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MAMEUI Tutorial
Article source: http://fantasyanime.com/emuhelp/MAME

Contents
1. About MAMEUI (p.2)
2. Should you use MAMEUI? (p.2)
3. Why I don't recommend the latest MAME (p.3)
4. Installation (p.3)
5. Understanding MAME's ROM structure (p.5)
6. NeoGeo games need neogeo.zip (p.7)
7. Loading a game (p.8)
8. Troubleshooting undetected games & loading errors (p.10)
9. Loading a CHD (hard drive) game (p.11)
10. How to play games (p.11)
11. Using a gamepad or mouse (p.12)
12. Reconfiguring the keyboard or gamepad (p.14)
13. Using save states (p.15)
14. Finding ROMs (p.16)
15. Knowing which ROMs to download (p.16)
16. Advanced help with MAME (p.18)

A Preview of MAMEUI
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About MAME
MAME [https://www.mamedev.org/] is the most compatible and capable multiple arcade
machine emulator. It supports thousands of games. There is a large community of contributors
working persistently to expand and perfect MAME's library of supported arcade games.

This tutorial is to help you with MAMEUI (short for 'MAME user-interface'), a once-popular build
of MAME. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated since 2014 and has since been abandoned.
However, as you'll read in this guide, that's not a bad thing! The arcade roms that are readily
available in rom sites work best on old arcade emulators. I'll explain this more in this guide.

This tutorial is for beginners, impatient casual gamers, and people who aren't very computer
savvy. If you're an advanced MAME user looking for help or if you're building your own arcade
cabinet, this tutorial won't help you - you need to go elsewhere for help:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MAME/

*If you would like to download MAMEUI, I have it in my emulators page:

https://fantasyanime.com/emulators#arcade

Arcade emulation terminology

A list of important terms, so you don't get lost in this tutorial.

● MAME - The king of arcade emulation. It's available for every OS and platform.

● MAME 2000, MAME 2010, etc. - A version of MAME from that specific year. For
example, “MAME 2010” is a build of MAME from the year 2010.

● MAMEUI - A fork of MAME that has a Windows UI (user-interface). It was last updated in
2014, so it's abandoned.

● FinalBurn Alpha - A strong competitor to MAME. It was last updated in 2018, so it's
abandoned.

● FinalBurn Neo - A continuation of FinalBurn Alpha by a different group.

● RetroArch - A popular multi-system emulator that can emulate over 40 video game
systems, including arcade.

● NeoGeo - Arcade games such as Metal Slug were developed by NeoGeo. These games
require a special BIOS file to run with MAME.
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● CHD - An acronym for “CD hard drive”. These are what the ROMs are called for arcade
games that used a hard drive. Killer Instinct is an example. Their file sizes are drastically
larger than regular arcade ROMs.

Should you use MAMEUI?

With all the emulator offerings as of 2022, should you use MAMEUI? Well, it depends.
RetroArch [https://retroarch.com], a popular multi-system emulator, is a great option for arcade
games. It includes multiple 'cores' (multiple emulators) for arcade games. At the time I'm writing
this, it includes the following: FB Alpha, FinalBurn Neo, MAME (latest), MAME 2000, MAME
2003, and MAME 2010. This selection of cores is valuable when it comes to getting old arcade
ROMs to work. And in my RetroArch tutorial, I have dedicated sections that cover emulating
arcade games.

Emulation quality between RetroArch and MAMEUI is generally the same. RetroArch may run
better/smoother simply because it's in active development and optimized for Windows 10.
MAMEUI's benefit is that it's far easier to use and offers more features and options. I can't say
which emulator is better because they both have their pros and cons. I recommend trying both
to see what works best for your needs.

