Hi – I’m currently building my first two-player arcade cabinet (well, MonsterArcades is building the shell), and I have my raspberry pi 3 being shipped to me.

I’m trying to get all my roms ready and I just want to make sure I’m downloading the right versions.

My understanding is this (please correct me if I’m wrong) – for MAME, I know retropie supports different emulator front-ends. It seems that mameforall-pi might be the most stable MAME front-end for Pi. I’m going to use that for now.

In the notes it says that mameforall-pi is based off of MAME 0.37b5. I also understand I need to use clrmamepro to convert and verify that my roms will work.

Okay, here’s the question. I’m currently downloading a huge MAME rom collection (50 gigs) based on MAME .161. Once that finishes downloading, I run it through clrmamepro and that will clean up my roms and tell me which will work, and which won’t, correct?

Is there a general rule of thumb when looking for MAME collection roms that will clue me on compatibility for mameforall-pi? I’m not sure how to interpret the version number of MAME rom collections. (.161 for example)

Just curious if someone would say, “Oh, don’t download roms based on MAME .161 for mameforall-pi – they’re not compatibile. Look for MAME roms with X romset version number…” That sort of thing.

I’m sure I’m murdering some of the terminology and confusing items, so please forgive me. It’s my first foray into emulators and roms. I did read through all the documentation, so hopefully the questions aren’t too stupid. :)

Thanks in advance. Very excited to get this working!

D.J.