{"id":614128,"date":"2026-04-19T09:05:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T09:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614128\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T09:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T09:05:17","slug":"three-monitor-ridge-racer-machine-emulated-in-mame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614128\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-Monitor Ridge Racer Machine Emulated In MAME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When\u00a0Ridge Racer hit the arcades in the early 1990s, it came in a few different versions. The last variant used three large CRTs to create a wraparound display for the player. Incredibly rare, it\u2019s believed that only a single-digit number of machines remain in existence. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GmyMT3oPO-g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">[beaumotplage] has secured a remaining example, and been working to preserve this historical artifact.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The first mission when it comes to this machine was to dump the ROMs, which have thus far not been preserved in any major archive. With that done, [beaumotplage] worked to hack a version of MAME that could emulate the Three Monitor Version\u2019s unique mode of operation. As it turns out, each screen is driven by its own arcade board, with the three boards linked via C139 serial links. To emulate this, the trick was simply to write some C139 linkup code and run three versions of MAME all at once, letting them communicate with each other as the original boards would have. It\u2019s a little janky in operation right now, but it does work!<\/p>\n<p>You can download the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1LdpdFC1LKzhHaf0oPDM2pCFwEhYuqQUw\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">hacked version of MAME for three-monitor operation here,<\/a> though note that this does not include the ROM dumps from the machine itself. We look forward to seeing if the hardware ends up getting a full restoration back to operational standard, too.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, this work goes to show that arcade preservation and archival work sometimes requires <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2025\/04\/21\/restoration-of-six-player-arcade-game-from-the-early-90s\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">getting deep into the nitty-gritty technical stuff<\/a>.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When\u00a0Ridge Racer hit the arcades in the early 1990s, it came in a few different versions. The last&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-614128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}