Thread by @MameHaze

I guess as we head towards the end of the year I just tend to get a bit nostalgic,start to wonder what my favourite memories of contributing to MAME really have been. Was it some of the earlier stuff - improving NMK sprite decryption (Macross etc.) or Sega C2 learning Genesis hw

Maybe some of the stuff slightly after that, such as getting Sega System 32 / Multi 32 up and running in MAME, and discovering things that the Modeler emulator hadn't implemented such as the RGB controls used in Alien3

but then I think about all these absolutely terrible bootlegs, all the Korean 'garbage' and for whatever reason figuring those out, and understanding where they fit in seems to hold strong positive memories.

Other tasks where I worked closely with others are often positive too, for example getting the encrypted FD1094 CPUs use for many Sega games hooked up and working in a MAME friendly way. The encryption itself was beyond me, but getting a working hookup was satisfying.

Some memories are less positive, the CPS3 emulation especially seemed to attract a lot of the 'wrong' crowd, and I really wish I hadn't been involved in it. That left me not wanting to contribute for a long time.

PGM and PGM 2 I have mixed feelings about. I enjoyed them from a technical point of view, but having to write extensive protection simulations for things like Puzzli 2, and not being able to get to the bottom of some others makes me wish we just had the ability to dump the MCUs

Kaneko SH2 SuperNova started as a 'update this code' job, but quickly evolved into it's own thing, requiring extensive work on improving the hardware emulation. Psikyo's SH2 platforms were interesting, although I have to be thankful to others for figuring out the blending there!

bouncing ideas around regarding the Data East encryptions, with Nicola ultimately figuring them out was fun too, as was working on the emulation of the systems that was then unlocked by that progress, eg. Osman, Charlie Ninja, PartyTime

The extensive reworking of the Data East video implementations that led to was also rewarding, as was combining it with the protection research Charles had done, bring many previously emulated Data East games up to scratch. I also made many improvements to Data East MLC

It's a shame I never figured out how the video decoder on DragonGun worked, as the missing backgrounds there really stick out. Data East cassette improvements would have been more fun if a significant number of the games weren't being hoarded.

Extensive optimization tasks, such as getting the Cave CV1000 games up to speed (both the blitter, and getting the SH4 recompiler running) were something different, likewise Sega's Cool Riders, which also required heavy optimizations due to the wacky compressed sprites.

Small tweaks to existing drivers, such as getting the crowd to show in the Taito F3 football games also spring to mind as memorable, but I know deep down the entire video code there needs rewriting, and I haven't done that!

Even some of the video slot machine drivers were fun to work on, such as the Igrosoft one, and the Amcoe one. I'll never want to play the games, but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment found in getting them running.

In more recent years, the extensive reworking of the 'Seta SSV' and 'Seta 2' drivers to add a whole bunch of missing video effects has also been a personal highlight, especially SSV as it turned out the effects were being used in many more places than anybody had ever reported.

.. but yeah, even without thinking about the hundreds of individual drivers for one-game PCBs, there's a lot to reflect on, although I'm probably just trying to convince myself that I haven't wasted my life!

I can sit here and watch people stream, see things I either emulated, helped to get emulated, or improved significantly, and that does make it all seem worth it, although I also can't watch without feeling anxious, hoping the emulation doesn't fail in some way, but that's just me

Other earlier work I enjoyed included getting things like the Technos WWF games, and Shadow Force which was on similar hardware up and running, and working to extract protection data from Tecmo's Raiga - Strato Fighter.

Somewhere in the middle was working on the Korean Hyperstone games. While I didn't do the CPU core there, the sprite hardware, which turned out to have separate sprite lists for every 16 row chunk of the screen, stands out as memorable because it was unusual to see.

I even looked at some Video System platforms such as the hardware Tao Taido runs on as well as Welltris and Super Slams before going on to do some significant refactoring of the emulation for that family of hardware too.