Where can I find the database of Rom titles that RetroArch uses?

RetroArch General
#1

RetroArch incorporates a ROM scanning system to automatically produce playlists. Each ROM that is scanned by the playlist generator is checked against a database of ROMs that are known to be good copies.

Where can I find a copy of this playlist? Do I need to rename the file name of each rom or the file name contained in the cue file for each game to ensure that it matches this ‘database’ of roms so that the playlists are generated. Also for thumbnails, I have to edit the name of each thumbnail if it doesn’t match the name that is listed in the lpl file? Even using markwkidd playlist buddy that seems like it would take a long time. What is the quick solution to all this? Are their rom sets already available that match the database of ROMs perfectly and the title of the thumbnails for each game so that we don’t have to edit on our own? Seems like the roms I find don’t match the retroarch database so no playlist is generated and the thumbnails obviously won’t work.

Is the information contained in the “core info files” or “databases” files that can be read with notepad or something?

#2

The databases are in binary format, but you can see the uncompiled databases here: https://github.com/libretro/libretro-database/tree/master/metadat, mostly no-intro and redump.

The best thing to do is make sure your dumps match these, as they are known-good hashes. For arcade ROMs, do a manual scan and feed it a DAT to get the proper names.

#3

Are there not no-intro and redump options for arcade ROM’s as well? I’m assuming by arcade you mean MAME? Where does one find these no-into and redump collections? Some of these like Sega Saturn and 3DO for example where you would need something like a usenet, torrent downloader or something since these would be huge zipped files of 100+ GB?

#4

No, there arcade ROMs are an oddball in many respects, and MAME ROMs are the standard there, though MAME is not the only arcade emulator. See this document for additional info on arcade emulation:

We can’t help you find ROMs. We assume our users dump their own games in accordance with their local laws and statutes and don’t want to hear different.

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#5

Understood. Thanks again for your help.

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#6

Hello! I’m completely baffled by what you’ve written above. Can you break it down for a noob please?

#7

DATs in this context are specially formatted files that include information about the games (lots of stuff, but we only really care about linking the name to the filename). You can get a bunch of them here:

MAME can also generate them for a list of every game it supports, but it ends up being a pretty huge file, so most people prefer to use smaller, specific ones in the above link. You can find a bunch of them that we use in my link in the second post.

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#8

Thank you for the reply! :smiley:

The reason I reached out is that Reset Collection was mixing up my MAME and Genesis files. I figured there must be a way to fix it. Last night I started from scratch by adding my Genesis, GBA, and SNES collections, making sure that the file paths are all correct. I waited on MAME because I wanted to try the DATs in order to ensure the files have the right names.

This inevitably led to further questions:

  1. When I clicked to download the DAT, my pc opened a new tab (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libretro/mame2010-libretro/master/metadata/mame2010.xml) and the raw data appeared in it - is this what I need to use? If so, how?

I ended up finding a file called MAME_Dats_139.7z and using that with clrmamepro instead.

  1. I’m using MAME4DROID on a Google Chromecast with Google TV because it was the first version I had success with. Looking at the DATs in the link you recommended, it seems that there are many newer versions of MAME and no DATs specifically for M4D. Would the DATs work or would they break everything?

  2. I ran my MAME ROMs through clrmamepro and the 260 files (I don’t want/need everything) turned into 2,048 files with lots of games that weren’t in my collection. I’m (yet again) baffled. Do you have any idea what has happened?

Again, thank you for taking the time to reply the first time around.

#9

I can’t help you with clrmamepro, but it should be fine to use basically any DAT for the manual scan because all we’re interested in is tying the “pretty” names to the filenames, which should be consistent regardless of version. The only problem you might run into, AFAIK, is games that are missing from the DAT altogether.

Re: the raw data, you can either right-click that link you posted and ‘save link as…’ or while you’re looking at the data, ‘save as…’

#10

I was wondering about this myself. Of the folders in metadat, which is used in the database that files are ultimately scanned against (since Sega CD is in both libretro-dats and redump for example).

Asking because my dumps for Sega CD and TurboGrafx-CD are both in redump format, but the directory scans only find a few things for Sega CD and nothing for TurboGrafx-CD. Also, some UMD PSP dumps end up in the PSN playlist and vice versa, and all of my PSP dumps are no-intro.

Just wanted to make sure the redump files (and no-intro for PSP) were the way to go for those databases. Are these databases WIP or something maybe? Thanks in advance!