Confusion about Atari systems

[DJQuad]

Hey all, so I can't seem to wrap my head around this whole systems / rom / emulators thing. I owned an Atari 2600 as a kid and have the roms, and have very limited experience with 5200 and 7800. I know a new system like the 2600 can be added (thanks for your videos Simply Austin ) since the 5200 is the only system basically preconfigured in RocketLauncher. From what I understand, the systems are basically:

 

2600 = the grandfather of them all

5200 = heavily modified XL in a different shell

7800 = 2600 in disguise with additional graphics hardware 

 

I'd rather not get every rom for every system as atm I can't afford to get a 6TB HD for all roms and media for all systems I do want the Atari games to be the best though - I.E., if games like Pitfall, Asteroids, Kaboom, etc, aren't noticeably different, I might as well stick with 1 system.

 

Then there's the elephant in the room - MAME, which adds to the confusion as far as emulators. Not only am I not sure what MAME ROM a game like Kaboom is from (2600 or 5200), I'm not sure if MAME or an emulator like Stella or RetroArch runs it better.

 

The same would go for Nintendo systems I suppose, but I haven't tackled them yet

 

Please be gentle, I'm muddling my way through a good HyperSpin setup, and am finding out it's a complete exercise in frustration at times, like any good hobby is.

[Guest]

Hey all, so I can't seem to wrap my head around this whole systems / rom / emulators thing. I owned an Atari 2600 as a kid and have the roms, and have very limited experience with 5200 and 7800. I know a new system like the 2600 can be added (thanks for your videos Simply Austin ) since the 5200 is the only system basically preconfigured in RocketLauncher. From what I understand, the systems are basically:

2600 = the grandfather of them all

5200 = heavily modified XL in a different shell

7800 = 2600 in disguise with additional graphics hardware

I'd rather not get every rom for every system as atm I can't afford to get a 6TB HD for all roms and media for all systems I do want the Atari games to be the best though - I.E., if games like Pitfall, Asteroids, Kaboom, etc, aren't noticeably different, I might as well stick with 1 system.

Then there's the elephant in the room - MAME, which adds to the confusion as far as emulators. Not only am I not sure what MAME ROM a game like Kaboom is from (2600 or 5200), I'm not sure if MAME or an emulator like Stella or RetroArch runs it better.

The same would go for Nintendo systems I suppose, but I haven't tackled them yet

Please be gentle, I'm muddling my way through a good HyperSpin setup, and am finding out it's a complete exercise in frustration at times, like any good hobby is.

Start with the cartridge systems. You're only looking at 10-20GB for all games for all cartridge systems.

[Metalzoic]

Hey all, so I can't seem to wrap my head around this whole systems / rom / emulators thing. I owned an Atari 2600 as a kid and have the roms, and have very limited experience with 5200 and 7800. I know a new system like the 2600 can be added (thanks for your videos Simply Austin ) since the 5200 is the only system basically preconfigured in RocketLauncher. From what I understand, the systems are basically:

 

2600 = the grandfather of them all

5200 = heavily modified XL in a different shell

7800 = 2600 in disguise with additional graphics hardware 

 

I'd rather not get every rom for every system as atm I can't afford to get a 6TB HD for all roms and media for all systems I do want the Atari games to be the best though - I.E., if games like Pitfall, Asteroids, Kaboom, etc, aren't noticeably different, I might as well stick with 1 system.

 

Then there's the elephant in the room - MAME, which adds to the confusion as far as emulators. Not only am I not sure what MAME ROM a game like Kaboom is from (2600 or 5200), I'm not sure if MAME or an emulator like Stella or RetroArch runs it better.

 

The same would go for Nintendo systems I suppose, but I haven't tackled them yet

 

Please be gentle, I'm muddling my way through a good HyperSpin setup, and am finding out it's a complete exercise in frustration at times, like any good hobby is.

MAME is the arcade games and arcade roms.

MESS is an emulator that runs many of the older console systems (the Atari ones included I believe)

They used to be separate, but recently they merged MESS into MAME. so some versions of MAME might also be able to run MESS etc... However some versions of MAME are compiled without it.

For example I use MAMEUIFX and so far as I know it doesn't have MESS in it and won't play them. At least that's how I understand it.

I don't really use console games on my cab though so I'm not sure what emulator is better for the console systems. MESS is a bit of a pain in the ass, Retroarch is a pain in the ass, has a stupid font and smells dumb. I've never tried any others.

[Styphelus]

Mame or MameUI have Mess in them. You just need the bios files in the roms folder.

 

MameUIFX doesn't have Mess. I use MameUIFX for my Mame roms and MameUI for my Mess systems. I could just use MameUI for everything but I like to keep them separate.

 

In Rocketluncher just assign Mame as your emulator and add the rom extensions for the system you want to it. That's all you need to do.

[phulshof]

MAME for console emulation is very easy these days. Simply install the PD MAME romset (which includes all the BIOS roms), and run MAME with the name of the console and medium type, e.g.

mame.exe snes -cart "Super Mario Kart.zip"

If you have the software list roms, this becomes even simpler:

mame.exe snes smkart

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[DJQuad]

Mame or MameUI have Mess in them. You just need the bios files in the roms folder.

 

MameUIFX doesn't have Mess. I use MameUIFX for my Mame roms and MameUI for my Mess systems. I could just use MameUI for everything but I like to keep them separate.

 

In Rocketluncher just assign Mame as your emulator and add the rom extensions for the system you want to it. That's all you need to do.

 

Yeah Simply Austin's tutorials were for MameUIFX and Mess for Atari 2600. Am I missing out on much if I switch to MameUI?

 

Also, is there a way to tell for a MAME ROM like Centipede which system it was from? I know some have revisions but am not sure if these represent different systems.

[damageinc86]

I would think a MAME rom like Centipede would just be the original Centipede game.  It's not from any system, it's the arcade game.  When I started doing hyperspin I found it was easiest to get the consoles up and running first to get the hang of it.  NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.  

[DJQuad]

Do most have MameUIFX and Mess, or MameUI? I don't mind setting up Mess for consoles I guess, I'm just not sure what I'd lose if I change to MameUI to handle both.

[Styphelus]

You don't need to setup mess at all. 

 

I just spent the weekend upgrading to Mame 0.172. For some reason MameUI 0.172 game me issues with pop ups that I did not have with my previous version.

 

So, I setup MameUIFX 0.172 for Mame (Mess systems are not included in the FX version) and just plain Mame 0.172 for all my console systems. Just make sure it points to the roms folder and it will play them. One thing I noticed what the the latest rom set will overwrite the aes.zip bios files so you won't be able to play Neo-Geo AES games. Just make sure you backup the old file and revert back to it.

 

Got everything working with some help from Gigapig. You can get away with just 1 Mame install but I like keeping them separate.