MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: A Hornet's Nest

> HACH! my secret plan for taking over the whole emulation world has been uncovered!
>
> Putting the joke aside, I asked because there is probably some fundamental reason for
> having Neo-geo with each game as a single emulation, and a2600 as a system with
> softlist, but this reason I can not find by myself.
> So, as I'm sure that mamedevs have already discussed the issue in between themselves,
> I was wondering if anyone of them was willing to explain it in layman's terms to me.
> If, on the other side the issue is STILL in discussion between mamedevs, than simply
> tell me to mind my own business, and I'll shut up.
>
> TIA.

As MAME evolves, things may change.

At this point, though, neogeo uses both methods. There is the traditional MAME launching (MAME mslugx) and also a softlist launching (MAME neogeo -cart1 mslugx). The softlist was created for the home system and since the MVS/AES versions are in many instances.. identical, it made sense to allow the softlist to be used for the arcade driver. The latter allows for multi-slot installation and loading which is possible for neogeo, st-v, megatech and likely others once they are implemented (Playchoice 10 is one that comes to mind). Don't be surprised if the old way becomes deprecated since we have merged MAME+MESS is makes sense to transition to a method of loading which uses the multi-slot hardware properly. The fact that Atari 2600 (and most home consoles/computers) is in a softlist is to allow documentation of the games, valid testcases instead of loose and unknown crc'd images.

All that said, as far as I know, Naomi hardware isn't exactly the same thing. It doesn't allow multiple games to be loaded and allow selection between those games. Chances of seeing the same softlist approach to Naomi at this time doesn't make sense tight now. You will likely see Dreamcast softlists once the emulation gets to a point where testing and running at playable speeds is a real possibility. Like I started, things change. Who knows, MAME might become more externally driver oriented allowing for adding sets without the source which I feel what you might be looking to do? Or not..