CHDs: Which ones do you guys bother with?

[nitz]

Been working on getting my rom collection complete (minus all the useless crap ) lately and just wondering what I should do about CHDs. Normally, I would just grab a whole set and sort through them, but this has gotten huge - I've noticed that some of the laserdisc games alone are over 10 GB. I don't really want several gigs of stuff if it's basically useless, so I'm gonna be a bit choosy rather than get a whole set.

I'm definitely not gonna bother with stuff that's non-working, nor with mahjong/quiz/casino/mature crapola. But I'm wondering how much of what's left I should even bother with...

How is laserdisc emulation in mame? Is it worth it to grab these massive files?

Should I bother with Rhythm games? Do they work well enough?

A couple of notes:

I'm fine with stuff being unplayably slow. I'll tuck it away for when processor speeds catch up.

I'm not really interested in grabbing stuff that used controls that are impractical to reproduce, and where the game is pretty much useless without them. According to controls.ini, the Beatmania games use a "Turntable + dial". I'm guessing this is what I think it is (I've never seen a Beatmania) and it's not something I would ever try to recreate, and I'm also thinking the games would be pointless without it. The fishing games have "?-?-?" for controls, I'm guessing they used some kind of rod and reel setup. There is a horse racing game also marked "?-?-?" that probably used reins or something?

Anyway, I'm curious to see how many of these and which ones people actually bother with.

[TopJimmyCooks]

I might ask something like what are the top ten CHD games people play and like.  (I don't know, haven't attempted any)

[yotsuya]

The only CHD games I seem to play are Jurassic Park, Area 51, and Firefox. Glad they got Firefox working.

[Howard_Casto]

Gameplay is subjective, so we'll leave that aside....  the easiest way to tell is with a simple "mame rom -lx" call.  


Scroll down to the "driver" entry.  

If "status" is preliminary  then the game is unplayable.  If it's better than that then it'll run.  If it says "imperfect" for the status, then look at the rest of the flags to see where it's messed up.  Imperfect games are playable though... they are just glitchy in various respects.


The rythym games run just fine.... the chds in this instance are for the music.... won't fit on a rom ya know.     Don't let beatmania fool ya... the turntable is a spinner basically, but you don't need a spinner to play.... it's kind of like guitar hero... the strum bar flicks up and down, but it doesn't matter which way you strum it.  It's basically like that.  You need 6 buttons to play beatmania.... 5 for the keyboard keys and at least one for the turntable..... you could even map the turntable up/down to your joystick.  

As for the controls... I'm not sure which games you are talking about, but bass-angler, which uses a chd, is mapped to a joystick/mouse.  I don't know what version of controls.ini you have, but we never put "? ? ?" as a control type... my guess is your viewer is doing that.  Look at the controls via the "-lx" command.... that will give you the software controls... which give you a better idea of what controls you would use for the game besides the original controls.

The laserdisc emulation is pretty good, but the resource requirements are HUGE compared to daphne.  That being said, cube-quest and firefox only run in mame... so get cube quest and firefox.  

I actually have a difference of opinion with the mame devs in regards to the laserdisc chds.  They are essentially using lossless full-resolution frames  ripped from the laser disc.  That's great and all for sticking on a shelf, but the actual cabinets only had a crappy ntsc signal that was converted back to rgb, so it's a tad overkill for playability.  You can compress ld chds more I'm told, but then your rom manager will forever say they are broken, and that's a hassle.  The artwork system can't really handle fmv very well either... thus the slowness.  I'm not complaining mind you, I'm just saying that the ld emulation could be handled differently.


I share your frustration... I'm going through it myself, but it is so difficult to pick and choose and still verify your rom set that it just makes sense to dl em all.  What I'm doing is keeping a master copy on my desktop. This is for rom verification.... it's much easier to tell which roms are missing when you don't have a 500 game "miss list" of the casino and em games you decided not to dl.  My mame cabs aren't getting all of these roms though.  Anything with a status of prelimenary doesn't get copied to the mame cabs.  

I'm keeping the chds "on a shelf" atm... even the non-working ones.  Some of them are pretty cool and they'll be fun to try once the drivers start working.  The thing is, dling them, even on a high speed connection, can be tedious and time-consuming.  To me it's better to do it now so I'll have them.  I stopped dling chds for a period of several years and now it's taking me a couple of months to get all my chd ducks in a row.... and that's just the playable ones.  

