Tafoid

A snippet that was overlooked: "Not mentioned in the executive summary, Ville Linde has made some big improvements to the driver for Rolling Extreme, a street luge game from Gaelco. He's got more coming for 0.237, too."

MAME 0.236 The big event of the day is here! MAME 0.236 is ready for your enjoyment! Sadly, this month marked the passing of Sir Clive Sinclair, who it could be argued did more to put computers into the hands of everyday people than anyone. There’s a small update to MAME’s ZX Spectrum software list in this release. The effort to dump and preserve protection microcontrollers is still going well. This month’s additions include Juuouki and Wonder Planet. Protection simulation has been removed for Wonder Planet and Space Harrier. Remember, this is a worthy cause that provides multiple benefits: it improves accuracy by taking guesses out of emulation, helps people maintain and repair ageing arcade boards, and simplifies MAME’s code. MAME’s NEC PC-8001 now supports floppy disks. The PC-8001 and PC-8801 software lists have been reorganised to match, and a big batch of items from the Neo Kobe collection have been added. MAME continues to improve its NES/Famicom cartridge coverage. There are a whole lot of games you can play now, including Chinese RPGs, fighting game bootlegs, and pirate multi-game cartridges. Experience a parallel universe of software of such inconsistent quality that you can’t stop going down the rabbit hole! Saturn emulation has seen a few improvements, with several games that didn’t boot previously reaching playable status this month. As you might expect, the FM Towns, PC-98 and V.Smile software lists have been updated as usual. A couple of recently dumped prototypes have been added to the SNES and Game Boy software lists. The SpongeBob SquarePants Jellyfish Dodge game has been dumped and emulated, and a Korean version of Sotsugyo Shousho known as Jor-eop Jeungmyeongseo has been found. More pleasant surprises include working emulation for the IDE protection dongle included in Killer Instinct 2 upgrade kit, and some fixes for Atari 8-bit home computers using the ANTIC video chip. For people with more exotic tastes, MAME has added its oldest working software list additions: Munching Squares and Punchy for the MIT TX-0. There’s also a new disassembler for the DEC VAX architecture. In more mundane news, you can now reduce the proliferation of duplicate ROM sets for families of similar keyboards and other devices. Of course, there’s lots more going on, and you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.

https://docs.mamedev.org/_files/MAME.pdf That is the only one we have right now AFAIK

MAME 0.235 What’s in store with MAME 0.235? First of all, the lost unencrypted version of Rafflesia has resurfaced, ending a long saga! A genuine copy of Bubble Buster, an early North American version of Puzzle Bobble, has been found, and a prototype of Tecfri’s Sauro known as Sea Wolf has been dumped. This release includes an update to BGFX and fixes for the long-standing issues with YUV decoding, so LaserDisc games can be played with BGFX shaders. Konami Viper emulation now has sound support thanks to Windy Fairy, and a big batch of unlicensed multi-game cartridges for NES/Famicom are now playable. As usual, the Apple II, FM Towns and PC-98 software lists have been updated with the latest dumps. You can find out about all the updates in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.234 Hi everyone! After four busy weeks, MAME 0.234 is ready! Newly supported systems include Runaway (a licensed version of Sega’s Head On made by Sun Electronics), Konami’s Magical Twin Bee (the European version of Twin Bee Yahhoo!), and Tronica’s LCD hand-held Spider (same program as Space Mission, but with different artwork). Although it was added last month, VS Mahjong Triangle is now working. This is a rare early example of a mahjong game supporting two simultaneous single-player games, or a two-player game – a format popularised a decade later by Psikyo’s Taisen Hot Gimmick. There have been two significant sets of improvements for 3D arcade games this month: rewritten 3dfx Voodoo Graphics emulation, giving significant performance gains in many cases, and continued development on Konami’s ZR017 and GTI Club hardware. Although not directly related to 3D graphics, bug fixes for the Fujitsu TGP DSP make Motor Raid more playable. We haven’t forgotten 2D arcade games – Namco racing games have seen another round of fixes for missing or incorrectly positioned sprites, and missing sprites are now drawn in Data East’s Chanbara. For home systems, our friend kmg has been hard at work adding support for pirate NES/Famicom cartridges, and Brian Johnson has fixed a couple of video issues on the Epson QX-10. Kelvin Sherlock added support for the LANceGS card, providing another networking option for Apple II users. You can read about everything that’s been going on in the whatsnew.txt file, and the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

