MAME Neo Geo speed ??

[JoeB]

A while ago there was talk of how to increase the speed of neo geo games in MAME.

I'm running with a 2.4Ghz machine, but there are some spots in Neo Games that it slows down.  Some people have commented that it's the way it was in the real arcade, and MAME is just emulating that behavior.

Well.. for me MAME is better than the real thing in this respect.. so how does one go about speeding up Neo Geo games to the point that they play normally and never show slowdowns?

[paigeoliver]

You can overclock the processors, but that can have adverse affects on the games as well. In the end there isn't too much you can do, that is the way the games were made.

The real machines do it too, I have one.

[Tritoch84]

If you are talking about in parts like, say, when someone gets hit with a strong attack in some SNK fighters, the slowdown is for effect, and not slowdown. Alot of SNK games do this, but if you are not talking about this, then I have not had the slowdown problems you speak of.

[JoeB]

Here's an example of a slow down:

Play Shock Troopers 2nd Squad.  Right off the bat, when you see a car for the first time, shoot it.  Lots of bad guys all around tossing granades, etc.  The actual game play slows down!

Another example is when you play Magical Drop 3 with 2 players, and a lot of stuff is happening on the screen, the game starts slowing down.

Is this normal??

[DYNAGOD]

yea shock troopers does do that..
i have absolutely no problem with any of my neo-geo roms or their gamespeed, but i can attest to shock troopers being unusually slow..
i think its just the title(s) themselves.
these are questions that may be better answered on the mame forums.

[TalkingOctopus]

Here's an example of a slow down:

Play Shock Troopers 2nd Squad.  Right off the bat, when you see a car for the first time, shoot it.  Lots of bad guys all around tossing granades, etc.  The actual game play slows down!

Another example is when you play Magical Drop 3 with 2 players, and a lot of stuff is happening on the screen, the game starts slowing down.

Is this normal??

Yes it is normal.  It happens in a few neogeo games, including shock troopers, and metal slug 2, and double dragon.  The slow down occured on the actual neo geo hardware so this is faithful emulation.  You remove the slowdown by using the cheat.dat and overclocking the processors.  Enable cheats, run the game, press ` (the key that brings up volume control, gamma ect...) and cycle through the list until you find the processor speeds.  Increase it to 200%.   But as paige said, this may have some bad effects, and it is probably best to just live with the slow down.  It sure makes metal slug 2 easier.

[SirPoonga]

BTW, I use kawaks or nebula for neogeo, they seem to do a better job.

[KHAN]

 As many other members mentioned about these games (Metal slug 2, Magical drop 3,shock troopers 2)which are slow down in game at some places where a lot of action takes place in a particular time...this might true

BTW, I use kawaks or nebula for neogeo, they seem to do a better job.

Sorry SirPoonga but you are wrong as my point of view.

Kawaks or nebula for neogeo looks good , but they only run game fast .That
is not a very good emulation....
Mame execute these games quite nearly like original neogeo cassetes .
I am little more confident here because i am a very good player of "THE KING OF FIGHTERS series"
When i play kof2000 in nebula it was just fine i was not able to do as much i do in original SNK neogeo cassete board.
When i play it in Kawaks it was better then nebula and neorage,i was quite happy with it.
Mame was amazing to execute kof2000.I am not saying 100% but 95% currect.All moments,special attacks,Combos,Infinites made my self expert.

Thoughts are different of every person like the thumbs lines are different of every person  in the world.  

[Tritoch84]

I to am a huge fan of the KOF series, and I respectfully disagree! Mame is good for what it does, which emulate everything under the sun, but Kawaks runs them much more faithfully, (when run in standered mode with out fanct dithers, but 95% with them on if you have a good computer) and the controls are much tighter. As a person that has played many 2-D fighters   and is making a Cabinet with almost nothing but 2-D fighters on it, I have to say hands down that Kawaks does KOF, SamuraiShodown, Art Of Fighting, Fatal Fury, and The Last Blade ten times better than MAME could hope to, if for no other reason than the options kawaks gives you!

[Tritoch84]

Sorry, I'm an arcade 2-D fighting nut, I love everything from Street Fighter 3: 3rd strike, to Last Blade.

[paigeoliver]

Mame has neo geo emulation way more than 95 percent correct.

Any problems with you not being able to do combos are REALLY related to the fact that your muscle memory is trained for the joystick and machine you normally played them on. Your mame machine might have a different joystick, and might have the timing/speed a tiny teeny bit different, and thus you will need to retrain yourself for the mame cabinet.

[wboy]

All Neo Geo roms runs as expected on my PIII 866, running Win98SE.  I don't think your P4 should have any problems.  Yes, there is the noted slow down in games, but no dropped frame as such, meaning all is normal.  Overclocking the CPUs within MAME to 300% eliminates all slowdown on the same machine.

For those that have noted it, what are some of adverse affects on the games when you do overclock the CPU in mame?

[paigeoliver]

Oh, i didn't note any, I just said that there could be adverse affects. It really all depends on how the game is programmed. Since the games are programmed directly for the hardware, some programmers might use tricks that are going to not work right if you change the processor speed.

[Gunstar Hero]

The NeoGeo timing in MAME feels pretty dead on to me, and I own a NeoGeo AES (home unit), so I'm pretty tuned into my NeoGeo games.

[paigeoliver]

I own an MVS and also own the special Irritating Maze Neo Geo hardware as well, but I am not much of a fighting game freak, so I can't actually comment on the timing.