Standalone Mame 0.169 versus Retroarch

[LMD75]

I have a nice collection of ROMs that are all zipped to .7z format and use BigBox with standalone Mame 0.169.  Is there any benefit in using BigBox with Retroarch instead?

I ran into issues with scanning my .7z rom files with a few different versions of the Mame cores such as Mame, Mame 2015 and Mame 2016. I.e. the scan process started then froze at 2%.  Is Mame 2015 the correct version in Retroarch for ROMs that work with Mame 0.169?

I think my roms are merged as they contain other folders.

Many thanks

[Headrush69]

If you have the standalone working fine, probably not much benefit.

You can get Retroarch's shaders, and overlay support, but MAME can do those as well on it's own.

For me, I just find native MAME can handle a variety of input devices, joysticks, keyboards, steering wheels, track balls, spinners, mice, etc, with a lot less work. As long as you have your ctlr file set up to keep device IDs static, it's quite painless.

You can always use both and use only specific games with one or the other. (For example to get alternate music for some games in MAME 2003+)

[Lordmonkus]

MAME 2000	MAME 0.37b5
MAME 2003	MAME 0.78
MAME 2003-Plus	MAME 2003-Plus (latest version)
MAME 2010	MAME 0.139
MAME 2015	MAME 0.160
MAME 2016	MAME 0.174
MAME (latest version)	MAME (latest version)

There is the RA Mame core versions and the rom set thy match up with.

[LMD75]

Thanks Headrush and Lord.I will stick with Native Mame 0.169 as everything just works.