We don't control the MAMEUI Windows-based MAME that people have been accustomed to over the years. That said, you may be confused to the fact that MAME no longer produces binaries that are NOT 64-bit. Any MAME binary produced/released from the official site from 0.218 onward as been 64-bit only. As well, starting in 0.229, the "64" suffix was dropped so all binaries are produced as simply "MAME" Therefore, the newest MAMEUI won't show the 64 - but will be a 64-bit binary.

MAME 0.233 Are you ready for MAME 0.233? With dozens of reported issues fixed, over a hundred pull requests merged, and a flurry of development across all areas, our mid-year release is huge! Some of the more interesting machines added this month include several prototype JAKKS Pacific TV Games, the elusive English version of Namco’s Armadillo Racing, and the LCD hand-held game Space Mission from Tronica. There are lots of new Apple IIgs and Macintosh software list items, tying in nicely with the recently improved emulation of these systems, as well as an update to the Colour Genie collection, and a massive haul of MicroBee floppy dumps. A few more Mattel Juice Box cartridges have been dumped, allowing you to marvel at the poor-quality, 6 frames-per-second video. Significantly improved systems include the Atari Portfolio, Tandy MC-10, and Tandy VIS. Carl has continued to work on Japanese home computers, and Ville Linde is back this month, bringing a batch of updates for the Konami Hornet platform. Juno First, The Tin Star, The Empire Strikes Back have all had bugs squashed, and some of the last remaining regressions from the Yamaha FM synthesis rewrite have been resolved. David Haywood has turned his attention to bootlegs of games including Final Lap 3, Guttang Gottong, and Alien Storm. This release includes preliminary sound support for the Super A'Can console. On the topic of sound, some Yamaha synthesisers have been promoted to working, and MAME can now play back standard MIDI files to exercise machines that take MIDI input. There are several general usability improvements in this release, including updated Chinese and Greek translations, better configuration handling for slot devices, and a few small enhancements to the built-in user interface. Issues with artwork using SVG and Windows DIB (BMP) images on ARM/AArch64-based Linux systems should also be fixed. As always, you can find much more detail about all the action in the whatsnew.txt file, and the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.232 It’s time for MAME 0.232, and do we have a surprise for you! The incredibly rare Universal game Mrs. Dynamite has finally been found and dumped! This is an early example of a game where you place bombs to kill enemies that walk over them, showing Universal’s flair for cute characters and cutscenes. Mrs. Dynamite is believed to had performed poorly on location tests, and never had a widespread release. The graphics in the version that has been dumped don’t match what’s shown on flyers. Other arcade additions include Dokaben 2 and a prototype of Spinal Breakers. Namco racing games have taken a leap forward this month. Final Lap has its sprite chip hooked up subtly differently to later games on the System II platform, which had been causing graphical issues on the title screen. Lack of playback status register emulation in the C140 sound chip was causing issues with engine sounds in Final Lap, Suzuka 8 Hours, and Four Trax. The horizontal position of the road layer has also been adjusted to better match videos made using original hardware. A number of bug fixes allow previously unplayable Japanese home computer games, including µPD7220 issues affecting the Madou Monogatari games on PC-98, the missing 1-bit DAC sound on PC-98, broken sprites in Asuka 120% Burning Fest. on FM Towns, and background bugs on Sharp X68000. Mac media support continues to improve, with working CD-ROM drives on more Macs, and fixes for high density floppy drives. The V.Smile Smart Keyboard is now supported, in US, French, and German variants. Tim Lindner has continued to fix long-standing bugs in Tandy CoCo 3 emulation. Software list additions include Taiwanese Game Gear cartridges, Master System prototypes, a big batch of software for the Australian MicroBee series, and quite a few add-on ROMs for the Acorn BBC Micro. We’ve also got the latest Apple II floppy dumps and cracks, FM Towns floppies and CDs, and PC floppies. You can read all the development activity this month in the whatsnew.txt file, and the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are right there on the the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.231 MAME 0.231, our April release, is out now! The Yamaha FM synthesis rewrite is progressing, with the OPL family (including YM2413, YM3526, YM3812, YMF262 and Y8950) done this month. A number of regressions reported against the previous release have also been fixed. Most things should be improved, but if you notice something wrong with a system using one of these chips, be sure to let us know. Warp-1, a very rare Sun Electronics game from the late ’70s, has been added this month. This is an early example of an “into the screen” space shooter. For as long as it has been emulated, the “3D” stages in Contra have been too easy. This comes down to the functionality of the Konami 007452 chip, which Konami calls a VRC&DMP. Now we know that VRC stands for Virtual ROM Controller, and controls ROM banking. However, the DMP part has been more of a