Lately I've been having a ball with emulators. I've been into retro gaming. Actually, to be factually correct, you can't really "go back" if you never left. But you get my point. This is probably old hat to most of you, but here is the stuff you need:

Atari 800 emulation: AtariWinPlus 800 4.0. And there's one that seems to work well for the OS X, Atari800MacX. I think the Windows one works better though, but the OS X one does seem to work good enough. I had a little trouble with input devices. I had to turn off USB Overdrive in order to make one of my gamepads work, but even then I was having a teensy bit of trouble. Could have been the gamepad. But I can definitely and unhesitatingly say that the Windows AtariWinPlus 800 4.0 works very very well. And I've tried more than a few. A few Atari 800 games and stuff can be found here. And there's a whole bunch of stuff here as well. But the mother load of all Atari 800 game ROMS is bookmarked at my other computer at work. I'll add that later. By my estimate, that link has about 1200 games or so, and they all seem to work. Another thing you'll need for either emulator is the system ROMS. There are direct download links for them near the bottom of this page. And if you want to go crazy, you can find all kinds of programming languages for the Atari 800. There's basic, of course, and many flavors, including some very speedy ones such as Turbo Basic. Advan Basic is supposedly the cream of the crop in terms of speed. You can find Pascal, Forth, LOGO, and, believe it or not, even versions of C. There's a veritable shitload of languages. I've been doing a little fooling around with Forth. It's definitely the propeller-head language. Pascal is supposedly the somewhat sane language of choice. I may try that, but BASIC is just so damn easy to do something now.

Another way to play old Atari games (and a host of others systems) is the MESS emulator. It's problematic for some of the systems, but at least some of them work just fine. You'll find the system (BIOS) ROMS here. A good place, but not the only place, for the game ROMS (except for Atari 800 games) is here.

An absolutely great way to play old Atari 2600 programs is Stella. (Stellaaaaaa!)It comes with a shit-load of games as well. Again, this just works. I've tried not to include mention of anything that is nut-driving or problematic, although MES does somewhat fit that bill at times.

Last but not least is MAME. You can get a great collection of ROMS at that above link at ROM World. Fortunately you don't have to mess with any system BIOS ROMS with this one. Not every game ROM you download is going to work. But this emulator does work, and it works very well. It really plays some kick-ass games. One of my favorites is Galaga 88. This emulator has the potential to get a little geeky, but in a way that's good. You have a lot of flexibility in how you assign the various buttons to your joystick or keyboard (or whatever input devices you are using). A lot of the other above systems are somewhat hardwired in their choices. With the Atari 800, of course, all you generally ever have or need is just a one-button joystick (can't believe this wouldn't be a favorite with you-know-who). And by hitting the tab key on the keyboard while in a MAME game, you'll bring up a screen that will let you change things such as how many players you start out with, the difficulty level, and sometimes even if you can proceed with a new game from your last starting point. (This is the only way I can get past about screen 3 in Galaga 88.)

One thing to mention is that most of these systems don't require you to unzip the zip game ROM files. With the Atari800WinPlus you do have to unzip them, but I think that's the only exception. Another benefit to these emulators is that these games look better on a hi-res computer monitor then they ever looked on a TV screen. Granted, the pixels get bigger when you run them large enough to play with them. But that's just part of the retro experience. There used to be a time when a pixel was a thing so respected that you wanted to see all four corners of it. Another thing nice about these emulators is that you can pause the 2600 games, for instance. The original Atari 2600 gaming console had no way to pause games. And there are a few other options that are generally added via the emulators that make them sometimes better than the original systems. And many of these are cool games. I got a real kick out of one of my nephews. We've got a few retro consoles set up at work. Me and him were playing Joust on my old Atari 800 XL. He was having a ball. When we were done for the day he said something like, "Gee. I didn't know you guys had such great computer games when you were kids." And this from someone who grew up on 64 bit, 128 bit, 1 bazillion bit systems. Atari is 8-bit but it represents a type of gaming that I don't think has ever been matched. Same with the Super NES to a great extent. Actually, the Super NES was the next logical step after Atari had Atari not been so greedy and stupid. They just thought they could more-or-less keep repackaging slight upgrades to the 2600 forever. But that's a long and a very old story. And you get a part of that story by delving back into some of this old stuff. Less is more? You bet. Sometimes too much less. Some of these games are pretty crummy, but that's true of any system. But finding the gems is a lot of fun.

