M.A.M.E. - Arcade Emulation - What to play?

[Yuri-G]

Just rediscovered the joy of MAME and looking for suggestions to play. I'm all about shooters, platformers, and fighting games... but any suggestions are welcome. So far I've got:

Rainbow Islands
Bubble Bobble series
Raiden (only the original Raiden works )
R-Type series (Leo is sex)
Simpsons
Strider (can't get Strider 2 to work, sad)
Dungeons & Dragons series
Little Nemo
Snow Bros.
TMNT series
SFIII 3rd Strike

[Devolver]

Windjammers. Ultimate 2 player bro game. Put countless hours into this in college. Not as fun solo though.

[Vandole]

fire the sephyuyx signal! he buit a mame cabinet and can probably write you a dissertation on mame

[Spoony Bob]

Rockman power battle maybe? Never even heard of windjammers before, but that actually looks kind of fun.

[Minions]

Can't got wrong with Killer Instinct

[Correction]

all the old neo geo games are awesome.

[Cheerios]

A lot of 3D games don't work too well with MAME. From what I understand, MAME emulation is done mostly with the CPU, so even the shittiest of shit graphics cards will be able to run games the same. A graphics card helps take some load off of the CPU, but it isn't going to make a game like Strider 2 run any faster than 10-15 fps. For example, some tests with Tekken 3 showed about a ~1.5% increase in speed with a better video card. The Mame developers don't really seem to care about how fast a game runs, but how "accurately" the game runs, and that's where other emulators come in.

If you want to run 3D games, you'll need other emulators that will bring the games up to speed. Model2, Zinc, and Naomi are a few of the emulators you should be looking for to play the 3D games that MAME offers. Keep in mind that just because you have the ROM file for MAME, that doesn't mean the game will run. Sometimes you need to download BIOS files or .CHD files, as well as put them in the correct folders, for the games to function. Easy to do if you're just using your PC, a nightmare if you're trying to set up an arcade cabinet and a front end.

I'm using the term "3D" loosely here. Some games pretty much need to utilize the GPU to run at a playable speed, so I'm just throwing those into the bunch, 3D or not.

Couple of games you should play off the top of my head:

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
Sunset Riders
Marvel vs Capcom
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Metal Slug series
Altered Beast
Final Fight
Double Dragon
Mortal Kombat
Killer Instinct 2

List of some Zinc games:

Strider 2
Ehrgeiz
Tekken 1, 2, and 3
Soul Edge
Street Fighter EX and EX 2 Plus
Rival Schools
Plasma Sword
Bloody Roar
Battle Arena Toshinden 2
Dead or Alive
G-Darius


List of Naomi games (pretty much Dreamcast/NullDC):

Ikrauga
Guilty Gear series
Capcom vs SNK 2
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Power Stone
Cannon Spike
Project Justice (Rival Schools 2)

There are shooters you can play as well if you want to use the mouse, but I don't have a gun set up on my cabinet so I didn't bother listing any shooters.

[Yuri-G]

I love you, cheerios. great suggestions and some very helpful information re: arcade emulation. got strider 2 up and running on zinc and it's a lot nicer than it was on MAME.