r/MAME

I picked up this Silver Strike Bowling cabinet, but it was completely gutted when I got it. I had hoped hoped to re-use some of the parts, at least the the wells gardner tube/chassis, but the chassis was salvaged by whoever sold it and the tube was completely burned to shit.

So I found a 27" Philips set in great condition, and the surgery was successful! Got the whole tube and chassis in there and secure now. Pics included of my Philips tube/chassis that I transplanted into the cabinet. CRT is a must-have for arcades, IMO.

It's currently just running component off a splitter from my couch setup, but this will be a standalone-unit. Currently deciding whether I should use a MiSter FPGA or a Batocera PC as the brains of the machine. I run both already on my couch setup. I prefer the Mister in general, and it's definitely easier to set-and-forget than Batocera. Navigating the UI and options is a breeze. And obviously accuracy is what sets apart the FPGA....

But from what I can gather, FBNeo (which batocera runs) is basically as good as the MiSter cores for CPS arcade games and Neo Geo emulation, which is mostly what I want to run in the cabinet anyways. The Batocera front-end is going to be much prettier and customizable when swapping between games, and the scraper to get artwork and descriptions feels almost mandatory for a set-piece arcade unit, as opposed to the bare-bones text approach of the MisTer. Batocera can also run more games than the MiSter, like CPS3, atomisweave, or naomi games, and the entire mame catalog. Though I think the CPS3 core is coming soon for MiSter.

I also think building a new Batocera PC (or buying a rig used and replacing the video card with something with analog output) is also gonna be cheaper. Mister requires picking up the box (qmtech or whatever alli express version), a new power supply (the one that comes with it sucks), a big SD card, wifi/bluetooth adapter, USB hub...and I'm not sure how compatible it would be with a USB encoder. But with a batocera setup I can re-use some hardware I already have, and the older PC parts it needs (or a Dell optiplex) can be found pretty cheap.

What do yall think? I also obviously have to get the control board setup, wire up the speakers, re-finish the cab, pick or design some artwork, put in a marquee...but taking it one step at a time here! I'm currently leaning Batocera as the base of this project, but curious what everyone else thinks, or if anyone else has experience with a CRT based multi-arcade cabinet build.

Hey guys, if anyone here are interested, I have recently forked terminatorhex's script in order to extract 'The Last Blade' into MAME working files, which ROMVault accepts. I personally have this game via Amazon Games., but so long as the game folder/files structure has 'resources/game' this should also work on any other. It doesn't run the same way as terminatorhex's, but it is heavily informed by their script. Just place the two files in the game folder and run the bat file:

DrRetroMod/lastblad-rom-extractor: lastblad-rom-extractor is a Python script to extract MAME compatible rom archives from the Dotemu release of The Last Blade

I extracted these files from the ROM of the 1993 Air Combat game, from the Namco System 21 board, and I mainly wanted to rip the 3D models. However, a bunch of files with strange formats appeared, like 1A, 3C, 5X, 12E, 4S. Does anyone know if there's any software to view these types of files?

I would like an extensive collection of Arcade ROMs but I do not want duplicates like you see here. See how that are three '99 The Last War games and two 10-Yard Fight listings, etc.? Is that what merged vs. unmerged means or am I misunderstanding that?

Hi, this is my first post on this sub. I've been lurking for some time but didn't have any reason to post until now and made an account for this.

I've written a python script to extract MAME compatible roms from Dotemu's ports of Metal Slug 1,2 & X.

Here is the github repo:

https://github.com/terminatorhex/mslug-rom-extractor

And steam guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3720505003

If you are curious basically Dotemu optimized the game binaries to run better on their emulator. My script reverses those optimization to recreate the exact binaries found on a real cacartridge (the ones that MAME expects).

Sadly a MAME compatible rom can't be extracted for Metal Slug 3 (more details on the repo)

Don't know if this tool will be useful fo most pepeople. Nontheless I wanted to share it because it's another way to preserve this awesome games.

Hey guys, here is another script for extracting Twinkle Star Sprites ROM from Steam/GOG/Amazon Gaming. This is also heavily informed by terminatorhex's script. How to use it is in the description on github.

DrRetroMod/twinspri-rom-extractor: twinspri-rom-extractor is a Python script to extract MAME compatible rom archives from the Dotemu release of Twinkle Star Sprites

Also if you are interested in also extracting 'The Last Blade' I posted this earlier today: The Last Blade (Dotemu) Amazon Gaming/Steam Extractor : r/neogeo

I understand it is recommended to use the up to date MAME version and the updated rom set but I don't understand how that works.

What changes are made into the rom files?. I just read people said roms get new and better dumps but let's take a very specific example.

Tecmo world cup 98 twcup98

This game has a weird bug where randomly the opponent goalkeeper freezes and you can't continue playing but the thing is this game runs kind of good besides that bug in a very specific version of mame I think it's mame 2010.

But I just tried a more updated rom and MAME and the game runs too slow with cracking sound making it unplayable.

What is the explanation behind this ? There is not much information about what changes are made between rom updates how do I know if twcup98 has a new dump or why it's running worse in newer versions of MAME.