We're happy to confirm David Haywood will be coming to PLAY Expo Blackpool this year.

David, also known as MameHaze, is an emulation developer based in Derby, UK. He is primarily known for his work within the MAME project, where he has been involved for in excess of 20 years, bringing support for many classic arcade games, and more recently even plug & play consoles to the venerable emulator. He has also dabbled in game development and the commercial side of emulation outside of MAME.

Recently he has balanced this emulation development with his own

 where you can find a mix of livestreams and MAME progress reports, the latter highlighting the direction in which the emulator is heading. His yearly summary posts have also proven to be popular and often show progress from the development team that could have otherwise slipped under the radar.

Some examples of popular arcade games that are playable in MAME thanks to David’s work over the years include Capcom’s Street Fighter III, Cave’s DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou, Kaneko’s Puzzloop, Psikyo’s Strikers 1945 II, WWF Wrestlefest from Technos, and Ken Sei Mogura, the slightly more obscure Whac-a-mole style Street Fighter 2 game. If asked, he’ll likely tell you that he is more proud of the work done on games and systems that would otherwise have been forgotten however! Recent work includes significant updates and imporvements to MAMEs emulation of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 platform.

David will be around all weekend and will be taking part in the Rose Tinted Spectrum talk on Sunday.