Why I don't recommend the latest MAME

MAMEUI, RetroArch, FB Alpha... I'm throwing a lot of names at you. I know this can be
confusing for newcomers. So why not just use the original and latest version of MAME, and not
bother using anything else? With Super Nintendo, for example, most of us just use Snes9x. We
don't need to fuss with multiple emulators to get Super Nintendo games to work. So why is
arcade emulation so complicated?
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How the official build of MAME looks like

The source of this problem is the latest version of the official build of MAME. If you download a
bunch of ROMs from a random ROM site, they won't work with the latest MAME. The latest
version of FinalBurn shares the same complications. Additionally, the latest MAME is not
user-friendly at all. I classify it as an advanced emulator, so I do not recommend it for
newcomers and casual gamers.

As I mentioned earlier, my recommendation is to use RetroArch or MAMEUI instead of the latest

MAME. The arcade ROMs that are readily available in ROM sites work on these 'old' arcade
emulators.

Installation
Windows versions of MAME are all a standalone program so they do not have an install wizard.
Installation is simple: just extract MAME from its zip file. Not sure how to extract zip files? Here's
a video tutorial showing you how: how to unzip files on Windows
[https://youtu.be/6ISxgrCOwok?t=1m1s].

IMPORTANT! MAME must be placed in a common folder on your computer. I recommend

Documents, Downloads, or create a folder on your desktop. If you place MAME somewhere
else on your main C drive, then you may be restricting it to read-only access. Doing so prevents
MAME from saving anything.
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To open MAMEUI, double-click on . If you opted to use an older version of

MAME such as MAME32, double-click on to open it.

Understanding MAME's ROM structure

Upon opening MAME, the first thing you see is the All Games tab (shown below). This is a list of
all the games supported by MAME. MAME does not include these games. You need to
download them separately.

In this list, notice the indented games. And notice that the first game of the same title is not
indented. The first game is the parent and all the indented games below are the children. See:
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In the picture below, I'm showing you how this parent/orphan relationship applies to actual
ROMs in the roms folder. This is how all arcade emulators work with arcade ROMs.
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In other words:

● If you want to play the parent of a game, you need to download the parent ROM.
● If you want to play a child of a game, you need to download both the child ROM and
the parent ROM.

You'll notice that all arcade ROMs are abbreviated. You must never rename or extract an arcade
ROM! Its exact filename is how MAME can detect it.

NeoGeo games need neogeo.zip

NeoGeo games require the NeoGeo BIOS in order to boot. You can download it from the web
version of this tutorial. Additionally, old versions of MAME emulators may require an older
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version of the NeoGeo BIOS. If you're finding that the first NeoGeo BIOS doesn't work,
download the old version.

*To setup the NeoGeo BIOS with MAME, simply move it into MAME's ROMs folder. That's it!

Loading a game

1. Before we do anything, I must first inform you to never extract or rename the zip file of
an arcade ROM! The exact filename is how MAME detects it.

2. Move your arcade ROMs into MAME's ROMs folder:

3. Next we need to have MAME scan your ROMs folder for new games. You can do so by
going to File > Audit all games (shown below), or just press the F5 key.
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A progress bar will appear on the bottom of MAME's window:

4. The audit usually takes just a few seconds. Sometimes it could take a few minutes.

5. Click on Available to view the list of games that MAME has

detected as playable, as shown to the right:

6. Double-click on a game to play it.

*If your games are not being detected or giving you 'not found' errors, read the next section.
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Troubleshooting undetected games & loading errors

A sample prompt of 'missing file' errors

Unfortunately, it's very common for MAME to refuse to detect your games. Or, MAME will detect
your games, but give you 'not found' errors upon loading a game. These two problems have the
same source.

This is happening because the authors of arcade emulators are purists who insist on everything
to be perfect. As soon as an arcade game has a better ROM dump, MAME is updated to
support the newer dump. This renders older ROMs incompatible. This problem gets more
complicated with the reality that pretty much every ROM site distributes only old ROMs. These
old ROMs are incompatible with newer builds of MAME.

The first step in troubleshooting this is to run through the following checklist:

● Double-check to make sure your arcade ROMs are indeed in the ROMs folder.

● Did you rename or extract your arcade ROMs? You must never do that! If you did then
that's why they're not working.

