Wolf_

SentaiBrad said Well they're not specific to the Genesis Plus GX, but I assume since you are using that you're on RetroArch because that doesn't exist for PC standalone otherwise, so your issue isn't with that but rather RetroArch. I covered All of the Sega consoles up to CD in a tutorial on our channel. I would give that a watch to see if that helps. You can get there by clicking the link in my signature below all of my posts. I've watched it about 5 times (Make that 6 because I watched it again before replying to be sure) but sadly it doesn't really answer my questions. I still don't know why the "optional" bios are optional (I would assume those features simply wouldn't work, and yet the SMS works without the bios so perhaps they are optional because they do nothing, but if that is the case then why does the Sega CD not work without the bios?) And when you added the files it only shows the .cue files so your audio could be in .ogg format or something so I don't know if my roms are supported or not. (This happened to me before with neogeo roms which turned out to have a special ragex formatting to them and wouldn't play in mame) Lastly you were just like "I got these bios but can't talk about where/how I got them" which is fine because laws, but you didn't give us any information about which sega cd bios you used or how you set them up. Like which version of the bios you obtained and what files you renamed to what.

Hi, I'm having a hard time setting up my Sega CD emulator and had a few questions, any help would be greatly appreciated. 1) MasterSystem Eu Bios, MasterSystem US Bios, MasterSystem JP Bios, Sonic & Knuckles bin, Sonic & Knuckles UPMEM bin, action replay pro bin, and ggenie bin are listed as "optional" bios. What impact does having/not having them make? 2) I can't get Genesis Plus GX to play my Sega CD roms, does it accept .cue files for iso files with the audio split into mp3 files? 3) I obtained the Sega CD bios for all 3 regions and properly renamed them but I'm not sure if the versions were all the same release or if they were correct. Will that have any impact? Or better yet without breaking any forum rules could any one point me in the direction of a Sega bios pack with the optional bios included? I tried googling "Sega Genesis Plus GX Bios pack" but it didn't give me any worthwhile results.

Btw, for the mame retroarch core, can you get it to emulate the same as mame standalone if you put your systemlist in the system folder or something like that? Edit: figured out the problem with the NeoGeo roms, they were in ragex format. That was my bad but I did not expect an emulator to require its own special format.

Antropus said Spend some time reading the Mess manual, specially the part about cartridge emulation: http://www.mess.org/mess/howto#cartridge_emulation -cart applies to systems with a single slot. -cart1, -cart2 etc applies to systems with multiple slots, like the NeoGeo MVS, which is a multi cartridge system. So yeah, -cart1 is correct and works for me. Not sure why you are trying to run .cue files. If you downloaded the Software Lists pack, CD rom and HDD based games are saved as CHD files and those are the ones you should be using. I thought you were the one bringing up that this wasn't a competition about what emulator was better, but rather just needed help to make those systems work in Mame? I didn't mention those systems run better in Mame than any other emulator. I did say it surprises me how well they run in Mame though, completely playable at full speed mostly, so definitely worth testing :) I will say that those systems are working quite nicely, probably not the best emulation out there, but really nice and VERY promising indeed. Mame has an extensive collection of emulated chips for arcades and a lot of those components were used in consoles as well. It's a just a matter of time before the puzzles are put together and custom chips are emulated until Mame becomes completely accurate in their emulation. Things are definitely moving faster now under the Mame umbrella! I did say that which emulator is best is off topic, but as you were talking about it first I just thought I should let you know those systems are not perfect yet and better ones exist before you expect them to be on the same level and encounter a problem. (Also for the RetroArch fanboys I wanted to point out a few things RetroArch does better than mame (currently) so they would be less likely to hunt me down irl and "maim" me.)

Antropus said One more CD system for you to test: Playstation One! Man, Mame came a long way. The emulation is not perfect, but it's pretty damn good! Just played some 2D games: King of The Fighters 99 and Gunbird and they both ran at full FPS, with music and all! I also tried Burnout, which is a 3D game and it ran fullspeed as well. I'm gladly surprised! Command line: mame64 psj -cdrom GAMENAME Turns out cue files do not work (both my cd-i and turbocd) so I guess I'll need to re-import the main files? idk if I can do that though because some have split audio. Also my neogeo games get to a screen with bars on it after the popup and then fail to do anything, are you sure it is "-cart1"? And just a heads up but nonmame lists the genesis plus gx core as the best emulator for the sega cd, as well as the Mednafen psx core being best for ps1.

Antropus said I think I discovered how to make TG16CD work, as well as Saturn and Mega CD. Apparently you need to load a cart and a cdrom in the parameters, informing the bios as the cart and the CHD/Iso as the cdrom. I'll do some tests tonight. -Kris That makes sense! I forgot about the cart required for cds in the turboduo. Interested to see how that is coded.

