mine is a mame emulator arcade.

its got some absolutly amazing games on like atari luna lander and crazy climber

The Lost Artifact is not lost. Why? Because I have it!

Once I load the emulator, will I be able to run the Atari games, or do the games have to be bundled with the emulator package?

Rig # 965467 Summary: Stuff that's not as impressive as Rigs # 1-965466

All good game shops should sell verious types.

so long as you get a straight forward windows 32 98/me/xp vesion then alls you do is put the disc in and play a game of your choice.

I have a dvd version that has 3500 orignal games on

thats about it really. you sound like you want to delve alot deaper but I would not bother

The Lost Artifact is not lost. Why? Because I have it!

alive and radgy!

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. But I would assume that since the mame is freeware, and I still own and retain my original boxed and FULLY LEGAL Atari favourites, there wouldn't be a problem.

I just want to retain aspects of my computing and gaming history for notstalgic reasons. I've no intention of building up a formidable selection of Atari format material from questionable sources. I just want to be able to play what I've already got.

Ataris and Amigas were great for their time, but modern gaming is worlds apart from that genre, and the precious little time I have which I would be willing to spend on exploring a game I don't know, I would be more interested in a game built for current hardware.

An Atari game that doesn't have an edge because of familiarity and having fond memories of it, just can't compete!

An aside on legal entitlement:

It's important to point out, that when somebody buys a piece of software, or a music CD or a DVD movie, or whatever, they are not actually buying the physical hardware storage on which the material resides. They are buying the right of access to that material for their own personal use and pleasure.

It is very regrettable that marketing distributers of intellectual property licences manage business on the assumption that all attempts to make copies of the physical media, or download intellectual property through free peer to peer online systems, are acting illegally.

As long as somebody has a licenced copy, and paid for the use of that intellectual property, then they are perfectly entitled to protect their investment by making copies to safeguard themselves against a physical breakdown of the media.

The licence that they have paid good hard earned money for is a lifetime licence which will never expire, unfortunately, the media it is sold upon, often will not last a lifetime.

Distributers seem to go out of their way to prevent the public from taking this sensible action, by:

1] Placing copy protection on media

2] putting coding in individual distributed copies of media to make them not interchangeable. i.e. had a problem with my OS cd which had a crack, needed to make changes to my system upon which the system prompted me for to insert original cd into the cdrom drive - borrowed a LEGAL copy of exactly the same software from a friend, and get message: 'The cd inserted is not your original copy of ......[OS NAME AND VERSION] . Please remove this cd and reinsert your copy of ......[OS NAME AND VERSION] .

3] They are never willing to send replacement copies of the media to licence holders whose media has become damaged. CD's cost less than 1p to manufacture, so distribution of replacements should be available at a nominal fee, just sufficient to pay for postage and administration.

Finally, I travel a lot, and it simply isn't practical for me to take all the music I 'hold intellectual property usage rights' to, along with me... certainly not in the phyiscal media formats I've purchased them in! I've got an MP3 player that holds 3.6 gigs, so a reasonable reservoir for music on the move. I've also got a 10gig partition on a laptop which I can fill with more intellectual property to suppliment the MP3 player.

However, on longer travels, just sods law, I will invariably get a yearning for something that I don't have with me. Now, I don't see anything wrong with finding a 'hospitality' environment that offers wireless internet access to patrons, hooking up to something like Kazaa, and downloading a copy of something to which I already own lifetime intellectual property usage rights to, which I can demonstrate if ever FACT want to pay a police assisted visit to my home!

Many Thanks John

PS - would the last bit be better off in 'RANTS, MOANS AND WHINGES?'

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This comes up regularly in Rants, Moans & Winges usually under the heading of Piracy, Copying or similar. Leaving aside your moral etc. arguments you are fundamentally incorrect about the legal position.

1 In the UK it is permissable to make a back-up copy of Software, provided you own the rights to the original.

2 In the UK it is illegal to take any copy of CD's or DVD's - whether you own the original , how you produce the copy or on what medium or equipment you play it is irrelevant. The fact that the music industry has (temporarily ?)given up trying to control or police, for example, the transfer onto MP3 players etc. does not change the state of current copyright law.

the disc I have has some lengthy disclaimer on and that the cost of the disc is for distribution only.

Im not smart but someone is.

The Lost Artifact is not lost. Why? Because I have it!