Arcade boards are "dumped" for their ROM data to be used together with an emulator (a piece of software that mimics hardware). Short for read-only memory, ROMs are the arcade games as raw data taken from the chips on an arcade board.
When the add-on has finished installing, go ahead and quit the app-it's time to get some games! Step 3: Downloading Games & ROMs The current FBA team was formed some time after by Barry Harris, and they continued supporting FBA by fixing bugs and updating game compatibility.įast forward to the present, and developer Cpasjuste released a port of FBA or Android, called aFBA, bringing the cult favorite onto our phones and allowing arcade games to be played on-the-go. However, in all the buzz and uproar over the popular emulator, Dave suddenly withdrew from the scene, made FBA open-source, and stopped its development.įBA would later be brought back by another developer as an unofficial version, but updates were slow and, by that time, FBA had lost popularity to newer emulators.
SNK's Neo Geo system also had support in FBA, making it a favorite to play old school titles like the King of Fighters series and Metal Slug. FBA became a scene favorite when Capcom's CPS-2 system was finally decrypted by hacker Razoola, allowing games to be playable.įor anyone growing up in the '90s, Capcom's CPS-1 and CPS-2 system was home to favorites like the Street Fighter series and the still-popular Marvel vs. Released by a developer going by the name Dave, it initially supported old school Sega System 16 arcade games and a handful of miscellaneous titles. Otherwise, stay tuned for a brief history lesson. If you're already familiar with FBA and want it right now, skip down to the "Prerequisites" section below to jump right into installing it. It's called Final Burn Alpha (FBA), and long-time emulation fanatics may know this name from many years ago when it was first unleashed in 2000 for Windows computers. Although nothing beats an actual arcade environment, my favorite emulator from the early 2000s has found a new home on Android, and with it a second life. Arcades have long faded away from popularity, but their legacy is being kept alive thanks to emulators and the avid fans who grew up loading quarters into all of those coin-op games.