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| 1. What is MAME? |
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M.A.M.E stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Essentially MAME is a program that pretends
to be the hardware that was inside the original arcade machines. The actual
game programs were stored on small chips (ROMs) that plugged onto the hardware. MAME takes these
ROMs, which are saved as zip files, and uses them to play the games exactly as they were.
Long story short, MAME games are not remakes of the originals, they are the actual games themselves
exactly as you remember them, graphics, sounds, patterns, and all.
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| 2. How long does shipping take? How is it shipped? |
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For US orders, shipping generally takes about a week from the time the order is shipped to arrive.
Could be more or less depending on your location. International orders seem to take about two weeks
to arrive. Please allow some time for shipping as sometimes the US Post Office is not the most efficient
at what they do. I ship US orders First Class Mail, and international orders Air Mail.
I cannot guarantee that the post office will not loose your package somewhere along the line, but I WILL
guarantee you get your order one way or another. If your order does not arrive in a reasonable amount of
time, I promise you I will send you another at no extra cost. It will never be necessary to file a claim
about an order not being delivered. Anyone that does file a claim, will have their order immediately
suspended by me and I will NOT send another package until the claim is lifted.
Also, due to my low shipping costs I do not provide tracking numbers, nor do I provide support to add tracking
or faster shipping for an extra cost. I like to just keep things simple, so just have faith and patience as
you will receive your order.
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| 3. What kind of media do you use? |
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I always use high grade blank DVD- discs for all of my burning. They are professionally printed and are very nice looking.
Plus I always guarantee my discs work 100%. I throughly
test the discs and burners periodically to make sure each and every disc will work every time. For me it's more
important to insure the DVD's will be as compatible as possible so to aid in compatibility, I never burn
DVD discs any faster than 4x, which seems to be the fastest most burners will reliably burn DVD's today.
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| 4. Can I pay with ...? Do you accept ... payments? |
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Visa and Mastercard? Yes we do. Anything else... sorry no. We run high security here so your information is safe
with us. I guarantee you any information sent to us is never misued or distributed in any way shape or form.
A customer's privacy and satisfaction is our number one concern.
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| 5. What games are included, or do you have game ...? |
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You can see a complete list of the MAME games HERE.
For a list of the CHD games that are available in the CHD collection click HERE.
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| 6. Why does the current 'Full' set only have 11 discs? |
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The main reason is the CHD games were starting to get completely out of control. Not only do they not work
very well (if some at all), but they were taking up way too much space. We broke the CHD games into these
seperate sets:
| Main CHD Set |
6 DVD's |
Contains all the main CHD games, but does not contain the duplicates, bootlegs, copies, alt versions, etc…
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Game List |
| CHD's Re-Mixed & Alternate Versions |
8 DVD's |
Contains all of the "Re-Mixes" for the Music & Dance games included on the first set as well as all alternate versions of some of the CHD games.
|
Game List |
So all in all the CHDs really fit onto 14 DVD's total for a total of 19 DVD's (including the ROMs which fit on 5 DVD's.)
There are some other places offering sets that fit on as many as 24 DVD's, but why so many I don't know. Maybe they don’t
organize the files as well as I do, or they are over-bloated with old and deprecated files that are of no use anymore, who knows.
Our sets are very well laid out and well organized, and you are guaranteed to be happy with them.
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| 7. Does game ... work or why doesn't game ... work? |
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Look in your mame directory for a file named gamelist.txt and look in it to see the emulation status of
the game you are wondering about for your emulator. If you do not have that file then you can either download
the latest version of mame to attain the file, or do a search on the internet for the file and you should
have no problem finding it.
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| 8. Will the ROMs work in MAME32 as well as MAME? |
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Yes indeed they will. MAME32 is for all intents and purposes exactly the same as MAME with the exception
that it has a very nice Windows GUI built right into it. Every game that regular MAME will play
so will MAME32.
