Genesis games not running in MAME 176

[DrakeTungsten]

This is my first time running console games on mame, and so far my nes and snes games run fine, but I am having little luck launching genesis games. I am using mame 176 on 32-bit Windows XP.  This is the pre-compiled version from mame's site. I run it from the command line, with "c:\pathtomame\mame genesis -cart c:\pathtoroms\aliensoldier.smd" I get the screen with the driver information and the "hit any key to continue" prompt. I proceed to hit a key, and then it crashes with an access violation message and stack crawl.

Trying different things on the command line, I have managed to get a rom to work maybe one time out of twenty. I also have one rom which I have been able to get to work consistently, but only if I alternate each run by adding and then removing the -skip_gameinfo option on the command line. In other words, when I add the skip_gameinfo option it will run, but after I exit, it will crash on the next run unless I run it without the -skip_gameinfo option. And then it will only work again if I add the option back, etc... This craziness has only worked for one rom. As for the other one time out of twenty successful runs I mentioned above, they were also after changes to the command line, but those were one-offs, and alternating the change did not duplicate the success.

I see I do not have a genesis.xml in the hash directory, but from what I've read, these aren't necessary unless you want to use the official short names of your roms, which I don't care about. I'm not sure if that's true and maybe I need one? I do have a megadriv.xml file. I don't know if that's relevant when you specify "genesis" on the command line. I don't know what region my roms are for, but I have tried swapping out megadriv for genesis on the command line, with the same results.

All of my roms ran fine in Fusion. Any ideas?

[Titchgamer]

Just use a genesis emulator problem solved

[Tafoid]

This is my first time running console games on mame, and so far my nes and snes games run fine, but I am having little luck launching genesis games. I am using mame 176 on 32-bit Windows XP.  This is the pre-compiled version from mame's site. I run it from the command line, with "c:\pathtomame\mame genesis -cart c:\pathtoroms\aliensoldier.smd" I get the screen with the driver information and the "hit any key to continue" prompt. I proceed to hit a key, and then it crashes with an access violation message and stack crawl.

Trying different things on the command line, I have managed to get a rom to work maybe one time out of twenty. I also have one rom which I have been able to get to work consistently, but only if I alternate each run by adding and then removing the -skip_gameinfo option on the command line. In other words, when I add the skip_gameinfo option it will run, but after I exit, it will crash on the next run unless I run it without the -skip_gameinfo option. And then it will only work again if I add the option back, etc... This craziness has only worked for one rom. As for the other one time out of twenty successful runs I mentioned above, they were also after changes to the command line, but those were one-offs, and alternating the change did not duplicate the success.

I see I do not have a genesis.xml in the hash directory, but from what I've read, these aren't necessary unless you want to use the official short names of your roms, which I don't care about. I'm not sure if that's true and maybe I need one? I do have a megadriv.xml file. I don't know if that's relevant when you specify "genesis" on the command line. I don't know what region my roms are for, but I have tried swapping out megadriv for genesis on the command line, with the same results.

All of my roms ran fine in Fusion. Any ideas?

It is a sad/undetected side effect of changing GCC toolchain just before release.  There have been quite a few issues found with this change to 6.1.0.
http://mametesters.org/view.php?id=6326
The issue has since been fixed and current GIT can be compiled/working.  Otherwise use 0.175 or wait for next release on the last Wednesday of each month.

[Ginsu Victim]

MAME runs NES, SNES, and Genesis now?!? Man, I've been out of the loop...

[DrakeTungsten]

Thanks for the explanation, Tafoid.

[Robbbert]

Or use the MESS build from the MESSUI site. It was built with the older compiler, so it should work fine.

[Haze]

MAME runs NES, SNES, and Genesis now?!? Man, I've been out of the loop...

Yes, as of 0.162 (May 2015 release) all the MESS code was promoted to being a primary part of the MAME codebase and ships fully integrated into the releases.

Prior to that you could get the same effect using UME.

Makes sense really, because that's where the development is mostly these days.

MAME is a place for people to emulate whatever they want to emulate, it'll still run the arcade stuff, but it also does a whole lot more.  If somebody wants to emulate something (and it actually existed as a real thing) there are no barriers stopping them from doing so as long as they have the resources to do it (eg. ROM dumps etc.)

It's proven rather productive really, and sparked a bit of an interest in all kinds of pieces of obscure hardware that nobody considered emulating before. (eg the Atari Portfolio organizer thing, as featured in the movie Terminator 2) http://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=106760#Post106760

[DrakeTungsten]

It sounds like it's possible to still separate your executables into MAME-only and MESS-only versions. Is this right? My MAME game list is finalized (no, really) and all the arcade games I am interested in are currently emulated just fine, so if I could keep my current romset and matching MAME build forever, and still try MESS-only builds once in a while to take advantage of future console emulation advances, then that would be ideal. Yes, I can always use the current integrated build just for arcade games and future integrated builds for only console games, but that would bug me knowing that I unnecessarily had duplicated and unused functionality existing on my setup.