Guys. We decided to close and edit the last few posts in this thread. The rules we decided to use for these forums were derived from years of experience in the arcade collecting and development scene. We took pieces of a lot of forums when we decided on them. We consider our forum to be pretty open and loose. While we did open this forum to better express our own beliefs in comparison to other forums that did not see eye to eye with us, there are many ideals that we do also believe in and share with other forums in the scene. One of those ideals is to not support profit by bootlegging. Now I know that the term can be applied to a VERY broad spectrum. And many people believe that some of our products are "bootleggy".
On the other hand there is the school of thought that what we do is preserving the arcade culture, community, and very existence. As an example, there are a lot of hacked HDDs out there for various systems. Many people profit off the sale of these HDDs. Some, such as our beloved member Niko, provide the information to make these drives for certain platforms for free. Is a multi drive a bootleg? Well it's not original so by loose definition yes it is. However, if the work was never put into cracking these drives then we could not save that platform once original drives began failing. I am a member and donor to VAPS. This stands for Vintage Arcade Preservation Society. We try to preserve as much as we can about every aspect of the arcade experience and it's history. From big warehouses full of old machines, to those machines held in private collections. We try to restore our machines to the original state if at all possible. So if we have a CPS2 cabinet the preferred flow would be (in a purely preservationist sense):
Battery-powered/original keys > Decrypted romsets > MAME
Now there are two major subsets in the arcade scene. The gamer and the collector.
The gamer mostly just wants to play games. They don't really care about condition or platform just as long as it plays like the original. MAME may be fine for some, for others it doesn't feel right and they prefer the original hardware. The collector, which I would put the preservationist in this group also, is more concerned with condition and authenticity. I would venture to say a large majority of the arcade scene falls into this category. At least the older crowd.
Darksoft and I love this hobby. It has been a passion of mine since I got my first machine in 8th grade. I want to preserve as many aspects of this hobby as I can. This is more important now than ever before. Arcades have all but disappeared. Shit, most arcades now are run by COLLECTORS. We keep these things in the mind of the public by unlocking that memory a random person had of playing Donkey Kong back in the day. Not just how the joystick felt in their hand but just how that machine looked sitting over in the corner of that smokey arcade. It's important to a lot of us.
That was along speech. But my main point here as it relates to these forums is this:
1. Our rules are in place for a reason. They are not just random things we threw together.
2. We will not change our policies.
3. All we ask is for you to respect our policies.
If our policy says we don't kill live pcbs or carts then that is our official stance. You do not need to like it or agree with it. But you will need to respect it, please. You can do whatever you want with your own property. If you kill it, that's our decision. But please do not openly announce that you killed your pcb. If you are new I understand the inquisitiveness. Sometimes you just want to know why it's like this instead of like that. Wouldn't this be better? In many cases the issues you are bringing up have been debated ad-nauseam for a long time. Sometimes even decades. We encourage noobs to come here. But as a new member of any type of group it is your duty to try to learn as much as you can on your own as well. If you have questions you can't find the answer to, ask away. But a good search is your best friend. Also remember, sometimes things are just the way they are and have been for years. There is no new wheel to invent. There is no secret reason. It is an axiom. It just "is".
One last thought for you. I have only been in the "backstage" part of the arcade scene for a few years now. What does that mean? That means that for most people what you know about the arcade scene is just the surface. There is unfortunately a TON of politics in this hobby. But in order to keep new things flowing you have to play politics, you have to play the game. Whether this is to negotiate for a rare game to dump and share with the community, swapping knowledge about one thing for the knowledge of another thing to advance both of your works, or having to stroke the ego of some talented programmer in order to figure a way around a security system that prevents us from reviving a dead game. At this point a lot of new additions to MAME have been negotiated for for years. I'm not even kidding. But the passion that certain people have for this is just amazing. Many of them never want their name ever mentioned. They just do it because they love it.
We should all just do it because we love it.
OM F