I'm running MAME 214 in my cabinets...is it worth upgrading anymore?

[cwilkson]

I am running MAME 0.67. Games work great. Why would I "upgrade"?

I've actually never used MAME. It's weird, I know! But when it first appeared I was still too busy doing a lot of console stuff. Then when I got interested in MAME it was a dumpster fire that I couldn't be bothered with. Too hard to set up and manage for bad emulation of games I didn't even care about. Now that I'm interested again....it's too late to jump in.

Why would I "upgrade"?

If it aint broke don't fix it! - Traditional Wisdom

Also...
"If it's not on fire, it's a software problem! " - @mopar5150
"Fire or no fire....it's still a software problem! " @cwilkson
"It's just sand without software" - my obviously confused (and hardware challenged) colleague

 

[purbeast]

I was running a version of MAME in my light gun emulation cabinet and I updated to a newer version that is supposed to run Time Crisis 2 better, however my hardware still wasn't good enough to run TC2 properly.

A side effect of it was that now my Atari games like Maximum Force and Area 51 ran all choppy. After some research, the version of MAME after the one I had upgraded from caused issues with those games.

So I just downgraded back to the previous version so I could play those games, and I setup the PS2 emulator so I could run TC2 on PS2 instead of the arcade version, which runs fine.

 

[McHale]

I've actually never used MAME. It's weird, I know! But when it first appeared I was still too busy doing a lot of console stuff. Then when I got interested in MAME it was a dumpster fire that I couldn't be bothered with. Too hard to set up and manage for bad emulation of games I didn't even care about. Now that I'm interested again....it's too late to jump in.

It's never too late to jump in and things have changed quite a bit over the years. At a very minimum, it's good to keep a recent copy around so you can test games/roms when troubleshooting a cabinet to see if the bug you found is actually in the game or an issue with your cabinet.

Install your chosen variant of MAME (MAME, Arcade, MAMEUI, etc), put roms in the rom folder. Enjoy. It's really that simple. How complicated you want to make it is up to you.

 

[alfonzotan]

I just checked MAME and as long as you run it with the appropriate artwork file, it works exactly like the full cabinet.View attachment 845528

I'll have to try that, thanks.

 

[Scott C]

As I recall, a Pentium 3, 450 Mhz computer would run MAME 0.33 - 0.76 for DOS pretty well. DOS support ended around .100 or so. Now, Windows or Linux is required. There was a lot of good in that last version for DOS.

I have a spare rig tbat would probably be fine for MAME .2xx (Win7, 64GB RAM, and Intel i5 4th Gen, and GTX 1080). Hmmm.. maybe I'll try. If it needs a better CPU, then

Scott C.

 

[DonPanetta]

I've run into this myself. Games that ran great 50-100 versions ago are now broken or they run worse. How does that happen?!?!

Scott C.

Because there's a massive difference between getting a game to 'just run' and accurately emulating the hardware to the best of your ability (as you further understand the hardware). The MAME team has always made their stance known that their project is a machine emulator- not a game emulator. Their goal is to emulate as many machines as accurately as possible. That has involved changing their graphics engine and even cpu emulation cores multiple times. Other times the MAME team have done away with using pre-recorded sound samples and poor emulation of analog circuitry. Sometimes that will bring down game compatibility for a time.

 

[journeymandt]

At a very minimum, it's good to keep a recent copy around so you can test games/roms when troubleshooting a cabinet to see if the bug you found is actually in the game or an issue with your cabinet.

^^^^ THIS ^^^^

It is also useful to have a mame machine on hand to test out games that you hear about, or stumble onto for sale to see if you may have an interest in pursuing new acquisitions.(assuming the game you're looking at is supported, and runs well enough)

It also has value, in some cases, as a place holder for a favorite game until you can find an affordable high cost board. LodeRunner is that game for me.

BITD, my cousin had LR for his Apple IIe... I played the hell out of it almost every weekend. That's also a game that I don't recall seeing much in any of the arcades I frequented back in my misspent youth. It runs well enough on mame to scratch the itch until I can get around to getting a real board, or setting up a Mister FPGA system to run it. I'm currently waiting for my Mister clone boards to get to me.

Just my 2₵

Dylan

 

[cwilkson]

^^^^ THIS ^^^^

It is also useful to have a mame machine on hand to test out games that you hear about, or stumble onto for sale to see if you may have an interest in pursuing new acquisitions.(assuming the game you're looking at is supported, and runs well enough)

It also has value, in some cases, as a place holder for a favorite game until you can find an affordable high cost board. LodeRunner is that game for me.

BITD, my cousin had LR for his Apple IIe... I played the hell out of it almost every weekend. That's also a game that I don't recall seeing much in any of the arcades I frequented back in my misspent youth. It runs well enough on mame to scratch the itch until I can get around to getting a real board, or setting up a Mister FPGA system to run it. I'm currently waiting for my Mister clone boards to get to me.

Just my 2₵

Dylan

Dylan...I also spent many hours with Lode Runner (Gold Runner) on the TRS-80 Color Computer 2. Great game! There's a pretty good port on the NES if you have one of those lying around. It scrolls side to side IIRC so the mechanics are different from the 8-bit computers (and unfair at times) but it's easy to find a copy! It's usually on feeBay for $10-15.

 

[hisnice]

I just checked MAME and as long as you run it with the appropriate artwork file, it works exactly like the full cabinet.

That's awesome!!!

 

[wugly]

on an update I usually make a clone of my drive with operating system and config for the games and ini. I then buy a service that will make me a full setup rom collection with the frontend on my supplied hard drive. I usually am pretty much all setup by putting my old config and ini on the new roms and going through and adding the new games setting

 

[alfonzotan]

I'm using 0.223.

Apparently I don't have the artwork for Akka Arrh loaded, but it does display "lamps" all around the screen in Full view:

 

[tstone]

MAME is awesome.

It literally lets me play dozens or hundreds of games that I enjoy playing but I just will never have cabinets for. Can't buy em all...

I tend to collect arcade cabinets that have controls that are difficult to emulate properly in MAME for this reason.

 

[alfonzotan]

MAME is awesome.

It literally lets me play dozens or hundreds of games that I enjoy playing but I just will never have cabinets for. Can't buy em all...

I tend to collect arcade cabinets that have controls that are difficult to emulate properly in MAME for this reason.

I think it's invaluable. There are games like Akka Arrh (or hell, Funky Fish) that none of us would ever get to play without it. And in the early days, it introduced a lot of us to games that we didn't even know existed (in my case, Major Havoc and Black Widow) that we'd eventually seek out in their native state. Unless you're Doc at GG, nobody is ever going to have EVERYTHING in their house... a reasonably-tweaked MAME opens up that door for the vast majority of games.

Salut, Nicola.

 

[journeymandt]

Dylan...I also spent many hours with Lode Runner (Gold Runner) on the TRS-80 Color Computer 2

Thanks for the heads up on the coco2 port... I still have a coco2 up in moms attic! we're clearing out her house right now to sell it, so I'll be getting to the attic in the next couple months... Im also pretty sure I have a speech cartridge up there that has a Votrax sc01 in it.

I can't imagine playing the NES port if it scrolls side to side to give you a "better" view... I think it would drive me crazy. I might look into it though... I do have an old NES in the shelves at the back of my gameroom.

I'm inclined to wait though... I ordered a Mister recently for the specific purpose of putting it up for LodeRunner!

~Dylan