mystery, assumed to be some kind of protection. This month, furrtek worked out that it’s apparently some kind of Divide/Multiply Processor, for 16-bit maths operations that would be unacceptably slow on the games’s pair of 6809-family CPUs. The great news is the game now runs correctly, the bad news is you’ll probably die a lot more. David “Haze” Haywood is back this month with fixes for several arcade games that have never been quite right. He’s fixed graphical priority issues in SNK’s Beast Busters and Mechanized Attack, improved timing in Seibu Kaihatsu’s Shot Rider, and corrected layer offsets in Mitchell’s Funky Jet. He also added support for a couple of protected Mega Drive bootleg games from Argentina. Recently, David has been streaming MAME gaming sessions, often highlighting under-appreciated games. You can watch the recorded streams on his YouTube channel. Still on the topic of things that have never been right, sasuke has been busy this month. He’s improved the Nichibutsu 1412M2 DAC playback rate and timer period calculation, most noticeable on the Mighty Guy soundtrack, and made Taito’s unicycling game Cycle Maabou playable. That’s all we’ve got time for here, but you can read about all the additions, bug fixes, and enhancements in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.230 Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for MAME 0.230! There are big changes this month, but before we get to that, let’s highlight some of the more routine additions. Several TV games featuring adaptations of popular Hasbro board games are now supported, as well as a couple of VTech systems featuring Dora the Explorer. Several electronic toys and handheld LED game from Mattel and Invicta have been emulated this month. There’s a big update for the Apple II software lists this month, with clean cracks of lots of educational software from MECC. If you’ve been following along with development, you’re no doubt excited about the new Yamaha OPM/OPN (YM2151, YM2203, YM2608, YM2610, YM2610B, YM2612, and YM3438) sound emulation core. This addresses numerous subtle and not-so-subtle issues, particularly in Sega and Data East games. Windy Fairy and Jennifer Taylor have continued to improve MAME’s support for Konami rhythm games, making beatmania IIDX, Beatmania III, Keyboardmania and ParaParaParadise games playable. Thanks to Happy, a couple more graphics issues with the Hyper Neo Geo 64 have been fixed. There’s been a lot of work on the Apple IIgs and 68k Mac drivers this month. As well as the flood of machines promoted to working, Apple 3.5" floppy support has been revolutionised, and improvements to ADB GLU microcontroller simulation make the IIgs control panel usable. On the console side, save EEPROM support has been fixed for several Mega Drive games. Of course that’s not all, and you can read about all the additions, bug fixes, and enhancements in the whatsnew.txt file. You can get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page and start playing. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.229 It’s been an eventful month, culminating in the release of MAME 0.229 today. One change that you’ll notice straight away is that the “64” suffix is no longer added to the file name for 64-bit versions of MAME. If you’re unsure, you can see the data model at the end of the window title. One very elusive Argentinian title has finally made it into MAME this month. We’ve very proud to present Ms PacMan Twin, an extensive hack of Ms. Pac-Man with simultaneous two-player cooperative gameplay. Another rarity you can now experience is Midway’s unreleased Power Up Baseball – the NBA Jam of baseball. On the topic of prototypes, Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey Fatality Edition is now supported. Several TV games for preschool age children from JAKKS Pacific’s Sharp Cookie line have been dumped and emulated, featuring popular characters like Dora the Explorer, Scooby-Doo, Spider-Man and Thomas the Tank Engine. Travelling back a little, Mattel’s representations of Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, and Tag as electronic toys are now supported. Elektronika Autoslalom has arrived from Russia (with love). Another batch of JPM IMPACT fruit machines have been promoted to working this month, making use of new artwork engine features for their internal layouts. Updates to the Win32 and Qt debuggers add a context menu to debugger views with an option to copy visible text to the clipboard, improve behaviour when views are scrolled to the bottom, and fix a crash when right-clicking some memory views. We’re lucky enough to have received another shader update from cgwg, improving the appearance of the popular crt-geom and crt-geom-deluxe effects. We’ve added support for the NEC/Renesas V850 family to unidasm. That’s all we’ve got time for here, but there are lots of software list updates, newly dumped bootlegs, bug fixes, and other enhancements that you can read about in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, you can get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.228 Has it already been an entire month? It must have been, because MAME 0.228 is ready today! We’ve added support for two very rare arcade games this month. The first is Namennayo, an overhead-view obstacle course game making unauthorised use of Satoru Tsuda’s Nameneko characters. The second is Get A Way, an overhead-view racing game made by Universal, touted as the “first game in the world to feature a 16-bit