LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT

mediamogul

23-lcd-handheld-electronic-game-watch_360_5bb8905def4f4fa121d63f2b8750ffa7.jpg

I recently put a DAT together that isolates all the LCD handheld games in MAME 0.229 and I thought what better place to share it than here. All together there are 318 LCD-like games in this version of MAME. Granted, some are a bit outside the usual definition of a game, like the 'Tamagotchi' and 'Speak and Spell', but even those can be fun to mess around with. I was disappointed to find that 'Arcade Defender', seen played by teenage Groot in Marvel's 'Infinity War', hasn't been added yet. However, you can play Coleco's 'Electronic Quarterback', featured in 'TRON'/'TRON Legacy', which was arguably an improvement over the competing 'Mattel Electronic Football' seen modified in 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2'.

Speaking of 'TRON', Tomy's 'TRON' is included here and is most definitely a standout. People talk about modern AAA game adaptations of movies that poorly represent the source material and here we have a primitive LSI game that manages to capture the most important action of the movie in three stages. Level one starts things off with a lightcycle race, followed by a disc-based jai-alai ring game against the movie's main villain, Sark and finally Tron is tasked with throwing his disc into MCP where the game then loops at a higher difficulty each time. All very impressive stuff for the limited technology.

There are a few games I hope get added in the future, such as Mattel's 'Masters of the Universe' and Acclaim's 'Bartman: Avenger of Evil'. The former is actually a reskin of 'Dungeons and Dragons' which has been playable for some time using MADrigal's simulations through RetroArch. However, the latter is nowhere to be found yet, which is a shame, as it was the only decent game out of several at the time to feature the Bartman character. Needless to say, all of Nintendo's 'Game and Watch' titles are classics, as are Coleco's line of mini arcade cabinets. To round things off, I'll list a couple of other oddballs that are worth checking out.

Pac-Man 2/Galaxian 2 (Entex Industries):
Not sequels to the arcade originals, but rather they are named for their two player feature. Player one controls either Pac-Man or the traditional ship, while player two is allowed to control the ghost monsters or the Galaxian force. These two units offered asymmetrical gaming decades before the term had even been coined.

Merlin/Master Merlin (Parker Brothers):
A friend of mine has an original Merlin and they're pretty nice. The units used an array of eleven LED lit buttons to display and control six-nine different games. Among them were versions of other popular electronic games of the time such as 'Simon', 'Lights Out' and 'Mastermind'.

Of course there are many more here to explore and despite their poor reputation, even the occasional Tiger Electronic game is worth a play or two. Their adaption of 'Mortal Kombat' for example can't really be called a good game, but it's actually pretty impressive when you consider that it has multiple characters, moves, a life bar and even a boss. All using the same technology you use to spell BOOBS on a calculator.

Below is the DAT file, so have at it and feel free to post any other recommendations. I'd especially be interested to hear about any of the Tiger games that weren't all that bad. There have to be a few, right?

mame0229_hh.dat.zip

Thorr69

I see my old Pinball game in that picture. (Bottom left corner, gray red & blue).

My dream is to have a MAME that plays 3 specific games:

Pinball (as seen in that photo) https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Gakken/Pinball.htm
Mattel Burgertime https://handheldmuseum.net/Mattel/BT.htm
Searchlight http://www.electronicplastic.com/game/?company=&id=294

And my super dream is to have this again:
https://www.handheldmuseum.com/GCE/GameTime.htm

mediamogul

@thorr69

Those look really nice. the GCE Game-Time watch seems especially interesting. I love items like this that gave you a lot play value for your money. It's great you mention the Pinball game, as I've been looking to pick up some form of LCD pinball game for a while now. My first choice would have been Nintendo's version, but this one looks excellent as well. Problem with both seem to be how expensive they are, with each commanding north of a c-note. This whole venture into this side of MAME really has me wanting one though and I might settle on picking up Tiger's 'Electronic Pinball' just to get one into my hands to play. It actually doesn't look half bad. The playfield is nicely designed, albeit pretty small, and the artwork is very appealing.

Thorr69

@mediamogul The ones I mention are the ones I bought when I was 12. I kept them forever, but a box containing all of them was lost in one of my moves. I had 3 burgertime (because my mom, my brother, and I all had one). My Pinball game was my alarm clock for all of middle school.

mediamogul

@thorr69 said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

My Pinball game was my alarm clock for all of middle school.

Ha! That's great. I had a Nelsonic 'Super Mario Brothers' watch that I got when I was in grade school. Problem was, they were very quickly banned where I went and it sadly went into a drawer for some time. When I got to High School years later, I found it tucked away and wore it everyday until the buckle broke. That little guy got me through a lot of boring study halls.

Thorr69

@mediamogul I have the Zelda watch that matches yours. I bought that when I was 15. I still have it in my nightstand drawer. (box and all) I played it until I got a perfect score and then left it alone until the battery died.

ObscureUsername

@mediamogul said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

@thorr69 said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

My Pinball game was my alarm clock for all of middle school.

