MALA won't show any game lists on the main menu. Won't show 'All Games' list.

[Wade007]

I'm a MALA newbie and I'm sure this problem has a simple solution, but I just can't figure it out. I've searched these forums and can't find a similar post, so here I am... Please help me Mala experts. 

I recently installed the latest version of MALA along with the excellent retroGUI layout. After pointing Mala to all the correct set-up files (catver.ini, controls.ini, nplayers.ini, history.dat, mameinfo.dat, snaps, marquees, cpanel, roms, mame.xml, etc, etc) it initially showed my "All Games" list. After making a few "tweaks" I somehow lost this list on the main menu of MAME.

Under 'Game List' tab of the Mala Options/Configuration window it shows 'All Games' under the MAME emulator. To the right it lists all roms sorted by Name. I do NOT have the 'Hide 'All games' list checked. It is unchecked so this game list should show up right? 'Use most played game list' is unchecked. As a test, I've even created other game lists under the Game Lists/MAME emulator area (using Malagamelist.exe) and added a few games to the list on the right, saved the .mlg file, but none of them show up either on the main MAME menu.  Under GUI/Filter, all filters are Off (if that even matters).

Now...When running Mala, the initial Menu (MAME) shows no 'All Games' listing (or any other) but does show 5 categories: Control, Genre, Manufacturer, Players, and Year. If I browse into any of these categories I can get to various lists of MAME games (from the large rom collection) that will ultimately show up on the screen as expected and launch just fine. However, this is not what I want to have happen. I want game lists, not categories. Why is it showing categories of games I haven't set up instead of "All Games" or other gamelists. What I want is for Mala to show "All Games", "Lightgun Games", "Trackball Games", etc per the lists I create and populate. I can't seem to get rid of the categories as the first line menu for MAME

I did notice (while running Mala) that if I click on the left or right arrow for (Next List or Prev List) it will show the name of my created lists in the 'Text2' layout area. IE: "All Games: 1 of 5" or "Test List A: 1 of 3". The 1 of 5 "games" in both cases are the five categories mentioned previously. I can't get to any game unless I drill down through one of those 5 categories in any case.

I set up other layouts for other emulators (Sega Model 2, Daphne) and those layouts correctly show the "All Games" list immediately. No problem. MAME seems to be the only messed up with these dumb categories (that I didn't set up that I know of) being the first filters for any MAME games.

Wow, this is frustrating. What did I do to mess this up? How can I fix it? 

Thanks in advance to all you Mala experts out there.

[Wade007]

I couldn't figure this out. Not sure what happened. I just reinstalled Mala from scratch and rebuild everything. Far less hassle than trying to debug whatever when wrong. 

[highland04]

How odd - this is the same thing I posted about today.  I suppose I will just try the same thing you did.

[Wade007]

OK. I just figured this out last night on accident. Thought I'd post the solution in case someone else runs into this problem.

It's not a item you can fix in the Option/Configuration menu.

While in Mala, pull up the MAIN MENU screen (Button #2?). There you will see a list of options one of which says "Browse - Yes/No".
This is the toggle that makes MAME show all your games properly or not. I believe I set it to YES and it showed my gamelist like I wanted and expected. When I moved it to NO and then closed the window, it only shows categories as my "game lists".

Kind of odd, but that's what I figured out.

[Katana Man]

Wade, thank you very much.  You saved me a lot of headaches as there is no documentation on how to enter or exit this mode on malafe's web site.  Some kids were playing on my machine and somehow jacked it up so lists were stuck on: " Control, Genre, Manufacturer, Players, and Year".  Could not figure out how they did it.  Your post saved me. To prevent this again, I removed the Menu option altogether (default is "2").