[HELP Needed] Setting up MESS on RetroArch

RetroArch General
#1

Hi everyone! Besides my new account, I’m very active on the subreddit of emulation, and I’m a long time user o RetroArch. So, after my presentation, I’m here to ask for a little help.

I’m trying to set up some systems in my emulation rig, and I have a personal preference to run everything that I can within RetroArch.

So, I’ve tried last night to setup MESS (2014) and UME (2014) core, so I could run Atari games, more specifically Atari 5200 and 7800. The problem is, I can’t manage to make it run any game.

Last night I’ve put my focus only on Atari 5200, I tought that if I could manage to make one system work on MESS, the others would be easy.

So, I’ve grabbed the MESS core, and tried to set it up. No luck.

I’ve tried every single information that I could find on Google. Grabbing the Atari 5200 BIOS and putting it on the System folder of RA. Tried grabbing the “hash” folder from MAME standalone package, and putting it on the System folder of RA, inside the folder MESS. Tried using UME in the same way as MESS.

Nothing worked, and I couldn’t find a proper way to setup the core. None of the tutorial or tips that I’ve found, seemed to work.

So, I really need some help. One thing that I’ve noticed, was that, everytime that I selected the MESS core in RetroArch menu, RA doesn’t show in the menu the name of the core. And this behavior only happens with MESS core, the other ones show the core name correctly.

I’m running Windows 8.1 x64, and the latest stable of Retroarch, 1.3.6. My roms for Atari 5200 are in the No-Intro format, so they have the extension .a52

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

#2

There are a few threads about running MESS for consoles on the forum but I can’t seem to find them right now… This post has a little bit of information: http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4888&p=40399&viewfull=1#post40399 and this page has some more: http://www.libretro.com/index.php/mamemessume-cores/

FAKEDIT: ah, right, here’s one of the threads: http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4990&p=33726&viewfull=1#post33726

#3

Thanks for the answer. I will try again with the information that you provided.

I hope make things works, and then I will write a guide on that. :slight_smile:

#4

Just a heads up. After strugling for one hour, for now I’ve gave up on MESS in Retroarch. The core MESS2014_libretro.dll seems to be broken, as nothing happens at all.

And using the old version (mess_libretro.dll) doesn’t gave me anything, just Retroarch opening.

After that, I’ve got MAME 176 (Which already have MESS inside) and solved my problem.

Thanks in advance!

#5

That’s good info. Thanks for sharing your solution!