A weekend challenge: run Galagalaxian on MAME

SpudsMcToole

I've recently been jiggling around with stuff to see if I can get Retropie to run some of the more interesting and worthwhile arcade hacks that aren't supported by any official versions of MAME.

I'm talking about stuff like Galaga X (which is 1942 retooled with space graphics):

And Pac-Man 2600 (which changes the maze layout as well as the graphics):

and The Simpsons Tapper:

and Galaxian Invaders:

and Ms Yak-Man (by Tempest 2000 coder Jeff Minter):

After quite the tussle, I've managed to get all these and various others running nicely in Retropie. The main trick is that you have to put them in a separate folder inside your MAME ROMs directory, because you have to use the filenames of the originals, not the hacks, as the hacks aren't supported directly.

It's then just a question of finding the hacked ROMs (made for PacMAME, MisfitMAME or HBMAME) and adding in the correct ROMs from the original game. I can't give you links here but they're not too tough to track down.

But the one that's got me completely defeated - Galagalaxian.

I enjoy it because by using the Galaxian graphics it feels like a more natural sequel. But I cannot for the life of me get MAME to recognise it.

It appears to be based on the supported galagamw ROMset. But no matter what I do I can't get it to run with the hacked graphics - I just get normal Galaga.

These are the files you get in the galgaxin.zip ROMset:

And these are the files lr-mame2003 wants for galagamw:

You can find the g08, g09 and g10 files, and the 5n.bin file, in the standard galaga.zip ROMset, so I added those in.

But if you then run the resulting ROM in Retropie as galagamw, it's just bog-standard Galaga.

That ROM also won't run in MisfitMAME or HBMAME, which wants a different set of ROMs for it:

But if you put the ROMset with those files, which works in both MFM and HBM, into Retropie, either as galagamw or just galaga, it's still boring old normal Galaga.

I've tried everything I can think of and I'm totally stumped. Every other hack works with this process and I can't see any reason why Galaga would be different. But I'm sure some smart person can solve it.