Ha! That's great. I had a Nelsonic 'Super Mario Brothers' watch that I got when I was in grade school. Problem was, they were very quickly banned where I went and it sadly went into a drawer for some time. When I got to High School years later, I found it tucked away and wore it everyday until the buckle broke. That little guy got me through a lot of boring study halls.

I had that one too, until I forgot to take it off when taking a bath! The Tetris version (with a fully functional version of Tetris) was the one I really wanted though.

Thorr69

I also still have this Entex Space Invaders game. Bought that when I was about 9, I think. I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Mine is the original grey color.

http://handheldempire.com/game.jsp?game=644

ObscureUsername

This might be stating the obvious, but if it helps anyone, these run fine with lr-mess, and also the standalone mame (but not other versions of mame for me).

For scraping metadata, I found that Skyscraper got just about all screenshots and game titles from arcadedb when selecting 'arcade' as the system type.

If you're setting up a new system for it, having this in the emulators.cfg for the system in configs should work (where lcd is the system folder name):
default = "lr-mess"
lr-mess = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/lcd/retroarch.cfg %ROM%"

mediamogul

@obscureusername said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

This might be stating the obvious, but if it helps anyone...

Very helpful and very concise.

mediamogul

@obscureusername said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

The Tetris version (with a fully functional version of Tetris) was the one I really wanted though.

You and me both. I just checked eBay and they're currently listed between $200-400!

DTEAM

@mediamogul

Are you aware of these threads

You can find Themes, "games scraping" and artworks for some of those. Easy methods for installation

Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME

and

Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone

thanks for your mame0229_hh.dat.zip Very interesting

In https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/28182/lr-mame-20xy-and-handheld-games/16?_=1605029025333
I tested a lot of those (some doesn't work). I'll check with your list if I miss something.

On my side, I have use the driver.ini from https://www.progettosnaps.net/renameset/ and backcheck with http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/default.php

mediamogul

@dteam said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

Are you aware of these threads

It was those very threads that got me going. You and everyone involved there did an amazing job working this all out for RetroPie. Your findings were also very helpful in setting all this up on other platforms as well. It is much appreciated.

Folly

Just to let everyone know, because it seems not everyone is aware of it.

Many handhelds can be set up by our script/scripts :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone

So, for the supported handhelds, no need to do it all by hand.

Just a suggestion on my part.

mediamogul

@folly said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

it seems not everyone is aware of it.

You can count me among them. That is great! We really have come a long way from the limited number of options for playing these types of games.

I bit the bullet last night and dug through my closet to find my old handheld collection. My absolute favorite is 'Donkey Kong II', but unfortunately I'll need to pick up some new batteries for it. I was however able to play 'Masters of the Universe' and 'Bartman: Avenger of Evil', which I was pleased to find still lived up to my memories of it. Acclaim may have whizzed every traditional Simpsons game right down their leg, but this handheld Bartman game is surprisingly pretty great.

Folly

@mediamogul

Nice to hear you are digging up those old handhelds !
My first was highway , sadly it's not in mame/lr-mess.
There was java-script highway on the internet but I forgot the link.

Perhaps I will dig up some too.
Would be nice to have some pictures of those old games in this thread.

A little bit about our script.
The latest, which I have changed for a possible merge with the Valerino stuff, can directly generate module-scripts to the ext directory.
So If you want the Konami handhelds (konamih) installed.
Make sure you have the RetroPie-setup that supports external repositories and install mame and lr-mess.
Then just run the script in the terminal online with a Konami handheld game like -> kgradius.

curl "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/main/00-scripts-00/generate-systems-lr-mess_mame-2v0-alpha.sh" | bash -s kgradius

Now you can install the module-script from the experimental packages.
Put all your roms in the specific rom directory. (now konamih)
Then you will be able to run it with mame or lr-mess

You can do the same with :
all_in1
classich
jakks
konamih
tigerrz
tigerh
gameandwatch (if not already created)

So if you want to setup tigerh, find a tigerh game in this post to generate for tigerh :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/28462/tutorial-handheld-and-plug-play-systems-with-mame/2
But basically our script can create for every mame/lr-mess system.
Also the ones from your .dat if the name can be found using an old or new mame version.

If you want to install all the gamelists. artwork, overlays and cheats do :

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/main/00-scripts-00/get-cheats-artwork-overlays.sh | bash

It will download and generate all in the correct places.

mediamogul

@folly said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

A little bit about our script.

Very impressive. While it's mostly the LCD stuff that piques my interest out of nostalgia, I'll probably end up exploring the Jakks Pacific stuff at some point, as quite a few of those caught my eye over the years. Especially the video pinball units.

It also occurred to me over the weekend that some of these would make great Halloween costumes. Showing up to a party as a fully functional Coleco 'Electronic Quarterback' would be a riot and fairly easy to put together.

Folly

@mediamogul

Nice to hear you like my stuff.
I hope more will enjoy this.

Keep me posted with your halloween stuff. 😊

DTEAM

@mediamogul
Here we are now !! Fully functional

mediamogul

@dteam said in LCD Handhelds MAME 0.229 DAT:

Here we are now !!

I don't know. I'm open-minded and all, but that might be a bit skimpy.