[Howard_Casto]

In regards to the EM roms.... I'm hoping I'll get to submit some source code to mame to give them a shot at being simulated.  I want to expand mame's output system to accept data as well as send it.  Then mame could act as a sort of server for em simulators.

18 wheeler is calling me like a siren.  The game has no physics..... All I would need is a scan of the road loop and some photos of the hit detection system.  I could whip up a 3d simulator for that game in a couple of weeks.  I've done a couple of pure EM simulations in the past afterall.

[HaRuMaN]

Killer Instinct

[Howard_Casto]

de de de de... de duh da de..... de de de de... de duh da de....... bow bow... be. ha da Do da!


(Sorry couldn't resist)

[Dazz]

Personally, I keep ALL roms/chd/samples.  I've found that it's much easier to keep a full MAME set updated than it is partial sets.  With over 15+ TB of drive space in the household, I'm not worried about drive space.

Then via HyperSpin I keep a FULL game list and just add regularly played games to favorites.  This way I have a list of every game for when people come over and say... "I bet you don't have <insert game name>".  Just switch over to the main list, find the game and if it's worth while it's added to the favorites for later use.

[nitz]

I don't know what version of controls.ini you have, but we never put "? ? ?" as a control type... my guess is your viewer is doing that.

You're right. When Maws went down, I made a script that parses the mame xml plus controls.ini, catver.ini, and nplayers.ini so that I could gather it all together in one place. If a game is not found in a particular ini, it just returns ?-?-? for that value (actually without the dashes, but if I do that on the forum here I get this ). I had forgotten that it was my doing and not part of the ini.

it is so difficult to pick and choose and still verify your rom set that it just makes sense to dl em all.

I've found that it's much easier to keep a full MAME set updated than it is partial sets.

A valid point for sure...but, and this may sound a bit silly to you guys, I'm kinda getting to a place in my life where I'm trying to keep clutter to a minimum - and that includes even my digital media collection. I'm fine with having games I'm not that interested in because I might want to check them out sometime or a guest may like them. But I just can't be bothered with mahjong, mature, quiz, casino, mechanical, or non-working games. Not I nor anyone who plays my machine is gonna care about those. It just feels like clutter.

The rom validation thing isn't a big issue for me either, as I don't really care to keep up with mame. For me, it's too much time and effort for such a minor benefit. I was on 0.122 for the longest time, and only decided to upgrade because of the HLSL effects - some good solid CRT simulation was really the last piece of the mame puzzle for me. So I'm kind of just getting together a final set of mame roms and I'm gonna call it done. (Though I may update one last time if they get some good 7-zip support going.)

Anyway, it sounds like I should probably get most of the working CHDs then to finish out my collection. It'll be a bit of a slog as my connection is slowish - about 2 hours to download 1 GB. But I think it'll feel great to have a "final" Mame setup.

Thanks for the input guys!

[Howard_Casto]

That wasn't exactly what I was getting at in regards to verifying roms.  The best way to tell if a game is broken/missing is via a rom manager..... you can't really get a list of "the good roms" from a rom manager... errors show up as errors even if the game is totally broken and unplayable.  So yeah, you can download just the roms you want, but unless you are talking about a set so small you can download each individual rom manually it is quicker to download ALL roms and then set the other ones aside for later (programatically of course) so that you don't download them again in the future.  Romcenter doesn't really have any options like that except for ignoring chds.  Clrmamepro oddly enough has an option to sort your roms into different folders based on type, but afaik you can't verify just one type so it isn't particularly helpful.

You say that you don't want to keep up with mame updates and I not only understand that but agree with you.  The problem is mame doesn't work that way.  One day mame will add some new feature and it'll be the coolest thing since sliced bread (like the recently added hlsl effects).  You'll want to try it out only to find that your current roms are a mess.  I've tried it both ways and I've found that it takes far less effort to just go ahead and update your roms periocially than to wait a long time and only do so when needed. Rest assured there are still some "must have" releases ahead for mame.  I've got to think that with EM and pinball games in mame, at one point they are going to add some sort of server mode for mame so that it can control simulations like vpinmame does for visual pinball.   

I'm not trying to argue with you or anything, I just wanted to explain myself better. 

[nitz]

So yeah, you can download just the roms you want, but unless you are talking about a set so small you can download each individual rom manually it is quicker to download ALL roms and then set the other ones aside for later (programatically of course) so that you don't download them again in the future.

I realize now that I probably gave the impression that I was downloading hundreds or thousands of roms by hand. There is no way I would do that...I would just download a torrent.

