None of the roms I download work on my mame32 system, what am I doing wrong? I am using vista home basic.?

Question

I try to play roms and it always says I am missing files. I download them to my roms file in mame32 folder and I also dont unzip them, I have had this problem for years even when I used to use windows XP. can someone please help.

Answer 1

It also helps to state what game you are trying to play and the rom you have for it. You need to understand the structure of game roms.

Lets say you are trying to play Pac Man. There may be different versions available. Many games are available from different countries US,UK,Asia,Eurp,World,Brizi . Also Versions .1, .21, .09. You may even find them saying that they are a clone of another game. Some games need the master rom (this is the first rom the game used ie Pac Man then as other versions came out they just made patches and added on to the master. So both the master rom and the patch would be needed) Some roms need BIOS roms to play, these would be like the Street fighters series requiring CPZ1 and/or CPZ2 bios also NeoGeo games needing the NeoGeo bios. More advanced/newer games require CHD files which are the hardest to come by and the largest files MAME uses. And lastly not all games listed in MAME32 work or work properly and states that in the descriptions

So the more Information about a game you are trying to play will help out the most.

Also MAME32 you should state what version of it you are using. You need above version .115 to use with Vista (VISTA has a lot of issues with older games and programs not given the Microsoft AOK)

You have done right by placing the roms in the right location and by leaving them zipped. Give some more info an keep looking here....

Answer 2

HAHAHA! DUDE! roms are illegal downloads, and normally that wouldnt be a problm, whos gonna find out unless u download like a million right? but vista, apart from taking up like 800 mb of ram, operating system alone outta the box, it reports all illegal downloads! vista probably messed u up so u couldnt use them! ill stick to windows XP, it doesnt report illegal downloads, and it doesnt use up much ram.(the 800mb thing is the main reason that most pc w/ vista come with a couple of gigs of ram already inside)