What is LÖVE M.E.G.S. ?

LÖVEMEGS is a mega project which consists of simulating various electronic handheld games like the ones made by Luca Antignano (aka MADrigal - see his wonderful web site HERE). MADrigal's handheld simulators are among the most known as well as Peter Hirschberg's LEDhead which simulates many Mattel's electronic handhelds that were released in the late 70's, but they have three small problems which i find a bit irritating: small playfiled of games (we can't make them bigger or fullcreen), can't hide your desktop and finally, they work only with Windows or some old OS's. So that's why i chose LÖVE to program these handheld simulators since LÖVE can work with Windows, Mac, Linux and a few others OS's and can make any games fullscreen or not. So this project is for simulating these electronic handheld games for digital archival and historical purpose.

Now M.E.S.S. emulates many electronic handhelds games (especially VFD's and LED's) since version 0.156.

LÖVEMEGS is divided into these categories, which are:

01 - Electro-Mechanical Game [EMG] (example: Tomy Blip)
02 - Light Emitting Diode/Light Games [LED/LGT] (example: Mattel Football/MB Simon)
03 - Liquid Crystal Display Games [LCD] (example: Nintendo Game & Watches)
04 - Color LCD Games [CLG] (example: Nintendo Tabletops)
05 - Vacuum Fluorescent Display Games [VFD] (example: Coleco Arcade Tabletops)
06 - Wrist-Watch Games [WWG] (example: Nelsonic Pac-Man Watch)

Any handheld games that has a microprocessor, especially in the categories 02, 03, 04 & 05, are now on hold to see which handheld games will be added in future releases of MAME. So that leave categories 01 (EMG) and 06 (WWG) to simulate.

The biggest problem that it's "almost" impossible to simulate all the electronic handheld games out there. More than 2,000 exists and some companies continues to produce them (only VFD games aren't produced anymore, which is a real shame since they are the best ever electronic handheld games). So the best is to choose one or some games that you really love (or loved - you had one in the past) to play. If you have a problem to chose a game or need some informations about it, there is many web sites that talks about electronic handheld games but the best one i like is the "Handheld Museum" (created and maintained by Rik) web site and it also have a forum to discuss and help out about any kind of electronic handheld games.

There is also a sub-category for the EML-types that would be quite fun to add/do which are "Electro-Mechanical Toys - [EMT for short]" (an example: Nintendo Duck Hunt - 1977) that could/can be added to category #1 (Electro-Mechanical/Light Games) since these EMT-types are very close to EML-types games. Even some EMT-types are based on old "Penny Arcade" games.

Here's a list of Electro-Mechanical games i intent to simulate soon:

* Horizon/Yonezawa Screen Tennis
* Illco Magic Tennis
* Marx T.V. Tennis
* Marx T.V. Hockey
* Sears Rocket Launch (made by Alps)
* Tomy Arcade Attack (1978)/Cosmic Clash (1982)
* Tomy Arcade Racing (1978)/Daring Driver (1982)
* Tomy Blip
* Tomy Digital Derby
* Waco Electro Tic-Tac-Toe
* Waco Black Jack 21 (pocket edition)
* Waco Draw Poker (pocket edition)
* Waco Slot Machine (pocket edition)


--- Sly DC ---