I am a first time watcher but this is the most useful video I have seen to explain Mame. I have no idea what you do for a living but with the patience you display and your mild manner you would be an excellent teacher. You come across as someone that has a passion to educate the community. You also come across like you care for the community. Well done.

I never would have imagined that the roms have to match the version of mame! Thanks!

I kept seeing tutorials with all these terms but no one actually ever explained what they are, this video was a huge help 🙏

I wish I had this years ago. Thank you for the interesting and informative video.

Good overview of what can be a very intimidating topic. Thanks.

I came to play my childhood games but ended up leaving with a PhD in software engineering...bad ass!!

We need more videos like this. Sometimes no matter how intelligent you are, reading how the emulator and ROMS work is complicated to understand. This is a good video that someone is explaining things to make it easy for you to understand.

By the time I found this I already got most of what I want, but now I feel like I can complete my collection!

This was very helpful and interesting. Thank you!

Thank you for making this amazing technical explanation. Now I know whay some of my roms won't work on some MAME versions.

Thank you very much. I played MAME since I was a kid

Broh, Thanks for the Primer 😃👍

Very informative thanks!

Fantastic explanation thank you very much!

Good to see you be back :)

excellent explanation

Just built a bartop and have had so much trouble with this. About to watch. Lets see what you got good sir! lol Happy holidays all

Someone with a commonsense explanation. Thank you.

wow. incredible video thank you sir

Thank you, please keep up the good work

I discovered mame and it's roms way back in 2002. It was a learning process to be sure. Once I figured it out, it became routine. 🙂

You are a friend. Thank you.

That was awesome. Thank you.

I fricking love your intro music

Awesome!

Now I understand what parent and clones are...thanks

I hope you mention how 1.xx roms will only work with that version of mame. Maybe I am just dumb but I couldn't get it running until i matched my romset version with mame version, 1.41 in my case. Nice you did.

I know there's a lot of negativity in the comments but just know you're a legend. I'm trying to turn my old pc into an Arcade emulator as a gift for my dad so that he can relive his childhood but its proving to be one of the most complicated things I've ever done. Regardless, your videos are a big help, I'll get there eventually!

I have a Raspberry Pi Zero running Retropie, it runs most MAME and Neo Geo roms pretty well. There are occasionally some MAME ones that don’t work though.

Thank you!

It's ok to blink man, your eyes must be on fire Thanks for the video!

thank you sir,.

I looked for romsets and could only find some that were about 68gb. So my question is what should I look for to get the most common, or popular, games running? I don't really need thousands of slot machines lol just the good games from the late 70s- mid90's will do. Thank you for your time sir 👍

That's why I like Antstream arcade, they don't have all the arcade games yet (if they will at all) but everything just works without Mame emulation it seems. I don't know if they don't use Mame, but you never see and logos from emulators.

Thank you.

I found the round set that I need but it won't let me download because there's too many files

Thank you very much for your answer, yes, I saw what retropie recommends in the documentation, what I wonder is why it recommends using the "mame 2003" version instead of the "mame 2003 plus", since the mame 2003 plus was designed precisely so that it works better on portable devices and on not very powerful hardware, such as the raspberry pi. Then shouldn't the plus+ version be better for the pi? I take this opportunity to congratulate and thank you for your videos and website, they are very helpful, and of excellent quality and explanation.

Once you download the reference set, do you then add it to the mame-libretro folder? I am running retropie

Thank you, Irish Jeff Goldblum!

So, I'm still unsure what I need to download and where from to get all the classics from the arcade?

I Think this is useful to Play Mame games on Handheld like Anbernic RG35xx or R35S handheld, i will explore the site you gave us. Thanks

Which version should I download for Retropie 4.8 on Pi3? mame 2003 or mame 2003 plus?

Does a reference set just come with Bios files? Or does it also come with games and CHD files?

even if you only use retroarch for mame game you still need it to see why it crashes it shows what you are missing out of the box

This is a great video but absolutely cannot get a working rom set on mame. This is one of those projects you really need someone who knows what their doing to help you out with.

A quick question. When you mention using a 'reference set'. Are you saying that a Merged Rom set is easier to use for beginners? Just a little confused there with the terminology. Thanks

I am running Batocera on an i5 PC through a USB thumbdrive. How can I (for example) download the correct MAME emulator (does it not already exist on the Batocera OS?), and let's say for now, I just want to download Galaga, not 1000's of MAME games. Do you have a video that helps with getting started with just one game? Thanks for your time.

