Arcade games emulated by MAME

Arcade Games can be played in LinuxMCE, thanks to the wonderful work by the MAME project.

Game Player Playing 1943

Basic Definitions

• The OK button is defined as the button normally pressed while the Options screen is visible to select items, and to enter into other menus.
  • If you are using the keyboard, the OK button is the ENTER key.
  • If you are using a joystick, the OK button is Button 1 on your joystick.
  • If you are using the Orbiter, the OK Button is the Play button on the bottom of the orbiter display next to the arrow keys.
• The Escape button is defined as the button normally pressed while the Options screen is visible to abort selections, or to exit menus.
  • If you are using the keyboard, the Cancel button is the ESC key.
  • There is no cancel for the orbiter currently, (FIXME)
  • There is no cancel on the gamepad. You will need to define one if you want it, in the UI Controls subsection in the Options menu.

Putting ROMs into the system

Using Mac OS X Finder to drop ROMs into the system.

In order to play the games, you must acquire the ROMs. These can be found in a variety of ways, and they will not be detailed here.

Once the ROMs are acquired, place the ZIP files into a directory searchable by the filesystem. Normally, this would be under public/games/MAME. CHDs are also supported and each set of CHDs must be placed in their respective folders, in the same place you put the ROMs.

Once UpdateMedia finds the ROMs, the Game Database will be consulted, and imagery will be pulled from the Game Snapshot Database.

Playing Arcade Games

Selecting a Game

Selecting Donkey Kong

Games can be played by selecting the Games scenario in the main screen, and selecting Arcade from the resulting list. If you have changed the sort order (under Options), you should change it to System, so you can see the Arcade option.

If available, each game will be shown with their respective cover art. If you see a game and it doesn't have cover art, it would be wonderful if you at least filed a ticket, even better if you provided cover art.

You can of course use the Options page to filter, and search through games, the same as with other media. In search, games for all systems will be shown.

Playing a Game

Typically, once a game has been selected, the Game will appear, with artwork around the game screen (if available). Since these games are simulations of the actual game hardware and software, you will see the game "boot" its hardware and software. This will entail various "self test" screens which may look quite strange, but they will eventually give way to the Game's attract screen.

Insert coin

Inserting a Coin.

Since these are simulated arcade games, you will need to insert a coin, before you start the game. You do this by pressing Insert Coin. Most games only need one coin to be inserted for each time the game is played. Some require more. Please watch the on screen display for more information.

Player Start

Once the required coins have been virtually inserted, you can then start the game, by pressing P1, P2, P3, or P4 start for 1, 2, 3, or 4 player start. What is actually available varies from game to game. Please follow the on screen instructions after you've inserted a coin.

How Do I?

This section shows common issues that can arise while playing Arcade games with the Game Player.

Configure your controller

Setting MAME options

You can configure a controller by pressing Options . Once the Options menu has appeared, you can use either the orbiter to select the folowing:

• Input (General) - Changes in this menu affect every single arcade game.
• Input (This Game) - Changes in this menu affect this specific game.

Once you select this section, you can then select the button you wish to redefine, and then press the OK button, and then press the desired button on your keyboard or controller to define the new button. Repeat this for each button you wish to define.

A note about redefining buttons present on the Orbiter

Mapping buttons so Orbiter can work too.

Currently, because Arcade implementation uses MAME, and we are throwing keystrokes at MAME, these keystrokes are currently hard-coded into Game Player. We expect that 1 is player 1 start, 5 is insert coin, etc, and we send keyboard events whenever you press a button on the Orbiter display when this happens. If you redefine these keys, the buttons on Orbiter will cease to function correctly. This is easy to solve. When you are defining your keys, define your new button, then repeat, the process, pressing the appropriate orbiter button. MAME will assign the button events to both keys, and your orbiter buttons will continue to work correctly.