MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Questions about the new ROMS of a game vs. the old ROMs

> What does this mean in reality for the game?
> Let's take the first US version of the original "Street Fighter II" (sf2ua) as an
> example: Which noticeable differences are there between the ROM with the new files
> and the ROM with the old files?

Many times there is no (user visible) difference. Files are moved around between sets due to the way MAME loads ROMs for a given game and depending on whether you keep merged or split sets.
Some set changes are purely "documentational" in nature - sometimes just the name of a file is changed, in order to better reflect its location on the original game PCB.

Sometimes an undumped revision of a game is found. Usually, but not always, if it's newer than the existing parent set, it then becomes the parent set and the old parent set becomes a clone set. This causes some reshuffling of files. Sometimes, due to incomplete ROM dumps, some versions of a game will use files from other versions of the same game, or even from a different game that runs on the same hardware or arcade system - until someone makes a complete dump available. This again causes files to move between sets or disappear from them entirely.

You have to pay attention to the whatsnew to notice when these things happen. Sometimes it doesn't even appear in the whatsnew, it just happens. You can compare the source code (the ROM loading code for the game) from before and after the changes. Sometimes, well, rarely, changes are annotated and explained in there.

The Street Fighter series (as well as many other CAPCOM games) have a ton of revisions, versions for different regions and modified bootlegs too. It's likely there will be many more changes to those ROM sets in the future as new versions and revisions are found.

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