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| 9. Will the DVD's work with a Mac? |
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All the DVD’s “should” work just fine for Macs. I say should because I don’t own a Mac and have never actually
verified this myself, but people have ordered from me for their Macs and have had no problems to speak of. If
anyone out there has used my discs on a Mac, please let me know.
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| 10. Why was no emulator included on the discs? |
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Hmm, guess you never read the Terms of Agreement you accepted 8'Þ
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| 11. Is your collection a perfect flawless set? |
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We try very hard and use every available source to ensure we have the most up to date ROMs that are available. This
however is where our guarantee ends. I can not and will not ensure every ROM to be 100% perfect. The fact is sometimes
this is simply not even possible with what is actually available, so to claim a set to always be perfect is sometimes foolish and
just setting yourself up to disapoint someone that has too high a standard. What we will guarantee is your satisfaction
that the ROMs we provide will give you countless hours of enjoyment as you will be able to play just about
any game you can remember.
If you are looking for a collection that will give you 100% in clrmamepro, our collection is an excellent start.
We keep our ROMs up to date directly with the MAME community, so if it is supported by MAME, then we have the most up
to date version. However if you are not going to be happy with the possibility that something may not be absolutely
perfect beyond our control then you should probably look elsewhere. So let's just say that if you are looking for
thousands of fun and classic arcade games to play with and enjoy then I CAN guarantee you this collection will make you
very happy. Just look at our hundreds of positive feedbacks.
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| 12. How does your subscription service work? |
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The subscription service we provide is a great way to keep your collection updated for up to a full year.
Once ordered you will receive a disc with all of the changed and new ROMs automatically. How often I send
out the updates depends on the size and frequency of the updates. A small update that only has a few changed or new roms
may be combined with another update to help keep the updates a more reasonable and worthwhile size. Fear not
as you will definately get the updates one way or another even if your subscription has expired before you received
your last disc.
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| 13. Is your collection split or merged? |
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My ROMs are a split set. In the past I had preferred to keep the roms merged. It just seemed like a nice way to
keep the roms organized, and to some extent it is, but it is also a pain to keep the roms up to date so from now
on I have my roms set up as a split set.
For those wondering what the heck I'm talking about...
MAME supports thousands of ROM sets. However that doesn't mean that all of these ROMs are actually different games.
Many of the ROMs are clones, imports, bootlegs, etc of other games. Some games can have quite a few different sets
of ROMs for all of it's variants. What a merged set does is combine all of these different versions of the ROMs into
a single zip file. So in your ROMs directory you will see one ROM for each unique game. A split set has every variant
in it's own zip file. Space wise it doesn't really matter which way you go as long as a split set is organized correctly
which mine are. I.E. MAME is smart enough to pull ROM data from multiple zip files to play a game so there's no need to
duplicate ROM data in multiple zips.
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| 14. Hey Jerky! I sent an email but never got a response... |
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We make it a point to respond to EVERY email we get. However it is possible that we didn't get an email due to a
spam filter so if you do not get a response in a reasonable amount of time we may have just not received the email.
Instead of sending me an email directly please use the contact link above and that will ensure that we get your message.
Just please be careful to enter your valid email address that we can respond to. On the flip side please be sure
you can receive emails from the mamedvds.com domain so that our response is not filtered.
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| 16. How do I install the games? |
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MAME is fairly easy to get working especially if you use MAME32 which is a very easy
to use Windows version. Installing the games usually only requires copying the files from the
DVD's to the directory where you installed MAME to.
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| 17. What are CHD games? |
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CHD games are games that in the original arcade version needed a hard drive or CD-ROM drive to play. Generally CHD
games are much larger than normal ROMs because they contain lots of video and or high quality media
that used to be too expensive to fit on conventional ROMs.
Because of their size (the small number of CHD games alone are more than 40 GIGs larger than all the other MAME files
and games put together) I offer CHDs and MAME sets independently for the people that do not want or need one or the
other.
