Mame On Ds?


rygar

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Hi. I've googled this and searched the forum but can't seem to find any information on playing MAME on the DS.
All I found was a reply saying the screen resolution wasn't the same but would that prevent MAME being run?
Hopefully Someone can answer this without flaming me. ;)
 
MAME is horribly inefficient and mostly C, which means it's easy to port but very slow compared to emulators with assembler for CPU cores, VDP simulation etc. It already runs slow on PCs but it will run like molasses on a DS. Without ARM ASM cores it's pretty sluggish on gp2x too and it's mostly only older stuff that will run (pre-1990s) at full speed (REAL full speed, 58-60 FPS, not 4 frameskip and 20 fps.....) Hah, but talk to the guys on the MAME forums and they'll tell you it's just 'slow because it's accurate'..... I guess that's why specialized emulators are faster AND more accurate, right?....... :rolleyes:

and indeed the DS screen resolution is much smaller than most arcade screens, and horizontal too, hardly ideal... 256x192, I think. Most arcade monitors are 320x224/240 or higher. Scaling's usually a bit on the ugly side if you're of the perfectionistic sort..... it would bother me certainly if the game had good detailed graphics. Even NES games look pretty shoddy on the DS screen scaled, even if the gameplay is very smooth it's distracting.....
 
rygar said:
Hi. I've googled this and searched the forum but can't seem to find any information on playing MAME on the DS.
All I found was a reply saying the screen resolution wasn't the same but would that prevent MAME being run?
Hopefully Someone can answer this without flaming me. ;)
There is no MAME for the DS. The closest thing to MAME is MarcaDS and it only runs 75 games. Check it out!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the help. MarcaDS looks interesting but I guess I'll still be using my trusty GP32 for MAME for now. :D

Cheers.
 
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