MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Is there a list of all official 0.73 roms?

>>The amount of things fixed since then is staggering. It may be worth upgrading.

>What version do you recommend?

For starters, visit the home site https://www.mamedev.org/

Consider model of computer and operating system being used to run the emulator.

Assuming computer is a Windows based system using Win '98, then stay with that version of MAME. If computer is a Pentium series and uses WinXP OS, maybe MAME can be upgraded up to .18x versions of MAME even though these days Windows 7 is the minimum OS that can run MAME since Windows XP is on its way out of no longer being supported.

My system is Pentium 4 and Win XP and that is why I am using MAME .178 as latest version.

Assuming computer running MAME is an out-of-date system, click on downloads and select older Previous Releases https://www.mamedev.org/oldrel.html

Starting with 0.73 03 Sep 2003 whatsnew_073.txt as an example,

Although .73 could run over 1000 games at the time, there were numerous popular systems that were not yet emulated because of various obstacles such as encryption, or hardware protection, or components not yet emulated. Gambling products also not supported nor non-cpu coinop games either and audio such as analog/discrete audio not fully supported yet.

a. Capcom CPS-2 games still required using Razoola's XOR files until 2007
b. Sega System 16 games using FD 1089/1094 protection not yet emulated until late 2004.
c. Capcom CPS-3 not yet emulated until mid 2007
d. analog audio for many 1970s era games using ttl components not emulated until 2004.
e. gambling coinop products not supported until 2005
f. initial laser disc support began in 2009
g. non-cpu coinop games not supported until 2012.

Better artwork support first happened in 2006 with .107

0.107 23 Jul 2006 whatsnew_0107.txt

Non-cpu controlled coinop games such as Pong and Breakout didn't happen until 2012.

0.147 17 Sep 2012 whatsnew_0147.txt

MAME incorporating and integrating MESS into MAME and MAME dropping the initial acronym didn't happen until 2015 in which at this present time MAME now handles both coinop items and non-coinop items (consoles, handheld games, etc).

To also mention, support for multiple player support such as multiple input devices, and light gun support and other support for extraneous input devices have been added to MAME over the years. What has been typed is only a small bit of all the improvements over the past 15 years.

As earlier, take into consideration of computer system and operating system and look at each whatsnew.txt file to see which games might have had best improvements.

If that means having to update to a different rom set, then the tradeoff could be worth it.

Hold on to old version of MAME and romsets. Install newer version of MAME into a new folder, and see if old romset works with new version of MAME. If it doesn't, then time to update new rom set file to the new version of MAME.

A bit of a learning curve when using MAME, but it is easier these days compared to 20 years earlier.