Getting started with Arcade emulation with RA seems daunting.
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I love classic/retro emulation but have never gotten into arcade emulation because I'm not sure where to start. Now I'm building a RetroCake Windows powered machine with RetroArch and EmulationStation. This hardware is powerful enough for Gamecube emulation, so it should handle most classic arcade games but might not run some newer ones. I have three questions.
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RetroArch has multiple FBA and MAME cores. I don't know if the MAME core with no year attached is the current .200 version or another. But I have no idea which cores I should use for which roms. Are their any community lists which break down that you should use FBA for certain roms, and MAME for others? Part of me thinks the latest MAME core with no year attached is the latest version and would be more accurate, have more bug fixes, cover more games, etc. But I'm worried that if I'm using a moving target that I'll constantly have to update the rom sets as well.
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I'm not requesting that anyone share roms or point me to links. However, looking at documentation, it seems most MAME rom sets include roms of consoles emulated by other emulators, as well as multiple/alternate versions of the same game. Because of this, the sets are rather large.
Are there sets that are "one game one rom"? Even better, are there sets like this solely focused on arcades assuming that I'm using other emulators for other systems?
If so, what would these sets be called?
- Along similiar lines, are there sets which are focused on classic games that can be easily emulated on weaker hardware and exclude the larger more recent games that night not even run well on weaker harder?
Tons of other people have created RetroPie and similiar projects. I can't be the first person crossing this bridge. How have other people cultivated an Arcade library for their RetroPie?
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@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/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)
...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.
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