● Did you run a game audit? You can do so by going to File > Audit all games, or just
press the F5 key.

● Make sure you have the parent of the game you're trying to play. Learn more about
parents and children in Understanding MAME’s ROM structure above.

● Still getting errors? Try downloading all versions of the game you're trying to play.
Meaning, download its parent and all of its children.

The workaround: If you're good on the above bullet points then you are doing everything
correctly. This means the arcade ROMs you downloaded are definitely old. So how do you get
old ROMs to work? That's simple - use an old version of MAME! In my emulators page
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[http://fantasyanime.com/emulators] I provide a version of MAME32 from 2007. It has a high

success rate of detecting ROMs that are being distributed in popular ROM sites.

Loading a CHD (hard drive) game

Arcade games based on a hard drive require some extra steps. You need two things: (1) the
parent ROM, and (2) the CHD file (the hard drive file). The size of the parent ROM is tiny, but
expect the CHD file to be around 100 MB. I'll use Killer Instinct as an example in these
directions:

1. The parent ROM for Killer Instinct is “kinst.zip” and the CHD file is “kinst.chd“. Place
“kinst.zip” into MAME's ROMs folder as you would with any other MAME ROM.

2. Within the ROMs folder, create a new folder and call it kinst (which is the exact name of
the ROM).

3. Move “kinst.chd“ over to this new kinst folder.

4. Open MAME and do a game audit. You can do so by going to File > Audit all games, or
just press the F5 key.

5. You should see Killer Instinct come up in the Available list. Double-click to play. If Killer
Instinct did not show as available, read the section in this tutorial about troubleshooting
undetected games.

*If these directions aren't enough and you're still lost, here's a YouTube video showing you
exactly how to load CHD games: http://youtu.be/aAtHfRtjlGs.

How to play games

Arcade games on MAME work in the same fashion as the real thing. Upon loading an arcade
game, to play you must insert virtual coins. You can insert as many as you want (which gives
you infinite lives). Then press Start to begin. Each player has their own coin bank and Start
button.

Players 1-4 Player 1 Keys

● Player 1 Start = Press 1 ● Player 1 Button 1 = Left Ctrl

● Player 2 Start = Press 2 ● Player 1 Button 2 = Left Alt
● Player 3 Start = Press 3 ● Player 1 Button 3 = Space
● Player 4 Start = Press 4 ● Player 1 Button 4 = Left Shift
● Player 1 Coin = Press 5
● Player 2 Coin = Press 6
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● Player 3 Coin = Press 7

● Player 4 Coin = Press 8

General MAME Keys

● Press left Ctrl + Alt + Enter for Window mode. Press it again to go back to full screen.
● Press F3 to reset.
● Press P to pause.
● Press F12 to capture a screenshot. It will be captured in PNG format and tossed into the
“Snap” folder.
● Press Esc to quit your game.

Using a gamepad or mouse

Your gamepad must be plugged in before you open MAME. MAME won't detect it if you plug it in
after you open MAME.

1. Click on the Options > Default Game Options:

2. The “Default Game Properties“ window will pop up. Click on the Controllers tab:
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3. Put a check in the box for Enable joystick input:

If this option is shaded out…

...then MAME is not detecting your gamepad.

a. To enable a mouse (for light gun games), put a check in the box for Enable
mouse input.
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4. Click on Apply then OK.

5. That's it! MAME has already configured your gamepad's buttons. Although you still have
to use keys 1-8 for player starts and inserting coins.

If MAME didn't detect your gamepad: Test your gamepad with other emulators. If it doesn't
work with any other emulator, then your gamepad is faulty. If it does work with other emulators,
then MAME isn't compatible with your gamepad.

Reconfiguring the keyboard or gamepad

MAME is a little weird with this. It doesn't offer a way to reconfigure buttons using the frontend
GUI. Rather, MAME requires you load a game and use the in-game overlay menus. Here's how:

1. Open up a game. Press the Tab key.

2. The menu that you see toward the right will pop up
over the game. You have two options: globally change
the keys (Input general), or just this game that you
currently have running (Input this Game). Select the
option you'd like.

