Where is a decent place to get MAME roms?

[Anthony1]

What I mean by decent, is a place where you don't get one million pop up ads, and where you don't have to sign up for something.

Also, what are the most impressive MAME games, in terms of, "I can't believe that I can play this game on a emulator!", type games?


Can the Sega Model 1 Arcade board games be emulated? Can you play a acrade perfect Daytona? Virtua Fighter? Virtua Racing?

[zektor]

Well, we have some goodies right here:

http://www.videogamearchive.com/emu/mame_rom.htm

As for other places, well, it's getting a bit hard to find Mame roms on websites. IRC is a good place (try #roms-isos on EFnet) and of course the newsgroups (alt.binaries.emulators.mame) is an excellent resource. I just completed my v0.75u1 romset through the newsgroup today....and I doubt I'd be able to do that any other way to tell you the truth.

As for games that make me go "wow", alot of the newer emulated games do this for me such as Metal Slug 3 and Guwange to name two, but there are just so many more that do this for me. Get good newsgroup access and a fast connection (cable, dsl) and download the complete set if you can. You will be amazed every time you play mame as you will always find something cool that you didn't try yet! :) A complete Mame romset currently runs about 15GB of hard disk space, so make some room!

BTW: As for Model 1, not yet man. It will be awile and I would imagine will require a pretty fast CPU to run at reasonable speed.

[Sotenga]

This is a damned good place for roms. :D

I've got another, if no one minds:

www.playagain.net

Enjoy! :-D

[Gamereviewgod]

I'm with Anthony on this one. I've just got into MAME myself and I've found nothing and I really don't want to have to go the newsgroup route, but there's almost no choice. Romnation.net is the only one I've used but it's either down or you have to go through a ton of anime porn ads. Oh, and half the ROMS don't work which also sucks. :o

[jonjandran]

You can use Kazaa Lite and find them all the time.

[zektor]

I'm with Anthony on this one. I've just got into MAME myself and I've found nothing and I really don't want to have to go the newsgroup route, but there's almost no choice. Romnation.net is the only one I've used but it's either down or you have to go through a ton of anime porn ads. Oh, and half the ROMS don't work which also sucks. :o

Dude, the newsgroups are EASIER to use than Internet Explorer! Just get newsbin pro ( http://www.newsbin.com ) and while installing when it asks you for your news server, type it in. After that, just download the groups and add alt.binaries.emulators.mame to your favorites. Now, when you want to get roms, double click on the newsgroup favorite and the files show up. All you have to do is check off what game(s) you want to download and they come right through. It's not only good for Mame stuff. You can get ANYTHING in the newsgroups. If yah need a hand setting it up just let me know. You WILL be hooked :)

[Gamereviewgod]

Ok, I'm set up with my server and the like, but I can't find that group you had mentioned. Nothing came up. I did find one alt.games.mame, but I don't see anything come up???? It's over in the that little groups box, but there's nothing else anywhere....

[jonjandran]

You have to double click on it when its over in the group box and then it will show you all the post and files.

[Gamereviewgod]

I did that, nothing happened. I showed the number of posts it was downloading, but nothing appeared when it was done....

[jonjandran]

Did you double click on your newserver first?
Also are you sure your news server is set up right?
If it's not it will look like its working but its not.
Did you try downloading some groups , did that work?

[Gamereviewgod]

Ah, I didn't click on the news server. That's it. Thanks!

[zektor]

Good deal. Now that you have it up and running, go up top to "Preferences", the, "Group Options". Check the box that says "Display Groups Containing" and type "emulators". You should see a list of alt.binaries groups for different systems and such. You can get roms in any one of these for the desired system. You can also type stuff like "mp3" in that display groups box, and you'll find some nifty groups for mp3s. You can also type alot of "other" things there as well. Experiment! For now however, alt.binaries.emulators.mame is in the middle of posting a big roms flood. It's a good time to have this set up to start your collection. Good luck!

[slurpeepoop]

I just set up my newsgroup account as well, and I was wondering how to download stuff.

All I get is a bunch of text posts, and when I click on one, all I get is gibberish text.

Sorry for asking such a newbie question.

[NE146]

yes, I agree, you can't get any simpler and easier grabbing loads and loads of mame roms than you can get with good old Usenet.

