If any of the MAME devs are reading this, I would like to say thank you for all the amazing work you've done. I started playing with MAME in 1998. Watching how it's progressed has been jaw-dropping. In my opinion, it belongs in the arena a "human achievements." It's not just a technical achievement. Hundreds of people from all over the world cooperate with each other to move the ball forward with every release. I've never been a developer and know nothing about what goes on "on the inside," but I have to believe there has been conflict, politics, and infighting among the various participants over the last quarter century. But the perseverance, tenacity, and dedication shown by everyone who has given selflessly to create MAME is inspiring. These people sure aren't doing it for the money. There's a lot of love there... love for the games, the history, and the nostalgia. And we all benefit from it. I'm so grateful to all of you for what you've done and continue to do.

A couple of anecdotes....

There's been some episode where the development team has made some unpopular choices. Sometimes moving the ball forward on full emulation is at odds with end-users' game-playing enjoyment.

Asteroids was my game as a kid. I dreamed and obsessed about it when I was eight, nine, and ten years old. Asteroids was quite playable on MAME even in its early stages, but only the video was emulated. Asteroids' sound is generated by analog circuitry and emulating it took many years to tackle. In the interim, MAME used samples to play its audio. Enter Derrick Renaud! He fully emulated Asteroids' audio. At first, it wasn't perfect and a lot of people (who have no idea what goes into making MAME possible) were angry that their game didn't sound right anymore. It slowly got better, but there was one thing that kept bothering me. The interval between the "thumps" was a major third instead of a minor second as it was supposed to be. Rather than creating tension, the thumps sounded strangely cheerful. I managed to find the forum where the MAME developers hung out and left a very polite and detailed message about the thumps. I included recordings from an Asteroids cabinet to show how the pitch of the thumps wasn't accurate. Derrick never responded to my message, but it was fixed on the next MAME release. So, THANK YOU Derrick. Asteroids sounds amazing. Now, if only someone made a monitor that even came close to simulating the incredibly bright CRT used in the cabinet, I would be on cloud nine. Maybe some future iteration of HDR will get us there. :-)

https://www.retroblast.com/articles/Renaud_interview_AR-IN-0...

A more recent episode was similar... The Votrax SC-01 voice synthesizer chip used in several classic games had never been emulated. Consequently, games like Qbert, Gorf, and Wizard of Wor used samples as well. Someone managed to put a Votrax under a powerful microscope and document its exact functionality. (I just went looking for the photo of it, but couldn't find it.) Again, starting at some MAME revision, any game that used the Votrax chip no longer triggered samples, but used Votrax emulation instead. At first, it really sounded bad. Gorf sounded like it had sucked off of a helium balloon. It was a long time before things improved. I posted a question on reddit's mame subreddit and received an interesting reply from a MAME developer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MAME/comments/e2cdr4/mame_0216/f8xa...

A few months later, a new MAME release made some huge improvements to Votrax emulation. And, while not perfect, it sounds really really great. It's particularly important on Qbert, because so many of the strange sounds that the characters make are generated when random phonemes get sent to the Votrax. When Q*bert dies, his expletives are different each time. When you're using samples, it's not really possible to achieve that.

Anyway... enough of my musings. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to the whole MAME team. You've put a million smiles on my face and the faces of my friends, co-workers, and my kid. And for that I'm so very grateful.