It's almost like the classic arcade has been recreated in the home, Dragon. The arcade-at-home sub-industry is amazing, with a plethora of options, from do-it-yourself stuff to complete turn-key solutions to everything in between. I DO highly recommend GameTap (whose price even dropped and hundreds more games added since that preliminary article was written), but not necessarily as the primary option in an arcade cabinet such as I have. Bottom line, the more custom your configuration, be it arcade controls, arcade monitor, etc., the less something like GameTap is a good primary option over something like a self-configured MAME32 setup (since GameTap purposely limits certain configuration options). At the same time, even with the somewhat slow initial start-up and the need to download games before first play, it's infinitely easier just having all these various emulators in the one service. This is of course in addition to all the neat games that have online features enabled, either hotseat or simultaneous, that never had that option before (like classic arcade games). As it is, I still spend most of my time in MAME32 (I have yet to install Daphne and Visual Pinball), with mostly jumping into GameTap to play Sega and other console games. I haven't bothered much yet with watching videos on the thing, though it works reasonably well, if not full screen. Obviously, as previously stated, I can only play Sam and Max on my primary PC (due to a conflict with my cab), which is another advantage to GameTap, in that you don't have to configure each and every system you have as you would with individual emulators - I know I have no time to configure both my arcade machine and PC - besides the fact that it would be redundant.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
======================================
It's almost like the classic arcade has been recreated in the home, Dragon. The arcade-at-home sub-industry is amazing, with a plethora of options, from do-it-yourself stuff to complete turn-key solutions to everything in between. I DO highly recommend GameTap (whose price even dropped and hundreds more games added since that preliminary article was written), but not necessarily as the primary option in an arcade cabinet such as I have. Bottom line, the more custom your configuration, be it arcade controls, arcade monitor, etc., the less something like GameTap is a good primary option over something like a self-configured MAME32 setup (since GameTap purposely limits certain configuration options). At the same time, even with the somewhat slow initial start-up and the need to download games before first play, it's infinitely easier just having all these various emulators in the one service. This is of course in addition to all the neat games that have online features enabled, either hotseat or simultaneous, that never had that option before (like classic arcade games). As it is, I still spend most of my time in MAME32 (I have yet to install Daphne and Visual Pinball), with mostly jumping into GameTap to play Sega and other console games. I haven't bothered much yet with watching videos on the thing, though it works reasonably well, if not full screen. Obviously, as previously stated, I can only play Sam and Max on my primary PC (due to a conflict with my cab), which is another advantage to GameTap, in that you don't have to configure each and every system you have as you would with individual emulators - I know I have no time to configure both my arcade machine and PC - besides the fact that it would be redundant.
======================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
======================================