#Laserdisc game emulator zip file#

That way they could avoid the legal pitfall while still preserving the oldest games, those with discrete circuitry, which are also those most in need of preservation.

#Laserdisc game emulator zip file#

What they really should have done is create a plug-in framework for discrete-circuitry games, so that the emulated/simulated circuitry could be packaged in a zip file and downloaded just like ROMs are. They arbitrarily call all-circuitry games 'simulated' games rather than emulated-a very stupid distinction since, to run the ROMs on the emulated machines in MAME, MAME simulated a whole lot of discrete circuitry. So they removed Pong and drew an arbitrary distinction between all-circuitry games and games that have ROMs. The MAME devs decided that emulating a whole discrete-circuitry game-meaning that MAME would play that game without needing to download any external ROMs at all- would keep MAME open to easier legal attack. The reason that Pong was dropped and support for other discrete-circuitry games was dropped isn't technical, it's legal. It's in older versions of MAME, in improved versions of recent builds of MAME called FixMAME, and it's been emulated accurately in its many different forms, both arcade and home, by several other emulators. In fact, Pong was one of the first games emulated by MAME. Such games are no more difficult to emulate than any other games.