What frontend should i use?

[Yooyenkoo]

I'm pretty new to mame (as being in an arcade cab)... and i've been looking around at some of the front ends for mame that are out, and i've tried a few but i can't seem to get a few of them to work....

I want to make my first cab a 2d fighter only cab... so i'm wondering what is the best front end to use for mame?

[loadman]

We get these requests every so often and inevitably they turn into a FE war between the people who respond .

I say:
There is no best front end, only a FE that works best for you and your gaming needs.

1) Take a look a the Wiki
 http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Front-Ends
2) Try them all

If you still just want peoples opinions you need to give us more info as that will influence it.

EG
* What hardware are you running
* What type of Cab
* PC Monitor or Arcade

etc....

Have Fun 

[Buddabing]

Amen, brother!

[Havok]

I refuse to comment, and agree with that crazy Australian...

 

Oh wait, did I just comment!!

 

[headkaze]

I've been ignoring this thread hoping it will go away! 

[Circo]

Make batch file menus... BEST EVER!!!

http://http-server.carleton.ca/~dmcfet/menu.html 

[Havok]

Make batch file menus... BEST EVER!!!

http://http-server.carleton.ca/~dmcfet/menu.html 

Sweet! That brings back memories!!!

 

[spystyle]

I've tested a truckload of FEs and decided:

Mame32 is most user friendly

MaLa is best looking while still very intuitive

arcade.exe is good too

fastmame is my favorite command line mame

Cheers,
Craig

[FrizzleFried]

I run MAMEWah v1.62b12 in both my cabinets and MAME32 in my PC rig.   MAMEWah is a little daunting when you first start,  but is pretty spanky once you get the hang of it.   I think I may mess around with MALA some day ...

[spystyle]

Mala is so intuitive that anyone can set it up. I was impressed.

[quarterback]

I've used Mame32, MameWah, ArcadeOS and Mala.

IMO:
Mame32 is really easy and doesn't look 'bad', but looks like Windows and not an arcade machine
MameWah looks good, but is tough to set up and (in my experience) does buggy things
ArcadeOS... looks like DOS, nuff said
Mala looks great and is easy to set up 

I'm just upset that I spent so much time dicking around with other FEs before moving to Mala.  Based on my experiences, I thought all FEs must involve editing multiple .ini files and struggling through configurations.  Therefore, I resisted trying Mala presuming it would be as much of a pita as other FEs, but I was wrong.  Mala is way easy to set up.

[Funky_K]

I've tried AtomicFE, Mame32, Mala, MameWah, GameEX, and a couple others.

Although it takes a little more effort to figure out and get working properly, I have found MameWah to be the best for me.

...especially if you need a "tamper-proof" frontend.

[MYX]

Atomic Front End. I have finally gotten it working and have been able to explore it for a few days now. If you are a tweaker and you have the desire to make your own look and feel, this thing is so full of options it is sick. I was held up for quite a while because I have an Arcade monitor + LED Wiz + 2 Gp49Wizs and 2-49 way joys. This was not a problem for MAME32 but I did not want my front end to be windows. Plus MAME32 looks like crap at 640 x 480. With AFE you can build your own look like everyone else, but for the tweakers, you can animate backgrounds, add sounds to almost anything, add LED queues to just about anything, change opacity of things on the layout, and much much more...Once the initial set up is done you can just leave it alone and it will work just fine or you can mush it around untill your head blows up. And, you sort of get to learn french at the same time because little bits and pieces are not translated yet.   

[Kook]

I used Mamewah in my cab for over a year. Recently switched to Mala. I can definitely recommend Mala. The configuration is all GUI driven, so it really isn't difficult to setup, and it has lots of bells and whistles.