MAME 2000 core on Wii - compatibility list

RetroArch Nintendo consoles
#1

I’ve been out of the loop a bit with keeping up with RA releases on Wii. So I dove back in again recently and have notice that since 1.4 there’s now a MAME 2000 core. Which is sweet, sweet news to us arcade fanatics and a great addition to the FBA cores. Also samples are working great… Q*Bert and Berzerk in all their digitised speech glory. Question is: any ongoing work with a compatibility/bug list specific to that core? If so, would be happy to contribute. If not, might start something up. I’m going back on lists for the old SDL MAME Wii port as a reference point. Some games are reported OK on that, but have graphics issues such as with text/background layers on the RA core (Starforce, Altered Beast). Leading me to think its more an RA core issue? Probably makes sense to take the mame037b5 list and remove whats common with/works with FBA, since anything on that should be more optimised. Thoughts?

Edit: anything related to the old MAME Wii port probably isn’t worth relying for this core. I’m seeing lists that just take the MAME GUI text on rom status as verbatim “GFX OK, Sound OK” when there are actually problems running on Wii.

#2

we maintain a compatibility list at retropie. this is for raspberry pi users only so be mindful that an issue isn’t wii-specific before updating the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fmx2RPcgVgIIeKpaBKNEGWCDuu3DGfR-VkrnIVsIpeE/edit?usp=sharing

#3

That’s perfect. Exactly what I was looking for, thank you. I won’t make any changes to that list any time soon. I’ll take a local copy, add a column for Wii and start some cross comparisons. I can see a few game examples already standing out with what looks like commonly reported issues. I have an RPi so might validate it’s the exact same behavior (e.g. graphics garbling) cross platform. As we know Wii has less RAM than RPi so there will be at least one Wii specific issue where ROM data is just too big to load. I’d really like to expand it out to be a master list that’s game-centric that might show commonality of games between different cores (FBA vs MAME), when it exists and when it doesn’t, and any benefits. Who knows how long that would take but it’s fun to try anyway.

#4

@dankcushions … have been working my way down a copy of your sheet. Haven’t made any changes to yours. At some point, the data in columns J and K has become out of sync. I noticed it at line 866 - it has 1993 Irem against Insector X , but that should be 1989 Taito. In The Hunt is also wrong, as is much around this area. Some further up lines look OK, but further down is incorrect. Not a big deal I guess, but worth noting the data in these columns has gone bad somehow.

2 Likes
#5

Work so far:

For reference, here is the compatibility list for the FBA cores for GameCube and Wii. Test base was the 1.0.0.2 release:

#6

thanks for the heads up about the messed up columns… i tried to fix but it’s kind of annoying to work out where the issue is, and then also move the data around in google sheets. I thought I had it and then it decided to move it to the wrong place and I got fed up and just wanted to delete the columns :slight_smile: if you manage to fix it on your sheets, let me know please :slight_smile:

#7

Probably would be best to just import those columns afresh, from the original source maybe, or else scrape the data per rom to have it accurate. It’s static data so should be doable… helps me prioritise if I’m going to bother testing some ancient late '70s black and white game :slight_smile: Will share that if I get to it. I’m getting a data import from a mame.dat file to immediately highlight those marked in this (old) mame version as having no sound, or just not working or will only work on bootleg, that should help flag a few more and avoid tests to find that out. You can copy in those columns too to yours… I always key my column sorts by 1st column for imports.

#8

@dankcushions here is a clean list of games from MAME 0.37b5 with year and manufacturer. sorted by 1st column (rom/game short name)

You should be able to add empty columns to your sheet and then import this data and verify. It’s worth noting a few extra games might have snuck on somehow? Maybe from FBA? Because the official list for MAME 0.37b5, including bootlegs/hacks, looks to be 2,240 and this would match the file count in the actual romset aswell.