When I heard about HLSL I download a 0.142 set which was one version too early for HLSL, but it was the newest I could find and I figured it would be fairly easy to upgrade to the first solid version of mame which came after that. That turned out to be 0.145. I found a 0.145 set and thought I'd just point the torrent to my roms folder - but then I noticed it was 12 GB larger. I knew it was just a bunch of mechanical and casino stuff that I'm gonna delete anyway, so I just figured out what roms I was missing that I actually want. It was only about 40 and most of them were really small, so I downloaded them by hand and presto - a complete 0.145 set minus CHDs and categories I don't care about.

You say that you don't want to keep up with mame updates and I not only understand that but agree with you.  The problem is mame doesn't work that way.  One day mame will add some new feature and it'll be the coolest thing since sliced bread (like the recently added hlsl effects).  You'll want to try it out only to find that your current roms are a mess.  I've tried it both ways and I've found that it takes far less effort to just go ahead and update your roms periocially than to wait a long time and only do so when needed.

I totally get what you're saying and the thought had crossed my mind. But I really think I'm done.  Every game I care about has been in mame since the 0.8x releases except for some laserdisc games and Sega Model 3 stuff which are emulated elsewhere. Mechanical and pinball simulation does sound a bit intriguing, but I don't think I'd be that into it, since I've never been really in to the real stuff let alone a sim.

And I honestly can't imagine a feature that could be added to mame at this point that would make me want to upgrade. CRT simulation was the only thing I ever felt that mame was lacking. I guess to keep up with each release, I'm committing myself to some work and time no matter what. If I plan to just download another whole set if a must have feature is added, then I may never have to, or at least the work would be all at once instead of spread out which I prefer.

[MacGyver]

I too went through thousands of files to sort out the 1 working original out of a set of 7 different sets, and then fixed their names by hand (my list is about 3600 titles), and every time a new version comes out I secretly want it, but cower in the corner from the fear of 12 gb worth of missing fills.
Someone needs to create a compiler that can use a block-list to build a custom version of MAME that doesn't include roms from the block-list that may just be copies, non-working, irrelevant (fruit machines), or just unwanted by the user.

I know very little of the structure of the programing in MAME, but from what I recall, what I recommend above is not a simple task, I could be wrong, it may just need some well placed // in some sort of master list so that it doesn't screw up some dependency code that is sitting in a non-working parent rom function (so same sized MAME.exe for one that does only pacman or every rom, the code for the unwanted is still there, the romlist just doesn't know it).

The resulting MAME.exe would create .xmls and list that were "clean" as it pertained to the users needs.  I wouldn't have to be in fear of the next release, and because it is a block-list rather than a use-list, newly added roms would show up by default, but could be blocked if deemed non useful.

Just a dream.

[TopJimmyCooks]

The way to do it would be with custom .dat files.  I. e. someone curates a "classics and playable" dat file and keeps it up to date as mame/rom revisions come out.  Then you could use it with a rom manager to keep your subset updated. 

currently I have a full mame 145 set of roms but no CHD's.  Very few to no errors with CLRMAMEPRO.  When I filter out bios, gambing, mahjong, mature with romlister I get ~5700 games on the list.  Still includes plenty of clones, not filtering those. 

What I'm saying is that if someone did a dat that kept the games subset and allowed the rest to be deleted, and with reasonable assurance that it would be updated with full Mame releases, I would trim my full set.  Of course, my list filters chd's so wouldn't be desired by some with more happening cab computers.  Pleasing everybody with something like this is challenging, but I think doable. 

[nitz]

Pleasing everybody with something like this is challenging, but I think doable. 

It's very doable...and I don't think it would even necessarily have to be updated with every mame release if the user simply keeps up to date on catver.ini.

Actually this is pretty much what RomLister does, though I'm not sure if it can generate dat files for rom managers or not.

It's been ages since I've messed around with a rom manager. TopJimmyCooks, if you want to post a typical dat file from CLRMAMEPRO or whatever, I'll think about doing an ahk script that lets the user check off which categories of games they want to keep in a little gui, and then have a dat file generated based on that. Although if someone confirms that RomLister does this, then I don't think I'll bother.

