New Emulation Breakthrough Revitalizes Namco's Arcade Titles

The last few years have been fantastic for game preservation, at least to some extent. Even though massive game companies still treat their old titles as disposable products, the emulation side of things has been making leaps and bounds. Modern consoles getting figured out, old problem areas like older Xbox generations and Nintendo 64 continue to improve, and now we're seeing some serious progress on the arcade front.

Arcades boards, especially some of the later ones, tend to get ignored. Their libraries are smaller, and the few games that are there, usually had console counterparts that are almost the same. To some extent this is the case for Namco System 246, but the new fork of PCSX2, called PCSX2x6, is focused on giving people an accessible way to experience those classics.

I think this might be especially important for fighting game fans, since progress in emulation has allowed for major advancements in netplay for these older titles. Flycast integration with Fightcade is a major example of this, imperfect as it is, and it's always nice to have more games available to people who really want to play them.