@enderandrew Hello. MAME is indeed a beast and before you begin even thinking about installing anything at all on anything, I recommend that you read read and read again. Here are some links to help you understand a bit about the MAME variants that are supported on Retropie...

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7247/guide-arcade-games-and-how-to-play-them-a-non-technical-mame-fba-tutorial

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2859/how-to-use-mame-with-retropie-help-guide

https://choccyhobnob.com/mame/demystifying-mame-roms/

Once you have read these, you should have good understanding of what you need to get. You will need to be comfortable in updating romsets over time to maintain functionality but personally, I build with the recommended emulators depending on the hardware I choose. I don't use windows so I cannot comment on that but all the links above stand true for Arcade emulation regardless.

Good Luck and....

Here is the compatibility list (second tab along the bottom)

and recommended MAME variants

...oh and there are sets with one rom / one game but come to that later - you will need to get your head around DAT files and filtering methods.