MAME is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. You can find the game ROMs, BIOS ROMs and all other files needed to play games in the MESS and MAME collection on their site as both direct downloads and torrent files. 5) Setup your game file directories. Place your rom files, including bios files, and chd files into the appropriate folder. As an example, let’s say I want to emulate Neo Geo CD and I want to play League Bowling.

Hi all, Through some experimentation I thought I would write a little tutorial to help others get their MAME/MESS Console emulation up and running. This kinda started earlier today when I pm'ed @Antropus for some assistance in getting MAME setup to run Philips CD-I roms. I was lost and had no idea what I was doing. Then, somehow.I had some sort of epiphany and I got it working!

O/ The following tutorial can likely be used for all other games in the Software List CHD torrent but I have yet to test any other than the Philips CD-I. I'm also writing this for my own reminder when I come to set it up again and for use with other consoles.

Re-reading the tutorial, it seems like MAME / MESS is really not that much more unintuitive then RetroArch, except for that the ways to do things are more archaic or obtuse to the point of confusion. MAME has lot's of documentation though, and so does RetroArch so I think that is also a key difference. MESS has very little from my past experience (I don't know if it's gotten better). The only thing I think MESS has going for it is that it emulates some systems that have 0 workable emulators for, and the ones that already do have great coverage or RetroArch coverage, MESS emulates poorly compared to the competition. I don't write this as an attack on you, so please don't think I am trying to say anything negative about your post, I actually mean the exact opposite. It is great you wrote this for the exact reason I said in the previous paragraph, stuff like this only helps. @SentaiBrad - I think since MESS merged with MAME things seem to be a whole lot better!

Once I got my head around the initial setup, get the bios, figure out the command it was straight forward:) Trying to mess (pardon the pun) with neo-geo right now but it's got a horrible arcade bezel and a tiny screen.no doubt there's a setting somewhere to remove that:D Just got to find it! Change the following settings in mame.ini # # CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS # artwork_crop 0 use_backdrops 1 use_overlays 1 use_bezels 1 to # # CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS # artwork_crop 0 use_backdrops 0 use_overlays 0 use_bezels 0.

Ok, so trying to run this from Launchbox throws up some interesting problems, Launchbox tries to target the.chd file as the rom, even with the command line setup as follows: cdimono1 -skip_gameinfo I have selected MAME as the emulator, pointed it to the mame64.exe, added the above to the command line arguments and it adds 'file' to the end of the command, problem is it's trying to run the.chd instead of just bship Perhaps someone can enlighten me to my error? @SentaiBrad (I presume it would be the same issue for MAME CHD's) or @Antropus Thanks in advance! I will get back to my mess module at some point, but here's what I'm populating when it comes to CD-i. It will be painful for you to edit each game and add the correct command line, but I found it very effective when it comes to running most systems.

Everything is being added automatically, so there's no sweat on the user's side of things, but yeah, if you are going to do this manually you are screwed:) I will get back to the mess module at some point and make people's lives easier. Here are my settings: -Kris.

Btw, most if not all systems populated on the left fully work or partially work and were all added in a little over half a minute with my program:) There's a movement happening right now about the folks in charge of the support files (catver, series, etc) starting to dedicate more time to the software lists, so I believe that in the future we will have enough information per system to be able to capture more metadata. I know that there's a whole lot of hype surrounding Retroarch, but don't count Mess out. Remember: Mess is now under Mame, the most powerful emulator to ever exist;). Personally I don't buy it, because even MAME is still a pain. Otherwise why need software to parse everything like we do? Don't get me wrong, I love the dedicated from both sides, but RetroArch (I believe) is seriously a lot better at doing the job.

MESS emulates more systems, technically speaking, but a majority of those don't really work well or at all. I guess that is more a fault of the emulation scene in generally though not working on less popular systems.