microcomputer.” Universal went on to create the much loved Mr. Do! character. Emulation is preliminary – while the game is playable, there are some graphical issues, and sound is absent. In other arcade emulation news, Windy Fairy has made a triumphant return, bringing numerous fixes for issues affecting Bemani rhythm games running on System 573 hardware. Thanks to the persistent efforts of David “Haze” Haywood, various fruit machines from JPM are starting to become playable in MAME. Interestingly, these machines rely on similar Brooktree RAMDACs to NCD X11 terminals, and Motorola DUARTs used by numerous other systems emulated in MAME. A complete dump of the type 01 program for Zaccaria’s Cat and Mouse has finally been obtained, making both known versions of this obscure game playable at last. For hand-held consoles, the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color have had an overhaul, and Game Gear X-Terminator cartridges are now supported. Several Bandai RX-78 cartridges have been dumped, exercising more aspects of the emulation and allowing several shortcomings to be fixed. We’ve also made some progress on emulation Apple’s floppy drive controllers, providing a path to support for SuperDrive high-density floppy drives, and eventually the HD20 external hard disk. There’s been plenty more happening, including a new LCD shader from cgwg, all the latest FM Towns software dumps, fixes for recent regressions, and more code modernisation. You can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, and get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.227 It’s time to say goodbye to 2020, and we’re doing that with the release of MAME 0.227, the fruit of our extended November/December development cycle. A lot has happened in these two months, in terms of internal improvements to MAME as well as user-visible changes. If you’ve been following along with development, you’ll have noticed that we’ve migrated MAME to C++17, overhauled the Lua interface, further streamlined and enhanced the emulated memory system, and cleaned up a lot of ageing code. MAME 0.227 adds preliminary support for macOS on AArch64, also known as “Apple Silicon”. Please note that we lack a native A64 recompiler back-end, and there are some issues with our C recompiler back-end. If you’re running an A64 build of MAME, you can disable recompilers for most systems that use them with the -nodrc option on the command line. You may get better performance for emulated systems with MIPS III or PowerPC processors by running an x86-64 build of MAME under Rosetta 2 with recompilers enabled. (Yo, ’sup dawg. I heard you like recompilers…) Lots of long-standing issues have been fixed in this release. Missing platforms in stage 15 of Sega’s Quartet now appear properly. This relies on a protection microcontroller feature that we were previously unaware of. Protection features that are only used late in the game have been a recurring source of frustration not just for emulator developers, but also for arcade bootleggers, and even publishers re-issuing old games in new formats. It seems Sega missed this feature in their Astro City Mini release. Another long-standing protection issue was fixed this month that made Atari’s Rampart impossible to complete on Veteran difficulty. This one was actually a regression that managed to stay unresolved for years, possibly because the game’s high difficulty makes it difficult to reach. While we’re on the topic, protection simulation has been added for the versions of Sega’s Carnival that run on Head On hardware. While protection emulation may encompass the most noticeable fixes, lots of other things that have been improved as well. Graphical issues have been fixed in Chase Bombers, Championship Bowling, and Prop Cycle. NFL Blitz ’99 no longer skips animations in attract mode. DIP switch descriptions have been corrected in 3-D Bowling, Bloxeed and Mahjong Tenkaigen. Game switching now works on Multipede, and Klax bootlegs are playable, with working sound. It wouldn’t be a MAME release without new supported systems. This month we’ve got TV games from dreamGEAR, JungelTac, LexiBook and Senario. As always, the quality varies enormously. New versions of 1944: The Loop Master, Cookie & Bibi 2, F-1 Grand Prix, Forgotten Worlds, and Narc have been found and dumped. One of the newly supported Narc versions is particularly interesting, as it appears to be an early test version, lacking a substantial amount of content found in other versions of the game. Another incomplete copy of Unico’s Master’s Fury was found, which could be combined with the previous incomplete set to make the game playable. Finally, there are a few improvements to the internal user interface. There are more controls for screenshots, aspect ratio and scaling accessible from the Video Options menu. You can now use NOT codes when assigning analog joystick axes to digital inputs. The menus for the Cheat and Autofire plugins have been made more consistent. Of course, there’s far more that we don’t have space for here, but you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, and get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. It’s been a very tough year for a lot of us, but it’s still been a great year for MAME development. Thanks to everyone who contributed this year, even if it was just a kind word or helping out a user on a community forum. Have a great new year, and keep the spirit of digital preservation alive! Read the rest of this entry »

