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Fiddle With Food Fight From Familiar Footholds

Our friends at Midway Games, Inc., owners of Atari Games (who presumably holds the rights to Food Fight) has seen fit to release three collections of their old arcade classics to date, for current hardware. Rumor had it that Food Fight was to be among the releases at some point, but at this writing (Summer 1999) nothing has materialized, nor have any new rumors. But I'll cover the collections that have come out of Midway (et al) to date, at least the ones I know about...

The first collection, Williams Arcade Classics (also known as Williams Arcade Greatest Hits), featured old Williams games (the rights to which are now owned by Midway) such as Joust (another all-time favorite of mine), Defender, Stargate, Bubbles and others. Midway released it for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Super NES, while GT Interactive licensed and released it for PCs. I own a copy of it, and it's outstanding. If you can find a copy for your hardware, buy it! It's well worth it. The software is emulation based, so it's running slightly modified original code and is virtually identical to the arcade.

Apparently there was also a Mac version released, but I've heard conflicting stories about it, including that the games were initially released separately for the Mac, and then as a collection. I've also heard the the collection was not the same as the one for the PC; the PC version has six games in all, and the Mac version apparently had only four. I'm not a Mac person, so if you are, and have better info on this, please let me know.

At any rate, the second collection was Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits 1. It featured Centipede, Tempest, Missile Command, Battlezone and Asteroids, all originally from Atari. (These same five games were licensed some time ago for the PC by Microsoft, and were released for Windows as Microsoft Arcade.) The GH1 collection was released by Midway for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Super NES. I presume it, too, is emulation-based.

It's worth noting that Microsoft also released Microsoft Return of Arcade, which features Dig Dug, Pole Position, Pac-Man, and Galaxian. All of these games were written by Namco. Dig Dug and Pole Position were released to the arcades by Atari under license, while Pac-Mac and Galaxian were released by Midway under license (at least in the United States). And speaking of Namco, they've released a very large number of their classic games (most of which were licensed and released by companies other than Namco for the arcade) for Sony PlayStation under the name Namco Museum. There are five such collections available.

The third collection from Midway is (was) called Arcade's Greatest Hits: Midway Collection 2. It features old Bally Midway games like Spy Hunter, Root Beer Tapper, Joust 2 (which I never saw in the arcade) and Moon Patrol. It also includes Burger Time, which was a Data East game as I recall, so maybe Midway bought them too. I know this is available for Sony PlayStation, but I don't know what else. I'm unaware of any licensed PC versions of the GH2 package, or the individual games.

The fourth collection, Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Collection 2, is also available for PlayStation and PC. It includes Paperboy, Gauntlet, Vindicators, 720º, Marble Madness, and RoadBlaster (on the PC). My opinion isn't worth any more than anyone else's, but I don't consider most of those "greatest hits" by any measure, but take that for what it's worth. Worse, the PSX version has some different games, including Millipede and Crystal Castles. This probably has something to do with the platform-dependent nature of game licensing.

There's also a bunch of releases for Game Boy Color, which frankly, I couldn't care less about.

All of this is made more complicated by the fact that the games were often written by one company (like Namco), released by another (like Atari), then licensed for home video consoles by someone else (like Midway's home videogame division), and licensed for home computers by yet another party (such as GT Interactive or Microsoft). In some cases, all rights to a particular game have been sold in their entirety, which is apparently what happened to Battlezone, which I'm told was bought lock, stock and barrel by Activision.

If you can keep it all straight and find what you want (that's the problem), you can have a blast recreating the past at home.

What About Food Fight?

So where does this leave the fan of Food Fight? At this writing, it leaves Food Fight fans out in the cold. Midway has not (yet) chosen to release the game for home game consoles or PCs (as I just mentioned above).

The popularity of game collections like Namco Museum and Midway's own Arcade's Greatest Hits has proven that there is still a stable of game players who enjoy these 15+ year old videogames from the boom years.

Midway keeps preparing a greatest hits releases for the home market, and rumors have long had it (well, over a year anyway) that one will include Food Fight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and will let you know when I hear something concrete. At this writing (January, 1999), there is no indication that's Food Fight is coming "for sure" in one of these collections.

In the mean time, there is a way to play Food Fight, and it's called emulation. In fact, 1997 and 1998 will likely be remembered as the years that third party arcade videogame emulation became real in a big way. Such a big way, in fact, that it's caught the industry's attention enough to by the end of 1998, serious crack-downs started to happen, and it's tough to get the goods now. More on that later.

As I update this page (Summer 1999) there are some signs of things beginning to change. While copyright holders and industry groups have successfully scared offline virtually every major source of bootlegged arcade ROMs (see below), some interesting things have occurred. For starters, the copyright in Midway's Robby Roto game reverted to its original author, Jay Fenton, who has released it for free, non-commercial use. And rumor has it that Capcom has licensed some ROMs for inclusion with an upcoming arcade-style control console called HotRod. We'll see what happens as the millenium nears.