Another amazing thing (granted, it's a spinning gear endeavor) is the way people have actually modified some of these old computers and gaming systems. Some have found ways to hook up, say, an old Atari 800 computer to their PC so that the Atari can use the PC's hard drive, printers, and other peripherals. You can literally go APE. Wanna add USB? Apparently you can do so.

Brilliant! I like retro-gaming too, my all-time-favourite title is Robotron2084 followed by Atari Asteroids (Vector-Graphic Version), both run flawless on Mame.
All hail the Robotron! :-)

Wait, you have a way to run old-school Asteroids on a Mac? Sign me up. I've been using the Flash widget, which is OK, but I'd rather have the original ROMs.

I'll try MAME and see if I can find Asteroids.

--OK, that link needed a subscription to download the file. Screw that. Was that a Windows version? Here's where I found the Mac OS X version of MAME:
http://mameosx.sourceforge.net/

It's going through some "audit" process that I don't understand. Asteroids shows up, but I'm not sure if that means the ROM is included or what.

All hail the Robotron! :-)

Smithz, I want to like that game. I was playing it just yesterday. But I'm pretty sure originally the arcade version used two joysticks; one for moving in all directions and one for shooting in all direction. But it's a really tough game to play with just one joystick where you're forced to shoot in the same direction that you're moving. How do you manage to play the game? Do you just make due with one joystick or do you perhaps use two, or a joystick in combination with the keyboard?

Here's that mother load of Atari 800 games that I mentioned earlier. I haven't even really started working my way through it.

Thalo, I don't remember which system has the best version of Asteroid. But I do know that Ambrosia Software's Maelstrom is the most kick-ass version I've ever seen. It adds a lot of fun elements and the sound sets are great. It's available for both Classic and OS X. I've played the Classic version a lot. I'm going to try the OS X version sometime today if I can.

My two favorite games for the Atari 800 (and these games were eventually available on several systems, including the Commodore 64) is M.U.L.E. and Lords of Conquest. You can read more about M.U.L.E. here and here. You really have to play it to appreciate it or to tell whether it's a game you'd like or not. You can play against the three computer players, but up to four people can play at the same time. I find it works great with just two. Lords of Conquest is a Risk-type of game. Many modern gamers might dismiss it as too simple. But that's exactly one reason I like it. You don't have to dick with so much stuff. I mean, if you're one of those Sim City or flight simulator guys, you like dicking with a hundred factors including health, ball size, and weight of your urine. But that kind of details just becomes tedious for me. I find Lords to be a very nice balance of simplicity and depth. And the computer is kick-ass to play against. Very strong opponent, but not unfairly so.

quote:

Smithz, I want to like that game. I was playing it just yesterday. But I'm pretty sure originally the arcade version used two joysticks...

BN, correct, you absolutely NEED 2 (8-way) Joysticks for the true experience. It just don't makes any sense without that. I use my old logitech gamepad, which offers a d-pad and 4 firebuttons (plus 2 shoulderbuttons, but these aren't needed now). So it's the best to configure the 4 firebuttons to behave like the 2nd Joystick. Using this configuration i move my player with d-pad (left thumb) and shoot in all directions using the 4 firebuttons on the right (right thumb).
This game is insane to play when you're used to the 2-Stick experience, perhaps it has something to do with left and right part of the brain etc.
This damn game made me buy two arcade-quality sticks and some buttons, they're waiting to be hacked into a arcade-controller-board. To do this i will hack up my Gamepad (which is worn out) and use its USB-Electronics. Some of my unfinished projects. :-)

I have MAME 32 running on a PC here and I happened to have two version of Asteroids, the original and Asteroids Deluxe. The Deluxe version, at least to me, doesn't have the appeal of the original. But they are both that cool, original vector graphic version -- at least I think the vector graphic version is the original one.