In case you may have missed it, the release of MAME 0.227 has been delayed and will not happen at its normally targeted interval (last Wednesday of each month). Read more about the reasoning and explanations HERE

I haven't first hand tried to use this functionality - but discussion and examples of such can be found in this thread https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=108050 There are some good examples of producing printed product via emulation.

MAME 0.226 You know what day it is? It’s MAME 0.226 day! A lot has happened in this development cycle, and plenty of it is worth getting excited about! First of all, there’s a change that affects all systems with keyboard inputs, including most computers. MAME now allows you to activate and deactivate keyboard and keypad inputs per emulated device in the Keyboard Mode menu. When a system has multiple keyboards (for example a computer with a terminal connected to a serial port), you can choose which keyboard you want to type on rather than effectively typing on all the keyboards at once. If a system has multiple devices with keyboard inputs, MAME will start with only one enabled by default. Sadly, MAME doesn’t have mind-reading capabilities yet, so it may not always choose the keyboard you want to type on. If you find you can’t type on an emulated computer, check that the right keyboard is enabled in the Keyboard Mode menu. Another batch of layout/artwork system updates are ready this month. More image formats are supported, several long-standing alignment and clipping bugs have been fixed, more parameter animation features are available, and external artwork loads faster. Lots of systems using built-in layouts look prettier, but Cosmo Gang probably shows the biggest improvement in this release (yes, the electromechanical redemption game). Try it out in MAME 0.226, and maybe do a before/after comparison to see how far we’ve come. Apple II systems have seen some significant development this month. Firstly, a number of issues with demos using raster split effects have been fixed. The Apple II has no hardware support for raster effects, so these demos rely on open bus read behaviour to work out what the video hardware is doing. Getting this to work requires precise emulation of memory access timings. Secondly, two parallel printer cards are now working: Orange Micro’s popular Grappler+ and Apple’s Parallel Interface Card. The Grappler+ is well-supported by Apple II software and provides a better out-of-the-box experience if you want to try one of them. Sega’s Tranquillizer Gun was a somewhat ambitious title for 1980, but was largely overlooked at the time. It’s finally fully emulated in MAME, with audio emulation and protection simulation being added in this release. We’ve also added support for Must Shoot TV, an unreleased prototype developed at Incredible Technologies. Step into the shoes of disgruntled ITS Cable employee Chuck and go on a rampage! Far more has been added this month than we can cover in detail here, like another batch of TV games (including several Vs Maxx titles), support for Mattel Aquarius CAQ format cassette images, and working Sega Mega Play games. You can read all the updates in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.225 Whether it’s the Autumn harvest moon, or the ornamental plum blossoms are blowing in the Spring breeze, it’s time for something special: MAME 0.225 is out today! We’ve got some big updates that benefit everyone! First of all, MAME’s sound output system has been overhauled, with better sample rate conversion and mixing. This makes pretty much everything sound sweeter, but on top of that, the Votrax SC-01 speech synthesiser has been tuned up. Does anyone here speak Q*Bertese? SC-01 speech has been added to the Apple II Mockingboard card, too. While we’re talking about Apple II cards, Rhett Aultman has ported the CS8900A Crystal LAN Ethernet controller from VICE, allowing MAME to emulate the a2RetroSystems Uthernet card. Other across-the-board enhancements include more artwork system features (you’ll start to see this show up in external artwork soon), an option