I was just wondering what the difference is from one version of MESS to the next. To my knowledge,
since you can't update a MESS rom set like you would for MAME, what's the advantage of having a newer version? Also, does anyone know where to find a compiled version of MESS that has the nag screens removed? Thanks.
As far as function, there are little differences between MAME and MESS. MAME, historically, deals with arcade and coin operated hardware and amusement devices. MESS deals more with consumer electronics - computers, game consoles, handhelds, calculators, chess machines and virtually anything else you can think of that ran on CPU-based hardware. Roms change for MESS as well, but not nearly as often as MAME simply due to numbers (26k+ MAME sets/devices vs. less than 2k MESS sets/devices) as well as there are often not too many revisions on a consumer electronic whereas arcade games had different regions, languages and bootlegging which all require different roms.
I always point people to the latest and greatest revision when it comes to MAME and MESS for multiple reasons including ability to find romsets, developer support in fixing bugs and you always have any improvements in emulation that happen and general support from the userbase as most people run later/latest versions. At the same time, personally, I'm strongly against NO-NAG patches. The patches remove essential information which inform the user as to driver status. Production of such binaries for MAME or MESS is against the developer's wishes as noted at
http://mamedev.org/about.html - Under "Derivative Works". As such, there shouldn't be binaries with such function as default being distributed. You have the right modify your own code for private use, however.
MESS is a capable emulator for many dozens of popular computers, consoles and handhelds and while generally never as good as the very best single system emulators available, they perform at a level which the casual gamer will likely find acceptable in most cases. Best thing you can do is try it and choose for yourself