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Comment by wimagguc | Hacker News Reader

Have you guys seen Musee Mecanique in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco [1]? It's a collection of older-than-old slot machines and games, I want to say I've seen some 100 year old ones, but the point is: there's Heavyweight Champ' style boxing, there are all sorts of sport games, and even a mechanical road runner [2].

The gameplay is obviously changed with technology, but for some games the core idea survived some heavy decades of transitions. The originals would probably be less engaging for today's kids, so it's only fair to ship them a 3D/VR/mobile version, and keep our nostalgia from trying to sell mechanical road runner to all arcades. CRTs will phase out in favour of everything else, and that should be ok.

[1] http://museemecaniquesf.com

[2] https://www.facebook.com/museemecaniquesf/videos/vb.51627194...

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This is my thinking as well. Hamfisted attempts to make LCD's look like CRT's by artificially curving the screen and messing with colors is just nostalgia. It doesn't add anything to game and 1980s designers were most likely pissed they had to deal with these limitations like color distortion, curvatures, ghosting, burn-in, etc. Pac-man isn't better on a shittier screen. Pac-man succeeds because it had novel game mechanics for 1982.

Outside of lightguns not working this seems like a non-issue to me. I'm sure the emulation community can find a work-around for this for the few people actually using lightguns under emulation.

>Have you guys seen Musee Mecanique

I live in Chicago and have access to all sorts of barcades as well as one of the largest, if not largest, arcades in a nearby suburb, so I'm pretty well versed in the arcade experience today as well as from my childhood. I went to Musee a few years ago and was expecting an experience like that, but instead the game floor was mostly these near turn of the century mechanical games. I was fairly disappointed, from a gameplay or mechanical perspective they were kinda terrible and largely uninteresting. They had historic value but that's about it and probably better off in a proper museum and lovingly maintained than beaten up for quarters. I think in 20-30 years this is exactly how CRT's will be seen. Kids will marvel at how terrible their low resolutions, framerate, color accuracy, and ghosting are.

I mostly agree, though I think it gets a little muddier when you consider that the artists of the day — while doubtlessly wishing they had access to "more perfect" displays — were often designing their art to take advantage of those distortions to get effects they wanted. So, if part of why we're doing emulation is for history's sake, we have to keep that in mind. The painters of ancient Roman frescoes probably wanted more vibrant pigments than they had and it might even be interesting and attractive to "enhance" one with modern pigments, but it's ahistorical.

That being said, I've never personally found added distortion in emulators to improve the experience. I'm always constantly aware of its artificiality and that far outweighs any potential gains in "authenticity".

Or the (fortunately no longer common) trend in the 1990s of "colorizing" black and white movies under the misconception that this would make them better, ignoring that people filming in black and white took advantage of the medium for things like shadows that actually worked better there than in color.

I'd like to see CRTs maintained as long as possible but when I see the rebuilt machines in the barcades (was just at Headquarters in Chicago last night) using LCD screens I'm usually very satisfied with them - even preferring them. Occasionally I play one with unacceptable lag, but I suppose that has something to do with some suboptimal scaler or converter being used. Generally it's a great looking and playing experience.

> Pac-man succeeds because it had novel game mechanics for 1982.

Pac-Man was released in 1980, not 1982.

Yes! I spent at happy morning there last time I was in the city. That old submarine is right outside the front door. There was some very cool old arcade games in there but some of the mechanical ones were incredible, like the baseball game.

My wife had never really been in a real arcade till she and I visited that very same one, and we were both blown away!

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