| | | Back in the day I got the Humble Bundle "NEOGEO Classic Complete Collection," which is still available on their site. These are the DotEmu ports that are just the NEOGEO ROMs run through a really bad emulator, and the installers put the game ROM and NEOGEO system ROM right in the install folder. You can also buy the games individually or in smaller packs from Humble Bundle (and it appears, on Steam: Humble gave me Steam vouchers for the 3 included Metal Slug games; I haven't tried getting the Steam versions of KOF2000 or Twinkle Star Sprites, though!). The NEOGEO system ROM included in the DotEmu version of Twinkle Star Sprites that I got from Humble includes extra stuff, like Unibios up through version 2.3; the system ROM from the other game installers has only minimal systems included--enough to run the game from the MAME command line, now that I try that, but no Unibios, for instance. So I used the NEOGEO system ROM from Twinkle Star Sprites and the game ROM from KOF 2000; new MAME expects Unibios ROMs through version 4, so these somewhat old, legally obtained ROMs won't run from MAME's GUI, but if you run MAME from the command line, it doesn't care about non-essential stuff you may or may not have, and will still run the game.
For instance to run KOF 2000 with my legally obtained ROMs (thanks, Humble Bundle! : D), I have put them in the MAME roms directory, run the Windows "cmd" command line console, browse to my MAME directory, and enter
mame neogeo kof2000 -nofilter
(The -nofilter option prevents it from being filtered and blurry. : P)
In MAME, I press Tab to bring up the in-game menu, turn VSYNC on, because I really don't like the tearing, set the graphics to "Pixel Aspect (10:7)" (highlight it in the Video options menu and press Enter; NTSC pixels are NOT perfectly square, they're 10:9 or something...anyway, if you run it at the default 4:3 aspect ratio, it'll look too narrow), set the inputs up for my arcade stick, set the BIOS to Unibios 2.3, select Reset below that, and the game boots up with Unibios--then press Start and Select together to bring up the Unibios pause menu, select soft reboot, hold the NEOGEO A, B, and C buttons until the Unibios system menu comes up, and set it to Europe/AES, then start the game and it'll go into AES mode, and in the AES game options I can turn off Flash and the power meter (Supers).
Hopefully my consolized MVS and KOF 2000 cart last at least as long as me though so I never have to worry about that, because I'd miss their weird ability to use the AES supers-off setting in MVS mode in conjunction with the MVS settings (which unlike the AES mode let you turn off How-to-Play and Continues, and display the difficulty level in the bottom middle of the screen). The Unibios pause menu "Cheats" setting does let you turn on an infinite credits cheat for AES mode if you want more than the 4 it allows you, at least.
(In MVS mode, do a Unibios soft reboot--normally you'd get to this with F2 in MAME--and then hold the NEOGEO B, C, and D buttons to bring up the MVS operator's menu.) |
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| | | | Oh I forgot, don't have to bother with the Twinkle Star Sprites neogeo.zip since the Unibios author made version 4 free : ): http://unibios.free.fr/ |
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| | | Aha, start right off with the BIOS:
mame neogeo [rom] -nofilter -bios unibios40 |
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| | | Don't need to specify the "machine" on these, I suppose as long as the ROM names are unique, which maybe they always are I dunno; so just
mame [rom] -nofilter -bios unibios40 |
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| | | | OH. Forgot that to get AES settings like POW OFF to save, even on my actual CMVS, first you gotta play through a full credit after setting them, ie let the AI kill you. Then the setting will be kept when you switch over to MVS mode--and this DOES work in MAME. Huzzah! Well I can chuck my CMVS in the bin now. ^ _^ |
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| | | I've also tried the ROMs in Final Burn Neo and they run okay via the GUI without protesting about missing some versions of Unibios or whatnot--but FBN seems to be making no effort to reproduce all the little graphical ticks and flickers the actual NEOGEO produces when drawing new elements onto the screen--whereas MAME seems to reproduce them all perfectly.
So yeah, just use MAME, it's really good. |
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| | | To set volume, for instance:
mame kof2000 -nofilter -bios unibios40 -volume -10 |
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| | | But you can also set volume per game in an .ini file in the MAME root directory (NOT in the mame/ini folder 'p'); I think it saved a kof2000.ini file out for me after I'd run the GUI (double-clicked mame.exe), highlighted kof2000 in the game list, clicked General Settings, and then Save Settings?
Through the GUI General Settings is also where you set vsync.
The DotEmu KOF 2000 version on GOG (currently on sale for under $2 : P) installs a K' .ico icon file in the GOG Games folder on your root drive. : P I backed that up for later use as a MAME batch file shortcut icon or something. ; ) I *think* the neogeo.zip system ROM that comes in the GOG version has more Unibios versions and maybe region stuff in it than the version from Humble Bundle? Which seems weird but anyway...
For kicks I ran the DotEmu version emulator: it runs in 640x480 or so ONLY (you can scale it up to full screen blurred if you want...), has most but not all of the MVS options (can't turn off How to Play, weirdly, for instance), has random but kind of soothing menu music, has NO input options: you're stuck with bizarre fixed keyboard input that has stick inputs on the arrow keys--right hand--and punch/kick buttons in weird places on letter keys on the left side of the keyboard! Wow. The graphics in their tiny window at least are sharp, and don't feel excessively input laggy, but I didn't get it set up with Joy2Key on an actual stick so who knows. Thank goodness you can just get the ROMs from the install folder and run them in MAME instead. |
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| | | | Correction: the DotEmu emu runs at 800 x 600. : PP |
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| | | Correction: the GOG DotEmu emulator runs the game at 800x600
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I'm a MAME noob--I've been playing KOF 2000 pretty much exclusively through my Omega consolized NEOGEO MVS for the past three years--but even so, running the DotEmu KOF 2000 through MAME, I can get an experience that is far superior to running it through DotEmu's own, very limited emulator. Playing KOF 2000 through MAME with the legally obtained ROMs from the DotEmu versions over the past day or so has felt, to me, pretty much indistinguishable from playing it on the actual NEOGEO hardware.
So yeah, MAME, Pixel Aspect 10:7, Vsync on, Unibios 4, get those DotEmu NeoGeo games running proper. : ) |
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| | | | To correct something I said in the OP: KOF 2000 is not on Steam. |
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| | | Easier not to do the setting up an .ini and .bat file thing per game, can just set that stuff in command line options in a shortcut to mame.exe. Ie create mame.exe shortcut, right-click and select Properties, change icon if desired, and add something like the following to the command line:
kof2000 -nofilter -waitvsync -bios unibios40 -volume -10 |
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| | | | Probably not gonna do -waitvsync actually, since these arcade games may not be quite 60 fps anyway (have to use OBS's ~59.94 fps setting). |
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~ Frames of light punch input lag on my set-up:
The King of Fighters 2000
Dreamcast: 7
NEOGEO: 5
Flycast: 3-4
MAME: 5-6 |
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