Regarding MAME game ROMS, sometimes (quite often, actually) you'll see all kinds of versions of the same game: Rev. 1, Rev 2, bootleg, or maybe even a Japanese version. Honestly, I haven't found any rhyme or reason as to which works best. And on a rare occasion there are some dependencies where in order to run (for example, but I don't think this is the case) Asteroids Deluxe you need the original Asteroids ROM installed too. So if you run into an instance where some really kick-ass game that you like isn't working, try another Rev or language version, and/or try install an earlier version of it.

The Atari versions of Asteroids all tend to be the same. And, swear to god, the 2600 version is better than the Atari 800, which is a much more powerful computer. The Atari 7800 system plays a slightly different version of Asteroids, but I prefer even the Atari 2600 version to this. But the smoothest playing one (and probably the most original) is the MAME one.

Smithz, a few months ago I broke down and bought a fairly nice gamepad. I've got it at home and the moment and forget what brand it is, but it's very solid. Now, you must understand that compared to gamepads, I absolutely love liberals and leftists. I, for the life of me, still can't play games like Halo on the X-Box because I just can't get used to the game pads. But it's just so hard to find a good joystick, at least that's been my experience. They're either these honkin'-big joysticks that look like they came out of an F-16, or their cheap little things that have no feel to them. So I finally broke down and got a quality game pad. And I'm getting used to it. It allows me to play a lot of games I couldn't otherwise. No, that little penis-head mini-joystick thingie on the gamepad is no substitute for a "grab-it-by-the-shaft" joystick. But it's workable for MAME games.

That joystick you linked to looks like an arcade-quality joystick. I think there are two things that will survive a nuclear holocaust, and they are cockroaches and arcade-quality hardened joysticks. Those red joysticks on the original Pac Man arcade stand-up machines, for example, couldn't be broke. You could wrap a chain around them and tie the other end to a tractor and I think the tractor would lose that battle. And despite the ruggedness, that Pac Man joystick had a wonderful feel to it. That's something hard to find in a joystick and, perhaps ironically, the cheap-o hard-plastic original Atari joysticks actually work pretty well. And they may be the third thing that survives that nuclear holocaust because they'll take a fair amount of abuse. I should know. I used to really abuse them. What else are you going to do when Blinky ruins a good game you were having? Take it out on the joystick. I just don't believe in kicking dogs.

Another thing I've found is that the best game of Joust that I've every played (another of my favorites) is on the Atari 800. Yeah, there are MAME versions and such. And some are okay. But they really got the feel of it right on the Atari 800. There's a funny, sort of over-the-top Joust II version playable on MAME. But like a lot of arcade games that are ruined by greed, it gets too hard too fast. And I say "ruined by greed" because I suspect that the game designers are being just a little too greedy about trying to extract quarters from people. Games such as Pac Man were fun to put quarters into because they were fair. You stood at least a decent chance to have a little game time before you got into the really hard levels. But some start out way too hard. Galaxian is a game sort of like that. I really like the concept, but it gets too hard too fast. And obviously with the arcade units, they can adjust the difficulty levels. They have software that keeps track of things like games played, how long the games lasted, etc. And I'm pretty sure they then dial up the difficulty if they find games are lasting too long. The upright arcade version of Tron was one of my favorites. Me and my brothel used to visit this one store that had it. But one day we came in and noticed we were dying a lot faster than usual. Yep. Some greedy asshole had turned up the difficulty. So what was the result? We stopped playing the game. They stopped getting our quarters.

Let me know when you get those two joysticks working. I'll try playing the MAME version of Robotron and making better use of my buttons and stuff on my gamepad like you did. MAME allows that kind of customization where I haven't found that to be the case with most of the other systems. Also, do you like Berzerk as well? It's slightly in the same vein. It's another game that gets hard pretty fast if you ask me.

Thalo, I think "audit" checks if the Roms are up-to-date and errorfree, it saves a text-file when finished which contains a list of damaged or outdated ROM-Files. I never used "audit".

