![]() ![]() They are used as programatic constructs to make creating drivers easier and more like the real world machines. To play ‘Galaga’ you will need the ‘Galaga’ set (the Parent), the ‘Namco 51xx’ set (a Device) and the Namco 54xx’ set (a Device)ĭevices are a MAME concept for bundling together a specific bit of functionality in a standard way. Now you may need three files to get a game to run. If you have a Split ROM set, you will have separate BIOS sets as well. Again to save space and because they are logically (and physically) grouped this way in the real world, the ROM files for the base unit can be grouped into what is called a BIOS set. ![]() The ROM files for each game also need the ROM files for the system, much like for Parent/ Clones but the games need not be based off of one another. To play ‘King of Fighters 10th Anniversary’ you will need the NeoGEO set (the BIOS), the ‘King of Fighters 2002’ set (the Parent) and the ‘King of Fighters 10th Anniversary’ set (the Clone) These systems contain a base unit and a cartridge type plugin for the games. Popular examples of this are Mega-Tech (Megadrive), Playchoice (NES), NeoGEO. Ok I got that, What about BIOS Sets?Ī lot of arcade games are written for the same ‘system’, sometimes based off a home console with changes made for arcade usage. A Merged set contains all of the files for every Clone version of a Parent game. The next evolution of this thinking was “If MAME will look in the Parent set for all of it’s ROM files, why bother splitting out the clones at all?” and so Merged sets were born. MAME still understands the un-split way and will look for all the required ROM files, first in the Split set zip and then the Parent set, as long as it finds the right file somewhere it will run. ![]() This means of course that if you want to run that Clone game now, instead of just one ROM Set you need two, the Parent and the Split set. To play Pac-Man you will need the Puck-Man set (the Parent) and the Pac-Man set (the Clone) The required ROM files would be Split between the two sets. A Split set would only contain the ROM files that are different to the Parent set. A Parent set would contain all of the ROM files required to run a ‘master’ version of the game and all the other games based upon that game would be Split. Long ago, when disk space was expensive it seemed wasteful to store many, many copies of the same file so the concept of Split ROM Sets was born. The original way ROMs were organised was the easiest to understand, every ROM file for a particular game was stored in a folder or zip file named after the game. These games are variants of one another, and so the concept of Parent/ Clone games was born. What about Parents and Clones, what are they?Įventually the programmers started to notice that a lot of the ROM files being dumped were the same as other ROM files for other games, and that in a lot of cases only a few of the IC’s would be different. The file typically referred to as a MAME ROM is actually a zip (or 7z) archive of all of the ROM files for a particular arcade game and is more correctly referred to as a ROM Set. For simple systems like the NES, SNES or Megadrive this is the entire game, you can dump the cartridge into a single file and an emulator will have all of the data required to run the game.Īrcade games are more complicated than that, there are lots of IC’s and lots of those IC’s contain code or data that is required to get the game running, each must be dumped separately and all of them are required to get the emulation to work. In simple terms, a ROM file is the code that is stored in a ROM chip (or IC) after it has been dumped. Here is my guide to MAME ROMs and their associated terminology. There are just a few concepts you need to understand and some simple terminology and it all makes sense. I hear these kind of things a lot on various forums around the web and it’s true, MAME ROMs are more complicated than console ROMs, but not hugely so. “Why is this so much more complicated than NES or SNES ROMs?” “I upgraded my version of MAME and now none of my games work” A lot of people get confused about MAME ROMs, they seem so complicated and fragile. ![]()
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