[MacGyver]

I created a modified tiny.lst, tiny.mak, and tiny_dev.lst and modified it the best I could, and fixed the issues that stopped it from compiling (fixed is not the right word for what I did to make it work).  I can tell you going this route is a pain (for a non-programmer like me), it does give you a mame.exe that knows ONLY about the roms you want, but it takes FOREVER to deal with the dependencies for the various drivers in the .mak file.  I created it mostly to create clean .dat files from mame.exe. 
Really what I created was an "Enthusiast version" of MAME, Only playable Roms, no porn, and only 1 from each of the clones (the most current playable version), I removed all the "(version 3.1) (US)" crap from the names, kept a few of the fruit and a mahjong or two, I kept clones if they were different enough (Green Beret, Russian Attack), with no nags from a 0.145 source.  It had to be done by hand as no combination of filters can replace the complex reasoning of a human (I tried filters, but "clone" is very subjective, some of the clones were unique enough to warrant keeping, while some unique games were just clones but on different hardware, but still not listed as a clone, and filtering "playable" and "no clones" when the parent is broken but a clone works gives you no version of the game at all, there is no setting for "no clones unless parent isn't working"). 
I would consider normal vanilla MAME to be more of a developer version (or historical-reference version), as a normal person doesn't care about having and playing 6 versions of any one game (300 in the case of those mahjong games). 
I was looking for a way to make a version that only lists the ones we "bother with", so there is no question. In the end the list was about 3600. 

[g_block247]

Found this list: http://www.retroroms.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=35952  when I was farting around a few months ago...older list, but still...

Only a few games that I personally would event bother with if I had a really good MAME setup. Anything been added since that list?

[TopJimmyCooks]

MacGuyver:  Would you consider having somebody else playtest that build?  Like me? Because that's exactly what I was talking about.  You did it by hand, but it could obviously be used to produce a mame.xml that could be used to trim down full sets. 

[MacGyver]

No problem, It would make more sense to just send you the .lst and .mak files (the rest of mame source is stock and hi_145, then it's just a matter of re-compiling with "SUBTARGET=ARCADE", 1k vs 60mb
The lst file is perfect, but like I said, the .mak is dirty (I am not skilled at anything c, more like a monkey with a typewriter), I would be interested to see if someone with real knowledge can fix some of the issues I "fixed" to make it compile.  The creating of the .lst file is what took sooooo much time, happy to share.

[TopJimmyCooks]

I appreciate it, I'm not in a good position to do anything with it right now, now that I think about it seriously.  I'm switching to pinball mode for the summer. 

[Howard_Casto]

Pleasing everybody with something like this is challenging, but I think doable. 

It's very doable...and I don't think it would even necessarily have to be updated with every mame release if the user simply keeps up to date on catver.ini.

Actually this is pretty much what RomLister does, though I'm not sure if it can generate dat files for rom managers or not.

It's been ages since I've messed around with a rom manager. TopJimmyCooks, if you want to post a typical dat file from CLRMAMEPRO or whatever, I'll think about doing an ahk script that lets the user check off which categories of games they want to keep in a little gui, and then have a dat file generated based on that. Although if someone confirms that RomLister does this, then I don't think I'll bother.

I'm not willing to do it atm.. (too much other stuff to do) but I can tell you how to do it and do it so that it's dynamic.
The key of course is listxml.... it has all your rom checksums are in it and afaik both romcenter and clrmamepro allow you to convert listxml into a dat. 
What you do is generate a full listxml, and then write a program/database to filter off stuff.  Here are some things that might help:

Chd:  Most of the file sections contain only rom nodes (<rom name=blah....></rom>)   If a game has a "disk" node, then it's a chd game.

Mechanical:  They have a "ismechanical=yes"  right up in the name node.  Why this isn't done for chds I dunno. 

Bios:  They have a "isbios=yes" entry up in the name node.

Unplayable:  If the driver node has a "status=preliminary"  value then it's unplayable.  You can further filter off any imperfect games by removing anything without a "status=good"  value, but keep in mind even some classics are imperfect (in other words they use samples). 



You also have a year value, so you could easily make a "classics"  listxml by only looking at roms prior to 1983 or something.  Then of course there is the catver.ini as you guys were talking about.  It's very useful but I would reccomend against using it as anything more than a guide.  I've been around since catver version 1 and let me tell you, every time somebody else takes over the project, the cats change and what genre a particular game falls into changes depedning upon the author's opinion.  It still works great for filtering  (software) but it probably isn't the best tool for rom managment (deleting files). 


I hope some of that is useful to you.