Anyway, Mame will run the original Atari Asteroids ROMs (Arcade Version, not the Atari 2600 version) and shows an excellent simulation of the Vector-Screen (you even can enable flickering, choose line thickness, etc. etc.)
Right now i'm at work, but i can send you the file later when i'm home.
All hail the Asteroids.

BN, i know Berzerk and like it, but it lacks the brilliant 2-Sticks-Control-Scheme of Robotron. Yeah, i have to confess i'm a Robotron-Addict. ...
Another brilliant (and annoying :-) game is "Demon Attack" for the Atari VCS. It's a fairly normal shooter (bit like Galaga or Phoenix), but the movement of your enemies is odd and demanding, i rarely had seen such odd and strange movement. Give it a try and tear your hair out.

--OK, that link needed a subscription to download the file. Screw that. Was that a Windows version? Here's where I found the Mac OS X version of MAME:

Which link required a subscription, thalo?

It's going through some "audit" process that I don't understand. Asteroids shows up, but I'm not sure if that means the ROM is included or what.

Assuming the OS X MAME versioin is setup like the Windows version, under the "Options" menu there are two things you have to dick with. One is the "Directories..." menu and the other is "Default Game Options..." Under the "Default Game Options..." menu item, the most important things to set up are probably whether you want the game to play in a window or full screen, and here you can make sure that your joystick or gamepad is enabled. Under "Directories" is where you need to make sure you point to where your game ROMS are stored. Put them all in the same folder and name the folder whatever you want. Under the "Show directories for....>>> ROMS" item, navigate to this folder. It's convenient to name the folder something like "MAME Game ROMS" in order to sort of match the directory item. Believe me, a little organization at the start pays off. I've got a friggin willy-nilly mess on my PC at home. I just kept adding things now I've got shit all over the place. But it works.

Upon starting each game you'll like have to hit "Ok" or at least push the button once. It's just a BS disclaimer that you own each and every one of these arcade machines. For sake of convenience and to stay square with the law, I bought an entire 500,000 square foot warehouse and have filled it with old arcade machines that I have been buying up for years now just so that I could legally play these games in MAME. Let me know if you've got it working.

you even can enable flickering, choose line thickness, etc. etc.

That's sort of fun to play with. I confess I usually end up making things look as best as I can. But the various emulators will often simulate the television scan lines and things like that. One reason I so like the AtariWinPlus 800 for playing Atari 800 games is because it does a good job of keeping the original flavor of the games. Some emulators smooth things out too much. That can be okay, depending on the game, but there's something to be said for, well, pixelation.

Yes, I know the game Demon Attack. It's a bitch. Big flying birds or something as I remember it. I'll give it another play, Smithz. It's been a long time.

Right now, Smithz, me and my brother are having fun playing "Riveraid." There's a good Atari 2600 version and there are other versions as well. It's a simple concept but it works.

A couple sites with info regarding the Atari 800.

Antic Magazine back issues online. It was a real rush of nostalgia for me when I found this online. I used to pick up copies of this magazine occasionally. It was filled with lots and lots of stuff way over my head, but it's obviously wasn't over the head of the tons and tons of programmers who made all those games. And I've garnered from reading here and there that the Atari 800 was a bit of a bitch to program. But these magazines were fascinating to me because it was like looking behind the curtain in Oz. And they had all kinds of programs, short or long, that you could type into your computer. Some issues came with disks that would save you from having to do the typing. And you would learn a little something here and there by seeing what other people were doing.

Atari Age is another site that has a lot of useful info on various Atari games consoles.

Atari Archives has a lot of interesting stuff. It's an amazing resource for those who want to keep the Atari 800 alive. There are entire books that have been put online and organized nicely into chapters. I think tinkering around in BASIC for old time's sake is as far as I want to go. But although computers processors, memories, and hard drive space have all vastly increased in size and speed, you can basically access the same type of things via an Atari computers, including graphical user interfaces to some extent (a very primitive extent from what I've seen).

Atari.org is another site that seems to have a lot of info, although I haven't look through this site much.

