Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME
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@DTEAM also, semi-related, but I have been spending a LOT of time revamping some of the gamelists here (classich, konamih, and gameandwatch) to include detailed descriptions of each game, just because I'm bothered by having the minimalist descriptions that just say the title/publisher. But in doing the research for how to describe the games I've discovered for a whole bunch of them - especially in classic handhelds - I didn't really understand how to play the them until I had the background info. So I think the extra info might really be helpful integrated into the gamelists that are downloaded in the script. When I'm done, would you be interested in me sharing them so you can consider whether to replace the ones that are there? Also, in the classic handhelds all the madrigal romset games were missing the image for the gamelist, so I've found and added those too. Just an offer, no worries if you think it's not worth it.
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@bbilford83 If you know.. What emulator plays the most handheld games as of today? Is it the latest MAME standalone? Is there a list of supported games as of today? Finally, did the casio watch games ever get emulated? The last emulated consoles i have on my pie are from 2020,around rpi 4.7.1 time. is lr-gw even used any longer?
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@bbilford83 I would be interested if you had a gamelist with nice descriptions and perhaps play instructions as well if you have one :)
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@duglor I'll try to succinctly explain it here because honestly it's all a bit overwhelming.
There is a list at the top of this thread kindly created by @DTEAM which he seems to be updating every time a new game gets added to current mame. I have the tigerh, konamih, classich, and gameandwatch sets he has listed there. The first two just use current mame roms. I use lr-mame but probably standalone would be faster. These roms run like typical mame roms where you can get to the mame menu (pre-set to escape on a keyboard) to do button mapping, etc. They won't display properly unless you at least have background art set up, which this (wonderful!) script does for you. You also have the option of copying over the full (~10mb) .zip of art that you can download in the script into the bios/mame/artwork folder, and then the game will load with all the art and display the entire handheld with the screen only taking up a small part of your actual screen. In the mame menu, you have the ability to change the view to just zoom into the screen, or various other partially-zoomed in views (it depends on the rom I think). When you change the view and exit the rom, mame remembers your choice of view and next time you load the game it will load in that view.
There are also games that work through the lr-gw emulator (you apparently already have), which is designed to run the madrigal romset. I won't link to it to be safe but it's very easy to find. Those run very differently from mame. They automatically load with full artwork showing the handheld itself, not just the screen. While each game has the option to zoom into the screen, you can't make it do that by default, so you always start with the game displayed in the teenier handheld screen displayed on your big screen. When yo hit start it will show you what all the different buttons do as mapped to a standard controller layout. Select moves around the cursor to choose non-gameplay buttons (like start, alarm, game a/b, etc.). This is different to mame where you have those buttons mapped to something on your controller.
Confusingly, the lr-gw emulator is NOT limited to gameandwatch roms. The madrigal set is partially game and watch roms and partially handhelds made by other companies, which is why @DTEAM has them split into the gameandwatch set and the classich set. This is undoubtedly correct, but people like you and me who used to have the lr-gw set (which pre-dated this mess script) likely had a single gameandwatch system set up with a bunch of non-gameandwatch games. It took me a while to figure this out. Even more confusing, there are some games that are "tabletop" and made by nintendo, some of which (like Mario's Cement Factory) have identical gameplay to the traditional gameandwatch handheld. But they weren't watches, and weren't labelled under the game and watch brand. So I think they make more sense considered as "Classic Handheld." I suppose none of the tabletops games are really "handheld" but that's me just being difficult.
I'm still working my way through the classich and tigerh gamelists but am done with gameandwatch and konamih. I'll share with DTeam or anyone else when I'm done but it is slow going :).
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@duglor Oh and I don't think the casio games are emulated?
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Very good summarise ;)
I think I should add it in the script somewhere for the new-by's.
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@Folly Thanks! Of course you are welcome to if you would like.
I told a friend we are all a very specific kind of weirdo that would work so hard to get such mediocre games working :).
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Haha !
Indeed, we are the happy few ;) -
@bbilford83 Thank you very much with your detailed answer!
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@bbilford83 said in Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME:
I'm still working my way through the classich and tigerh gamelists but am done with gameandwatch and konamih. I'll share with DTeam or anyone else when I'm done but it is slow going :).
Of course, share them and I will update the game lists ! Thanks all for team effort !!!
Very good summaries !! For G&W, and ClassicH the easiest way to run MAME or lr-g&w automatically for the good rom is to use this emulator.cfg file. It presets all lr-gw games and you can choose MAME, lr-MAME or lr-mess for the others.
BTW, you should try "All in one", the gamelist with videos is completed and some handheld are very good!
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@DTEAM Thanks again. I will probably give the all-in-one a try too... originally I had left out the classich because I like having my systems organized by manufacturer, but since I've already crossed that line I guess there's no reason I shouldn't do allinone too.
Question to all... has anyone actually figured out how to play the U.S. Games version handheld called "Electronic 2-Player Football"? So far it's the first one to totally stump me. It has what are effectively d-pad buttons on each side, and mame has only one action button it labels as "kick-pass." I think select changes its function, but I haven't been able to get the game to do anything I would call "playing" at all... just incomprehensible beeps and boops.