[MacGyver]

Here you go TopJimmy,

A pretty well pruned rom list with 3606 roms. (could use a second set of eyes though)

Hyperspin Mame.xml (1of2) http://pastebin.com/FWd65kcc
Hyperspin Mame.xml (2of2) http://pastebin.com/yr0sdSxb

arcade.lst http://pastebin.com/KikCLnH3
arcade.mak http://pastebin.com/bC5WAJjD
arcade_dev.lst http://pastebin.com/bpCj02SM

I made the list with 0.141 originally, so you will need to add anything in between. I use the Mame.xml with a vanilla Mame, but the MameArcade.exe was to deal roms better, still a work in progress.  As you can see in the .lst and .mak files I had "problems" with some of them, and just lazily commented out the offending drivers (like I said, I do not code, and would appreciate any help to make it compile without the ugly comments) (some of the commented out are Dice and Daphne roms that won't ever run but are there because I'm lazy, they are detected by a .bat file that Hyperspin launches)

EDIT:
I forgot to add that you need to copy the "arcade" to the mame folder of the 0.145 source (where the tiny.lst and mame.lst are) then compile with "make SUBTARGET=ARCADE". You may need to clean compile, I did.

[nitz]

The key of course is listxml.... it has all your rom checksums are in it and afaik both romcenter and clrmamepro allow you to convert listxml into a dat.
What you do is generate a full listxml, and then write a program/database to filter off stuff.

Good to know. I've actually already got ahk code for parsing the xml for another project I've been tinkering with, so half the work on this aspect is basically done.

Then of course there is the catver.ini as you guys were talking about.  It's very useful but I would reccomend against using it as anything more than a guide.  I've been around since catver version 1 and let me tell you, every time somebody else takes over the project, the cats change and what genre a particular game falls into changes depedning upon the author's opinion.  It still works great for filtering  (software) but it probably isn't the best tool for rom managment (deleting files).

Yeah, I've kinda wondered about catver.ini at times, because sometimes it does seem a little off the mark. I figure I'll make use of it, but with a disclaimer or something.

I'm gonna go ahead and make this. No promises, but I'm gonna try to fit it in this weekend. I don't think it'll be that difficult, it's just finding the free time to do it. I'll start a new thread when it's finished.

[Howard_Casto]

Cool man.  I think it would be very useful.  I know I would appreciate it. 

About catver.ini....  I think it's flaw is that it isn't very structured.  The authors just make up some categories and when they find a game that doesn't fit well into one they just make a new one up!

That is all well and good, but the catver.ini doesn't include a list of all the possible cats, nor does it include a detailed description of each category.


For example..... if I were to define Final Fight as a "Brawler" many people would be confused.  That sounds like it could be some sort of boxing game, or anything involving a fight really. 

If I include a file that lets you look up "Brawler" then it's a different story.  I would give it the following definition.

=================================================================================================
Brawler:

A type of game popularized in the early 90's.  In a brawler, one or more players travel across a level (usually psuedo-3d but can also be 2d) using a variety of melee attacks to defeat several waves of generic enemies often ending with a fight with a over-sized "boss" character at the end of each level.  Fighting is the focus of this type of game.  There may be guns or minor platforming involved, but the main focus is combat with the waves of enemies. 

Notable examples of this genre are:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Final Fight
Bad Dudes
The Punisher
================================================================================================

It still isn't crystal clear, but if you give a little more info then users can get a general feel of what you are talking about. 


Also there are too many cats.  Last time a checked there are 4 or 5 sub-types for street fighter style games.  Really?  You think people are going to want to divide their list THAT much?  Also the distinctions don't make a lot of sense.  There are 3d fighters, 2d fighters and psued-3d fighters.  The distinction doesn't need to be made because in each case you are dealing with the same camera angle.....  those are just cosmetic differences.  On the other hand, some games with different control needs and gameplay differences are often lumped together.


Not complaining, just critiquing. 

[beast8812]

Is there anywhere I can get a step by step guide of how to games that need CHD's to work.  I have downloaded numerous roms that work with no issue, but when it comes to games that need chd's I can never get them to work.  I download the rom and the chd, now what do I do?  Ive tried just putting the chd in the rom folder and that hasnt worked. Any help is appreciated, but it's gotta be idiot proof.  A lot of the stuff talked about in this thread is complete foreign lanaguage to me. I am using mame and hyperspin.