Classic Gaming is certainly a graphic-rich web site dedicated to classic gaming. It has a nice Classic Gaming Museum, including this excellent entry on the Atari computers. I really loved that old look of the Atari 800. (They have the 800 caption mis-labeled at the top as an 800 XL. I have the XL. It's a nice computer as well.) The Atari 400 had a membrane keyboard, which means that little Johnny could spill pop on it or even puke on it and it would do no harm. But it was near worthless for typing on. The Atari 800 wasn't much better. The pressure needed to hit a key was somewhere between an old Underwood manual typewriter and a modern keyboard. Finally with the Atari XL, they had a keyboard that was at least in the ballpark of type-a-bility. Later I owned a Commodore VIC 20. The most memorable thing about that computer was that it played a mean game of Omega Race, which is one of my all-time favorite games. I just can't seem to get the damn thing to work right in MAME, but I'm still trying to hunt down some version that works well. I don't think I every owned a Commodore 64. My memory is a little fuzzy on this point. But I do think my next computer after the VIC 20 was my first Mac, the SE. I remember my cousin had Intellivision. And that seemed okay for a few games but I wasn't that enamored with it.

My brothel's got a really interesting book on the history of video games: The Ultimate History of Video Gaming. I've thumbed through this book and can highly recommend it. Here's a site that has some great pictures of those early all-in-one console systems. I remember having one of the Pong versions. Great fun. And then we got one that played multiple games, including the best version of Breakout I had ever seen. Ahhh. I think I found it on the second page. Video Pinball by Atari. That's the one. Geez, we played that one a lot.

History of Arcade Games. Wow. Look at those original machines.

Smithz, one of my favorite games is Arkanoid. I can find several working versions of it for MAME but I have yet to be able to make it playable with a gamepad. The little paddle at the bottom of the screen is always too touchy and I've tried tons of different settings. I just wondered if you or anyone else found a way to play it.

Oh baby, I didn't know there was a Maelstrom for OS X. That was one of my favorite mac games. I actually purchased it... I wonder if they still have my serial number on file.

I sort of got MAME to work. It's not clear that you have to leave the ROMs as .zip files when you drag them into the ROMs directory in your user library. I have Stuffit, which unzipped and decoded the binaries, and the program wasn't finding what it needed.

So I finally get classic Asteroids to run, but there's no way to set keyboard prefs, and no instructions about how to start a game or anything. I think I found most of the keys I need, but man, I wish I could change them to be more ergonomic. Still, it's Asteroids the way I remember it.

So I finally get classic Asteroids to run, but there's no way to set keyboard prefs, and no instructions about how to start a game or anything.

Yeah, as I had mentioned, don't unzip the ROMS except for that one AtariWinPlus800 emulator for the PC. And there are no system roms needed for MAME, just the game ROMS. Stick them all in the same folder and then point the directory to this ROMS folder under Options/Directories.... It sounds like you probably already did this.

Again, you may want to adjust a few general setting in Option/Default Game Options. But go ahead and launch a game and your input device settings are here. Hit the tab key and you can choose various menu items (using the arrow keys most likely). The main one you'll probably immediately want to screw with is "Input General." It is there that you can assign the "Coin" and "Start" options to wherever it is convenient on your joystick, gamepad, and/or keyboard. You can assign the same item to more than one thing. For custom setting for individual games, choose "Input this Game." I don't know how squirrely the interface responsiveness is. But it's hell on the PC in regards to moving the selection via the cursor keys.

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Just downloaded and ran Maelstrom. Works pretty good. That was always a fun game. On the Classic Mac, you used to be able to swap in some really groovy sound sets. Very funny ones. Don't know if that's available for this version.

Ahhh, thanks Brad.

Stuffit was automatically unzipping the ROMs as they downloaded, so I didn't really register what the hell was going on. Took me a while to get it.

I think the TAB key was the only key I didn't try, as I desperately was searching for the controls! That opened up the whole thing for interface customization. Oh man, old school Asteroids is the balls.

Yeah, it's a bit of a pain doing all the program navigating with the arrow keys, but oh well.

Talk about Less is More! Some of these games are so primitive looking, but are still so playable. Of course now I'm trying to remember all my favorites from college... when I used to blow tons of quarters on the things.