On topic: Massive thank you to @Antropus for that incredibly detailed guide, as well as @weltall I just need a bit more help finding the Default Command-Line Parameter for the TurboGrafx-CD in mame. I tried tg16 (without -cart) and it didn't work. Also I use .cue files for those roms so will that work? Off topic: @weltall about mame cores vs retroarch cores - I never claimed mame was completely perfect, in fact I even pointed out retroarch is able to run several cores that are better than mame without mucking them up (also there are other cores mame doesn't even have). However the systems I listed for mame are from their 100% perfect emulation list as documented by http://nonmame.retrogames.com/ who do extensive testing and reviews. @DOS76 I chose to invest the time into figuring out mame because eventually all the systems currently in retroarch (or anywhere else) and other emulators will be supported by it. Mame is coded by a group of ocd perfectionists and simply has higher manpower, update frequency, and accuracy than anything else out there. I would love to one day only have a single emulator that does everything and mame is the only thing that even comes close right now. It is certainly closing in on RetroArch very rapidly for the cores they both support. In the next couple years it will almost certainly support all but maybe the past 3-4 console generations to near perfection. Also posting about your personal feelings is completely off topic in a "how can I do this" thread. It is like someone asks how to plug a bullet wound and you say "well in my opinion being stabbed is much more preferable". It is completely off topic and not helpful. As is then complaining you are being censored. If you want to talk about what emulator you like... make a thread for it in the relevant forum (not the noob help forum, in a post asking for help). @lordmonkus I'm not a troll, I was just asking for help setting up an emulator and asking people to stay on topic so I could get the help I needed without wasting time in a fanboy war that might take up hours out of my day, make it even harder for actually helpful people to post decent info, and possibly get my thread locked without me getting any help.

lordmonkus said Wolf_ said For some reason absolutely 0 documentation exists on the entire internet (seriously I've been through multiple pages of google and youtube results and no guides for it exist) This is the precise reason why we told you to use Retroarch, there is no documentation around to get stuff up and running outside of arcade games. There is plenty of documentation for other, better emulators so no one is gonna go through the extreme hassle that is console emulation through Mame. Now having said that I have spent some time getting some stuff running through the stand alone MESS and basically you need the right bios files in the right folder and you need to have the rom paths setup for your console games. Once you get that setup it should be good to go. Keep in mind this is just my experience with getting MESS to do the X68000 stuff. You dont "NEED" to emulate these consoles through Mame, you may want to but there is zero need for it since far better emulators for every one of the systems you mentioned exist. Easier is not the same as better. Mame supports literally thousands of systems, RetroArch has a few cores to it. That isn't to say RetroArch doesn't do some things the best, or on par with the best, but Mame is far superior. Mame has teams of programmers working on it to update it very frequently. RetroArch has one guy stringing programs other people built together into a big patchwork quilt which normally works fine but fails in several cases. Such as the RetroArch ppsspp core which is several updates behind the ppsspp standalone and sega saturn core which has increased latency over the standalone. While RetroArch is fine at being an all in one for most of the systems it offers Mame is far superior because it has better support, natively runs the systems, has more developers, and will eventually catch up to RetroArch in the systems it is not perfect at. RetroArch is simply more noob friendly which is why people use it even though in many cases it is a tradeoff in performance for increased ease of use. (Also despite a few RetroArch cores being on par with the Mame ones Mame is still a better option because it will continue to grow in other areas and RetroArch will at best just add more cores until it can't support them anymore like the ppsspp or dolphin emulators) If you have any other questions/off topic comments feel free to research on your own.

I would like to know how to do it with mame though. I just need to know what it takes to get mame up and running. For some reason absolutely 0 documentation exists on the entire internet (seriously I've been through multiple pages of google and youtube results and no guides for it exist) yet I really need to set up mame. I don't want to get into a debate about which is better but this is the setup I'm using, please stay on topic or just don't post.

Hello, I am attempting to use mame to emulate: Nintendo Game Boy Nintendo Game Boy Advance Turbografx-16 Turbografx-cd CD-i Neo Geo Atari 2600 Sega Game Gear Sega Genesis Sega Master System and Wonderswan Except it does not work for most of those consoles. I have downloaded a mame bios pack and am running the latest version of mame so I was wondering if anyone could just tell me where to put the bios as searching google and youtube yielded literally 0 results that explained where to put the bios or what names/file types they require to be recognized by mame. Also for use with launchbox is it fine to just list the path to mame64.exe for the emulator or do I need to specify which core/plugin/bios/whatever mame uses for each system? Thanks again for taking the time to make this excellent and user friendly front end and answer questions!

SentaiBrad said You can either add the folder as roms or DOS games and use the Bulk Edit wizard to remove the need to use an Emulator or DOSBox. If you add them this way you can also remove the emulator or DOSBox check box when you edit a single game. Conversely, in the bottom right hand corner is an add button where you can manually add anything you want. Ah, took me a few seconds but I figured out that what you meant was to change the game status from "imported rom" to "good". "Good" is a bit vague on what that setting does but I got it going with my first guess thanks to your help. All is well now =p

In my gaming collection I have several visual novels which are basically pick your own adventure books in .exe form. So I was wondering if anyone could tell me an easy way to get those working with launchbox. I can add the .exe files to a folder easily enough but it still requires me to add an emulator for them and won't launch them. I was thinking maybe I could make a .bat file that would could just be told to start the exe that is fed to it or something? Heck maybe I could even try using explorer.exe. Anyways I'm off to bed now and will fool around with trial and error stuff after work tomorrow, but if anyone knows off the top of their heads that would be very helpful as I'm still very new to launchbox.