iPhone MAME project gets off the ground, performance doesn't

Raise a cheer, Google coder extraordinaire "kaisersoze" has a little gaming treat in store for us all, MAME -- retro, we know, but we love old school gaming and so should you. Hot on the heels of games like Doom and an NES emulator, the Google Code "sdl-mame-project" will let iPhone gamers revisit all of their favorites from decades ago. Of course, every great story has a happy sad ending and, in this case, that story is there are no binaries yet -- but the source is there if you are inspired to compile it up. While Pacman and Q*Bert run well, performance is apparently weak in other titles, so we'll simply cross our fingers and hope for rockin' speeds from one of our favorites, Ghosts 'n Goblins.

[Via Engadget Japan]

[CoffeeJones @ Aug 21st 2007 4:50PM]

I've got an iPhone with the NES emulator and the BSD user tools running on it.

My understanding is that they don't have direct access to the graphics hardware working yet.
So the picture is being copied to the framebuffer, a pixel at a time. So things that update the screen often, like a game, eat up CPU time quickly, even though producing the image(NES video emulation) can be done on a 386 with hardly any frames dropped.

The processor(s) is fairly powerful in the iphone and there is something like 128 MB of ram in it. It's effectively a pocket MacOSX system underneath it all.

[The General @ Aug 21st 2007 4:56PM]

They're working on it, though! I can't get it to build right, I wish they'd release binaries.

[Rainier @ Aug 21st 2007 4:57PM]

Whoa, for a second there, I thought that image was of someone playing both Pac-Man AND Burger Time in the same session....brings new meaning to multi-touch!

[Shre @ Aug 21st 2007 5:09PM]

Man a friend of mine has the real arcade system for burgertime (pictured on the right) and that game is so amazingly addictive. Can't wait to put that on my iphone as long as the controls don't suck.

[zachary.tunstall @ Aug 21st 2007 5:23PM]

If they suck, don't be lazy. Change the source and share it.

[Shre @ Aug 21st 2007 5:27PM]

Hahaha you don't want me messing around with some code because i would just break it ^_^

[ethana2 @ Aug 21st 2007 7:33PM]

If you break your copy and can't fix it, revert to the other people's source. If you commit broken code, they'll revert to their earlier source at worst. If you do it over and over again, you'll either get your commit access revoked, or they'll quit pulling from you with git.

[ethana2 @ Aug 21st 2007 7:36PM]

I still don't see why people put up with that thing when there's an openmoko. Do people just not look around a bit more?

[ethana2 @ Aug 21st 2007 7:38PM]

look around *enough*.

They /should/ look around a bit more.
Sorry about that.

[JJD_BR @ Aug 21st 2007 11:59PM]

Love PAC-MAN

[CB @ Aug 22nd 2007 4:44AM]

Pffff, been playing G&G on a phone since my Nokia 7650, but I guess that's iwhatever for ya, years out of date.

[Smileypanda @ Aug 22nd 2007 4:43PM]

I'm holding out for Battletoads.