Isn't there anything smaller to get started? These merged sets are very large. I was looking for something smaller because I don't have a large hard drive.

would it be better to download mame and get it working before adding launchbox or would launchbox need something different?

I have the whole mame games setup. Over 1200 games but I can't figure out how to get them to run. They keep crash dump the games. IDK does someone knows how to fix it.

Am i correct in saying non-merged roms have everything that a particular game may need to run... inside the 1 zip file?. This making it easier to delete the game files that you would not use without disturbing the working ability of the other games. !?!

this guy doesn't blink

When extracting a Mame file can it also be a subfolder for more files?.....is this normal? What would be the next step? Thank you great video

I've always found arcade/mame confusing and even frustrating. The easiest way I've found was using fightcade and a script that automatically downloads the proper rom sets for final burn neo. I then use retroarch/emulationstation to play the game. Might sound a little complex but it works!

One thing I find very odd is the roms not being titled properly. When there's thousands of roms and you see some abbreviated title it makes it that much harder to find the ones you want in a sea of thousands haha.. still hoping one day a frontend of some sort will list all the boxes accurately if the rom titles are gonna stay this way

Man. He went deep

is there one file to dowlaod to have all files together i try two days but is very dificult

This is good info .. sadly I'm a strong visual learner, I'm tryna keep up. But I need to know how it visually works. There's a video like this?

What’s the game your playing in your video bro ?

Some individual mame ROMs ivedownloaded and they work fine others Re missing files cuz I probably need the whole set.

How can i use roms rev2. I want to play pokemon alpha Saphir but i can ent zip the date can somebody help.

What is the name of the first game you’re playing?

after many years can i finally play hydro thunder, Capcom VS Snk 1 &2 ???

Piece by piece this puzzle will be solved...🤯🤣🤣

I have downloaded MAME roms all files have 2k, 3k, 4k, 3h, 4h, 5h.......files I cant play all the games how can you play the game, can you illustrate?

I have problem. There is a game Hyper Duel from Techno Soft. And there are two rom sets of it: hyprduel "Japan set 1"(parent one) and hyprduel2 "Japan set 2"(clone one). I did a lot of searches but couldn't find any specific description of each. I mean when it comes to something like Bubble Bobble I can see a lot of clarifications like: this is original japanese version, this is some bootleg, that ones are redux hack, Lost Cave mod, USA version ect. Then I simply rename merged zip archive into the name of version wich I'm okay with. But when it comes to Hyper Duel I can't decide should I choose - set 1 or set 2. I spent whole day in searches but nowhere I can find diffrecences list or something. Can someone help me to clarify these?

Great video! Btw, is this guy CG? I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t blink a single time in 15 minutes, which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a human do. Random thoughts…

How did you start the download from the specific site I've tried at the same site and it says file too large

Where can i find full non merged set? I just want to have 100-150 favorite arcade games on my sd card.

Is there a working version of Pac Man Royale in existence?

I have downloaded full rom set they are all zip files what do I need to next in order to make the arcade run?

Como puedo jugar a dolphkng blue... No me corre en el mame 2003

Yeah when I download a MAMA rom .. normally get a huge list ... like come on couldn't be easy like the 8bit & 16bit roms ..🙃

"Mame roms Explained" Me 7 minutes in: EVEN MORE CONFUSED

So mame is basically only for arcade software emulation? 🤔

太好了

Has anyone downloaded a "reference set"? just seeing if its worth the time........

i just want to play metal slug

raspberry pi runs fine on mame .78 (2003)...it's been 18 years now..that's an old rom set..it should be defaulted to mame2010 or (mame .139) or higher..but it's not.

You don't need a full set of roms...you can cherry pick games but you need to make sure you have all the right files to run the game.

I am starting to believe he's a robot. If you notice, he never blinks his eye. 😐

5 days,wow

My advice! Get a local friend who owns MAME to trade roms. Faster to copy a SD card than downloading. I got a friend with so many games I can ask him for anything and copy it. I don't download. I will rip MAME roms from his Pandora Box. 😂

Man, this guy looks like he's scared!

this is AI

Lizard person. He doesn't blink once for the entire video