5 replies to this topic

[Ze_ro]

A while back in a thread on Dreamcast emulation, I mentioned that MAME on the Dreamcast doesn't work very well... Well, I finally managed to find one that works quite well indeed! This isn't really news, as the emulator has been around for a while, but I figure a lot of people probably don't know about it.

Anyways, it's called MAMED, and it's also available for some digital cameras. It actually supports tons of games, although many of them don't work for a variety of reasons. However, a lot of the early 80's games like Pac-Man work very well, even with sound.

Keep in mind that the Dreamcast only has 16 megs of ram... and this has to be divided between the MAME program itself, the emulator roms, and RAM for the emulated game, so many of the later games won't even fit into RAM, let alone play at a good speed. So don't even think about running Mortal Kombat. None of the CPS1 games like Street Fighter, Final Fight, Knights of the Round, etc work either. Amazingly, NeoGeo games do work... at least, those that can fit within the RAM limitations (Nam-1975, Andro Dunos, Baseball Stars, etc). In case you're interested, there's a whole site detailing various game compatibility issues. Keep in mind that this version of MAME is based on an old version of the source, so the roms you have for your shiny new 0.70 may not work. Check mame.dk for information on rom changes and such.

There are some other MAME ports out there that I haven't tried, such as MAMEDC (which looks good, but doesn't support as many games), and this one which looks like it supports CPS1 games. There's also a bunch of "single game mame" releases where people have fine tuned MAME to play a specific game. In these cases, people have managed to get games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vendetta, Simpsons, etc to work despite various problems. Unfortunately, my brother has burned a disk with these on them, and they're difficult to get running at a playable speed (You'll have to shut off the sound to have fun), so I haven't bothered too much with them. Unfortunately, I can't find any good links for these at the moment, but check out the DCEmulation message board and do a search to find some of them.

Anyways, that seems to be the state of MAME for the moment... For those of you who are still interested despite the problems, I highly recommend MAMED... Most of my favorite games such as Berzerk and Wizard of Wor are playable full speed with sound (with samples even... make sure you get those).

--Zero

[Brian R.]

I think I'm still running MAME .54 on my PC.

I'd love to have a version of MAME for my DC... would be nice to play the older arcade games on my TV instead of my PC monitor. Pac-Man, Frogger, Tapper, Galaga... tons I could list.

I'll check out that site at home, but I doubt I have the skills, equipment and/or software to do it right. Probably all I'd do is turn a bunch of CDs into coasters.

[Happy_Dude]

if Mamed accepted a 2nd ROM disc (like Nester does) I'd be all over it.
As it turns out I havent got a clue how to burn this damn thing as it comes in
Selfboot Disc juggler format I used cdi2nrg but I still cant get the friggin' roms into the image

[Ze_ro]

Yeah, it's a little tricky to burn... if you have access to a good Usenet server, you might want to check out alt.binaries.dreamcast, as a CDI image of MAME with about 1700 roms was posted in there a while back. It's probably gone by now though.

Inserting files into a cdi or nrg image is a pain in the butt. You can make a seperate disk for roms though, and I think that's what the point of the image on the MAMED site is. All you have to do is burn a disk with all your rom files in the /roms directory on the disk.

I did the whole mkisofs/cdrecord dance to get mine to work (self boot + roms on disk)... it pays to know your way around Unix commands

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

Oh, and you might want to try this self-boot kit that was made by HyperGamer... you get a nice menu out of it in the process. I haven't tried this method, but it's probably your best bet (I think it uses cdrecord/mkisofs, but it gives you step by step instructions)

--Zero

[Lemmi]

i got MAMED for the DC and it has about 2500 roms on it, many that dont work, and many more ive never seen or heard of

mine is on 3 disc's