Arcade Pc Loader 1.4 Download
Latrisha Adan
So, what I learned this week is that there's a type of emulation that isn't really emulation in the traditional sense. For a particular era of arcade games (2005 up to the present day), the games ran on PC hardware and were written in regular PC code. This means that the process of getting them on your home PC isn't the traditional emulation route (where your computer is emulating a different machine entirely) but an arcade loader (where a loader program sorts out what you need to run the original PC based code on your own PC at home). You're effectively running PC games on your PC, so it's far less demanding than emulation.
The results of my experimentation (and thanks so much to @StoooTube for answering my questions when I got stuck) have blown me away. I have a 2007 PC with a second hand Nvidia 560Ti graphics card in it. It wouldn't run stand a chance of running, say, a PS3 or Xbox emulator. But it plays PC games from 2007 very well, so I'm using the Teknoparrot emulator and playing Afterburner Climax, Sega Racing Classic, Daytona 3, Outrun 2 and Sega Race TV and they are all running superbly. It's also strange how, for example, Outrun 2 plays really well on a joypad (the controls feel exactly the same as the home PC conversion) which is amazing when you think the arcade code is designed for a steering wheel.
The downside to all this is that it's the most tweaky system I've come across in emulation. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason as to which game file is the executable, and there are some issues that make no sense to me at all. For example, Chase HQ 2 ran extremely slowly, but as soon as you press start the game itself plays at full speed. Unfortunately this meant that calibrating the controller took ages and you have to do that (just the once) before you can play it. Some games do not allow you to insert a coin and you need to find the arcade settings screen and put the game on free play , after which it works fine. Some games need a patch for AMD graphics, others need a patch for Nvidia. The executable for Outrun2 happens to be hidden in a folder called Jennifer. Sometimes there's no obvious way of knowing what exe file to pick. A number of the games get files quarantined by your virus protection. It's not very intuitive!
But this is all a one time faff. Once you have the game set up, it's one click to start and it's proper arcade games in the home, good, recent stuff, working amazingly well. The best bit for me was being able to play and spend time on Sega Race TV, which I played once in Blackpool and never saw again. A very silly game (and not Sega's best by a long way) it's a racer I've always wanted to play again and I can't believe how perfectly it runs on my old PC.
This is an area of emulation I'd not seen before and it's pretty exciting! If you have the patience to tweak, it's quite extraordinary to have these brilliant arcade games running perfectly on a fairly basic PC. And if you can run Outrun 2 in 4K, well.... Glorious!
There are a few different 'emulators' like this (arcadeloader was one of the first I think). They aren't emulators in the strictest sense, they just allow arcade games that run on standard PC hardware to be run on your own pc, presumably taking care of security and I/O in some cases, although i've never delved into it.
You will struggle to find these freely available (i.e. through archive.org) as a lot of the games are recent-ish and will still be out in the wild. There is a french forum called Emuline that have a good subforum for arcade pc loaders, but you will find yourself trawling through various download link sites and the restrictions you get without paying for them.
These loaders cover a wide variety of machines though so there is no one spec that is good enough. I'd suggest cross referencing that hardware it supports with their wikipedia pages to see how your pc stacks up against them.
I found it to be very hit and miss, but there's some really good stuff on there when it does work. I had it integrated with CoinOPS next but it just wasn't configured correctly. For every game that did work, 2 wouldn't.
I am absolutely blown away by this. Running on a PC that is fairly old, I'm playing Afterburner Climax, Sega Racing Classic and Outrun 2 absolutely perfectly, not a glitch in sight. Thanks to @StoooTube for the assistance. This is incredible!
When I wrote that previous post I'd been setting the games up and making sure that they work and was just blown away by how perfect the games are emulated, even on my old PC. Now I've tried to play the games I've had varying results with different controllers. I don't have a wheel for the PC and I've got various control pads here to try out. The best results have been with the Xbox one controller. You get a small amount of drift which you can fix by changing the dead zone in the teknoparrot settings. Sega racing classic suffers due to the small amount of movement of the stick. You find yourself steering to the extremes all the time. Sega race TV and Outrun 2 seem to handle absolutely perfectly and plays as if it was written for your computer.
