Emulators that work with Ultimarc's ArcadeVGA

On previous posts, I wrote on Howto build a MAME cabinet with just a screwdriver in one day, and Howto build a MAME cabinet for $392.

When building my MAME cabinet, I figured why only use it for MAME – it works just as well with any other emulator. The thing is the ArcadeVGA card is made to accurately reproduce games running in MAME, by supporting all the video modes (resolution, refresh rate, etc) of arcade games, but it is not made specifically for any other emulators /systems.

For that reason, some emulators (and other programs for that matter) that work on a normal PC with a normal video card and monitor will not work with the ArcadeVGA card. For example, the classic (but now dated) NES emulator Nesticle will not work with the ArcadeVGA card. Here’s a list of the emulators I use on my MAME cabinet:

MAME: MAME32

MAME32 is much better than the vanilla MAME emulator because it uses windows. Using an emulator run from the command prompt isn’t excellent.

Other MAME emulators that are worth checking out are MAME32FX (also available from above link), and AdvanceMAME (along with AdvanceMenu)

SNES: SNES9X

Note: The default keys that MAME uses and so also J-Pac (see previous post) is a little funky with this emulator. When setting the keyboard input for SNES9X through the program itself, it wont allow certain keys (I think its alt and shift). To get it to work with the default J-Pac keybindings, you’ll need to manually edit the SNES9X configuration file (snes9x.cfg) for the keys you want.

Genesis: GENS

GameBoy Advance: VisualBoyAdvance

FYI, the default MAME/J-Pac keybindings mess with these emulators (alt for example), so most will need to be run in full screen, which is what you want anyway.