Around 1981-2 numerous afternoons were spent wasting coins at the local squash courts, and I actually got reasonably good at Galaxian. I never managed to approach the mastery of a friend called Murray though, who's score of 4 million on Naughty Boy amazes me to this day. Other favourite games of mine were Qix, Scramble (which I was pretty bad at), Lunar Rescue (you could get a free game by giving it a kick in the coinbox), and my all time favourite, Defender. After moving and going to high school, a local sit-down Asteroids machine became a favourite, and I'm still laughing after seeing someone do this. In about 1987 I would go into the cinemas with friend Wal to see movies and play Double Dragon for hours on end. I think that's the only game I ever managed to finish, ably assisted by Wal of course.

My experiences are by no means unique it seems, but as time moves onward the old games disappear, releagated to junk heaps. A few are fortunately saved by dedicated collectors but for most of us they become only fond memories. But there's more to it than that, these games are a part of late 20th century culture, a part of history. And to allow such pieces of history to be lost forever would be a tragedy. What Nicola Salmoria and the talented group of programmers responsible for MAME have done is to preserve these pieces of history in a manner accessable to everyone. Thus the contributions of the original game creators to the history of software and cultural development can be appreciated now and in the future. We should consider ourselves fortunate that so many far sighted individuals have given their time and energy to make all this possible. Answer: A lot of people care about these old games!

Anyway, after many months of scheming with co-conspiritors Adrian and Chris, most of the details had been worked out. For me it really had to be a cocktail cabinet style machine that looked reasonably authentic, they were always a favourite and functional too. I considered converting an old cabinet, but actually had my heart set on using POWER TOOLS (insert echo here), so it had to be a custom built one. Armed with some measurements of a real one, a bunch of raw materials and a small pile of outdated computer hardware, construction began in April 2000. What I've done with this page is to try and assist and inspire those who would like to do something similar.