3 Different Types of MAME, Which One To Use?

tdelios

When installing RetroPie 3.x or 4.0, I noticed that there are 3 different MAME folders in the folder structure to drop the roms into. So which one do I use?

The reason why I ask that question is because as a test all the MAME roms I have in my collection work 100% fine in PiPlay's mame emulator, but only about 50% work in RetroPie when placing them in the advance mame folder.

Does anybody have any suggestions which MAME emulator in RetroPie works the best for majority of roms that are out there.

herb_fargus

@tdelios just depends on what you want to play and what levels of playability you want.

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

tdelios

@herb_fargus , so it looks like lr-mame supports a lot more, followed by advanced mame and then mame4all..

is there a way for me to setup the raspberry pi to run the lr-mame for all of those roms using Retropie 4.0? .. I really don't have the urge to re-locate all the rom files from one folder to another.

dankcushions

@tdelios said in 3 Different Types of MAME, Which One To Use?:

@herb_fargus , so it looks like lr-mame supports a lot more, followed by advanced mame and then mame4all..

is there a way for me to setup the raspberry pi to run the lr-mame for all of those roms using Retropie 4.0? .. I really don't have the urge to re-locate all the rom files from one folder to another.

you need a specific set of roms for each mame emulator. your old set won't work, unless piplay also uses mame 0.78.

tdelios

@dankcushions ... Do you know if anybody has a good site in which all the old roms have been updated to the newest mame emulators?

caver01

@tdelios I think you should take a quick look at the forum rules. You should not be asking about sites that host ROMs.

That said, I feel for you because there are a lot of possibilities and and one size does not fit all. I have used PiPlay. It supports Mame4All as well as AdvanceMAME. These both require different versions of ROMs. In RetroPie, we have a lot more versions of MAME try, so it only gets more complicated, as one ROMset for a given emulator is not compatible with another emulator.

It will help you a lot if you can remember which MAME you were using in PiPlay, as there will be equivalent choices here in RetroPie—but you cannot expect your ROMs to work with every version of MAME.

That's the honest truth from a technical perspective, and there's a lot of really good reasons why it hasn't been "simplified". You see, not all emulators do as good of a job on all games. For example, AdvanceMAME has great support for Spinners and Trackballs. It also does a good job with vector games. However, if you like authentic looking CRT effects, you are better off using a libretro core (lr-mame2003 is the best choice for features and games supported). Then, some people want to improve the experience on specific game titles that run faster/better in older versions of MAME which is why many people like to use MAME4All. Still others will run certain games (i.e. NeoGeo titles) using Final Burn Alpha. So, you see, not all emulators are equal, and the games they support are all different versions of the ROMs.

Needless to say, it's complicated, and it's that way on purpose to give people the most choices, the best performance, the right visual aesthetics--all subjective aspects of retro-gaming.

What does this mean for you? It means you need to do the research, understand ROMsets, keep track of the ROM versions you use, keep track of the emulators you use to launch them. In the long run, you will have a better setup and a better understanding of how it all works.

The Arcade folder for ROMs does help simplify the interface for casual gamers/users if that's a concern--one folder for all of your arcade ROMs--but using it means you need to understand this stuff even better because you have to carefully track the versions of the ROMs you combine. I suggest using a spreadsheet to keep it all straight.

tdelios

@caver01 awesome detailed answer.. thanks for the feedback!