to reduce repeated warnings about imperfectly emulated features, and several internal improvements to make development simpler. Significant newly emulated system features include the Philips P2000T’s cassette drive from Erwin Jansen, the Acorn BBC Micro Hybrid Music 4000 Keyboard, internal boot ROM support for the WonderSwan hand-helds, and initial support for the NS32000 CPU. Newly emulated systems include several TV games from MSI based on arcade titles, a couple of Senario Double Dance Mania titles, Sun Mixing’s elusive Super Bubble Bobble, a location test version of Battle Garegga, a couple more versions of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and three more Street Fighter II': Champion Edition bootlegs. Some of the immediately noticeable fixes this month include 15-bit graphics mode refinements for FM Towns from r09, gaps in zoomed sprites on Data East MLC and Seta 2 fixed by cam900, Galaga LED outputs lost during refactoring restored, and clickable artwork remaining clickable when rotated. As always, we can only fit a few highlights here, but you can read all the updates in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.224 Are you ready kids? MAME 0.224 (our August release) is out now! As always, there’s plenty to talk about. First of all, the Magnavox Odyssey² and Philips Videopac+ G7400 have had a major overhaul, with many graphical errors fixed, most software working, and support for the Chess and Home Computer modules. The Gigatron 8-bit homebrew computer, created by the late Marcel van Kervinck and based entirely on 7400-series logic chips, is now working with graphics and controller support. Acorn 8-bit expansions continue to arrive, with several additions for the BBC Micro and Electron. Speaking of expansions, regular contributor F.Ulivi has delivered serial modules for the HP Integral PC and HP9825/HP9845 families. Analog arcade audio continues to advance. If you’ve played Namco’s Tank Battalion, ancestor of the NES classic Battle City, you’ll be acutely aware of the limitations of the sample-based audio. That has been addressed this month, with netlist-based audio emulation. For Midway, 280 ZZZAP sound has been further refined, and netlist-based audio has been implemented for Laguna Racer and Super Speed race, which use similar circuitry. Sega G-80 games have received some long-overdue attention, with netlist-based audio added for Astro Blaster, Eliminator, Space Fury and Zektor, as well as better Universal Sound Board emulation for Star Trek and Tac/Scan, and more accurate CPU timing. Other games receiving netlist-based audio are Destroyer and Flyball from Atari, and Fire One and Star Fire from Exidy. On the topic of audio emulation, the ultra low cost GameKing now has preliminary sound emulation, making the games feel more complete. Work on UK gambling systems has continued, with several more Barcrest, BWB and JPM games working in this release. There are also a number of new European gambling games, including several Cherry Master and Jolly Joker sets. A significant number of arcade driving games have had additional internal layouts optimised for use on wide aspect ratio displays added. Other advances in home computer emulation include Apple IIe RGB monitor mode support, Apple II CMS SCSII II card support, and proper emulation speed for the VTech Laser 500. As always, there’s far more happening than we have space for here, and you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

I think many people would be happy for any stable Jaguar solution. Currently flagged as NOT_WORKING, it actually has a decent handful of games which boot and perfectly playable among them being, my favorite, Tempest 2000. Apple IIgs actually is not flagged with anything determental and I can boot a game from the softlist when I recently tested it. It may not be perfect but it appears to be functional once you add the proper gameio slot device in menu. Atari ST/Falcon emulation isn't too far along. Supposedly there are CPU core reasons why things have not progress farther. You can keep track of status of things by viewing this links - MACHINE_NOT_WORKING

