Then, they post troubleshooting messages here confirming what we already know-they have the wrong ROM set-with misleading support for their decision like, 'well, it failed on game XXXX but game YYYY worked fine'. The danger is that someone reads this and starts to ignore the ROM set versions explicitly required by the emulator they have chosen.

Reporting results back here would merely confirm that a single game ROM may not have changed between ROM sets. This gets into some of the subtleties of how ROM sets evolve over time, but it is simply bad practice to knowingly use a ROM from the wrong set. Best of mitu says EXACTLY what I He means that using a ROM coming from another ROM set is not guaranteed to work, so testing the FBA roms with MAME2003 and reporting 'it doesn't work' is useless - since the wrong ROM set is used. The Pi is an educational device, after all, and with patience, you will have a lot of fun learning and configuring yours. Search the forum and read what others have written. Look, there are a lot of friendly people on the forums who have answered these kinds of questions repeatedly over the years and I occasionally jump in and answer a few myself, but this stuff is complicated and you won’t get all of your answers by asking common questions, as they have been asked before and documentation has been written. You need the right set for each one.įBA ROMs are just like MAME ROMS, but again, the sets differ. You cannot just use any rom and expect it to work in every emulator. Each emulator supports a specific rom set version, and while some individual titles may not change from set set, many do. The runcommand feature in RetroPie let’s you specify which emulator you run in a given system group, but the ROMs have to match. I am afraid you have a lot more reading to do. If so, lr-fbalpha is the obvious first choice and why it is the default. The standalone PiFBA for example is one that does not use retroarch, so you will need to learn more about retroarch to decide if you want those features.

This is why we have different ones available. Only games that these cannot play would have me looking to newer versions of MAME, but off the top of my head, I cannot think of you will need to read about the differences and decide for yourself which best suits your needs. NeoGEO games I would run using FBA (the libretro version) and the rest are on 2003 for me.

For example, anything with complex inputs, or until recently, vector displays, I would run these with AdvanceMAME. Many of us use the RUNCOMMAND feature of RetroPie and end up with a combination of multiple versions of MAME to run our games.

It is not MAME, but it has an ever-expanding romset that is beginning to rival 2003 in terms of features and game lists, so check that out too because performance is very good. You did not mention it, but by all means, do not ignore FBA. If you like the zfast CRT shaders and plan to run everything through handheld gamepads, RetroArch is your ticket, and MAME2003+ may be the best option. If, for example, you were building a three-trackball Rampart arcade cabinet, you are probably going to need AdvanceMAME to run it. No other MAME emulator on the Pi can match the input matrix flexibility of AdvanceMAME. If you want the most input capabilities and a slightly newer romset, I would recommend AdvanceMAME 3.x. If you want the most features and the most playability out of MAME on the Pi right now, you are looking at 2003 or 2003+. The feature updates on 2003+ are being replicated into 2003, so the real difference between them will be the additional games that are being back ported. It is fair to argue that the sweet spot on the Pi is lr-mame2003, with 2003+ adding some additional back ported games and features. Most of us are willing to sacrifice the nuances of emulation accuracy in favor of game playability, so it really boils down to performance vs. This means you end up needing to strike a balance between performance and emulation accuracy, or performance and rom coverage. The rule of thumb is usually that the newer the MAME, the higher the romset, but this requires a lot more computing power, so the LESS the performance. If you check the docs you quickly learn that there are many versions that span a pretty wide range of rom sets. Good question, and you are well on your way to finding your own answer with what you have already learned.

Best mame emulator for retropie