MAME 0.271

It’s the end of October, which means it must be time for MAME 0.271! It’s been another good month for gambling system emulation. A few Excellent System games are now playable, including Miracle Seven and Fever 13. Several more games from IGS were dumped and emulated. As well as mahjong games, there are a few card games, including several variants of a dou dizhu game. Speaking of IGS, Mahjong Senpu is now fully playable. This game is interesting as it feels like a poor-quality imitation IGS mahjong game, although it runs on completely different hardware and doesn’t appear to rely on stolen game code.

Numerous issues with NEC PC-98 emulation have been fixed, many of them affecting graphics. This has resulted in dozens of software list items being promoted to working. The Research Machines LINK 480Z is now emulated properly. This 8-bit computer from England could boot BASIC from ROM or CP/M from floppy disks or a network file server. We’ve also added support for a somewhat newer system built around one of the oldest integrated CPUs: Dmitry Grinberg’s Linux/4004. This system emulates a MIPS I CPU on an Intel 4004 CPU, allowing Linux to run from an SD Card. Using it is definitely an exercise in patience.

As always, there’s far more in this release than we’ve got time to talk about here. There’s some very visible improvement to Namco System 23 emulation, quite a few new chess computers, more Japanese TV games, some progress on Thomson computer emulation, and lots of additions to the Apple and Sinclair software lists.

You can read about everything that changed this month in the whatsnew.txt file, and the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available on the download page.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before asking for help:

• Have you tried the latest version?
• Have you tried different settings?
• Have you updated your drivers?
• Have you tried searching on Google?

If you feel your question warrants a self-post or may not be answered in the weekly thread, try posting it at r/EmulationOnPC. For problems with emulation on Android platforms, try posting to r/EmulationOnAndroid.

If you'd like live help, why not try the /r/Emulation Discord? Join the #tech-support
channel and ask- if you're lucky, someone'll be able to help you out.

All weekly question threads

Before asking for help:

• Have you tried the latest version?
• Have you tried different settings?
• Have you updated your drivers?
• Have you tried searching on Google?

If you feel your question warrants a self-post or may not be answered in the weekly thread, try posting it at r/EmulationOnPC. For problems with emulation on Android platforms, try posting to r/EmulationOnAndroid.

If you'd like live help, why not try the /r/Emulation Discord? Join the #tech-support
channel and ask- if you're lucky, someone'll be able to help you out.

All weekly question threads

Tony Hawk's Motion is one of the few Nintendo DS games that, to this day, cannot be fully played on emulator. While the game can be launched, it won't go past this message:

\"The Motion Pack has been removed. Please turn the power off and insert the Motion Pack.\"

At least that's what I thought.

Using a DS flashcart and this software to dump a .gba rom, I managed to dump the Motion Pack. You can download it here. It's an european copy, but as far as I know, it works on both American and European versions.

The DeSmuME emulator allows both NDS and GBA cartridges at the same time, so I did that- and I actually managed to get to the game select menu!

https://preview.redd.it/akkcesrhckvd1.png?width=256&format=png&auto=webp&s=87cb482a0a71f56fed214c1388381e3a3cd3904a

Even more surprising, Hue Pixel Painter can actually be launched! Now of course, you cannot move, but the game still launches and works.

https://preview.redd.it/ozhqav1pckvd1.png?width=256&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b2a7dd230b16d8deedca1eb97270b4708c80de0

But there's an issue. Well, two actually. The first one is that we don't really care about Hue. The second is that if we try to launch Tony Hawk's Motion...

\"The Motion Pack has been removed. Please turn the power off and insert the Motion Pack.\"

This message again. It uses a different font, and it appears on the upper screen instead of the lower one, but still, I cannot find a way to go past this.

So I'm asking: is anyone tech-savvy enough to find a way to trick the game into thinking the Motion Pack is there?

Saw this: https://www.analogue.co/

And I wondered if the SD card slot could be used to store ROMs and play via that instead of physical carts.

In terms of graphics, controlls, processing, etc...

Before asking for help:

• Have you tried the latest version?
• Have you tried different settings?
• Have you updated your drivers?
• Have you tried searching on Google?

If you feel your question warrants a self-post or may not be answered in the weekly thread, try posting it at r/EmulationOnPC. For problems with emulation on Android platforms, try posting to r/EmulationOnAndroid.

If you'd like live help, why not try the /r/Emulation Discord? Join the #tech-support
channel and ask- if you're lucky, someone'll be able to help you out.

All weekly question threads

Recently I announced the work I have been doing on Retrom (github repo) and received some incredible feedback from this community and others. I'm back to report on some of the work that had been done since!

If you missed the previous announcement, take a look at it here to get up to speed on what Retrom is and why it exists.

