Hey folks, like Saulo mentioned, we updated MAME recently to a newer version, and certain ROMs may be incompatible with the new version.
The 2 most common reasons for a mame rom not working are:
- MAME has several "rom sets" that are compatible with different versions of MAME. Probably your rom is incompatible with this version of MAME. You can either change the MAME version (involved, also a diff version of MAME won't be compatible with other AGS features, like upcoming high-score tracking) or use a rom set that is compatible.
- The ROM has a dependency ROM. Some ROMs depend on other ROMs, so if you don't have the dependency ROM then the one that depends on it won't work. You can look up if your ROM has a dependency here: http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/
If you'd like to test a ROM and see the full error output to know why it's not working, follow these instructions:
- on your keyboard, press the WindowsLogoKey+R
- type "cmd" (without quotes) and press ENTER
- type "cd AppData\Roaming\polycade\emulators\mame" and press ENTER
- type "mame.exe [ROMNAME] -rompath C:\Users[YOURUSERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\polycade\games\arcade" and press ENTER (note that the [ROMNAME] is the filename, without the .zip extension)
An example of the above command:
mame.exe asteroid -rompath C:\Users\Julia\AppData\Roaming\polycade\games\arcade
If your ROM doesn't work, it will output an error message on the command line (probably you are missing some ROM files).