3. Next select the player whose keys you want to

reconfigure:
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4. You'll arrive at the list of all the buttons for a player:

Press the Enter key on a button you'd like to reconfigure. Next, hold down the keyboard
key or gamepad button that you want the button changed to. That's it!

5. If you want to clear the changed button and reconfigure it with something else, press the
Enter key on it and do nothing (wait).

Using save states

'Save states' is a staple feature offered by all video game emulators. It allows you to instantly
save your position in a game at any point. You can then load that saved state any time. If you
saved at the start of a level or before a boss, you can restart it an infinite amount of times if you
die.

When it comes to MAME and save states, I have some bad news. Here's a direct quote from
MAME's documentation:

Note that the save state feature is not supported for a large number of drivers. If a given
driver is not known to work perfectly, you will receive a warning that the save state may
not be valid when attempting to save or load.
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In other words, save states won't work with more than half of the games supported by MAME.
But it never hurts to try it out and see if save states will work with the game(s) you want to save
in! Start playing a game and do the following.

● Saving a state: Press Left Shift+F7. You will be prompted to press a key.

● Loading a state: Press F7. You will be prompted to press a key or select from the menu
to determine which save state you wish to load.

If this is a big turn-off for you, I would recommend switching to RetroArch for arcade emulation.
Save states work on there.

Finding ROMs
These are the best places:

● Reddit is a great resource for finding good places for arcade roms. On Google search for
“reddit download mame roms” -
https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+download+mame+roms

● Archive.org (the Internet's library) is increasingly becoming a fantastic ROM site. You
can easily find their arcade roms using Google, with search phrases such as “archive.org
mame” - https://www.google.com/search?q=archive.org+mame

● In my links page [https://fantasyanime.com/links#roms], I have some good links to sites

where you can download arcade ROMs.

Knowing which ROMs to download

Downloading arcade games can be confusing. If you read this tutorial, you know that
downloading a single ROM for a game doesn't mean you've downloaded the game. You need to
download maybe 3-8 separate files in order for a game to work with MAME. ROM sites don't
make it any easier for you by separating every piece of an arcade game as a separate ROM.
How could you quickly & easily find out exactly which ROM files belong to a game?

This is where MAMEUI comes to the rescue! (Remember, you can download it from my site.)
MAMEUI has a search at the top. Start typing in the game in question, and you'll see it appear.
In the “Directory” column you'll see the filenames for the ROM files.
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For example, let's say you want to download Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time
(probably the #1 Turtles game, haha). Looking at the above screenshot, you'll see:

● Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time (4 players ver (UUA)

● Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time (2 Players ver EBA)
● Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time (2 Players ver UDA)
● Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time (4 Players ver ADA)
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Then remember everything I talked about earlier on parents and children. So to play Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time, you'd need to download these files:

1. [Parent] Teenage... - Turtles in Time (4 players ver (UUA) -- which is “tmnt2.zip”

2. [Child] Teenage... - Turtles in Time (2 Players ver EBA) -- which is “tmht22pe.zip”
3. [Child] Teenage... - Turtles in Time (2 Players ver UDA) -- which is “tmnt22pu.zip”
4. [Child] Teenage... - Turtles in Time (4 Players ver ADA) -- which is “tmnt2a.cip”

Advanced help with MAME

I wrote this tutorial for beginners, impatient casual gamers, and people who aren't computer
savvy. If you're looking for advanced help with MAME, you won't find that here. Rather, I
recommend the following Reddits:

● r/MAME - The #1 Reddit for help with MAME

https://www.reddit.com/r/MAME/

● r/cade - Great Reddit for help with custom arcade cabinets

https://www.reddit.com/r/cade/

● r/crapmame - Another helpful Reddit for custom arcade cabinets

https://www.reddit.com/r/crapmame/
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Thank you for reading my tutorial! If you have questions you can email me or message me on
social media [http://fantasyanime.com/contact].