Glossary Of Common Terms

Commonly Used Terms
Analog	A controller that the more you move it the more effect it has.
Anti-alias	A process that eliminates the jagged edge on a line generated by a vector game.
Aspect Ratio	The ratio of how wide a screen is compared to how high it is. If 1x1 is square then any numers not equal will indicate a rectangle. (e.g. 4x3 normal aspect of a TV or monitor screen or 16x9 is used a the widescreen TV standard)
Beta	An early version of a piece of software that isn't fully complete or working.
BIOS	Basic Input Output System. Used by alot of consoles to run games, cd drives and other hardware.
Bootleg	An unofficial version of a game that has been modified (normally by an emulator programmer to get it working)
BPP	Bits Per Pixel - The amount of memory that can be used to draw each pixel on a screen. (e.g 8bits = 256 colours or 16bits = 65535 colours)
Buffer	A buffer is the part of the memory on your video card that holds the picture being displayed. the more buffers you have the smoother the graphics. (Double is normally sufficient, Triple is better but may not work on some video cards)
Clone	Variant of a game that may have different graphics or be designed for a different country.
CPU	Central Processor Unit - The heart of every computer. If you have a Pentium or an Athlon thats a CPU.
Digital	A controller thats either on or off.
Dip Switch	A switch on the original arcade board that can affect how the games works (i.e. lives, credits, controls etc.)
DSP	Digital Signal Processor - This is used to manipulate digital data using dedicated code subsequently freeing up CPU time.
Emulator	A program that simulates the hardware inside a console or arcade system.
EEPROM	Electrically Programmable Read Only Memory - Used to store settings on an arcade board.
Filtering	A method of reducing the jagged edges on graphics by blurring the screen.
Front-End	A means to access a DOS program through windows
Gamma	The amount of brightness in a screen
GUI	Graphical User Interface - Saves you typing in all those boring dos commands. All you have to do is click a button.
Image	An exact copy of the information stored in a chip or on a disk stored in data format.
Interpolation	Takes the points on a wave form and smoothes them out reducing noise and distortion. Also used to smooth the edge of block graphics.
Neo-Geo	A console system that successfully crossed over into arcade machines.
Non Volatile	Non volatile means that when the power is switched off the chip doesn't lose its settings.
NVRam	Non Volatile Ram for storing settings for arcade games.
Plug-In	A small program that an emulator can use to perform tasks e.g. ePSXe has plug-ins for graphics, sound and cd-rom support.
Ram	(Random Access Memory) A silicon chip that contains data that can be changed quickly.
Raster	A 2D game that uses sprites for graphics
Raster Effect	A manipulation of a 2D raster graphic sometimes used to give it a 3D effect.
Renderer	A piece of code that displays the emulators graphics often enhancing it.
Rom	(Read Only Memory) A silicon chip that contains data that cannot be changed
Rom Image	Data dumped from a rom chip on a circuit board using a piece of hardware.
Scanlines	The scanlines mode is included for people who like to emulate the low resolution scanlines effect seen on arcade monitors.
Sprite	An image that can be move independently on a screen without affecting the background.
UI	User Interface - Mice, Buttons, Menus, Windows etc...
Vector Game	A game that uses 3D graphics.
Zip File	Compressed file or set of files.