Not sure what's up with MAME?

[KnightNight]

I'm new to both Launchbox and MAME, so to set everything up I went by these videos. 

However, none of the games seem to run. Whenever I double click on a game in Launchbox it shows a initializing screen, then shows the progress at either 59% or 79% before closing out of the initializing screen entirely leaving me in the Launchbox menu. I tried to run the roms on MAME itself, but that doesn't work either. They just show the error "The selected machine is missing one or more required ROM or CHD images. Please select a different machine."

I also tried adding some other ROMS I wanted to play (Marvel Superheros and Marvel VS Capcon 2 New Age of Heros) these also didn't work. I also got them from CoolRom.com. 

Edited October 26, 2018 by KnightNight

[voicesinthedark]

30 minutes ago, KnightNight said:

I'm new to both Launchbox and MAME, so to set everything up I went by these videos. 

However, none of the games seem to run. Whenever I double click on a game in Launchbox it shows a initializing screen, then shows the progress at either 59% or 79% before closing out of the initializing screen entirely leaving me in the Launchbox menu. I tried to run the roms on MAME itself, but that doesn't work either. They just show the error "The selected machine is missing one or more required ROM or CHD images. Please select a different machine."

I also tried adding some other ROMS I wanted to play (Marvel Superheros and Marvel VS Capcon 2 New Age of Heros) these also didn't work. I also got them from CoolRom.com. 

Some MAME game require both the ROM and a CHD file so it all depends on which games you're trying to do. I would suggest grabbing a copy of a game that you know doesn't require a CHD (something like frogger is a great one) for testing to make sure you have mame set up correctly. 

With the games that require CHD files you need to have it in it's own separate folder with the same name as the actual rom.

Also if you're using a MAME romset and not just getting the individual roms make sure the mame set is for the same version of mame you're using. 

[neil9000]

Also to add here, it's not recommended to grab random roms from sites, as you likely don't know what romset they come from, which is very important. Games can and will break from one version of the MAME emulator to another if you are not using the correct rom version for that version of MAME.

Also those two videos you linked are not what you should be following, those are for full romsets which you don't have as you have some handpicked games, what you followed only works with a complete full set. You will need to use the old import method of Tools/Import/Rom Files and follow that wizard,the MAME fullset importer wont work for you.

As for the particular games you mention not working, Marvel Superheroes is a cps2 game so will need the qsound file as well, which was recently changed the way it works so likely wont work with your rom if using the current version of the MAME emulator, you will simply get missing files errors. As for Marvel Vs Capcom 2, that is likely a Naomi or Model 1/2 game which will likely need a CHD file and if it is one of those platforms games they don't work in MAME anyway as they are similar hardware to the Dreamcast and will need to be run in Demul not MAME.

And finally, depending on what romset type the games you got came from it is also likely that you are missing the bios files required. Each hardware board has a bios that it needs to run, so cps 1, cps 2, neo geo etc all need a bios to run the games, they may be included in the rom zip depending on the type of rom you have, but could just as likely not be, so that would also cause missing files errors, as the bios is required.