MAME ROM-hack software lists

MAME’s built-in software list is convenient, being able to browse through known pieces of software for machines it emulates. The upstream project has a policy against accepting ROM hacks, which is reasonable enough given the sheer scope of the category.

This project is my attempt at doing it anyway. For the most part, it represents ROM hacks I care about, and historically significant hacks, but potentially everything on ROMHacking.net is fair game, as well as any other sources.

Usage

Download the latest archive.

Software list definitions (the *.xml files in hash) are exclusionary to same-named definition files later in the hashpath. While you could permanently override them, it is better to launch MAME with custom parameters, eg:

mame -hashpath ~/.mame/romhacks/hash -rompath ~/.mame/romhacks/roms

In this command, the following paths are assumed:

• ~/.mame/romhacks/hash: a directory to store the files from /hash.
• ~/.mame/romhacks/roms: a directory that contains sub-directories for each system containing the ROM hacks themselves. It may additionally contain system ROMs that MAME requires to run the system.
  • As an example, ~/.mame/romhacks/roms/megadriv might itself contain either a s3c.zip file or s3c directory containing one or more versions of Sonic 3 Complete.

MAME can be launched with just these parameters, in which case you will be able to browse systems and the software lists in the standard user interface. You can also directly run specific games, for example, to launch Sonic 3 Complete:

mame genesis s3c -hashpath ~/.mame/romhacks/hash -rompath ~/.mame/romhacks/roms

For convenience’s sake, mamerh.func is a bash function that you can source into your environment (eg, in ~/.bashrc) to provide a mamerh command that automatically sets hashpath and rompath. Feel free to customize it to your preferences.

Gathering/naming ROMs

The files in /hash are in the same format as MAME’s upstream software list files, so tools like clrmamepro can be used to automatically rename and sort ROM hacks into where MAME will expect them while using these custom files.

As for copyright, the original game developer/publisher maintains copyright on all the games these hacks are built upon. No files will be officially provided by this project.

Canonical repository URL

This repository is hosted in the Fossil version control system, and hosted on Chisel at https://chiselapp.com/user/chungy/repository/mame-romhacks. If you are viewing this on a GitHub mirror, some links in this README will not work and you need to clone/download the repository through GitHub to get the same files.

Report issues or make suggestions on the Fossil repository itself, pull requests on GitHub will be ignored.