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| 18. How do I install the CHD games properly? |
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Like the other MAME files, installing the games is simply a matter of copying the contents of the DVD's into
your main MAME directory. CHDs are organized slightly differently that normal ROM images in that they sit in a folder
inside the ROMs folder. However, if you just copy the folders from the DVD, everything should be all set and ready to run.
To help clarify how the CHD files should each be organized in a folder in the ROMs folder, here is an example:
\mame (folder)
\roms (folder)
wargods.zip (ROM file for the game)
...
\wargods (folder)
Wargods.chd (CHD file for the game)
Note that each CHD file also has a corresponding rom(zip) file that belongs with all of the other rom files in
the roms directory. Also note that the CHD file itself must not be zipped or added to the main rom zip file
for that game in the roms folder.
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| 19. How do I play the Laserdisc Games? |
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Most of the laserdisc games can be run with the Daphne Emulator. Please see the
official Daphne Website for more details.
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| 20. How do I install the Laserdisc Games? |
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The emulator of choice for most Laserdisc games is Daphne. Daphne is more flexible than MAME is so there
is no one way to configure Daphne to get it working
properly. However if you follow these directions you should be up and running in no time. Please note
that not all of the Laserdisc games are currently supported by Daphne as of yet. Hopefully soon we will
see Daphne support more games.
Copy each DVD exactly as it is into your Daphne folder. On every DVD there is a "laserdiscs" folder
that contains the laserdisc games, and on the first DVD there is also a "roms" folder. Just make sure to copy
everything over from the discs to your Daphne directory. Answer OK or YES if you get a message prompt asking
if you want to overwrite directories or files.
Now run the DaphneLoader.exe that is in your Daphne directory and select a game and hit the "Configure" button:
Under the "Laserdisc" tab select the "Virtual LDP (MPEG/Ogg)" player type. Then in the "Frame File Location" box, hit Browse and
go to the game folder that is in the laserdiscs folder in your Daphne directory. Select the text file (it will be named
"game.txt") then hit OK:
The image above is an example only. Your Daphne folder may be in a different location, but this should be good enough to get
the game running. On the Daphne loader screen you should be able to hit "Start" and the game should start up. Some games will
take about a minute to start up so have a little patience if the game is taking more than a few seconds to get going. As
always, if you are ever having any trouble make sure to look at the "daphne_log.txt" in your Daphne folder to see what
the problem is.
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| 21. How come all of the MAME ROMs do not appear to work? |
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There are quite a few ROMs that MAME does not support yet, but list as supported games none the less.
These games usually come up as “no good dump found” or “rom re-dump needed” or something like that.
Of the ROMs in my collection, most all of them are 100% complete and up to date. It’s just a matter
of time until MAME gets around to supporting them all.
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| 22. Is this legal? |
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For all intents and purposes yes. I do not sell these games, I am merely providing the service of burning DVD's.
Burning is a non-profit service meant to preserve the life of games that are otherwise impossible to find or play anymore.
Burning sets is a labor of love considering it can take up to an hour to burn a single DVD. The goal is not selling
games but providing the service of distribution so that as many people as possible can continue to enjoy these great
games which I provided only to people that agree on the terms of ownership. All monies received from the sales of these
sets goes solely into the media, packaging materials, and shipping costs involved.
However, if I am distributing any game that an owner feels to be unlawful, I will be happy to remove them
from my distribution archives.
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| 23. Where are the "Good" LaserDisc Games? |
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As per request from the powers that be they have been removed. Maybe out of jealousy who knows. I guess
even after twenty plus years they feel they must still squeeze every nickel they can out of the public, instead of God forbid giving
something back to the community that have been so faithful for so very long. It's too bad they can't release a product
that even comes close to the perfection that Daphne offers otherwise Daphne never would have been developed. Rest assured
that the MPEGs for these games will always be available somewhere on the net if you look hard enough, so the true spirit
of these games will continue to live on even if the owners of these games don't want them to. Just send me an email and I will
be happy to point you in the right direction.
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