Game choice on MAME cabs.

[grunger106]

So how do you guys decide which games go on your MAME cabs, do you put the full romset and use your frontend's filtering options on or do you pick and choose manually.

I've had the full set on mine for ages (with filters) but 1000+ games are a bit of a pain to scroll through.

I'm getting tempted to pull the 200 or so games I actually want out of the romset and just use those, but its quite cool to see unknown games show up on attract mode as the screensaver from GameEX.

Just wondered what people do...

[Paul Olson]

I make a bunch of small gamelists based on controller type since I have a modular panel. I try to keep less than 20 games or so per list for easy navigation. I keep a list with all games for when I feel like exploring.

[severdhed]

I have multiple lists..I have a favorites list with about 100 games that is the default. I have a 4 player only list I switch to when there are going to be a lot of children visiting, and I have the all games list with several thousand games that I use sometimes to find new games...I don't leave it on this list because there are you many mahjong porn games that pop up when I least want them to.

[shponglefan]

I test individual games and pick 'n choose the best, since most games are pretty crap to be honest.  I think I've got around 200 games or so, which is plenty.

[Le Chuck]

I group my games by genre, screen orientation, as well as by controls.  I am pretty choosey about what makes the lists for each genre too.  For example, under fighters I'll only have two versions of SFII rather than scores of them listed there. 

Some of the categories I like having around (controller and rotation dependant of course)

Vert Classics
Horizontal Classics
Fighters
Brawlers
Platformers
Vert Shooters
Horizontal Shooters
Spinner
Trackball
Gun
Neo Geo
Favorites

This means some games appear more than once over varied lists but that isn't necessary. 

[grunger106]

What frontends are you using?
I'm using GameEx on the MAME cab

[Malenko]

I group my games by genre, screen orientation, as well as by controls.  I am pretty choosey about what makes the lists for each genre too.  For example, under fighters I'll only have two versions of SFII rather than scores of them listed there. 

Some of the categories I like having around (controller and rotation dependant of course)

Vert Classics
Horizontal Classics
Fighters
Brawlers
Platformers
Vert Shooters
Horizontal Shooters
Spinner
Trackball
Gun
Neo Geo
Favorites

This means some games appear more than once over varied lists but that isn't necessary.

Mines pretty close to this. Some games appear on multiple lists , like King Of Fighters shows up on Fighting Games and Neo Geo. Galaga shows up on Favorites, Golden Age, and Vertical shooters.  I do have the "full list" enabled being as only a few people I know are allowed to use my MAME cab. I make the kids play on the other cabs.  I use MaLa as the FE

[Le Chuck]

What frontends are you using?
I'm using GameEx on the MAME cab

MALA, just like Malenko.  You can do this with about any FE tho, set up varies widely and most aren't intuitive so there's a learning curve. 

[RyoriNoTetsujin]

The first thing I did in organizing my romset was to archive anything that's not currently playable, insignificant clones, pinmame, mahjongg, quiz, foreign language, etc (with a few exceptions, of course!) That easily drops the list down to under 4000. ROMlister is great for this, especially if you have limited controls (no trackball/spinner/guns, etc.)

When I'm alone, if I'm not in the mood for a particular game, I find myself playing games at random from that "functionally complete" romset (usually via mameUI64, to be honest).  If I come across one that is really great or might be notable in some way, I'll put it in the general gamelist that's available when friends are playing, via Mala.

That curated list is big, but not intimidating. Like shpongle's, I think my list is around 200-300 games.

If people ask if I have a particular game that's not on that list I can quickly bring it up, but I have to say that's a pretty rare occurance.

[CpCaveman]

I started by selecting 50+ games I consider classics and will play, backed up the rest to a portable hard drive (apparently have 8,000+ roms according to explorer, probably mostly clones and unplayable) , and if someone has a go they usually end up suggesting a game theyre "not sure of what it was called blah blah" , then I add them as they come up, up to about 80+ games on there now so I wasnt far off, but is starting to feel like TOO much choice.

[mgb]

A few years ago I went and took the whole rom set and went through each one
I went through it in kinda a dumb way that took way to long.
 Now I have a little over 500 games that are fine for my setup.
I didn't have a whole lot of hard drive rm so I got rid of the roms I didn't need rather than just filter them.

Then from there it's game lists, though I typically just keep the machine on the all games list in mala