Intellivision and Mamewah - Nostalgia?

[markjen1]

Is anybody running an Intellivision emulator within Mamewah?

I have tried several emulators for Intellivision without a whole lot of success.  The best to date has been Nostalgia.  However I cannot figure out how to avoid Nostalgia's GUI.  I want to run the game directly from Mamewah.  Right now when I do, it runs Nostalgia and then I have to pick the game from there and run it again.

Does anybody know if this emulator can be used the way I want?

Any suggestions on a better emulator to use?  

I have tried MESS, but cannot get it running at all.  I have also tried Bliss, but games didn't run too well from this emulator.

Thanks,
Mark.

[arcadecab]

Mark,

I had this exact same question a few weeks ago.  I also tried several emulators and found Nostalgia to be probably the best overall.  I also use MAMEwah and I was finally able to get the roms to launch and bypassing the gui.  Mamewah launches emulators and roms through commandline so if the paths in MAMEwah are correct and if the four categories (Send rom path, Send rom extension, Use long names, show Dos box) are set right, "yes, yes, no, yes" I believe, the rom should load to full screen and no gui involved at all.  I works very nice with MAMEwah after it is setup.  If you cant get it to set up properly, I will try to answer your questions as it is still somewhat fresh in my mind since I did this a couple weeks ago.  Good luck and I think Nostalgia is a good choice with MAMEwah.

[markjen1]

I will check those settings as soon as I get home.  Thanks for the advice.

Another question...do I have to unzip the roms?  This is the only way I could get them to run in Nostalgia.

Thanks,
Mark.

[arcadecab]

Mark,

Not sure if you HAVE to, but I know that I did.  Just checked the other day and it works great.  Loads to full screen and absolutely no gui involved--great setup with MAMEwah.  Now if I could get my remaining two--Atari Lynx and Neo Geo Pocket to work well with MAMEwah, ie load to full screen and exit by escape key, I would be set.  Let me know if you have any further problems with Nostalgia and MAMEwah.

[Zapper]

arcadecab, I tried those MAMEWah settings but it gave a "Ddhelp - illegal operation". The machine it's running on uses Windows98 (not SE). I did manage to launch the program with a batch file from MAMEWah and exit back with no probs. The only way I could get it working was to choose refresh games list which launches Nostalgia

[GamingGreg]

You might look at the following (apparently some ex-Mattel programmers bought the rights to Intellivision [years after it died]):

http://www.intellivisionlives.com/download.shtml
http://www.intellivisionlives.com/retrotopia/direct2tv.shtml

There are a few free downloadable intellivision games there with some sort of emulator.  Not sure if that could be broken out or not.  They also sell CD collections of the games, and there's even one of those controllers you can hook to your TV (similar to others ones out there for Atari and Nameco games).

[GamingGreg]

Okay, I'm replying to my own post. (Yes, I must talk to myself a lot)  

It appears the ROMs and emulator are bundled into one EXE from that download page, so that won't work.

However they do sell most of the Intellivision games in a bundle (see here).  This doesn't include titles made by other companies for the Intellivision console, and it doesn't include titles that are based on movies or other arcade games (due to legal reasons).

Good Luck!

[Zapper]

Intellivision Lives is the golden oldie of Intellivision emus It's still worth the purchase for the historical stuff though. There was a patch released to use the emu by itself but campatiblity wasn't too good plus it's a bit slow. The new 25-in-1 gamepad is very tempting.

[markjen1]

I am now able to run my intellivision games perfectly thanks to arcadecab's advice...works like a charm!  And yes, I unzipped all my roms.

But, man have I lost my touch in Lock 'n Chase.  20 years ago, I was pretty good at that game.    I'll just have to practice some more.

Problem is going to be how to set up a CP to work with all of the button options.  Each controller has 12 keypad buttons plus the side buttons and joysticks...  It would take at least 32 dedicated buttons for a two player layout just for the two controllers.  Plus the layout would demand its own CP.  Anybody done one of these?

I am also working on putting together a collection of artwork (screenshots, overlays and boxes) for as many of the games as possible.


I do have the new 25-in-1 gamepad.  It is OK at best.  I don't see me using it too much.  I don't think the the games have the same "feel" as the originals.    Plus, no Lock 'n Chase.

[Zapper]

Ah, I have Nostalgia/MAMEWah running now on a different machine. My old version of Win98 must be the problem. I read a bit about the 25-in-1 gamepad, I guess those games are recreations, it might be worth it to try new versions of Astrosmash and Nightstalker. A few places sell Intellivision controller PC adapters, they're expensive and you would still need a real controller to use with it.

[EggZilla]

Actually, I have that 25 in 1 pad and it's not good. It's actually downsized NES (or SNES - I can't quite remember) hardware inside, running an emulator and lots of the games are just wrong - for example, there are far fewer aliens onscreen in Space Armada.

However, the PlayStation 2 collection they just released, called Intellivision Lives!, rocks. The games are emulated flawlessly, you can play the sports games single player now, and there's a metric ton of extra art, interviews with the programmers, and other geeky, museum stuff. And I think it's only about $20. And it's coming to Xbox sometime soon. Can't recommend that one enough.

-Eric

[Walkinshaw]

Glad I found this topic before posting.

Does anyone know the settings I have to use to be able to get Intellivision to run on Mamewah using Nostalgia ?

There is nothing really posted here and Im having a bastard of a time setting them up. I can get the games list but when I try and run the game the little square box comes up with loading but then just disappears and nothing happens.

Any pointers ?

I am running Windows XP Pro if its of importance.

Regards,
Adam

[Walkinshaw]

Well its good to work out how to do things yourself.

I worked out how to run Nostalgia through Mamewah without the GUI and straight into each game.

The main issue you need to check first is the extension of the roms. If you downloaded from Romshare then you will need to unzip them all. I got mine from Bittorrent and the file extension was .rom on each file They need to be .int for this to work in mamewah.

ROM File Extension = INT
List Generation Method = ROM Folder Only

Send ROM Path = yes
Send ROM Extension = yes
Long Filenames = No
Show Dos Box = yes

These seem to be the most important options ones.

Just a heads up for anyone else that might have the same romset as mine or for anyone who has the need to set Intellivision up in Mamewah.

Thanks