I think what impressed me the most about this is that I had expected it to be an emulator in the traditional sense but it seems that these games are PC-based anyway and I can only assume that it's not doing anywhere near the amount of dynamic recompiling that you get with traditional emulators. My PC was last upgraded in about 2008 and is by no means a gaming PC. I'd have no chance of emulating, say, Afterburner Climax on a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 emulator but the original arcade game came out in 2006 and runs perfectly on it .
I think I'm on my four or fifth try to get most things working. I've downloaded a few packs for Coinops and Core, and they're incredibly hit and miss. You really do need to go into this directly from the emulator I've found. Another kicker is having your anti-virus quarantine half the files before you know it, leaving you wondering why so many files are suddenly missing.
I'm surprised there's not a proper set up pack or guide, but this really feels like experimental emulation. But when it works, it's incredible. I absolutely agree with dumpster that it takes some tweaking but it's worth it.
You guys have persuaded me to have a play around with this. So far I've only gotten hold of Sega Rally 3, but it crashes out with an 'Out of memory for tex' issue. Any ideas what I need to do to fix this?
How can I calibrate for Chase HQ2? I've tried not touching keys or joypad, I've tried holding left and right when it tells you not to (which seems to be the fix) but still tells me calibration failed.
Rambo was the same for me - I swapped the game exe to a different one - Here are my settings - I think I had it set to RamboR.elf to start with. It works now. I'll grab my Luigi settings as well. And wow, Outrun 2 is glorious!
I somehow managed to get hold of a copy of Outrun 2 where all the music had been replaced with just the worst "music" known to humanity. Absolute total barbarity, some horrific sub-Vengaboys audio puke. Who does things like that? Frankly it's a much bigger crime than downloading the game in the first place.
I think the Daytona 3 crash *may* be down to forced resolution. I remember having loads of trouble before I got it running. From memory it has to be set at a specific resolution, but you can use a fix to make it fit your monitor screen. The fix will be buried somewhere in the emuline Teknoparrot thread.
Hey everyone! I just figured out an extremely easy way to launch Pinball Arcade game directly to the table that I have not seen anywhere else on the forums. Most posts refer to the old camera mod thing that never really worked for me and was kind of an annoying work around so I found another one that is much simpler, to the point and just works. I figured that I would make this into a bit of a Pinball Arcade guide to help out noobs as well. So here I go.
1) Download the launcher attached to this post and extract it into the Pinball Arcade install directory. Quick disclaimer: I did not create that launcher but the license in the file states that the auther released it as public domain, so it should be good to go. After all, the place that I obtained it from would probably against rules anyway . I did scan it and it is completely safe. Your Pinball Arcade directory really depends on how you installed it. Usually its in Program Files. Right click PinballArcadeLoader.exe, select properties and select the run as administrator box. Click ok to close it.
2) Download the ROMS file from this post, extract to any directory and import to LaunchBox like usual. These are not actual ROM files but just empty files with the correct names. Basically, just renamed txt files. I'm just sharing the hard part so nobody else has to. I personally just extracted the folder into the Pinball Arcade install folder as well to make it simple.
3) Add a new emulator and fill it out exactly as the picture below. Make sure to select the launcher as the emulator and type out the path again with " in the Default command line parameters as well as selecting the right boxes. Make sure the sample command box looks exactly like the picture (obviously with different paths). Also make sure to put Pinball Arcade under Associated platforms and check the box for default like normal.
4) Start playing the tables! If everything was done right, it now simply launches directly to the table with no other app running in the system tray or other garbage. To finish off just search the downloads section for the correct media although it may have to be renamed. Hope this helps some other people.
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