By far and away the most common request for Retrom at the time of announcement was a loosening of the restriction on the library/filesystem structures it supports. Retrom now supports the two most commonly requested structures and will soon support arbitrary entries so that any potential user can adopt Retrom, no matter how convoluted the library structure is.

There have also been a handful of bug fixes and stabilizations, some of which were from bug reports from users (thank you!). Also many UI tweaks and improvements!

The next large release is also fast approaching, and the big feature that ships with it is Big Screen Mode. This is intended for users that will want to access their Retrom libraries and play on a couch, with their massive OLED TVs and/or simply want to navigate with their controllers.

Thanks again for the fantastic feedback and general praise for Retrom previously, I hope it continues to serve its users well!

For those who want to follow any updates and/or discussion on Retrom, please feel free to join the newly created discord server. It is barren, for now, but I hope it will grow to become a community proper someday.

EDIT: As per the suggestions of many, I have updated the media below to omit any content from a certain publisher. This was a silly oversight by myself to begin with, and I appreciate the suggestions for taking more care with this. I'll be extra wary moving forward!

Screenshots of updated UI

https://preview.redd.it/45i8rcohvytd1.png?width=1949&format=png&auto=webp&s=82d34ea477a409788f6591054c8bb39193b31f25

Big Screen Mode Preview

https://preview.redd.it/tj1d2qx6vytd1.png?width=1949&format=png&auto=webp&s=0d7eee7e6889dce742ed2a0b60f92d3dee5d3272

https://preview.redd.it/oz5srpx6vytd1.png?width=1949&format=png&auto=webp&s=91ff7076e1addcf6e71f07898bf124e5af9cc117

https://preview.redd.it/q1argqx6vytd1.png?width=1949&format=png&auto=webp&s=6882f11ce6e01953fc7596e629393f25209fc717

https://preview.redd.it/kbg7kqx6vytd1.png?width=1949&format=png&auto=webp&s=58b1fb7d6387bd77c1b4b2dbe4cf93e676e772d5

A friend of mine, who runs a YouTube channel with over 1 million subscribers, recently received several YouTube copyright strikes from "mm-nintendo.com" and "tatsumi-masaaki@protonmail.com," claiming to be from Nintendo of America due to his use of emulators for Switch games. After the strikes were lifted, he got an email from "tatsumi-masaaki@protonmail.com" (with "brand-protection@mm-nintendo.com" in the footer) asking him to take down five videos, which he did. Then more emails followed, demanding even more videos be removed, which he also did. The latest one said he’s no longer allowed to upload any Nintendo content at all.

What’s strange is that I found "mm-nintendo.com" linked to other takedown incidents, including some related to Garry’s Mod. My friend’s videos aren’t pirated—they're just emulated Switch games with some performance improvements like FPS mods or Reshade. Despite all this, he's really afraid these emails might be legitimate, and he's very worried about losing his YouTube channel. I’ve tried to assure him that it’s a scam, even reaching out to both Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of America, who confirmed that the domain isn't connected to them. However, out of fear, he still doesn’t believe me and thinks this is 100% real.

Has anyone encountered anything similar or have any insights into what’s going on?

NEW INFORMATION UPDATE 1: "FAKE Nintendo Copyright Strikes, A Big game officially headed to PC and more" by Mr. Sujano

NEW INFORMATION UPDATE 2: "The TRUTH about the recent Nintendo Takedowns..." by Kaze Clips (Kaze Emanuar)

If you don't want Sudachi calling home and tracking you add the following to your hosts file. Looks like all versions including v1.0.11 are referencing these sites. I don't know what they do.

0.0.0.0 sudachi-emu.org
    ::1 sudachi-emu.org
0.0.0.0 profile.sudachi-emu.org
    ::1 profile.sudachi-emu.org

Before asking for help:

• Have you tried the latest version?
• Have you tried different settings?
• Have you updated your drivers?
• Have you tried searching on Google?

If you feel your question warrants a self-post or may not be answered in the weekly thread, try posting it at r/EmulationOnPC. For problems with emulation on Android platforms, try posting to r/EmulationOnAndroid.

If you'd like live help, why not try the /r/Emulation Discord? Join the #tech-support
channel and ask- if you're lucky, someone'll be able to help you out.

All weekly question threads

So... given that these services are now end-of-life, which final distribution of either emulator runs better, has fewer bugs, etc (which one is better)?

Before asking for help:

• Have you tried the latest version?
• Have you tried different settings?
• Have you updated your drivers?
• Have you tried searching on Google?

If you feel your question warrants a self-post or may not be answered in the weekly thread, try posting it at r/EmulationOnPC. For problems with emulation on Android platforms, try posting to r/EmulationOnAndroid.

If you'd like live help, why not try the /r/Emulation Discord? Join the #tech-support
channel and ask- if you're lucky, someone'll be able to help you out.

All weekly question threads