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All MAME CHD files has been uploaded to Megaupload separately. Size of every single part is about 20MB and once again I can do nothing about that (for many reasons). However this shouldn't be a big problem. Most of the CHD files aren't very big. Consider this as an opportunity to update your existing set. MAME still understands the un-split way and will look for all the required ROM files, first in the Split set zip and then the Parent set, as long as it finds the right file somewhere it will run. The next evolution of this thinking was âIf MAME will look in the Parent set for all of itâs ROM files, why bother splitting out the clones at all.
About Mame
Mame is the most compatible and capable multiple arcade machine emulator. There is a large community of contributors working persistently to expand and perfect Mame's library of supported arcade games. Mame can pretty much play any game! Even the more modern hard drive based games and 3D games. Although Mame is not the most user-friendly emulator. It does things differently than what you may be used to with traditional emulation such as with SNES and Genesis.
This tutorial is to help you with Windows builds of Mame. The two most popular builds are MameUI and Mame32. They're both almost identical, with the exception that MameUI is newer and Mame32 is older. MameUI comes in two versions: âMameUI-64â and âMameUI-32â. MameUI-64 is for the 64-bit version of Windows and MameUI-32 is for the 32-bit version of Windows.
*If you would like to download Mame, I have it in my emulators page.
64-bit and 32-bit versions
When you go to download MameUI, the first thing you're going to see is two versions: 64-bit and 32-bit. So what is that and which version do you download? I won't drown you with technical jargon. In short: these are types of Windows systems. 64-bit is newer and faster, and 32-bit is older and slower. If you have 64-bit Windows, you need to download the 64-bit version of Mame. And vice versa with 32-bit.
Not sure if you have 64-bit or 32-bit Windows? Here's how you can check:
Using Windows XP? Here are directions for that .
Installation
Windows versions of Mame are all a standalone program so they do not have an install wizard. Installation is simple: just extract Mame from its zip file. Not sure how to extract zip files? Here's a video tutorial showing you how: how to unzip files on Windows.
IMPORTANT! Mame must be placed in a common folder on your computer. I recommend Documents, Downloads, or create a folder on your desktop. If you place Mame somewhere else on your main C drive, then you may be restricting it to read-only access. Doing so prevents Mame from saving anything.
To open Mame, double-click on , or , or any other *.exe if you're using another version of Windows Mame.
Understanding Mame's ROM structure
Upon opening Mame, the first thing you see is the All Games tab (shown below). This is a list of all the games supported by Mame. Mame does not include these games. You need to download them separately.
In this list, notice the indented games. And notice that the first game of the same title is not indented. The first game is the parent and all the indented games below are the orphans. See:
In the picture below, I'm showing you how this parent/orphan relationship applies to actual ROMs in the roms folder. This is how all arcade emulators work with arcade ROMs.
In other words:
You'll notice that all arcade ROMs are abbreviated. You must never rename or extract an arcade ROM! Its exact filename is how Mame can detect it.
NeoGeo games need neogeo.zip
NeoGeo games require the NeoGeo BIOS in order to boot. You can download it below. Additionally, old versions of Mame emulators may require an older version of the NeoGeo BIOS. If you're finding that the first NeoGeo BIOS doesn't work, download the old version.
*To setup the NeoGeo BIOS with Mame, simply move it into Mame's ROMs folder . That's it!
Loading a game
*If your games are not being detected or giving you 'not found' errors, read the next section.
Troubleshooting undetected games & loading errors
Unfortunately, it's very common for Mame to refuse to detect your games. Or, Mame will detect your games, but give you 'not found' errors upon loading a game. These two problems have the same source.
This is happening because the authors of arcade emulators are purists who insist on everything to be perfect. As soon as an arcade game has a better ROM dump, Mame is updated to support the newer dump. This renders older ROMs incompatible. This problem gets more complicated with the reality that pretty much every ROM site distributes only old ROMs. These old ROMs are incompatible with newer builds of Mame.
The first step in troubleshooting this is to run through the following checklist:
The workaround: If you're good on the above bullet points then you're doing everything correctly. This means the arcade ROMs you downloaded are definitely old. So how do you get old ROMs to work? That's simple - use an old version of Mame! In my emulators page I provide a version of Mame32 from 2007. It has a high success rate of detecting ROMs that are being distributed in popular ROM sites.
Loading a CHD (hard drive) game
Arcade games based on a hard drive require some extra steps. You need two things: (1) the parent ROM, and (2) the CHD file (the hard drive file). The size of the parent ROM is tiny, but expect the CHD file to be around 100 MB. I'll use Killer Instinct as an example in these directions:
*If these directions aren't enough and you're still lost, here's a YouTube video showing you exactly how to load CHD games.
How to play games
Arcade games on Mame work in the same fashion as the real thing. Upon loading an arcade game, to play you must insert virtual coins. You can insert as many as you want (which gives you infinite lives). Then press Start to begin. Each player has their own coin bank and Start button.
A sample of an arcade deck
Players 1-4
Player 1 Keys
General Mame Keys
Using a gamepad
Your gamepad must be plugged in before you open Mame. Mame won't detect it if you plug it in after you open Mame.
If Mame didn't detect your gamepad: Test your gamepad with other emulators. If it doesn't work with any other emulator, then your gamepad is faulty. If it does work with other emulators, then Mame isn't compatible with your gamepad.
Reconfiguring the keyboard or gamepad
Mame is a little weird with this. It doesn't offer a way to reconfigure buttons using the frontend GUI. Rather, Mame requires you load a game and use the in-game overlay menus. Here's how:
Finding ROMs
In my links page, I have some good links to sites where you can download arcade ROMs. If you want to try to find more sites than what's in my collection of links, just Google around. For example, if you want to download Killer Instinct just Google âdownload killer instinct arcadeâ or âdownload killer instinct mameâ.
Knowing which ROMs to download
Downloading arcade games can be confusing. If you read this tutorial, you know that downloading a single ROM for a game doesn't mean you've downloaded the game. You need to download maybe 3-8 separate files in order for a game to work with Mame. ROM sites don't make it any easier for you by separating every piece of an arcade game as a separate ROM. How could you quickly & easily find out exactly which ROM files belong a game?
This is where MameUI comes to the rescue! (Remember, you can download it from my site.) MameUI has a search at the top. Start typing in the game in question, and you'll see it appear. In the âDirectoryâ column you'll see the filenames for the ROM files.
Thank you for reading my tutorial! If you found it useful, you're welcome to return the gesture by buying something from my Amazon store. If have questions you're welcome to email me or message me on social media.
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