There was one where your ship was in the middle of concentric rings of force-fields, and you had to blast your way out. Loved that one. There was "Tempest"... a bizarre game where various shapes came winging at you in a perspective tunnel, and you had to wheel around with a track-ball and get them. Missile Command. Defender.

Then after the first graphics revolution: Joust.

Which one was Arkanoid?

What do you mean "gamepad"? Your words are alien to me. Are there gamepads you can hook up to the Mac? There used to be, I suppose, joysticks and the like... back in the ADB days. But the Mac is so not a game machine now, I don't ever recall seeing any for a USB Mac.

Ho yeah, right, I remember the Simpsons sound files for Maelstrom. Groovy. But "Yawp" is still one of my all time favorite sounds.

Arkanoid... I don't really remember that one. Let me google... oh yeah, a breakout type, I remember that. It was so cool that the graphics actually had "3-D" eye candy effects.

From before, the "MAME" link early in the thread. I clicked on it, hit download, and then when I clicked on the binary link, it sent me to fileplanet, which you have to subscribe to.

Robotron... don't remember that one. Gonna have to give it a try.

Oh man, old school Asteroids is the balls.

Yeah, it really is. I found it to be so smooooth compared to all the other Asteroids games. I'm definitely going to put that one in the rotation. And that's certainly one of the first video games I ever played. Think back to the first games that appeared. That was one of them. I know that Space Wars and some others surely came first, but I remember mostly looking at those games and wondering what to do. But I know I pumped lots of quarters in the Asteroids arcade game. By the way, you can run a PC version of Space Wars here. I haven't tried it yet. Oh, apparently Computer Space was the first commercial arcade game. But I tend to take a lot of these "firsts" claims with a grain of salt. There's probably some small company that made two or three games somewhere and had a short run in some bar in France or something like that. But a very cool cabinet, first or not. I don't think Nolan Bushnell designed it. I think space aliens did. If I was semi-rich and had a large den, I would have one of those Computer Space cabinets in it. Here's another early computer arcade video game: Pong

There was one where your ship was in the middle of concentric rings of force-fields, and you had to blast your way out. Loved that one.

Wow. That sounds vaguely familiar. That rung a few bells. I'll ask the brothel. He's good at remembering this kind of stuff.

Which one was Arkanoid?

Basically it was breakout taken to the next level. Arkanoid. I have a copy for my Classic Mac. It's one of the few games that I made it all the way to the end. I don't think I have any "zones" left. But I used to get in one now and then. You really had to be in one to beat the final screen. But it's a bitch to try to play with a gamepad. I might try mouse input with that and see if I can get it to work. I think I still have the original software somewhere. Maybe I can see if that still works in OS 9. And these games are Classic. Yes, you can make all those bricks (like in Arkanoid) shiny, 3D, and bathed in semi-transparent fog or something. But the basic concept is the concept. It doesn't really need elaboration. These are original ideas, and I just don't see all that many original ideas anymore in the gaming industry. It's all boring variation on the same theme. Granted, this stuff is looking great. I saw a football game the other day at Best Buy. They had a little demo areas set up, and it wasn't that far from looking like an actual NFL game. It was very realistic. And that's how they tend to measure games these days, by how real they are, how many megahertz, is it 32 bit or a gazillion bit. But these classic games were more like chess, checkers, dominoes, hearts, rummy, or a hundred other truly classic games you could name that are simple in terms of the objects needed to play the games, but provide rich play for decades.

Like I've said, I tend to eyeroll at the million-and-one version of the same stupid kick-boxing ninja theme. Okay, it was sort of neat the first time, but stop already and think of something original. With classic gaming, we had original in spades.

What do you mean "gamepad"? Your words are alien to me. Are there gamepads you can hook up to the Mac? There used to be, I suppose, joysticks and the like... back in the ADB days. But the Mac is so not a game machine now, I don't ever recall seeing any for a USB Mac.

LOL. Yes, I forgot. Macs are not gaming machines. These are for serious work. PC's are the toys. The Mac world went through that stage at one time. I had forgotten about that. I have a LogiTech Dual Action gamepad hooked up to my PC at home. At work I've got a cheapo something or other hooked up to the PC. I really tried finding a joystick proper, but they're all too big. They all seem to be made for flight simulators. I'd like to find an elegant, smooth, responsive, and rugged small one, preferably all black.

it sent me to fileplanet, which you have to subscribe to.