Tell Me About Emulation

Essentially, an emulator is a system that enables one computer to emulate another. There are emulators for the PC, for example, that allow it to function as a Tandy Color Computer, an Atari 800, and so on.

But the most popular emulators at this point are those that emulate the custom computers that are normally called console or home videogame systems. For example, you can use your PC to emulate the Super NES game system and play Super NES games without a Super NES machine. With emulators like bleem!, you can even emulate a PlayStation and play your PSX CD-based games on the PC. And, even more exciting, you can use your PC or Macintosh to emulate arcade videogames like Food Fight.

In fact, Williams Arcade Classics (at a minimum) is itself based on emulation. But the type I'm referring to here is an emulator written by a third, non-affiliated party (i.e., private individuals) in the interest of research or education into the hardware being emulated.

While emulation is itself legal, playing an arcade or home videogame on your PC using a third-party emulator requires that you possess disk-based images of the ROMs used in these systems. That's because the emulator emulates the videogame hardware, and you still need the software (stored in these ROMs in the actual arcade machine) in order to actually play a game. The software inside these ROMs is like most software: it's copyrighted intellectual property.

As you might have guessed, these third party, independently-developed emulators aren't always met with open arms. In particular, Nintendo has been very vigorous in defending their intellectual property, and has threatened and filed suit against people responsible for Nintendo game console emulators themselves, and the people and Internet sites that distribute disk images of copyrighted ROMs. Super NES emulation, in particular, has effectively been quashed by Nintendo through these actions, and finding Super NES emulators and game ROM images is now difficult after initially being actively developed and available openly.

It's easy to accuse "big, bad corporations" of "stomping on the little guy," and maybe they are in a sense. But intellectual property rights (i.e., copyrights) are designed to protect everyone, including the little guy, who are entitled to profit from their creativity. It's what protects song writers, painters, sculptors, designers, writers, and yes, even big corporations whose employees create terrific videogames and the systems to play them on.

But enough soap boxing.

Emulation of everything from legacy home computers (like TI 99/4-A, Sinclair, Tandy CoCo) to current and past game consoles (like ColecoVision, Nintendo, Sega Genesis) to arcade videogames is happening very much in the open on the Internet – including the distribution of ROM images (for both game consoles as well as arcade machines). And I'm as interested in some of them as anyone.

Introducing MAME – Your Key to Food Fight

The most popular arcade videogame emulation system today is known as MAME, for Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. The project started in early 1997, and in just about a year, MAME grew to emulate hundreds of arcade videogames – including Food Fight – provided you have disk ROM images of the games you want to play. You're bound to find dozens of your arcade favorites from the late 1970s and early 1980s in MAME, and now 90s favorites, too, as MAME keeps getting more and more (and more) games emulated. The total number of games emulated is now into the thousands.

MAME is available for PC (both DOS and Windows), Macintosh, Amiga, OS/2, and even some versions of UNIX. There's even a stripped-down version for Windows CE / Pocket PC handhelds.

One of the more comprehensive sources of information about MAME, as well as the MAME software, can be found at Dave's Arcade Classics (that's what it used to be called, anyway; it's now the Vintage Gaming Network, but it's basically the same site). The official web site is at www.mame.net.

Unfortunately, finding MAME is easy, but finding ROMs isn't. As I mentioned previously, the videogame industry and its heavyweight representatives (including, most notably, trade group IDSA), have come down hard on the distribution of ROMs, a process that started in late 1998. Like more warez (illegal software) on the net, ROMs can be found, but tend to be very transient. DO NOT ask me for ROMs. If I have any of them, I certainly am not sending them to you, or anyone else.

As I update this page (July 2000), the ROM frenzy has calmed somewhat. There are three or four sites on the net where you can reliably find and download ROMs, but the scene evolves and these pages really don't, so I don't have any particular desire to list them here.

I should point out that MAME is not for neophytes. Technologists (PC experts) will find it easy to get running, but less experienced users will find it a challenge. Whatever you do, DO NOT ask me for assistance with it! Some help is available on the above-mentioned web sites.

Retrocade – Another Key to Food Fight

Another arcade emulator showed-up awhile back, one that focuses on an outstanding and innovative user interface. It's called Retrocade, and it emulates Food Fight as well as MAME does. Retrocade is easier for some people to set-up, but unlike MAME, is not (at this writing) available in a native Windows format. You'll need to use your DOS prompt, and be conversant in DOS and DOS commands to be able to use it.

As I write this update (July 2000), Retrocade hasn't been updated in a very long time, and for all I know, the project has been tabled. Either way, it's still around, and it's a heck of an emulator, frankly, if nowhere near as ambitious as MAME.

