Another newbie with big plans

[Cheetah]

Hey! I stumbled across emulators a couple weeks ago, hadn't even realized they existed...So now I'm pretty much hooked on the idea.

My computer fried on me a few weeks ago, and I ended up replacing almost everything in it, motherboard, cpu, psu, and hard drive..So pretty much all of the major components. I realized after buying a new cpu and motherboard that Best Buy's diagnosis was wrong, or at least not entirely correct. After replacing the other parts, I tested it out and my old mobo/cpu still function flawlessly (AMD Athlon XP 2300+ I believe, but don't quote me..haven't seen the name of it since I bought it so many years ago )

So the idea came down the pipeline to rig a home theater PC, store DVDs on the hard drive(s), have my MP3 collection more accessible than getting up to scroll through my iPod's menus looking for a song, have PC games right there...then I found emulators, so they've become a neccesary addition in my eyes, as of now I'm thinking only SNES and N64 and possibly Colecovision if I can find a good emulator, as I never personally owned any other older systems.

Mostly I think I'll be here for hardware help, maybe finding a few ROMs, but from everything I've read this place seems pretty helpful, I hope I can bring something to the table that isn't here just yet

 

[-=VampyR=-]

maybe finding a few ROMs

...errr forget about that...read the rules.

Anyway...WELCOME !

 

[Cheetah]

Heh, yeah...I read that post just after making this one...Understandnable for sure :thumb_up:

 

[alcoatjez]

Welcome to the forum and enjoy your stay! I would suggest you should also check MAME, the best arcade emulator out

 

[Cheetah]

I've been looking at MAME a bit, but holy hell does it seem complex! Looking at the torrents I'd end up running 14+GB through a few torrents to get up to a recent version...I don't understand how/why I can't just get the most recent version and go

 

[Phantom69]

if you are mainly interested in arcade why not just stick with an emu like kawaks or nebula ?
or r u lookin at other systems that mame emus aswell

 

[alcoatjez]

I've been looking at MAME a bit, but holy hell does it seem complex! Looking at the torrents I'd end up running 14+GB through a few torrents to get up to a recent version...I don't understand how/why I can't just get the most recent version and go

MAME is just a couple of MBs. If you want a full MAME set, you'll be talking about 47GB (including CHDs now). If you just want to play some games, just download MAME and the games you want. They range from several kb to more than a GB, both most of them are under 100MB.
Good luck

 

[cloud4004]

I'm with Phantom69. Forget about Mame, use Kawaks...

 

[Cheetah]

I'm with Phantom69. Forget about Mame, use Kawaks...

I'll check it out...I never was big on arcade games...Just a few I'd like to play so I have no need to get every last game out there. Mame seems extremely complex, trying to figure it out the other night it didn't take me long to get to the point where I wasn't able to even absorb what I was reading anymore...

What about how the updated sets (or whatever they're called) have redone versions of a certain game, and you're supposed to use clrmamepro to update them...And a bunch of stuff about needing bios and and CHDs, etc, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about better than I do right now, but do you need to make those updates, I mean..Obviously you'll run fine, the updates just make it run smoother or more stable, but do you get a new ROM, do you have to update the files you already have, etc? I'm pretty confused by the entire mame category..

 

[-=VampyR=-]

To me Mame is way easier than Kawaks or Nebula.
Those are CPS1/2 NeoGeo emulators...but there are way more games Mame emulates.
Cheetah,what games would you like to play ?

 

[Cheetah]

Arcade games, I have to have Rampage , and I was always into the light gun games like Area 51, and the classic arcade fighters like street fighter and mortal kombat, NFL blitz, assuming my computer will handle it (not likely, it's going to be 1.3-1.5ghz), and driving games that it surely won't handle like Rush...Like I said, I was never huge into arcade games...I was usually on the pinball machine or pool tables

 

[-=VampyR=-]

As i can see YOU NEED MAME not Kawaks/Nebula.
Don't worry LA Rush is hardly going well on the latest PC's...

 

[Cheetah]

Yeah, I'm kind of getting into it with the mindset that if I can find it in an arcade today, my machine will probably refuse to run it

Are the ROMs hard to keep track of with MAME? Just with all the updates and everything, and considering the typically less than legal nature of them, it's kind of hard to find a website with any difinitive information about the roms rather than MAME/MAME32..

 

[-=VampyR=-]

The ROMS don't change with every mame as you may think.Only some games.
Rom sites usually have their roms updated.If you have Google you'll find any rom you want.
The emulator works even with one game it's not necessary to have the complete mame set (47GB).

 

[Cheetah]

Yeah, I hadn't planned on getting a complete set, if I would have had to in order to run a few games, I'd have turned around right then heh.

I'm just seeing a lot of stuff about updating versions with clrmamepro and such. I wouldn't expect every rom in the directory to be changed every time there's an update, but it seems quite complex.

Say I were to get the rom and anything else required for NFL Blitz, and it was later updated...Am I safe to assume websites will update the full rom, updated, so I could just get a whole new rom (the updated version of the same rom I guess) instead of getting the update files and using whatever program I may need to patch the one I already have? Since I only want a few games it's kind of sketchy as to if I want to dive into arcade emulators or not...So I'm hoping it's at least a little easier to handle than I'm thinking it is haha.

 

[-=VampyR=-]

It's easier than you think.When I first got into emulation (mame) I didn't need any help...figured out myself in 10min.

 

[Cheetah]

Well, maybe I'll just download mame32 and see what I can do...Only issue then is controllers :\ lol. Thanks for clearing up what you have at least, I would've been ten steps behind where I am!

 

[-=VampyR=-]

Hit TAB when in-game to set up your buttons/keys.

Thanks for clearing up what you have at least, I would've been ten steps behind where I am!

No problem.