Let me just put in my plug for GRABIT. I personally like it better than Newsbinpro. And I think it's easier for beginners to use as well. Just my humble opinion. But of course, a newsreaders's a newsreader. As long as it gets the job done :)

Grabit is free here: www.shemes.com

[NE146]

I just set up my newsgroup account as well, and I was wondering how to download stuff.

All I get is a bunch of text posts, and when I click on one, all I get is gibberish text.

Sorry for asking such a newbie question.

Sounds like you're using Outlook Express. It's all about the newsreader. Go download a good one ;) Try Grabit or newsbinpro.. or a number of others. You know which one I prefer from the previous post :P

[slurpeepoop]

I grabbed newsbin pro. I even got it figured out.

If the newsgroups are as good as I've seen so far, I think I found an alternative to irc....

Thanks for everyone's help.

[Gamereviewgod]

Zektor, i can't find that group anywhere. I've tired exactly what you said, but I still only get the other MAME one i mention above....

[Gamereviewgod]

cancel, cancel Zektor....found it...sorry...moving along...ignore the moron who doesn't know how to uncheck a box...

[Gamereviewgod]

Ok, so how do I know what games I'm downloading exactly? I'm really not interested in sets and such, just specific games. Is there any way to figure it out before downloading??? For instance, I want Warriors of Fate, but can't seem to even find something resembling it.

[zektor]

Ok, so how do I know what games I'm downloading exactly? I'm really not interested in sets and such, just specific games. Is there any way to figure it out before downloading??? For instance, I want Warriors of Fate, but can't seem to even find something resembling it.


Sometimes when people post games they give a description of what it is, sometimes they just post it and you would have to know what it is by filename. Warriors of Fate would be wof.zip for example. If you load Mame32 and look under "directory" in the file list you can see what the zipname would be for the particular game.

[ECWSandmanECW]

For Newsgroups, do you download automatically or do you have to wait? (Like IRC)

[zektor]

For Newsgroups, do you download automatically or do you have to wait? (Like IRC)

You check off what you want and it immediately downloads. Basically people are uploading files to the server and you are downloading them just like you would if you clicked on a file to download in IE.

[NE146]

Put it this way.. here's a sample list of video game tunes I pulled off alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.video-games using GRABIT.

So how do you download? Well you double click it! LOL

Or if you want to snag a whole bunch, you highlight what you want, right mouse click then select "download" from the popup menu. How simple can you get? :-P

Yep.. masses and masses of goodness with just a click or two. Gotta love Usenet :)

http://www.atariage.com/forums/download.php?id=12524

[Gamereviewgod]

Are there always alot of files (for MAME) that don't work? I downloaded every version of 19XX and none of them worked. Is this common?

[buttasuperb]

Holy shit, those mp3's look sexy. They got SF2 and Darkstalkers OST's in mp3 format?

Yes, I'm a hypocrite.

[zektor]

Grabit is a great program, although it has one tiny flaw that makes me not use it. When people upload yENC encoded files with non-standard tools the files do not download correctly with the program. They come in as large text files instead. Newsbin Pro NEVER does this. I get every file perfectly every time with it...unless the post has been purged or was not completely uploaded of course.

[NE146]

Grabit is a great program, although it has one tiny flaw that makes me not use it. When people upload yENC encoded files with non-standard tools the files do not download correctly with the program. They come in as large text files instead. Newsbin Pro NEVER does this. I get every file perfectly every time with it...unless the post has been purged or was not completely uploaded of course.


Yes I've seen that problem in the past (freaked me out too when it happened LOL).. but I do think it looks to have been resolved with the last couple of releases as I have not seen it for a while (and I downloaded 60 gigs of goods of all types under the sun just in the past month alone to give you an idea of the volume.. so I'm thinking it's gone? :?)

I dig newsbinpro and did use it for a while prior to Grabit. I like playing with different programs so I used a good percentage of them for long whiles (i.e. forte agent, Newshark, etc.) Long as it snags the files, it's all good :D

[zektor]

I just tested the new Grabit. Good work on their part! The program is indeed very nice, but I would probably say still a little more geared toward the semi-expert side. I can see anyone who knows nothing about newsgroups jumping right in with Newsbin Pro, but this program may take a bit more to get going....but not much. Seems the yenc problem is gone since I was able to pick up a few yenc encoded files without a hitch as well. The only thing it still needs is a thumbnail preview of images being downloaded. I find this useful in NBPro sometimes when downloading game screenshots. Other than that, once again, excellent program. And the price is MUCH better than NBPro....FREE! :)

[ECWSandmanECW]

Just ran into a problem with NewsBinPro. MSN Servers aren't supported, any way of getting around this without getting another ISP?

