So Tired...deleting Clones...

cousinsfan

I've got the Pi3+ up and going things look really good w/my .106 MAME set.
But now i'm getting ready to scrape for videos, and I realize there's so many clones I don't want to store all these 2Mb files for all these clones, and I don't want a lot of games that done have the right title and are exact copies of some games.

So I did a little research on all the ROM Lister things, CLRMamePro, etc. and nothing seems to just give me a simple list to get rid of the EXACT CLONES.

So I opened the DAT file in notepad and searching for all the CLONEOF fields and I'm deleting all these. The I see that TEMPTUBE IS A CLONE OF TEMPEST and RBTAPPER is a clone of TAPPER - NO THEY AREN'T (not in my mind, anyway). So now, I'm depressed, because it's a different game, and now I wonder what I' m going to be missing... :(

lostless

@cousinsfan
well clones are not necessarily the same game a lot of the times. While most of the time they are just region versions, with no difference other than language, others are not. Like Ultimate MK3. It is a clone of MK3, but different game. It requires the MK3 roms to be present to boot. Or 2 player version of the Simpsons, or TMNT. Clones are just roms that have something changed, but require a parent rom (shared code) to work. You can merge them so you don't need the parent rom, say you only want the 2 player version of The simpsons without the parent 4 player version present.

dankcushions

@cousinsfan "clone" in mame parlance just means the game is sharing the same base data. eg, pacman was originally release as 'puckman' in japan, but they adjusted it for american release, renaming to 'pacman' (and maybe some other things) by changing some of the memory chips. so 'puckman' is the parent, and 'pacman' is the clone, even though pacman is clearly the most well-known.

so the clone/parent designation doesn't mean the parent is necessarily the 'best' or most common version.

MrPacMan17

@cousinsfan I recognize what you are saying. For me these batch files did some miracles: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/794joh/newbienoob_quick_start_quick_1g1r_rom_sets/.

Of course you need the right rom sets for it in order to work. Google is your best friend here. When you have the right rom sets, these scripts save you a lot of time.

Another aproach might be the tool Simple Arcade Multifilter, as described here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7606/simple-arcade-multifilter-app-for-mame-and-fb-alpha-sets-get-rid-of-adult-and-mahjong-games.

Here you can filter out clones, besides adult games and the lot.

See what works best for you.

cousinsfan

Thanks, all!
Cab is looking better and better...have issues with videos but that will be a different topic.