You really
don’t need a very powerful machine to make a proper emulator for any of the
games from 1975 to about 1996 (Pac-Man up to Street fighter II). This is because they were based on slow 2d
based processors that are easy to emulate.
1997 to current (Think Killer Instinct or Cruzin’
All 1975 to
1996 games should run 100% on a Pentium III 500 MHz, with 126 meg ram, and a 64
meg or greater video card. Many of the
golden classics from 1975 to 1990 will run on practically anything. If you have a 386sx25 laying around…it should
run on them.
I currently
have a Socket 478 Celeron running at 2.8 MHz with 1 gig of ram, and a 128meg
Geoforce FX5200 and I have absolutely no problem running 99% of the games on my
system. If you are an avid gamer…you
should have no problems with your system as well. Even then some of the 1998-2003 games run
slow because they used pretty substantial dedicated graphics engines that do
not lend themselves very well to emulation.
If you are
making a dedicated system…you don’t need to get bleeding-edge technology. I recommend the following sites…
Tigerdirect
Watch this site for barebones kits and great
deals…quality is often “so-so” with their line of products
Newegg This is the one-stop shop for quality
products at a decent price. Shipping is
the best on the internet.
Your current
computer, if it has been acquired anytime in the past several years, should be
plenty to run as a MAME console.