Technical information, Nintendo arcadegames?

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oRBIT2002
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Technical information, Nintendo arcadegames?

Post by oRBIT2002 »

I am a little curious what kind of hardware Nintendo used in the arcades back in the good old days. Their VS-systems I am quite familiar with but I guess they used other stuff aswell? I noticed they're starting to re-release arcade games on Switch, "Mario Bros" is coming up in just a few days but that ain't a VS-title as far as I know?
I started to google but all I get are links for MAME, more or less.
Is there a decent website with more techrelated stuff concerning these arcademachines?
tepples
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Re: Technical information, Nintendo arcadegames?

Post by tepples »

Is there anything wrong with looking at the source code of MAME for this info, such as dkong.cpp?
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oRBIT2002
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Re: Technical information, Nintendo arcadegames?

Post by oRBIT2002 »

The only "documentation" that exists seems to be in MAME-source? I expected more, but perhaps I'm spoiled with nesdev.com. :)
tepples
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Re: Technical information, Nintendo arcadegames?

Post by tepples »

Unless an arcade board is used for numerous games, such as DECO Cassette System, Vs. System, Mega Play, Neo Geo MVS, or Capcom CPS, then each individual game on it is unlikely to warrant preparation of docs more detailed than needed to get the handful of extant games on that board working.
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Re: Technical information, Nintendo arcadegames?

Post by Pokun »

One purpose of Mame is to document the hardware of arcade systems (and now when MESS has merged with MAME, also non-arcade digital systems), so I guess MAME source is as good as it gets (it even proves the functionality by being playable).
I already spotted an unused feature of the Donkey Kong arcade board in that source that's planned to be emulated for documentation purposes only, proving that MAME isn't just for playing games with.

I saw something about an FPGA implementation of MAME, that sounds like an even more interesting way to document historical hardware than emulation is.
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