New to MAME...need help loading games...

[armour248]

Alright I'm not going to get in to the back story too much but basically I bought a 4 player NBA Jam TE cabinet about 2 months ago.  I've been toying with the idea of turning it into a MAME cabinet but haven't gotten around to it yet.  Today I figured I would at least learn how the MAME software works before I start looking into the hardware situation.

So, I downloaded MAME32 0.103.  I'm not even sure where I found it but I wanted a frontend rather than using the command lines.  I downloaded three games from [liNK NOT ALLOWED] Targ, Spectar and Robby Roto.  No problem there, all three games worked fine and showed up in my "Available" section of MAME32.   

Then I wanted to download some games from outside mamedev suchas Ms. Pacman, Galaga, NBA Jam, etc.  I found a few websites where I downloaded some roms but I can't get them to show up on my available games list.  I have them in the c:\mames32\roms folder with the three games that work.  I'm not sure what the problem is...

Any help really be appreciated...Thanks.

J

[nukedawg]

More than likely you may be missing BIOS files that many MAME games use. For example, if you see any NeoGeo games such as Metal Slug, King of Fighters, and may others use the NeoGeo bios files in a zip file and it should be placed in the same directory as the rom files.

Also you may have a clone of the original game in which some of the files have changed from the original. If thats the case, then many times, these clones do not include all the rom files from the original. You would need the original or what they call the Parent file and then if you had a clone as well, it would work since you have the parent as well.

A good place to check your roms your roms is to go to MAWS - http://www.mameworld.net/maws/

Near the bottom of each game is a list in the 'data' section that shows every file that that game needs. So open your zip file and compare what you have to what is needed.

Its really late, Im really tired and Im sure someone else could prolly make better sense than me, but good luck in any event

[unclet]

Did you try refreshing the game list or re-reading in the available rom images once again to see if the list updates itself.

[armour248]

I did refresh the gamelist but no luck

Could someone suggest some sites to get the roms from?  Maybe the one I was at was bogus...

Thanks for the help

[armour248]

maybe direct me to a working version of just like ms pacman or something and we can troubleshoot from there?  Thanks.

[armour248]

i did get some games off [liNK NOT ALLOWED] that worked suchas golden axe, nba jam, ms. pacman etc...but they are missing games like street fighter, mortal kombat, golden tee etc...

also, what do I need to do to speed up the ms. pacman game...it is amazingly boring at its current speed

Thanks

[NIVO]

do NOT post links to roms or roms sites. No discussion of HOW to acquire roms on this site allowed. Ask for help in getting mame running is just fine though. Thanks.

[nukedawg]

also, what do I need to do to speed up the ms. pacman game...it is amazingly boring at its current speed

Thanks

Not sure if you can speed up the normal version but there are versions of Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man that were the 'fast' versions, which I totally prefer over the normal speed. There may be dip switch settings that can be changed to allow it to go into fast mode but you would have to check as Im not in front my cab at the moment.

Hit the tab key and then go to dip switch setting and see if there are any settings, if not, you will have to locate the Fast version of the roms.

[Ummon]

I'm surprised everyone is missing the boat here. armour, read the help file within Mame32. Then go on over to the MameUI (was Mame32) main site and check out the faq, etc.  What you want to know is pretty basic.