MAME is a piece of ****

[Pyromaniac605]

Before you spam my thread with this crap i downloaded the BIOS files i got all of the ones from here. But still half of my games do not work even if it says they are working. Eg. Metal slug 3 Grapics:Working Sound:Working start t play and... nothing it says i am missing files or some crap so i get the neogeo BIOS and still nothing. Please help i have all these great games taking up space on my hard drive for nothing.

 

-Darren-

Edited March 18, 2010 by Pyromaniac605

[Trooper]

I would guess you probably have the wrong version of either the Neo Geo BIOS or of the game itself. Or if you'd rather think of it that way, the wrong version of Mame. So check which version of Mame you're using and make sure you have the same version of the BIOS and ROMs.

[Austin]

You also may want to try a dedicated Neo Geo emulator (Not sure what the best are nowadays, but Neo Rage back in the day was awesome). I've never had much luck setting up Neo compatibility in MAME. Outside of that, I've never had any problems with MAME other than romsets I download being incomplete (Not MAME's fault, heh).

Edited March 18, 2010 by Austin

[Pyromaniac605]

@Trooper i have the latest version i think 0.137 and there are no versions on the bios files its just called "neogeo.zip"

 

@Austin Well i want MAME because it (is supposed to) plays alot more arcade machines than just neo geo i didn't just want neo geo or else i would have gotten a neo geo emulator.

 

-Darren-

[Trooper]

I know that the only time I had problems with Mame was when I was trying to get it to run Neo Geo games, I had to download the bios from several different sources before I found one that worked. Have you made sure that the romsets you've downloaded works with 0.137 and not some earlier version of Mame?

[ls650]

The right tool for the right job: if there is a better emu than MAME, why not use it? Heck, I have three different emus for the 2600 alone, because each is better at doing certain tasks than the others.

[mbd30]

MAME is good, but if you just want to play Neo Geo games then get Nebula or Final Burn Alpha. The games look much better on those emulators as well. MAME doesn't have "HQ2X", etc.

[Video]

Mame is an odd beast. In order to play as many games as possible, you can NOT have just one version of MAME. Each new version will work out some bugs on a few games, and mysteriously end up axing a few in the process. No Idea why, but eh, the joy of emulation I guess

[darthkur]

I use mame32v103b for most everything and have very good luck with it. I also use MIS127G (misfit MAME) for all the hacks and oddballs.

[Pyromaniac605]

Well i got MAMEPlus which seems to be slightly more compatible but i still can get working bios files.

 

-Darren-

 

PS: Can anybody reccomend some good Beat'em Ups that will work in MAME?

Edited March 18, 2010 by Pyromaniac605

[BDW]

 

PS: Can anybody reccomend some good Beat'em Ups that will work in MAME?

Any of the Double Dragon games, Aliens vs Predator, Robocop 2, and Die hard arcade are good ones.

[Rik]

Some dude gave me a Mame CD-ROM with 1027 games on it.All the greats are on it,not sure what version,all it says is Mame for WIN32.I love it, works fantastic it's a Godsend.

[mbd30]

Well i got MAMEPlus which seems to be slightly more compatible but i still can get working bios files.

 

-Darren-

 

PS: Can anybody reccomend some good Beat'em Ups that will work in MAME?

 

Final Fight

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time

Sengoku 2

[atarian63]

Before you spam my thread with this crap i downloaded the BIOS files i got all of the ones from here. But still half of my games do not work even if it says they are working. Eg. Metal slug 3 Grapics:Working Sound:Working start t play and... nothing it says i am missing files or some crap so i get the neogeo BIOS and still nothing. Please help i have all these great games taking up space on my hard drive for nothing.

 

-Darren-

Yeah, mame also tends to run some things at the wrong size, usually way to small with BIG boarders,seems to apply to 1982 and earlier games..

[S1500]

I had some problems with MAME and my new setup. It ran twice without problems. I installed the cheat file, and nothing happened when I started it up again, after numerous tries. I re-unzipped it to a new dir, and that second copy worked.

[Hatta]

Before you spam my thread with this crap i downloaded the BIOS files i got all of the ones from here. But still half of my games do not work even if it says they are working. Eg. Metal slug 3 Grapics:Working Sound:Working start t play and... nothing it says i am missing files or some crap so i get the neogeo BIOS and still nothing. Please help i have all these great games taking up space on my hard drive for nothing.

 

-Darren-

 

You have to make sure your romset matches your version of MAME. As more chips are emulated, files added, subtracted, and moved around inside the relevant rom zips. Often playing one game will require the roms for another game, as they use some of the same data. It's not always easy to figure out what the dependencies are, so download a full set. Then download the version of MAME that matches.

 

 

Yeah, mame also tends to run some things at the wrong size, usually way to small with BIG boarders,seems to apply to 1982 and earlier games..

 

Hit TAB and you should be able to set it to scale or stretch however you want it.

 

MAME is really pretty good once you figure out it's idiosyncracies. Yeah, emulators like Final Burn or Raine are better at the subset of games they emulate. But MAME has the most compatibility of all, so it's worth figuring out.

[DaveD]

I haven't kept up with MAME for almost 10 years now but what I learned about it then I think still applies. MAME is a constantly evolving beast. What is current today may very well be obsolete tomorrow. This applies to both MAME and all of the support files it needs. If you finally get to a point where most of the games you want are working well enough, consider locking it down and making backups of the way everything works today. MAME's purpose has always been accurate emulation and will always evolve with technology. Newer may mean more accurate, not necessarily better if your intent is to merely play the games.

