Author: Zerodead
Foreword: If Mame is the overlord of arcade simulation, then MAME+ has the feeling of unifying the emulator world. In fact, according to many sources. Mame actually has a home machine driver, but it is hidden. On the other hand, MAME+ is still the first choice for most people because it supports multiple languages. This article will do my best to teach you how to use MAME+ players to play games on your console!
Please forgive me if there are any inconsiderations!
1. Why can MAME+ run console games?
Because mame+ integrates the drivers of two emulators, mame and mess.
Mess is a multi-model home machine simulator that includes many types. Like Mame, it is a "home machine database". Therefore, for players, many home machines or home computers may have never been exposed to it, and it does not make sense.
The advantage of mame+ is that it only selects the more mainstream home console and handheld emulators in mess. Other "antique-level" ones have not been added.
2. The importance and problems of mamepgui
Although it is a graphical interface, what you need to know is that this program is independent. That is to say, you can load any mame and mess and see the included driver through the graphical interface (for example, to update mame+, you only need to update the new one. The main program is enough, which is the program with the gray "M", and the blue M+ is the separate gui program). On the other hand, the gui supports 7z compression, which means that roms in 7z format will also be recognized. This is mainly because 7z is smaller than the usual zip and can save space.
As a separate program, mamepgui is currently upgraded to version 1.5.7. However, as the version is updated, no one fixes the program bugs. In the new version of mame+, you can see that a large number of CHD games have been included in the home console game list. This is just a bug in the gui.
3. Home consoles and handheld consoles supported by mame+
There are perfect simulations
Sega 5th generation: MD
Sega 4th generation: SMS
Sega handheld console: game gear
Nintendo handheld console: gameboy and some sub-series (GBPGBLSGB)
MSX/MSX2/MSX2+
SNK handheld NGP and NGPC
"Fake" perfection
neogeo CD
Imperfectly recommended running:
pce
Bandai Swan handheld console
Not perfect, not recommended to run
GBA
Super task
FC
(The reasons why it is not recommended and the reasons for "pseudo" perfection will be explained below)
teaching
1. Open mamepgui and click on the home machine folder
You can see that many home consoles do not exist, and some, such as the Sega 5th generation, come with them.
These home machines don't exist because they don't have bios. Yes, home machines also need bios, which is the same as arcade machines.
The bios of mess can be downloaded here: https://www.emunews.eu/mess-bioses/
After downloading, do not unzip and put it into the roms folder.
(Due to a bug in the gui, F5 may still show that it does not exist after refreshing, but as long as it is downloaded and placed in the roms file, it will already exist!)
2. Game rom
Players who have played home console emulators all know that a ROM is required to run home console games. Fortunately, the ROM of mess is the same as the ROM of commonly used home console emulators! !
There are two ways to run game roms. MD will be used as an example below.
(1) Load the cassette (rom)
Loading completed
It can be seen that the loaded game is Yu Yu Hakusho Demonic Unification Battle
After loading, just double-click the Japanese version of Sega 5th Generation.
(2) Directory setting: If you have trouble with this method first, you can also use directory setting.
Find the MD and set the game path (where the rom is)
Press F5 to refresh the list and double-click the corresponding game.
It can be said that all other games using cassettes as carriers can be run using these two methods.
Gameboy game screenshots (the light yellow color is so restored!)
NGPC game screenshots
Note: After running NGPC, you need to press "Q" on the keyboard because the button defaults to start (switch). You can play the game after setting the language and other settings.
MSX game screenshots (mame+ can also play Metal Gear Solid 2)
Note: MSX is a computer, so the computer keyboard and keyboard are the game control part, and the original shortcut key function of the emulator will be lost. For such games, it is best to use directory loading.
Sega 4th generation game screenshots
What’s very interesting is that the bios of the Sega 4th generation comes with a game (just run the Sega 4th generation directly after downloading the bios), which is Sky Castle
Sega handheld game screenshots
About "pseudo" perfection
A few days ago, I posted a message saying that 0.149 has a new neogeocd simulation function. Why is it called "pseudo-perfect"?
You can see from the list that the neo-geo cdz is green, but mess has had such a thing before. In the early days of mess and mame+, FC and GBC were both green, which is a perfect state, but in actual operation you will find that there are problems (not at all Perfect), and later both turned yellow again.
So this may also be the case with neogeocd, for the following reasons.
1. neogeocd itself is in red status, so neogeocdz as a clone may be affected by it
2. Through actual game testing, it was found that sometimes serious problems occur with the music of the game (turning into harsh noises!)
But if you turn the sound off the game actually runs very well, the textures are bug-free and the colors are correct.
The following is the teaching of neogeocd
1. Load the downloaded image
Note: Load cue index file!
Loading completed
Double-click neogeocdz to run. At this time, you can wait for the emulator to load the game by itself, or you can press the start key (the emulator defaults to the "1" key on the keyboard) to enter the interface shown below.
If you want to run the game, just move your hand to start to confirm. The reason why this item is shown shows that neogeo-CD has the function of a CD player, which means that in theory it can play CD songs. Since no good CD has been found, it cannot Do you know if the emulator has this feature?
Next you can enter the game, game screenshots
Note 1: The bios must be downloaded completely, that is, both neocd and neocdz must be downloaded, and 000-lo.lo in neocd must be added to neocdz.
Note 2: It is necessary to save in time. I don’t know why the game will sometimes force quit and display “out of memory”, and the progress will be lost. The archive needs to be saved and then exited to ensure that the save is successful (sigh... I hope it will be improved in the future). The poster replayed the game several times because he didn't save in real time.
Note 3: It is best not to have a Chinese name in the path, otherwise this problem will occur. Generally, it is best to put the simulator in the root directory of the drive letter.
About recommendation and non-recommendation
The reason why it is recommended is because the sound of PCE and Swan machines is not perfect. In theory, they can run smoothly after turning off the sound. But I haven't tried it, so I invite interested readers to give it a try.
Naturally, I don’t recommend it because the video is not perfect, and there will be sticker errors and so on. Interested readers can also give it a try
Other aspects:
mess also has its own set of peripherals, including artwork, icons, flyer, etc. These can be found at
https://www.progettosnaps.net/mess/
download. However, the current function of mess in this regard is not particularly ideal.
The teaching is over, here is the Q&A.
If you are interested in arcade culture and peripherals, you can join the QQ group 235564894-noise factory for further discussion. Please explain your purpose of joining the group. Thank you all! !