Homepage › Forums › RetroPie Project › Everything else related to the RetroPie Project › 97% of the roms I try do not work! :(

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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  • 09/20/2013 at 17:31 #2788
    pierrrrrrre
    Participant

    Hello guys!

    First of all, I wanted to say that I really love the idea of this project!
    I discovered it through an article on lifehacker, and I ordered a Raspberry Pi to try it on :) So thanks to petRock and all the people who make this possible!

    So I received my Raspberry Pi model B; I ordered the power adapter on the same website, because I heard the RPi was very touchy with power usage.

    I downloaded the RetroPie Project SD card Image v1.8.1 and followed the installation guide to put it on a 4GB SD Card without any problem (I use a microSD card with a SD card adapter).

    I can boot the RPi, and I configured both of my USB controller without any troubles.

    Now, to the interesting part: the ROMs.

    I tried dozens of them, for different platforms (MAME, SNES, NeoGeo), and basically 3 out of the 100 I tried worked. For all the other ones, the screen always goes back to the game list.

    I tried some of these ROMs on my computer (for instance using SNES9x on my Mac), and they work fine!

    Any idea where the problem could come from?

    Also, I don’t have time to read the error message (if any) that is displayed before the RPi goes back to the game list. Do you know if these logs are stored somewhere (I looked it up afterwards and could not find anything relevant in the home directory and its sub-directories)?

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    09/20/2013 at 18:02 #2789
    petrockblog
    Keymaster

    It might be that you need to unzip the ROMs. Make sure that the ROMs have the same extensions as Emulation Station expects them. See, e.g. for Genesis/Megadrive, https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/supplementary.shinc#L568.

    09/21/2013 at 03:48 #2794
    pierrrrrrre
    Participant

    Hi petrockblog,

    All the ROMs are in the correct format:

    *.zip for the Mame and the NeoGeo ones
    *.smc for the Super Nes ones

    They actually appear in the game lists, it’s just that launching them just comes back to the game list :(

    How do I exit EmulationStation and manually launch some of them to check the error messages in the Shell?
    (Sorry, I’m a complete noob with a RPi! But I’ve been using Linux for 10 years so I’ve no problem manipulating Shells, config files and vi :))

    Thanks!

    09/24/2013 at 07:16 #2805
    petrockblog
    Keymaster

    You can exit Emulation Station by pressing F4 or by using the menu of Emulation Station (F1 or whatever key you configured for that) and choosing “Exit”.

    In the FAQ in the wiki (https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki#faq) you can find an example for starting a SNES ROM from command line.

    09/24/2013 at 09:07 #2806
    zinger19
    Participant

    The way I’ve always fixed this problem is by placing your roms in your folders first and then manually reload the RetroPie-Setup script through terminal, and choose the binary install.

    cd RetroPie-Setup
    chmod +x retropie_setup.sh
    sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

    09/24/2013 at 16:36 #2807
    insaineyesay
    Participant

    I was running into this exact same problem, and was about to throw my pi through a window. Here’s how I fixed it.

    I used the SD card image found at the beginning of the post on this blog that shows you how to do it under ‘Major Time Saving Update’. I tried the long way at first and it took 16 hours. NOT DOING THAT AGAIN.

    After that, I unzip my ROMS first, then move the extracted ROM to the corresponding folder -> NES, SNES, etc

    Then I went to NO-LINKS-ROMS-SITES-PLEASE – best place ever. I donated, and now, I don’t have a problem with ROMS at all. EVER.

    For some reason though, the PI places 2 titles for each ROM in the list, not sure how to fix that just yet, and the volume seems to be a little low for the games, but other than that. Works perfectly.

    This is an awesome site, and thanks to whomever runs it for the guide. Saved me from throwing my entire computer desk into a lake.

    Hope that helps!

    09/25/2013 at 02:36 #2808
    pierrrrrrre
    Participant

    Thanks to you guys for your answers!

    petrockblog: When I run a SNES game from the command line, I simply have an error from RetroArch saying “Failed to load ROM”. Nothing else… not very helpful to debug what’s going on :)

    zinger19: I ran these commands, but after a while, the update ran out of free space.

    I just got a 8 GB SD card, I will try with this later on and let you know how it went.

    P.S.: Is a BIOS only needed for Neogeo games? What about arcade games (Mame) or SNES games?

    09/27/2013 at 07:16 #2828
    petrockblog
    Keymaster

    You need to expand the file system with sudo raspi-config at first. 8 GB are more than enough!

    09/27/2013 at 09:17 #2831
    pierrrrrrre
    Participant

    OK, so I reinstalled RretroPie on a 8GB card, and extended the space to take all the 8GB on the card.

    Then I followed the article on lifehacker to configure everything properly, then put some SNES roms, and… it worked!

    I tried with 5-6 SNES ROMS, and they all work properly.

    I still have the problem with MAME games. Maybe it’s related to BIOS?

    I saw that RetroPie is using several emulators, including RetroArch that emulates a lot of different platforms. How do you know which emulator is used for MAME or NeoGeo? Can you specify which emulator to run somewhere? Which one is the recommended option?

    Thanks :)

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