Hello World!!

Hello World!

First Things First...

Ok, first I'm going to start with the name, 'The Gaming Exegesis'. What does it mean? Well the word 'exegesis' means "critical explanation or analysis" which is what this blog pertains to in relation to my interest (or love for) gaming and gaming culture. It's a place where I can throw down my thoughts about anything to do with gaming be it the history of gaming, a new release, reaction to industry news or any projects that I have on the go. I chose the name because of the book 'The Exegesis of Philip K Dick' whom I considered to be the greatest science fiction author of all time. The book contains published sections of journal kept by PKD, which documents and explores his religious and visionary experiences. So that's that cleared up then.

So What's Currently On The Agenda?

Well, for some time I've had a real desire to build myself an arcade machine. I've had countless versions of MAME and other emulators over the years and I currently play my favourite titles using my Xbox 360 controller but always wished they were housed in a custom built arcade cabinet with proper controls and my own artwork adorning it. Well the process of building my own is well under way and so I am going to use this little corner of the internet to document my progress.

For the past couple of weeks I have done a lot of research online and I'm also currently reading 'Project Arcade - Build Your Own Arcade Machine' by John St. Clair (creator of Build Your Own Arcade Controls - or BYOAC http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/) which is an excellent resource that I recommend highly.

Alongside my research I have also completed much of the groundwork needed for my frontend of choice 'Hyperspin' (http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/), arguably the best and certainly the prettiest looking frontend (once all the required artworks and videos are added). I wasn't sure whether I should pay the subscription fee initially for access to the FTP but I'm seriously glad I did. At first I was downloading files straight from the website, which was proving to be a real pain due to the restrictions and amount of time it was taking. Not only are you paying for just the files but it is also going towards supporting a community without which none of this would be half as good, if even possible at all (plus I've come to realise the amount of time and effort these people are putting in now) so it's money well spent as far as I'm concerned. The next place I'm quite happy to donate some of my cash will be Emumovies (http://emumovies.com/forums/), again, the amount of work gone in to capturing video clips for the frontend is heroic.

Initially I wanted to build an arcade cabinet to host not only MAME but other emulators such as NES and SNES etc... But after thinking about it I decided I didn't like the idea of playing these games that were originally intended for use with a control pad. Then I thought, well I could maybe plug in my Xbox pad and play that way, but I really don't fancy the idea of sitting infront of the cabinet using a controller, it just seems wrong. So now I've decided to build a seperate unit that will go directly into my 40" Sony TV. That way I can sit back and play the console games the way they were supposed to be played. I'm pretty sure I've seen replicas of console controllers that work via USB which would make the experience all the more authentic (especially for something like the N64).

So currently I have two spare PC's (which is perfect) one of which is my old computer which I'm going to use for the cabinet (I've replaced the HD with a nice new 80gb Western Digital and also doubled the RAM) and the other was kindly donated to me by my Mums friend, which is twice as fast as the other PC, making it suitable for running more demanding emulators.

So now the frontends are nearing completion, my attention is starting to move towards the construction of the cabinet. I don't have a name for it yet so that is something I'm going to address very soon, what I do know is it's going to be a bartop for 2 players. This choice is down the fact I don't have room for a full-size cabinet and also a bartop can be placed in lots of different places and even brought out for parties. I've not really decided on button configurations exactly yet either, but there will likely be 6 buttons for each player as I'm a huge Street Fighter fan.

And there it is; my first post for The Gaming Exegesis. Time to get down to some more research I think...