MAME cheats, how do I get/activate them?

[Derek]

I was reading the Bagman thread, and they mentioned using cheats in MAME. What are these? Something you download? Something that is within MAME that you activate? The only ones that I ever encountered didn't work, the speed button that you could toggle on, on some versions of Ms. Pac for example, none ever responded. I'd like to try Bagman where you had at least a remote chance. The actual arcade game got one quarter from me back in 1983. I remember booting the game frustrated that Stern had come up with another good idea and ruined it by making it too !@#ing hard! Think: Lost Tomb, Tazzmania, Berzerk, another one with a Chopper and one pixel enemy fire which I can't remember the name of, but it was ruined by that! Who can see one pixel coming at you? That same feature took much of the fun out of Super Cobra, but at least that game was playable...

 

 

Anyway, someone please explain how to use MAME cheats on some of these more impossible games. It would be fun to play them instead of remembering only how pissed I was that an eighth of my two dollar a week allowance was eaten in seconds by some of these impossibly frustrating games. Thanks!

[Buzbard]

Go here and download the latest cheat file.

Instructions are on the site.

Open the downloaded file and unzip "cheat.zip" file into the same directory as mame.exe.

Create a "cheat" folder in that same directory.

Open "mame.ini" file in notepad and look for the following:

#
# CORE MISC OPTIONS
#
bios					  default
cheat					 0

 

change to:

#
# CORE MISC OPTIONS
#
bios					  default
cheat					 1

 

Start a game in mame then press the tab key.

You should see a menu with "Cheat" near the bottom.

Have fun!

Edited April 10, 2009 by Buzbard

[carmel_andrews]

Just to let you's now, you can no longer 'make' or 'create' your own cheats on mame, this has been the case since mame versions .127 uxx and later, as the person who wrote the cheat engine in mame is trying to rewrite it (so at the moment it is broken, i.e doesnt work) so you have to make do with the downloadable cheat file

Edited April 10, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[Moo]

How do you do it in mame0167b_64bit? There ain't no mame.ini for that.

[goldenegg]

From the command line, type 'mame -cc' to create the INI file.