Mame Roms Complete Set
Gaby Zenz
In the past the best place to get a full up to date Mame rom set was either from PleasureDome which had a complicated application process to gain access and you had to maintain a share ratio to keep access or you went to The Internet Archive and dealt with out of date sets and extremely slow download speeds. The PleasureDome has shut down their private tracker which sucked for several reasons but they have since moved their Mame downloads to a new site which is easily accessible to all and no share ratios to maintain.
For the typical users what you want is either the merged or split sets, which would be the 1st and 3rd links in the picture above. The CHDs are optional downloads and needed for a small handful of games but the download is quite large. The links will open a magnet torrent link which your torrent client should auto recognize. I highly recommend using qBittorrent found here: You can look up guides on using bit torrent if you are new to it, I won't be going into how to use the software.
Nice topic to link people when they ask for MAME Sets links.
Another similar way to find MAME sets is by searching "Roms Megathread". On the Retro tab you can find MAME Sets and other retro stuff. Be wary though, those sets might not be up to date.
We have always allowed rom site naming and google search terms, just no links has always been the rule here. We have never banned anyone for naming sites and we only remove links when people post them and ask them not to post links.
This is kind of related.
Who the heck builds these "full" sets? I've been messing with MAME for 15+ years now, and every time I download a "full set", when I do a check with a tool like CLRMAMEPRO against the matching mame.exe binary, it always has some differences or missing roms, sets named or packed wrong, etc. Split or merged, doesn't seem to matter. I just got in the habit or rebuilding when I decide to do an update. Its just bizarre to me. And you also have a to do goofy stuff like torrentzip to build your current set to the torrent set so you can join at greater than zero percent, and even that has weird inconsistencies.
Ultra noob (and french) here. I began to built my collection and I finded those awesome Rom pack. I just downloaded the mame Rom Pack and the only thing I find is a XML Document. Not Zip roms or anything. I continued my setting in Launch box, it analyzed it very well, but I could not play the games. It wanted to run, but failed after like 5 seconds (no audio or video). I know I probably messed up or forgot something, but right now I'm searching my Obi wan. You are my only hope.
I just downloaded the mame Rom Pack and the only thing I find is a XML Document. Not Zip roms or anything. I continued my setting in Launch box, it analyzed it very well, but I could not play the games.
You need to download the actual zipped rom files and if you followed the steps in the first post you would not end up with just an xml file. Not sure where you are downloading the Mame rom pack from but if it is just an xml file that is your issue.
I was looking around on the internet and I found some sites that allow you to buy around cd's/dvd's with a complete set of MAME roms on it. I found this site, =121. I was wondering if this is a good site and any other info people can give me on this idea? Thanks.
Personally I think buying that is a ripoff.. but I guess it's a viable alternative if you can't figure out how to download them yourself or your connection's too slow. But it's just kind of crazy someone would be selling those things in the first place.
Personally I find alt.binaries.emulators.mame more than sufficient to keep my stuff current. Or if you want to go the torrents route I think you can find full roms at although torrents to me are a last resort
I don't know anything about that specific site, but if these people have no problem breaking the law in selling something like this, they probably wouldn't have a problem ripping you off, and if they did you would have no re-course since you are buying something illegal.
There are some reputable sites, but honestly I haven't looked in awhile. I think buying a complete current set is a viable option for some because you are getting everything all in one easy shot. Then all you would need to do is the minor updates when they come out.
These guys are often *every* bit as comitted and genuine in their passion for MAME as any hardcore retro collector here on Atari Age. The guys who copy MAME sets on DVD as a service often have a policy page, and you can get a feel for what drives them by reading this.
Almost ANYONE doing this is doing it as a passion, not as a business, and certainly not to get rich. I think it shows a tremendous lack of understanding to assume that they're "breaking the law" for monetary gain. As far as I've ever seen, most of the people who do this probably lose money in the long run.
And there are a ton of private trackers out there that have torrents of the full rom set (and CHD's if you want) available. Torrents are perfect for stuff like this, because you can choose which files you don't want to download, and those that you specifically want can be set as high priorities so they'll get downloaded first.
Trust me, as a member of the MAME development team, I understand the situation. Yes, you are correct not everyone is doing this for monetary gain but there are some that are. The MAME team has contantly had to battle with people who abuse MAME for non-legitmate commercial purposes. People who sell ROMS of disks and associate these closely with MAME by using the MAME name, or actually including MAME along with the ROMS (which is against the license), put MAME in a very negative light and may drawn the attention of the copyright holders. The MAME team does everything it can to protect the original goals of the project which are to document and preserve these games. They also support legitimate projects that secure legal rights to the games, in the hopes that more companies will allow thier games to be re-released in a legal manor.
Ok. Now you're saying something a lot different than your original post, and I can completely agree with this. I've been saying for awhile that someone needs to start an iGames site where you can download legally licensed ROMs with DMRs built into them.
Hey... if you're part of the development team, and you want to do something to encourage the manfuacturers to get on board... there you go. Push to have DMR incorperated in the ROM format, even if it means a complete overhaul of the ROM encoding method.
You do that, and you get the manufacturers selling their titles for $.99/rom, you'll have a legitimate business model that will make them tons of money. It is a matter of WHEN... not if... and MAME might as well be the one that innovates the standards...
There was a site that was doing basically that, Starroms, but unfortunetly they in-explicably closed up shop earlier this year, don't know if there was ever a public explination of why. Hopefully someone else will attempt this, since I agree with you selling old roms at a low cost would probably generate a lot of business.
I imagine right now the DRM issues are the problem. I bet someone is working on a solution right now. But if they're not, they should be. First person that does that is going to corner the market. If you price the roms reasonably and make up your money on gross sales, it will succeed.
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