There is agreement that the built-in/internal UI isn't a perfect solution. Stuff has been added it the code that was original submitted was sort of crammed into the sourcecode and hasn't really been rewritten. In order to do so, it will take a lot of laying waste and rebuilding from the ground up which will no doubt carry along its own unique bugs. For most casual users, though, the current UI gives you a solid base from which to start your MAME journey and works well for many people. Sadly though, yes, a majority of the slider values that deal shaders as well as sliders related to use of CHEAT (over/underclocking of CPUs) are for various logistical reasons unable to be saved easily. The best way currently to deal with those shader settings is to adjust current screen, see your adjustments in real time and jot down on paper the new values, exit MAME, make the adjustments in your mame or machinename.ini file then restart to see them saved. You can view .ini/.cfg read order detailed in the MAMEDEV Docs and also see attempts to read for settings using -verbose command-line trigger.

Well, yes - 400MB of data (binary/symbols) is not an instant load the first time especially if you have MAME on an external USB drive or device. Successive runs once cached should be nearly instant to start. As far as options to make smaller binaries containing only desired machines, there is a "tiny" subtarget which only builds what is needed for support for the free ROMs listed at mamedev.org (those which are free for non-commercial use). You can also use the SOURCES= flag in your MAKE string to compile only certain drivers which contains, again, machines you wish to have part of the compile. As an example, you can opt to only compile neogeo games (neogeo.cpp). Pulling from the Batch File which is used by MAMEDEV to compile its integer binaries from, you can use the following MAKE assuming you have a proper environment set up to do so: > make SUBTARGET=neogeo TOOLS=1 SEPARATE_BIN=1 PTR64=1 OPTIMIZE=3 SYMBOLS=1 SYMLEVEL=1 REGENIE=1 -j9 SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/neogeo.cpp The only thing you'd need to likely adjust is where -j9 is and change it to match your system. Best way to come up with the j value to use is to determine amount of cores your have and add 1 - the compilation will use that many threads in an effort to do the job as quickly as possible. Please note that if in Windows, linking may take a LONG TIME to do, especially on 64-bit compiles. Hopefully this will give you a start. You can get more info at MAMEDEV

That's fair. For a lot of people the magic of being steamrolled by release after release of new arcade machines is pretty much gone. Periodically, a new prototype or something long known of but finally dumped will show up but mostly what is added in the arcade spectrum are different regions of existing machines and a fair amount of bootlegs. Other non-arcade targets allow for more magical moments as experienced by some with all the recent Game and Watch additions. Some computers in recent memory worked on are also finding a following such as the Sony NEWS computers, Sun Microsystems + SparcStation and Intergraph's Interpro/Interserve. It is nice to see you have targets for MAME which are not within its original "arcade" scope. Everything you've listed seems like a valid target for emulation and should be possible provided the data contained can be electronically dumped or decapsulated in some way. The TRS-80 Pocket Computers, as I understand, are essentially rebranded Sharp and Casio Pocket Computers. Many of those original models are in MAME but do not appear to be in a fully usable state currently. I'm sure over time that will change.

It is all part of the progress.. a dump of a machine is documentation. MAME welcomes anything that runs on a cpu or not. New and unique additions only add to the lure for many programmers to explore, learn and make the machines work in emulation. Apple 2/E/C Titles number 3400+ right about now with more added every release as they are being dumped and cracked properly and pushed to archive.org under "4AM Crack" and "Woz-a-Day" collections among others. MAME also often adds notable released prototypes as well for all consoles. Softlists are for helping the user experience by documenting software available and increasing use/testing cases. Not entirely sure why this needs to be a negative as they are not at all required unless you care to use them. My advice is to keep that glass half full rather than half empty.

