games, the the MAME community simply hasn't gotten around to coding specific emulation support, or has found emulation too difficult. It turns out there are hundreds of these unemulated games floating around out there, as ably documented by sites like unMAMEd and System 16.

That back-catalog includes obscure 2002 shooter game Gamshara, which has never been successfully emulated or ported to a home console, meaning few people have ever played it. That fact came into stark relief this week with the news that developer Mitchell Corporation was finally selling the rights to its back catalog. Legal issues aside, MAME ensures that future generations will at least be able to play and study these games without having to track down an aging cabinet or circuit board.īut as comprehensive as MAME is, there are a number of arcade games that remain unplayable (or functionally unplayable) without access to the original arcade hardware.

It is one of the most ambitious emulation projects ever, encompassing tens of thousands of games with highly varied hardware, programming, and controls.

Even those who remember the ‘70s and ‘80s golden age of arcades probably only had the opportunity to sample a relative handful of games that were available at their local haunts.įor people who want to preserve this disappearing bit of gaming history, or experience cabinets they never had access to, Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) is a godsend. Even with the minor arcade resurgence going on these days, the prolonged decline of the American arcade means that there's a whole generation of people who have had little opportunity to play any of the thousands of coin-operated games in their native cabinets.

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