Understanding roms

[Zachmeadows51]

Okay, so I'm glad I found this forum and I'm not as much as a noob as I started, but I have to ask this question. Do all roms (mame, snes,neo geo, Atari 2600, ect.) work on mame, if not, what emulators work with what roms? I wanted mega man 4 on my mame, but I'm starting to doubt I'll be able to get it for mame.

[Zachmeadows51]

Okay, so I understand there are different emulators for different roms, but  can any cross over to mame? If not what are the best emulators to get for the different roms besides mame?

[nitz]

but  can any cross over to mame?

If you're asking, "Is it somehow possible for mame to play non-arcade game roms?", the answer is no. However, MESS can emulate many game systems and is based on the mame core, so it's sort of like having mame play all those other roms I guess. The problem with MESS though is that it generally has much higher system requirements than stand alone emulators, and lower compatibility in some cases.

If not what are the best emulators to get for the different roms besides mame?

Depends what systems you want to emulate, and it's a matter of opinion. Here are the best IMO for a few systems. By best, I don't mean most accurate but rather these are emus with high compatibilty that don't require a blazing fast PC to run.

NES - Nestopia
SNES - Snes9x
Nintendo64 - Project64
Playstation - ePSXe

Hope this helps.

[sandheaver]

Okay, so I understand there are different emulators for different roms, but  can any cross over to mame? If not what are the best emulators to get for the different roms besides mame?

If you want MAME-like emulation, MESS is what you want to look into.

but  can any cross over to mame?

If you're asking, "Is it somehow possible for mame to play non-arcade game roms?", the answer is no. However, MESS can emulate many game systems and is based on the mame core, so it's sort of like having mame play all those other roms I guess. The problem with MESS though is that it generally has much higher system requirements than stand alone emulators, and lower compatibility in some cases.

MESS is much stricter with what code actually gets accepted and merged.  MAME emulates FAR more systems than MESS, but the MAME code often was written with a "make it work, then make it accurate" type of progression.  This is not how they prefer it but a lot of things slipped in over the years.  MESS has always been much more accuracy-driven, and fortunately, now, that's spreading to MAME (they share the same codebase.)

MESS has support for fewer systems, but they're WILDLY diverse.  Graphing calculators?  Check?  Desktop PCs?  Check.  MIDI keyboards? Check.  NES, SNES, PSX, AES, C64, N64, Dreamcast, etc?  Check.  http://www.progettoemma.net/mess/sysset.php

[jeremy0203]

Check out this site. They list multiple emulators available for each system along with ratings for each.

http://www.emulator-zone.com/