[zektor]

Just ran into a problem with NewsBinPro. MSN Servers aren't supported, any way of getting around this without getting another ISP?

No, I don't think so unfortunately. It's just just AOL's news service as far as I know...you have to use their own software. You can always pay for a news service however, instead of jumping to a new ISP if you want to stay with MSN.

[slip81]

okay i'm new and i know this question will sound stupid, but i just downloaded grabit and i am wondering how to connect to servers, and also how do i get the names of said servers? if anyone is willing to explain to me how to get started from scratch with grabit that would be cool. also to change the subject a little bit, does anyone know whatever became of the idea of starting a burning service, i read a post about it when i first joined, and expressed my interest, but so far no action has been taken. anyway thatnks it advance to anyone who helps me out.

[slip81]

okay i'm using newsbin pro now and that seems a little simpler, but what i think i need is the name of a sever that i can connect to, does anyone know which server i should be connecting to?

[NE146]

if anyone is willing to explain to me how to get started from scratch with grabit that would be cool.

Grabit has a nice tutorial. You can access it via the menus or go straight to here: Steps 1, 2, 3 are the ones to read. http://www.shemes.com/community/viewforum.php?f=6&sid=9c8be823f540b486438ed8f57ed63840


what i think i need is the name of a sever that i can connect to, does anyone know which server i should be connecting to?

You can either

1) Find out from your ISP what your ISP's usenet server names are. Sometimes it's right there on the ISP's homepage, and other times you have to dig it out of them. Sometimes they don't have one at all. It all depends. Sometimes the service is really good (like w/ Roadrunner Cable's), other times it's pretty poor (like uswest).

For example, Qwest's usenet server name is NEWS.QWEST.NET. Ask your isp.

-or-

2) Subscribe to a pay service. It's usually about $15 a month. Some places you can try are www.usenetserver.com www.easynews.com , www.ultrafeed.com amongst others. Shop around if you go this route. Once you subscribe, they'll give you their server name. For example usenetservers server name is NEWS.USENETSERVER.COM.

pretty simple :)

[DogP]

I dunno if you're trying to get a lot of ROMs at once, or just a bunch of singles, the place that I go to get all my MAME ROMs is http://www.emuconnect.com . They have some pop-ups, but just get a pop-up blocker if they really bother you. They ask that you vote for the first few ROMs you download, but you can just close the window and click the link again and you have no probs. I've had really good luck downloading from them, and they're always fast, and it's easy to find what you're looking for (and they have pretty much everything). But if you're trying to find a bunch of ROMs at once, I'd do IRC or some other P2P and just download a large ROM pack.

DogP

[NoahsMyBro]

I take the lazy route. A while back I sent a Tombstones member about 25 CD-Rs and return postage, and he burned me a full set of MAME .64.

Then earlier this week I sent off a check to another MAME community burner for the full 0.78 set.

I know I could download the ROMs myself, but this is inexpensive enough that I believe the written claims that nobody is profiting here, and the money is an appropriate amount to simply cover legitimate expenses involved, and I don't have the time or motivation to try and obtain the entire set.

This way, in one full swoop, I get the ROMs, the sound samples, the artwork, the CHDs, everything except MAME itself.

I can't wait to get the package in the mail. Maybe my 5200 A/V mod will arrive the same day - that would be sweet!

[VACRMH]

If you're just looking for random games, my suggestion is to use the MAME file name.

For example, i'm looking for Samurai Aces... just look up "samuraia"

Good places to do this... Google, www.filemirrors.net, or the program soulseek (www.slsknet.org)

[The Unknown Gamer]

You could try www.starroms.com but be warned they charge 99 cents for each of them

[Sofa King Gud]

This site has a little over 1000 small MAME roms, 175 kb being the biggest...

http://www.cybcity.com/shadowtek/