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

**sean.aaron** · October 17th, 2008, 07:34

Hmm, something must be different. Is yours a PAL Wii? What firmware version? What video mode setting?

The only ROM I tried launching was Robotron which worked fine on Mac/PC versions of MAME and is very small (less than 100k); I also figured small ROMs would perform well, but nothing happened and relaunching meant a hard reset -- it's a bit time-consuming just for testing purposes.

The SDL-Linux implementation probably made it quicker to port, but I think a native version would be a lot better. Kind of like running MAME OS X versus SDLMAME on Mac.

**goshogun1** · October 25th, 2008, 07:38

Went back and messed with this emulator. Pretty much most of the roms in my folder of 200 or so worked great. The average time to load games was around 65 seconds. These were all smaller games though, with the largest being 3MB. (macross 2 took 5 mins to load. Played well tho) Pre-93' Namco, Konami, Irem, Taito, and Capcom all worked quite well, minus a few non-working ones just because of special graphics etc. ie: Arabian Fight, Salovou.
I just finished playing Gain Ground, and Eswat. Both worked really nicely Even Simpsons and the TMNT games work well. That alone is awesome.

Also, the problem of only having 15 games listed is easy to deal with. Press start while in a game and then select, "select new game". It takes like 30 seconds to load the list of 15 roms the first time. Then, select "return to prior menu." Select the "load new game" option again. Now the list of 15 will appear instantly rather than 30 seconds. But most importantly the list will be completely different compared to the previous 15. You can just keep re-entering the rom list until you find the grouping of roms you want. Real time saver if you want to use this emu.

**sean.aaron** · October 25th, 2008, 13:42

You try anything not Japanese? I've only tried Williams games so far: Defender and Robotron. Neither one of them will start up; both are extremely small.

What's your setup (tv, wii video settings, etc.)?

Well, another reason I gave up on this. After wasting 10min. just getting the basic app launched, doing something as basic as setting default button settings causes it to crash; happened last time, but I forgot.

Not wasting more time with this until a more stable release comes out (if ever).

**melcrose** · November 22nd, 2008, 01:14

I'm running USA wii, 3.2U firmware.

I've reconfig'd the buttons, never had a crash.
The only problem I've had is if I push it a bit.. say load a 1mb rom and then flip out and try to load another larger rom.
Otherwise, never a lock, never a crash, never a problem. (and I spend a lot of time in this app)

I am running a 4gb SD (not SDHC) card, and those are supposedly much faster, maybe that has something to do with it. (mine was like an 80x I spent 100+ for a few years back)

One other nice tip: Hit walmart, and go to their "crap sold on TV" isle. Pick up the light switch anywhere thing for 15 bux. Plus your wii into it. If it ever locks, just flip the switch, and flip it back on. Way nice.

**kunsanboog** · December 23rd, 2008, 12:36

I have loaded the mame emulator using TP. After it says loading and initializing the menu displays with the first game on the list highlighted in yellow but no matter what button I press I can't get it to scroll up or down the list and no game ever loads? And I do have wiiconnect24 turned off. Any ideas?

**Excalibur212** · January 25th, 2009, 06:58

Same probem. Every time i've tried to load SMLmame, the Wii remote just loses connectivity as soon as it loads and you can't do anything. You get the list of ROMs, and if you try to press any buttons, the four blue LED's on your Wii remote just flash (what does this mean? I assume it means it's lost the connection). Only thing you can do is reboot your Wii.

I went out and bought Wii Classic Controllers and plugged them into my Wii Remotes thinking that was the issue, but still same problem.

Will someone who supposedly got this working please explain how they did it???

1) What remotes/controllers are you using? Do you need a GameCube controller or something??

2) Do you still need to put mamefs and boot.dol in the root if you have the Homebrew Channel installed, or can you just put them under \apps\sdlmame? No one seems to explain this anywhere...

3) Is SDLmame 0.125 still the latest version? There are 2 versions posted in this thread... Where is it officially maintained, or isn't it? Google just seems to come back to this thread as the only source of this emulator in existence.... I'm starting to think this is all a big prank!

Frustrated,

Thank you.

**Sir_Voe** · January 25th, 2009, 07:04

Originally Posted by Excalibur212

Will someone who supposedly got this working please explain how they did it???

1) What remotes/controllers are you using? Do you need a GameCube controller or something??

2) Do you still need to put mamefs and boot.dol in the root if you have the Homebrew Channel installed, or can you just put them under \apps\sdlmame? No one seems to explain this anywhere...

3) Is SDLmame 0.125 still the latest version? There are 2 versions posted in this thread... Where is it officially maintained, or isn't it? Google just seems to come back to this thread as the only source of this emulator in existence.... I'm starting to think this is all a big prank!

Frustrated,

Thank you.

Yeah, you need a GC controller. 0.125 is still the latest version, and it seems to be maintained here: http://www.tehskeen.com/forums/showt...8732#post48732

**sean.aaron** · January 25th, 2009, 18:04

I've never gotten this thing to work and every attempt is 20min. lost, so I feel the frustration Excalibur, I really do. It needs better support than is currently in place, that's for sure.

**tts** · January 27th, 2009, 05:24

nuvalo, Great work on porting MAME to the Wii! I download the source, and was going to try to compile it myself, but I'm not sure how to get started. I ran a diff on the SDL MAME source and your modified source, and it appears you used a cross compiler. Which cross compiler did you use? The source also referenced sdl-config2. That file was not included in the source, probably because it was part of the SDL package. Do you still have a copy of that file, or do you remember what parameters need to be changed?

Thanks in advance.

- TTS