MacMAME Troubleshooting

This part of the MacMAME Users Guide gives answers to problems you might have with MacMAME.

I can run MacMAME and go into a game, but how do I start playing?

Press the '5' key on your keyboard to insert a coin. Press '1' to start a one-player game. The arrow keys on your keyboard will control most games. The left 'Control' key is usually the fire button. You can also press 'Tab' to display a menu of options, then choose "Input (this game)" to see what the game's controls are. Press 'Esc' to leave this menu.

When I double-click on a zip file, my Mac unzips the file instead of playing it.

Put the zip file into the ROMs folder instead (see Using MacMAME: Files for its location), and run the MacMAME application to play it. If you set the file to open with MacMAME (by doing a Get Info on the file and choosing MacMAME as the application to use to open it with), then double-clicking the file will launch the game automatically.

When I run MacMAME, the game I want doesn't show up in the list.

Find the name of the game you want in the game list at 'http://www.mame.net/gamelist.html'. The name of the zip file MacMAME looks for is in the last column of that chart. That is, if you want to play "Asteroids Deluxe," the rightmost column says 'astdeluxe,' so the file you'll need is 'astdeluxe.zip'. Put that file into the ROMs folder, and MacMAME will show 'Asteroids Deluxe' in its game list next time you run MacMAME.

If you have 'merged romsets' (meaning that a game and all its clones are stored together in one zip file) and the clones aren't showing up in the MacMAME list, then select 'Show Virtual Clones' from the pop-up menu above the game list.

If the game is not listed in the game list, then support for that game hasn't been added to MacMAME yet.

The game I want to play has a red 'X' by its name in the list, and when I try to play it, it doesn't work right.

The red 'X' means that MacMAME does not yet correctly emulate that game, and it is known to not work properly. A future release of MacMAME will probably fix this. Sometimes, variations of a nonworking game might be playable (for example, a game might be encrypted and not yet playable in MacMAME, but there might be bootleg versions of it with the encryption removed). Control-click on the game's name in the list to see other games which are almost identical to this one; they might work for you.

When I try to open a game, MacMAME says that some of the necessary files could not be found or opened.

Most likely, you downloaded a zip file which didn't contain all of the ROM files necessary to play the game. Select the "Info" tab in the MacMAME application window, then select "Mini Audit" from the pulldown menu. If some ROM files are listed as "not found," then you are missing some of the files which MacMAME needs to have for that game.

Another possibility is that you are missing the "BIOS" files for a particular game system. Arcade games from Neo Geo, Nintendo Playchoice-10, Century Video System, and other hardware require files which are usually kept in a separate zip file. For example:

Obtain the file you need, then put it into your ROMs folder, and the game should work properly.

When I try to open a game, MacMAME says "NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN."

Some arcade video games are rare enough that a complete copy of their entire game program has not yet been found. MacMAME will try to emulate the game for you anyway; sometimes the missing data is trivial and might only cause sound or color problems, other times the missing data will prevent the game from working at all. Unless you can help find the original arcade game in question, there is nothing you can do to fix this problem until someone finds the missing data and updates MacMAME with the new information.

I get a warning that screen flipping is not supported in cocktail mode.

Ignore this message. Just type 'OK' and bypass it. 'Cocktail mode' refers to arcade games which were mounted on small tables in pizza parlors and bars, with the game screen facing straight up; players would sit on opposite sides of the table, and the image on the screen would flip upside-down so the second player could see it when it was his turn. Since you're probably playing MacMAME on an upright computer monitor, you don't need screen flipping.

Some games that used to work stopped working with this version of MacMAME.

MacMAME is constantly being developed and improved. Sometimes, a better (more accurate or more complete) copy of an arcade game program has required a change in MacMAME which makes an older copy of that game program no longer work properly. Select the "Info" tab in the MacMAME application window, then select "Mini Audit" from the pulldown menu; if any of the ROM files are listed as anything other than "good," then you may need to obtain a new copy of that ROM set.

If the "Mini Audit" reports no problems with the ROM files, then most likely some recent change to MacMAME is causing problems with the game. This happens occasionally with the "beta" versions of MacMAME, and most of these problems are eventually fixed.

If a game which worked in a previous version of MacMAME isn't even showing up on the game list in the MacMAME window, then you might need to rename the zip file. See the answer to "When I run MacMAME, the game I want doesn't show up in the list," above.

I think I've found a bug in MacMAME.

Visit the MacMAME Wiki at "http://localarcade.com/wiki/" and see if the problem has been reported there yet. If not, add what you've found to the bug list. You may also want to ask about the problem on the MacMAME bulletin board at 'http://www.bannister.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=26'.

The MAME Testers site at "http://www.mametesters.com/" tracks development of the original MAME engine itself, and may be more relevant to problems with specific games.

This document was last updated on April 25, 2005.