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Oh, and one other question for the group. There is an all-in-one handheld called "Electronic MultiSport" made by Conic, and it can be emulated and is part of the gamelists/etc. But it had three games playable - basketball, ice hockey, soccer - all with identical gameplay and only distinguished by clear overlays you slide into the handheld. You can see this in the gamelist image - it has the ice hockey clear overlay inserted. As far as I can tell, there is no mame artwork for these overlays (or for the game at all). Am I missing something? I suppose the artwork is technically cosmetic but it doesn't really make sense playing the handheld without it.
Note that from my research it seems Conic also released three separate handhelds that were identical except they had permanent art under the names of the three games (Basketball, Ice Hockey, and Soccer), but these aren't emulated as of now.
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@bbilford83 said in Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME:
has anyone actually figured out how to play the U.S. Games version handheld called "Electronic 2-Player Football"?
There are indeed some games of which it is not very clear how to play.
Perhaps an idea, you can find many manuals on progettosnaps. -
@Folly Thank you for the thought, I didn't know about that resource, but they also have most handheld manuals at www.handheldmuseum.com, which is also great because they organize by manufacturer. But alas, neither page has the manual for this game. I think it may just not be really playable without it.
And yeah, some of these games are just unbelievably impossible to figure out without the manual, it is amazing some of the manufacturers thought this hardware lent itself to such complicated setups :).
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Hi all. One more question as I am getting very close to finishing my new gamelists and such. One of the classic handhelds, Ultraman Monster Battle, has a corresponding mame artwork zip but the internal files in it look nothing like what I would expect, and it doesn't seem to do anything when you put it in the correct bios place. From what I've found elsewhere it seems that was required art in older versions of mess/mame that isn't needed anymore because it's integrated into the rom itself. Whether that's right or wrong, I can't seem to find any background image file that looks like what was on the original handheld (look at the artwork in the google folder, it is bultrman). It shows a tall building and the sky behind it, and that makes the gameplay make much more sense. I have also looked for videos of it being played on MAME on youtube and none of them have the sky/building background either. The game doesn't seem really playable to me without it, but I don't think that png exists anywhere :(. Anyone have any ideas?
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OK actually, I figured out the problem myself, but it isn't that there is missing art. The image in the google folder/being downloaded into the script is actually incorrect. This is what is currently being displayed:
I am not sure what that game is, but this is the game we are actually emulating when we play bultrman.zip.
It is a "pop-up" style game that, as you can see, has no background art. So that is good news, since the game is playable as it should be, but I would suggest replacing the gamelist art :). Which I am doing on that and a few other entries where I found minor issues or just better transparent pngs, so @DTEAM @Folly, if you want you can just see it all at once in a couple days when I am done.
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Alright, I overestimated how long it would take me to finish because I am done now. I think the easiest way to share everything was for me to create a google drive link for @DTEAM and @Folly so you can look at what I did. Here is that link. Note that because I had a pre-existing GameandWatch setup before your script, my gamelist for that isn't located in the same place (instead of in the roms folder it's in the configs folder), but I created subfolders for everything so they track where they would be in retropie. I also copy/pasted all the art in the media folders even though 95% of it is probably identical, but as I went through I did some replacing of art that was wrong or missing or just I was able to find better art. I think if you copy/pasted it into the existing repository for each folder and overwrote whatever was there, it would be OK, but I trust you to figure that out or you can just not use my art folders if you don't want to.
Hope this helps! I will probably still try to do All-in-One and RZone too sometime soon.
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@bbilford83 I would love to see casio game & watch and handhelds reproduced, like western bar or drunken sheriff ;)
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Nice, looks like it will improving many things ;-)
I had a quick look and noticed that you did not add support for .7z files.
Most roms are now in .zip but you never know in the future and some older roms were in fact in .7z format.
I think we need to keep supporting .7z too, don't you think ?The google drive for gamelists is managed by @DTEAM so basically he is the one that would have to overwrite it on his google drive.
A tip for @DTEAM, you can use
meldon linux to see the changes in files and in text.
Or you can make a repository and overwrite all of @bbilford83 to it to see the changes and then delete the repository again. -
@Folly said in Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME:
Nice, looks like it will improving many things ;-)
I had a quick look and noticed that you did not add support for .7z files.
Most roms are now in .zip but you never know in the future and some older roms were in fact in .7z format.
I think we need to keep supporting .7z too, don't you think ?Oh, oops, sorry about that. I am probably in the minority for this but I actually keep the retropie setting "parse game lists only" on because it allows a lot more control and freedom. Like for example the emulator for Sega Saturn doesn't support m3u files, so the only way I could find to not display the second discs was to use this setting and that way it only will show what I tell it to in the gamelist. So because of that I had to remove the .7z entries because otherwise retropie will read those and display double-entries for each game. Maybe that is not really a concern for others if not many people use this setting? But for me I always had to edit the game list in the script to remove all the 7Z entries because of this.
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