Bear in mind, Retrocade requires ROM files too, which is a good segue into my next topic.

A ROM Diatribe...

I'm obligated to point out that downloading and using arcade game ROMs, should you actually find any on the net, exposes you to the possibility of civil and/or criminal liability under federal and international copyright laws. As a former programmer myself, I believe in intellectual property rights. I'll let your own conscience guide you with this stuff. But don't say you weren't warned...

Let me expand on that next-to-last point. As I update this section of my page (January 1999), many in the emulation community have their knickers in a knot about the ROMs. Apparently some people think everything you can easily steal should be free anyhow, or that appears to the be logic. While I genuinely like and in some cases respect some of these people, most notably Shane Monroe over at MonroeWorld (as I mentioned above), I vehemently disagree with the prevailing logic in reasoning that 20 year old intellectual property "doesn't matter anymore" or that stealing it "isn't hurting anyone." (I'm not saying that's Shane's opinion, in particular, I'm speaking more broadly here.)

I agree that it's ridiculous and borderline indefensible for some of these videogame companies to throw such a fit, and I do question to what degree that this emulation movement is injurious to the companies. That much I have in common with the "prevailing opinion." But intellectual property rights weren't designed to apply in only some circumstances and not others. Copyrights are copyrights, they exist for a reason, and that's the end of it.

We don't have to like it, but that's usually the case when the laws are working in favor of someone else other than us. When the shoe's on the other foot, somehow the story changes. I don't want people speeding down my neighborhood street, but we get all bent out of shape when the cops catch us doing it in someone else's neighborhood. What is so difficult about seeing the flaws in this sort of thinking? It's not difficult for me, but apparently it all is perfectly normal for most people.

In fact, I think that's the most amusing aspect of this whole argument. The people who scream the loudest that ROM images hurt nobody, and should be free, are the same ones who spend great effort creating web sites, on which they affix the customary "Copyright © 19xx" notification. Dave may run the best emulation site on the net, in my opinion, but when he had ROMs on his site, he was very protective that people shouldn't link to his ROMs, and steal the fruits of his labor in creating the web pages, the descriptions, and the work he put into making his ROMs accurate, current, and compatible with the latest versions of MAME and other emulators. (And indeed, he did put a lot of work into that, much to the benefit of many, including me.) How ironic then that his creative efforts are worthy of copyright protection, but the efforts of others (most notably these facless "big corporations") are not worthy of those same protections, the only difference being the age of the work, apparently, or perhaps who's getting paid and who isn't.

If age had anything to do with it, we wouldn't covet collectibles the way we do (ever visit eBay to see what people fetch for old junk these days?), nobody would want to buy compilation CDs of 80s music, nobody would watch "Where Are They Now?" on VH1 because they wouldn't care, and a 57 Thunderbird would be just another car. This is a ridiculous argument, one based on bankrupt notions, and it doesn't hold water.

A Great Big But...

That said, as you may have guessed, I admit that I use MAME and Retrocade to play Food Fight, as well as many other of my favorite games from the classic era. But the primary reason is that there is no alternative. If I knew of a Food Fight machine (or an original Donkey Kong, an original Joust, etc.) that I could go pay to play, I would, for 25 cents a pop just like I did 15+ years ago. But they don't exist.

Or if Midway would see fit to release Food Fight in a collection for a home console system like PlayStation, I'd buy it in an instant. (I own such collections for all the other games I enjoy and for which collections exist.) But until then, MAME or Retrocade are the only ways I can enjoy one of my favorite videogames of all time: Food Fight.

Please, Midway – release this game for home PCs or console systems, or license it to someone who will.

Better yet, Midway, give us a legal way to pay for the right to use these arcade machine ROMs in emulators like MAME. The shareware concept might be a model to follow. Quote me a reasonable price to license a copy of the ROMs, give me an address to send a check, and I will. I'm willing to pay a reasonable price for my entertainment – give me a way to do it, and I will!

There are various moves afoot to make this last suggstion happen. I'd love to see an industry-sponsored group form, which could be a single-point for licensing ROM sets for home use. COME ON PEOPLE! GET WITH IT! There are people out here, like me, whole have the disposable income to pay, if you would just give us a way to do it!

Content unique to this web site, Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000 Alan D. Bryant, all rights reserved.

Screens, characters, and other game elements, Copyright © 1982, 1998 Atari Games (formerly Atari, Inc.), a wholly owned subsidiary of Midway Games, Inc., and/or their heirs and assigns, all rights reserved. "Food Fight" is a trademark of Atari Games.

DISCLAIMER: I do not condone or encourage software piracy. Use of computer system emulators is legal, but possession or use of copyrighted software, including disk-based images of software ROMs for use in emulators, is subject to license, and the lack of such license may subject the violator to prosecution under civil and/or criminal statutes.