[+SpiceWare]

Each new version will work out some bugs on a few games, and mysteriously end up axing a few in the process. No Idea why, but eh, the joy of emulation I guess

It's because they're trying to be as accurate as possible. When they first started emulating a game, they don't always have all the ROMs and would use a workaround to make the game functional. An example of this is the Color PROMS for Pacman. From Pacman hardware

Colors are defined in a 32-entries palette PROM where each entry contains packed RGB information:

 

Color palette entry

 

Bit Color Connected to

0 Red 1K ohm resistor

1 Red 470 ohm resistor

2 Red 220 ohm resistor

3 Green 1K ohm resistor

4 Green 470 ohm resistor

5 Green 220 ohm resistor

6 Blue 470 ohm resistor

7 Blue 220 ohm resistor

 

So games like Pacman were initially made functional by using a workaround of hardcoded color. At first that was fine, but that became a major problem when they started emulating other games that used the same video hardware, but with different colors.

 

When they changed the routines from being hardcoded to using the Color PROM, any game that didn't have a Color PROM stopped working.

Edited March 19, 2010 by SpiceWare

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Just like to say yeah HATTA has it exactly right. When I started with MAME it was touch and go for a long time. YES using a different revision of MAME form the ROM set causes many issues as MANY games appear to load only to notify about several "missing files" no need to complain about it, that is the way it is end of story. So if you have an older MAME ROM set you need the same version of MAME for the most compatibility. See HERE for a breakdown of different revisions, find the one that matches you ROM VERSION (I am not talking BIOS ROMS I AM TALKING THE ACTUAL SET OF GAME ROMS):

 

http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html

 

 

 

If both the MAME program and the ROM set are the same you will notice that most games then load no problem!

[Greg2600]

But what if you were to start from scratch, download newest MAME, and then download some roms of old games? How do you know what MAME version works with say Super Pac-Man, or Afterburner, etc.? Someone should have kept a database!

[Hatta]

There are ROM management tools like ClrMamePro which will can scan your roms and compare them to published XML files so you can figure out which version of MAME will work. I never bother, I just go for full sets straight away and download whatever version of MAME I need for the full set.

 

It's not often that there's a true regression in the capabilities of MAME. If your old ROM doesn't work anymore, chances are there's a new ROM that will. Not always the case, but usually.

[jeremysart]

I hate posting this because I know some people are sticklers about it, but it would be really nice to know where I could just download a good ISO or RAR with any version of MAME complete with tons of games. I used to have it, I used to play the old Star Wars vector game and Arkanoid.

[almightytodd]

...just download... ...any version of MAME complete with tons of games...

 

I don't want to be the one who is a "stickler", but wouldn't that be pretty much... ...um, illegal? I mean for companies like Nintendo and Namco that are still very much in business, these titles; though they are old, are still their intellectual property aren't they? I think some copyright owners (Exidy, Cinematronics) have chosen to release some of their titles to public domain, but there are many games with characters (Mario, Donkey Kong) that are in active use in current games. When I fire up whatever version of MAME and load a ROM into it, there is always a warning given that says if I don't own an actual piece of hardware that has this ROM in it, I'm technically not legally entitled to run it through an emulator. After seeing some of the hyper-reactions from the music and movie industries in defense of their copyrighted materials, I'd hate to see something similar start happening in the videogame world... ...just sayin'

[Austin]

You have to make sure your romset matches your version of MAME. As more chips are emulated, files added, subtracted, and moved around inside the relevant rom zips. Often playing one game will require the roms for another game, as they use some of the same data. It's not always easy to figure out what the dependencies are, so download a full set. Then download the version of MAME that matches.

 

^

 

A perfect example of this is when I run Killer Instinct and KI2. On my desktop machine via a newer version of 64-bit MAME, these games run fine. However, I recently got an older laptop and installed MAME32 on it with the same romsets for these games. Funny enough, MAME32 claims necessary files are missing from these romsets, despite them functioning properly in the newer version of MAME.

Edited March 20, 2010 by Austin

[jeremysart]

...just download... ...any version of MAME complete with tons of games...

 

I don't want to be the one who is a "stickler", but wouldn't that be pretty much... ...um, illegal? I mean for companies like Nintendo and Namco that are still very much in business, these titles; though they are old, are still their intellectual property aren't they? I think some copyright owners (Exidy, Cinematronics) have chosen to release some of their titles to public domain, but there are many games with characters (Mario, Donkey Kong) that are in active use in current games. When I fire up whatever version of MAME and load a ROM into it, there is always a warning given that says if I don't own an actual piece of hardware that has this ROM in it, I'm technically not legally entitled to run it through an emulator. After seeing some of the hyper-reactions from the music and movie industries in defense of their copyrighted materials, I'd hate to see something similar start happening in the videogame world... ...just sayin'

 

The way I see it, I own legal copies of 90% of those arcade ports, be it a port on to a home console or virtual download, not to mention all the Jakks Pacific "arcade in a joystick" deals I have bought. Feel I pretty much own my right to MAME it up if I want to. Sides', its not like I'm going to compile CD's and sell them over eBay or some shit.

If companies can compile these games onto made for TV controllers and sell them at your local Walgreens illegaly for profit, or load an N64 controller with NES games and sell them at the mall without license from Nintendo, I can damn-well play MAME arcade in the privacy of my own home for personal use buddy.