Do I need to unzip a game to play it?

[starfiretbt]

So I have always unzipped games I played when I loaded them in LB, however I downloaded a M.A.M.E. emulator and some kind of game collection including thousands of games all zipped. The games play just fine despite this. Is this because of the way M.A.M.E. emulators work and is it possible for LB to do the same?

[neil9000]

16 minutes ago, starfiretbt said:

So I have always unzipped games I played when I loaded them in LB, however I downloaded a M.A.M.E. emulator and some kind of game collection including thousands of games all zipped. The games play just fine despite this. Is this because of the way M.A.M.E. emulators work and is it possible for LB to do the same?

MAME roms MUST stay zipped or else they wont work.