Noob setting up Retro Arcade

clocey

I have been working the last two weeks working through a bunch of forums to try to get a my raspberry pi set up to be able to play the 80 vintage games that I grew up with. I bought a joystick and buttons from Adafruit to try to set up the retro gaming system they show but I have not had any luck. I am hoping someone has a step by step so I can learn and successfully set up my pi so I can have some fun.
Thanks in advance

mholgatem

where exactly is it that you are getting stuck? what have you set up so far?

clocey

I have the PiPlay image installed on a memory card and at one point I could see the joystick inputs but not the two buttons. I am starting from scratch again since I have jacked around so much.

clocey

@mgolgatem thanks for the help and I finally got things working using the mame4all. Now that I figure out that, what is the difference/benefit of the piplay image? Would I copy the roms over the same way?

Thanks

clocey

I was successful in getting my joystick working with the PiPlay. Can anyone tell me where I copy ROMs to for MAME? Also where is a good/safe location to get ROM's. I am looking for the 80's video games. Galaxian, defender, pacman, ms pacman, asteroids.

Conno123009

Unfortunately, for legal reasons we can't tell you were to get roms :( The first few sites are usually safe, but I don't think I can say more than that...
You can get a couple free roms (Legally) from http://www.mamedev.org/roms/ but there not the greatest games in the world.
Put the roms in /home/pi/pimame/roms/advmame (or mame4all)

clocey

Thanks. I found some so I am good.
Last night I want to play a game using the adafruit joystick that they recommend in their retro arcade project. the joystick worked on the piplay menu but not in the games using the mame emulator. Also I could not get any games to work with the advmame.
I reloaded the piplay image last night and will finish the setup later today to see if that helps. any suggestions would be appreciated.

mholgatem

I recommend using mame4all. it uses a specific romset (0.37b5), but works a lot better. You need to make sure that you configure your controller as well. In mame4all, you need to run your game, then press the 'Tab' key to configure it. Any other emulator can be configured from the piplay main menu by pressing 'Tab' and then going to the controller config option.

sadeter

Any hope of getting the controller config to work for mame4all too?

clocey

I am able to get mame4all_pi running using the adafruit retrogame instructions and it works great. I modified the retrogame app to add more buttons for credit, player and two extra buttons for games that need more than two. I set this up to run on startup by modifying the fc.local file but I would prefer to use the piplay image.
How can I modify the piplay files to eliminate the emulators that I will not be using? Basically I only want mame4all and the set up and scraper options.
This is an AWESOME forum and thanks for all the help.
P.S.
I am still looking for a functional pacman/ms pacman rom :)

mholgatem

you just need to edit the pimame/pimame-menu/config.yaml file. that will allow you to hide any unwanted emulators

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

Recommended Accessories