[BadMouth]

Is there anywhere I can get a step by step guide of how to games that need CHD's to work.  I have downloaded numerous roms that work with no issue, but when it comes to games that need chd's I can never get them to work.  I download the rom and the chd, now what do I do?  Ive tried just putting the chd in the rom folder and that hasnt worked. Any help is appreciated, but it's gotta be idiot proof.  A lot of the stuff talked about in this thread is complete foreign lanaguage to me. I am using mame and hyperspin.

the chd has to be in a folder with the same name as the chd, then that goes into the rom folder
after that, it works the same as any other MAME rom

[Howard_Casto]

Actually that's not true anymore!

The chd's folder has to be named after the zip, but other than that all bets are off. 

I currently have my chd folders in c:\mame\chds\ and my roms in c:\mame\roms.  You no longer have to extract the contents of the zip and place them in the chd's folder.  Of course you need to properly setup the folder paths in your mame.ini, some people neglect this setup and expect their fe to magically do it for them.

Actually you don't even need the chds in a folder anymore, but rom mangers will complain and they aren't always named after the zip, so it's less confusing that way.

[beast8812]

Actually that's not true anymore!

The chd's folder has to be named after the zip, but other than that all bets are off. 

I currently have my chd folders in c:\mame\chds\ and my roms in c:\mame\roms.  You no longer have to extract the contents of the zip and place them in the chd's folder.  Of course you need to properly setup the folder paths in your mame.ini, some people neglect this setup and expect their fe to magically do it for them.

Actually you don't even need the chds in a folder anymore, but rom mangers will complain and they aren't always named after the zip, so it's less confusing that way.

How do you setup the mame.ini. What do I need to add, and where do I need to add it?  Even attempting to change these settings is new to me.  Trying to set all this up to work properly is the most computer work i've ever done.

[Howard_Casto]

Don't take this the wrong way, but the first thing you need to learn how to do in regards to emulation is get familiar with editing text files.  Nearly every emulator out there saves it's settings to some sort of text-based file and there are always some settings you have to go into the text file to edit.


first off, mame doesn't come with a ini file, you have to create it.  Type "mame.exe -cc" at the command line once you've navigated to mame's folder.  A mame.ini will appear inside your mame folder.  Every time you upgrade mame you should run this as well... it will automatically add new settings to your existing ini.

Anyway, open up your mame.ini with notepad.  Towards the top you'll find a "rompath" entry that looks like this:

rompath          roms

This sets the rompath to "roms".  You can add as many additional folders as you want by adding them to the line spearating each with a semicolon. 

So to add a new folder just for chds, change the entry to read:

rompath          roms;chds

Now mame will look in the "roms" folder as well as the "chds" folder.

[luckyluca]

i found this thread very informative.

i'm writing my own mame cleaner to remove unused chd folders and ROMs from my Hyperspin installation.

i analyse the listxml name file for game dependencies.
I wanted to ask if by keeping all cloneof romof and disk name files for each game  it would be enough to ensure i preserve all needed files. or might I be missing any other tag?

[keilmillerjr]

Cool man.  I think it would be very useful.  I know I would appreciate it. 

About catver.ini....  I think it's flaw is that it isn't very structured.  The authors just make up some categories and when they find a game that doesn't fit well into one they just make a new one up!

That is all well and good, but the catver.ini doesn't include a list of all the possible cats, nor does it include a detailed description of each category.


For example..... if I were to define Final Fight as a "Brawler" many people would be confused.  That sounds like it could be some sort of boxing game, or anything involving a fight really. 

If I include a file that lets you look up "Brawler" then it's a different story.  I would give it the following definition.

=================================================================================================
Brawler:

A type of game popularized in the early 90's.  In a brawler, one or more players travel across a level (usually psuedo-3d but can also be 2d) using a variety of melee attacks to defeat several waves of generic enemies often ending with a fight with a over-sized "boss" character at the end of each level.  Fighting is the focus of this type of game.  There may be guns or minor platforming involved, but the main focus is combat with the waves of enemies. 

Notable examples of this genre are:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Final Fight
Bad Dudes
The Punisher
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It still isn't crystal clear, but if you give a little more info then users can get a general feel of what you are talking about. 


Also there are too many cats.  Last time a checked there are 4 or 5 sub-types for street fighter style games.  Really?  You think people are going to want to divide their list THAT much?  Also the distinctions don't make a lot of sense.  There are 3d fighters, 2d fighters and psued-3d fighters.  The distinction doesn't need to be made because in each case you are dealing with the same camera angle.....  those are just cosmetic differences.  On the other hand, some games with different control needs and gameplay differences are often lumped together.


Not complaining, just critiquing.

I agree. I have no idea what most those categories are. They need more normal names. Not everyone who likes arcade machines is a video game nerd.