Saturn emulator instead of MAME for some arcade...

[jasonbar]

Howdy-

I'm into MAME & have a big fat MAME cabinet at home. There tend to be some arcade games based on home console hardware that don't run too well in MAME but do run great in a console emulator.

Has anybody compiled a list of arcade games that MAME doesn't emulate well but that run swell on a Saturn emulator?

Thanks,
-Jason

[infernalcombustion]

I'm a big fan of MAME Jason, but to be honest I can't think of any games that work better emulated on the Saturn. We're talking about the original gamecode here, so I guess only games that have been either modified or extended for home use really count anyway.

Inccidently, I've purchased several Saturn games that I otherwise wouldn't have considered unless I'd played them on MAME first. So you could also look upon it as a bit of a try before you buy regarding Saturn arcade conversions.

These days I mostly play Mr Do and Pleiads (a couple of my favorite old school arcade games).

[mick_aka]

Diddnt someone post the plans for a Saturn to Jamma adaptor quite a while back?

I'll have to have a search...

[Kibbles]

I'm sure Jason is refering to STV games not running well in MAME.

I respect MAME for what it tries to be but personally am of the opinion that it does a less than stellar job.
Half of the emulation is stank broke-ass shit with bugs and other annoyances, which the devs claim is '100%' regardless of obvious flaws.

It's also not exactly the most efficient emulator on the planet, if a game runs in MAME, you can be sure there is a stand-alone emu out there that it runs better in...


Anyway back on topic!
SSF can run STV games well provided you supply it with an STV Bios, I'm sure!

[superdeadite]

No offense but a MAME cabinet makes no sense to me. If you have a real cab, play real games in it. If you truly spend time with the real board then go and play it in MAME you'll notice huge differences, most people don't remember how arcade games truly played so they don't realize how crappy MAME actually is.

The majority of Toaplan games don't work in MAME, so the Saturn port of Batsugun works well if you don't want to buy the actual pcb.

Any console that outputs in RGB is very easy to hook up to a JAMMA rig, though some consoles will need an RGB amp to truly shine in them. There's a guy on shmups forums that makes console-->JAMMA adapter boards. All you do is plug in the SCART for video, then wire up the controls.

[buckoa51]

Yeah because fitting thousands of PCB's in one cabinet is really easy

For a MAME cab I would highly recommend some sort of emulator front end so you can launch Mame, its derivative builds (shmupmame is particularly worth looking at) and other emulators. The more time you're willing to put in the better the experience gets. Saturn emulation is particularly flaky in Mame so yes its definitely worth getting a Saturn emulator instead.

[jasonbar]

Whoops, what can of worms have I opened??!! ;D

I used to collect full-size arcade games, and even with modding/customizing to run multiple game boards within each cabinet where I could, it just wasn't worth it to me to have all those cabinets in my apartment & to deal with board-level & monitor repairs on a regular basis. I'm OK w/ electronics, but I'm not good enough to keep dozens of them all working...

I went all-out & made a MAME cabinet over the last many years & put a ridiculously large control panel on it to cater to as many control panel schemes as possible (and then some!).

On the BYOAC forums (a great forum all-around, w/ lots of good technical info & not much noise), several people swear by the Dreamcast emulators to play arcade-perfect games that MAME can't handle. That was the source of my query regarding what arcade-perfect games (if any) a Saturn emulator could provide on a modest PC.

Thanks,
-Jason

[mick_aka]

I can't fault people for going MAME, I used to own quite a few cabs and having so much room taken up by a massice cab for single game is madness unless you're lucky enough to have a gigantic spare room or a warehouse attached to the back of your home.

I don't have any nowadays but I have a large selection of PCBs and STV carts that sit in a big crate doing nothing.

[planktonwarrior]

I think MAME is a good emulator! The trouble is that once a newer updated version of the emulator gets released some games that worked really well on the previous version won't work on the newer one!
You still have to give them credit though as it manages to emulate a massive array of different types of arcade boards which must be a task to say the least?
So when I've used it in the past I've actually had two or more versions on my desktop so I'll have one mame folder with the different version folders within it so that way I have the roms that work with each version that run certain roms!

[zyrobs]

Jan 1, 2011 23:45:28 GMT jasonbar said:

Has anybody compiled a list of arcade games that MAME doesn't emulate well but that run swell on a Saturn emulator?

Every game basically?