SDLMame 0.125 on WII - MAME Arcade Games Emulator for Nintendo Wii

[sean.aaron]

That's good, because I'm hoping that when my Wii gets back from Nintendo (hopefully in the next couple of days), my copies of Gamecube titles Namco Museum 50th Anniversary and Midway Arcade Treasures 1&2 will be redundant...some of those ports are good, but some, well, not so good!

[sean.aaron]

Well, looks like I'm waiting for the next release; I don't know if it's using 480p settings or what, but I couldn't launch Robotron 2084, I mean come on, it's freaking Robotron!

Hopefully we'll see a new release in the near future; in the meantime it's Gamecube port collections for me.

[kevenz]

forget about this emulator for now, it's too slow and buggy...... it's just a "demo" of what a real wiimame emulator could do.

[melcrose]

If, by slow and buggy you mean "perfect and bug-free" .. I agree.

Honestly have not had problem one with this emu, other than the 15 Rom limit. True, it may not support all roms (large) .. but the small ones are perfect!

[sean.aaron]

I limited myself to under 1MB ROMs; granted I've only tried one, but the only thing I can think is that it's one of the early issues noted with displaying over component.

Robotron should be pretty basic; I don't see why it won't load, but I've got a raft of proper Wii and Gamecube games not to have to wait to initialise without an option to get back to the main MAME menu when the video hangs meaning I have to do a hard reset on the Wii. I just don't have enough game-time to waste with that.

[jbardi]

The idea behind emulating older systems on newer systems is that they fulfill the following requirements:

1) They are quick and easy to get up and running (turn on and play)

2) They run faster than the original hardware

3) They do not have enough system control to cause instability with the parent system

4) The blast from the past is actually fun and enjoyable!

This fails miserably in every aspect:

1) It is not quick and easy to get up and running, as it sometimes doesn't run at all, tends to have problems with Homebrew Channel and normal Wii options/settings

2) It is not faster, as it takes 5-30 minutes, depending on the size of the game, just to load (if it loads at all)

3) More than 75% of the time, it causes the Wii to lock-up and requires a hard reset

4) By the time you get any game to load without crashing, you are so frustrated, the retro enjoyment is GONE!

Why on earth would I waste my time (even 5 minutes worth) to load PacMan? My Mac Mini loads PacMan in a tenth of a second.

Like I said... the concept is nice, but ultimately it is a failure and a complete waste of time.

[sean.aaron]

Yeah it's a real shame; I think a large part of the problem is it's running via some kind of mini Linux Kernel as opposed to being compiled for the Wii Homebrew environment from scratch. If you could boot straight into Wii linux I bet it would run a lot better.

Ideally you'd want someone to do a native port (well, as native as using the free Wii development tools can be) a la MAME OS X on the Mac, but that would take a lot of time and coding experience.

I'd rather see this than a Homebrew version of Missile Command or Breakout myself.

In the meantime I have Namco Museum Remix, Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (even if the dots in Pacman look like little rectangles!) and Midway Arcade Treasures 1&2+AnyRegionChanger for my classic arcade fix on the Wii.

[Baboon]

If you could boot straight into Wii linux I bet it would run a lot better.

I'm sure the developer of wii mame Nuvalo said that he is currently working on wii linux... which is why wii mame has been put on hold.

[sean.aaron]

I'm sure the developer of wii mame Nuvalo said that he is currently working on wii linux... which is why wii mame has been put on hold.

Cool, that should be interesting and will hopefully mean a lot of other things will be possible, like MAME keyboard support or even USB mice/trackballs -- I've got a wireless Kensington Turbo Mouse that would be awesome to use with Wii MAME.

[melcrose]

Wow, I totally appreciate what you guys are saying, but my experience differs DRAMATICALLY.

Nothing is slow, the roms I load load in.. 60 seconds?
Admittedly, I'm running Crazy Climber I and II, Defender, flying shark (sky shark), etc. BUT IT'S PERFECT!
Never a lock up, never a problem.
I load it, I choose, I'm in it, I play it, I'm done.

FWIW, I'm running component (HD), w/ Wiiconnect24 off.

Hope he does complete his plans on everything, I'd love to see more work put into this.

BUT, to anyone reading this, grab the latest version of this and stick to small roms: a blast to play!