MAME 0.223 MAME 0.223 has finally arrived, and what a release it is – there’s definitely something for everyone! Starting with some of the more esoteric additions, Linus Åkesson’s AVR-based hardware chiptune project and Power Ninja Action Challenge demos are now supported. These demos use minimal hardware to generate sound and/or video, relying on precise CPU timings to work. With this release, every hand-held LCD game from Nintendo’s Game & Watch and related lines is supported in MAME, with Donkey Kong Hockey bringing up the rear. Also of note is the Bassmate Computer fishing aid, made by Nintendo and marketed by Telko and other companies, which is clearly based on the dual-screen Game & Watch design. The steady stream of TV games hasn’t stopped, with a number of French releases from Conny/VideoJet among this month’s batch. For the first time ever, games running on the Barcrest MPU4 video system are emulated well enough to be playable. Titles that are now working include several games based on the popular British TV game show The Crystal Maze, Adders and Ladders, The Mating Game, and Prize Tetris. In a clear win for MAME’s modular architecture, the breakthrough came through the discovery of a significant flaw in our Motorola MC6840 Programmable Timer Module emulation that was causing issues for the Fairlight CMI IIx synthesiser. In the same manner, the Busicom 141-PF desk calculator is now working, thanks to improvements made to Intel 4004 CPU emulation that came out of emulating the INTELLEC 4 development system and the prototype 4004-based controller board for Flicker pinball. The Busicom 141-PF is historically significant, being the first application of Intel’s first microprocessor. Fans of classic vector arcade games are in for a treat this month. Former project coordinator Aaron Giles has contributed netlist-based sound emulation for thirteen Cinematronics vector games: Space War, Barrier, Star Hawk, Speed Freak, Star Castle, War of the Worlds, Sundance, Tail Gunner, Rip Off, Armor Attack, Warrior, Solar Quest and Boxing Bugs. This resolves long-standing issues with the previous simulation based on playing recorded samples. Colin Howell has also refined the sound emulation for Midway’s 280-ZZZAP and Gun Fight. V.Smile joystick inputs are now working for all dumped cartridges, and with fixes for ROM bank selection the V.Smile Motion software is also usable. The accelerometer-based V.Smile Motion controller is not emulated, but the software can all be used with the standard V.Smile joystick controller. Another pair of systems with inputs that now work is the original Macintosh (128K/512K/512Ke) and Macintosh Plus. These systems’ keyboards are now fully emulated, including the separate numeric keypad available for the original Macintosh, the Macintosh Plus keyboard with integrated numeric keypad, and a few European ISO layout keyboards for the original Macintosh. There are still some emulation issues, but you can play Beyond Dark Castle with MAME’s Macintosh Plus emulation again. In other home computer emulation news, MAME’s SAM Coupé driver now supports a number of peripherals that connect to the rear expansion port, a software list containing IRIX hard disk installations for SGI MIPS workstations has been added, and tape loading now works for the Specialist system (a DIY computer designed in the USSR). Of course, there’s far more to enjoy, and you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.

MAME 0.222 MAME 0.222, the product of our May/June development cycle, is ready today, and it’s a very exciting release. There are lots of bug fixes, including some long-standing issues with classics like Bosconian and Gaplus, and missing pan/zoom effects in games on Seta hardware. Two more Nintendo LCD games are supported: the Panorama Screen version of Popeye, and the two-player Donkey Kong 3 Micro Vs. System. New versions of supported games include a review copy of DonPachi that allows the game to be paused for photography, and a version of the adult Qix game Gals Panic for the Taiwanese market. Other advancements on the arcade side include audio circuitry emulation for 280-ZZZAP, and protection microcontroller emulation for Kick and Run and Captain Silver. The GRiD Compass series were possibly the first rugged computers in the clamshell form factor, possibly best known for their use on NASA space shuttle missions in the 1980s. The initial model, the Compass 1101, is now usable in MAME. There are lots of improvements to the Tandy Color Computer drivers in this release, with better cartridge support being a theme. Acorn BBC series drivers now support Solidisk file system ROMs. Writing to IMD floppy images (popular for CP/M computers) is now supported, and a critical bug affecting writes to HFE disk images has been fixed. Software list additions include a collection of CDs for the SGI MIPS workstations. There are several updates to Apple II emulation this month, including support for several accelerators, a new IWM floppy controller core, and support for using two memory cards simultaneously on the CFFA2. As usual, we’ve added the latest original software dumps and clean cracks to the software lists, including lots of educational titles. Finally, the memory system has been optimised, yielding performance improvements in all emulated systems, you no longer need to avoid non-ASCII characters in paths when using the chdman tool, and jedutil supports more devices. You can read about all the updates in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.