Hey, I know these guys need to make a buck, but screw File Planet. I find their methods extremely annoying and more than a bit intrusive. They're analogous to one of those annoying internet sites that somehow capture the "back" button and don't let you out. I basically hate File Planet.

Robotron is a hard one. It's frenetic. I hope brother smithz is drinking a few of them beers just to keep him on an even keel. I know that some of those really fast-paced games can get me a little wired.

Having trouble with MAME. I tried downloading Tempest ROMs... but whenever I try to launch the game, it denies me and says files are missing. I check the logs, and get the same story. So while Asteroids works, I guess not every game ROM that you get does?

Too bad, Tempest was a fun one.

So while Asteroids works, I guess not every game ROM that you get does?

Yeah, it's very common for some ROMS not to work. I noticed that at Rom World there are 4 versions of Tempest. If you really want a game, when in doubt, load them all. I can't say for sure. I'll give it a try myself. Hmmm. Rom World says its servers are down at the moment. I found another site: ROMnation. Eyeroll. Sorry, that was a reflexive eyeroll at the name. It couldn't be helped.

Okay, I got Tempest to work. Go over to that ROMnation (eyeroll) place and download and install all three versions (version 1, version 2, version 3). This is just in case there are any dependencies between them, although I think it's unlikely. I got version 3 to work just fine, but try all three in case that one doesn't. *IF* you can get any of them to launch then you may or may not have trouble making your gamepad or joystick work with it. If this is the case, try this bit of voodoo. It's a fairly common thing you have to do for games whose original stand-up arcade versions may have used an analog dial when all you have is a digital joystick or gamepad:

Hit the tab key from inside Tempest to bring up the options screen (or whatever the hell they call it).
Choose "Analog Controls."
Set "Dial Digital Speed" to 10
Set "Dial Sensitivity" to 50%
Choose "Input this Game"
Set "Dial Analog" to none (Basically hit return to highlight that item and then hit the escape key. Hitting the escape key is the way to clear out all the settings.)
Set "Dial Dec" to J1 X Axis - (hit return, hit escape to clear out previous settings, and then push your joystick or the D-pad on your gamepad to the left)
Set "Dial Inc" to J1 X Axis + (my D-pad on the gamepad pushed to the right)

Depending on the device you're using, the "J1 X Axis" may differ. And the Dial speed and sensitivity settings will probably need to be set to whatever feels comfortable. Hope this helps.

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Yeah, Tempest is kind of fun. I hadn't played that game in years. Very cool vector graphics. I made it cleanly to round four and then just could not avoid the spikes. Damn damn green spikes. The bastard spikes.

Finally racked up a 17200 score, which is nothing. But I did get past the damn spikes.

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If you still have trouble trying to get Tempest to work, it's a known factor that some ROMS will work on some versions of MAME and not others. I got it to work on version 0.103 of the PC version of MAME. I actually keep an older version of MAME hanging around (0.61.0.0) to play a couple of games that don't work on the new one, although I forget which games those are. My hard drive is a bit of an unorganized mess. And don't ask me why the newer version of MAME is .103 and the older one is .61. I don't quite understand their naming conventions.

Another game you HAVE to try is Tank Force. I use the US version, although maybe the Japanese versions works just fine as well. I like tank games and there are so few good ones. I remember the arcade version of Battlezone, but that was always such a frustrating game to play. I found it way too hard.

I downloaded all the Tempests, and none of them work in MAME for OS X. It says "Loading 5%" then "Some files were missing."

I tried another, "Space Invaders" which worked. Though the game window got really small (compared to Asteroids). Remember that classic? Love it.

I can't, for the life of me, remember that game with the rotating force-fields.

It was two polygons... and there was a ship in the middle. Your ship floated around outside. If you hit the force fields, you died. Then it took so many hits per side of the polygon to get through it. Eventually you punched through, but if there was a clear shot, the thing in the middle would shoot at you with a fireball and get you. What was the damn name?