#9

And here are the additional games that are not on the MAME romset. You may want to just leave them on your sheet and put a note against them… but it’s going to screw with the other year and manufacturer data. Removing them could prove tricky unless you remove them completely, line by line… that’s what I’m doing … :expressionless:

argus Argus batugnsp Batsugun Special Ver. bigkarnk Big Karnak blsthead Blasteroids (with heads) butasan Butasan (Japan) cameltry Camel Try (Japan) - was listed twice cubybop Cuby Bop exerizrb Exerizer (Japan) (bootleg) firetrk Fire Truck flstory Fairyland Story, The flstoryj Fairyland Story, The (Japan) hardhead Hard Head hardhedb Hard Head (Bootleg) karianx Karian Cross kncljoe Knuckle Joe (set 1) kncljoea Knuckle Joe (set 2) kurikina Kuri Kinton (prototype?) kurikint Kuri Kinton (World) logicpr2 Logic Pro 2 (Japan) logicpro Logic Pro mahoudai Mahou Daisakusen (Japan) momoko Momoko 120% pipibibi Pipi & Bibis / Whoopee (Japan) ? - pipibibi is valid plgirls Play Girls plgirls2 Play Girls 2 rranger Rough Ranger (v2.0, Sharp Image license) shippumd Shippu Mahou Daisakusen (Japan) skyfox Sky Fox tatsujn2 Truxton II / Tatsujin II / Tatsujin Oh (Japan) tubeit Tube It valtric Valtric

#10

thanks! I just had a look in the code. Argus, for example, is in mame2000 - https://github.com/libretro/mame2000-libretro/blob/d3619ac7df847664918fe4be841a8eedd4112901/src/driver.c#L2655

what makes you think it isn’t? might be the dat file is out of date instead?

#11

I went and got the original MAME 0.37b5 software + romset from archive.org I checked the dat in that, and also used the command line output from the 16-bit mame.exe to do game list exports in a more readily workable format (the csv file I shared) with year data I trusted more. Neither the romset nor the exe output referenced argus, or any of the other ones I listed above.

I now see in the header on that driver source that it says MAME 0.36… which I believe was 1999 release? There are discrepancies here and there for sure. I even found what looks to be typos in the year data embedded in this old build of MAME for DOS/Windows. I’m just basing what I’m doing mainly from that romset which matches that release as far as the compiled MAME binary goes. While The Fairyland Story is not in the romset nor on the exe output as a listed supported game, it does actually start when ran from the old command line (but has sound issues in MAME and graphics issues in RA MAME Wii). It’s all a bit fuzzy! :smiley:

#12

Sheet has been updated to add video resolution info: screen height, screen width, rotation (in degrees, 0 = horizontal) and display (raster vs vector). To help come up with some specific games lists; horizontal/vertical only, standard resolutions vs exotic, exclude vector. Still a lot of graphics garbling specific to this Wii build. I’m wondering is it anything related to a multi-core CPU issue? And interesting example is Sky Kid (skykid) vs Sky Kid Deluxe (skykiddx) They contain the same CPUs: M6809 and HD63701, but Sky Kid Deluxe has 2 x M6809 whereas Sky Kid has 1. The audio chips are different, however audio is fine for both. Sky Kid Deluxe exemplifies the kind of graphics corruption I’m talking about and is reproduced anywhere the term ‘garbled graphics’ is in the Wii notes column. Although other dual CPU systems are OK… (e.g. bublbobl) and tends to be better with Z80s Any Wii RA devs would could tag?

#13

The parsing of all roms on this sheet is complete: every title has a status against it, whether it’s been tested with MAME core, or is a duplicate with the FBA cores and has been tested on that. My thanks once more to @dankcushions for providing that existing data from the Pi project and all those who contributed to that formatting/data. I have dropped columns/references to RPi so as to avoid confusion and keep this one Wii specific. I’ll probably continue parallel title testing for non CPS1/NeoGeo, a lot of them I like and there isn’t a massive overlap, maybe 200 or so. Some titles work better on MAME (e.g. better sound, or samples support), others better on FBA. No matter what I try, I’ve never been able to get the FBA cores to load audio sample zips… anyone comment on that? Also… does this MAME core allow for any per-game cfg/ini files for custom controls mapping?