What are some great MAME games?

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Battletoads YES.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Great thread, makes me want to re-install MAME and build a new collection of games.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Early 3D beat'ups suffer from slow speed, bad camera and overall clunkiness but Die Hard Arcade is a glorious exception to the rule - meaty moveset, fast-paced combat, excellent controls mad this geam worthy successor of its 2D bros. Since Saturn emulation still sucks ass MAME is the only way to go. Its only flaws are QTE's (in 1996!) and blocky graphics but gameplay mechanics is so good that they don't really matter.

Cannon Spike vel Gunspike is an awesum top-down shooter with characters from various Capcom games, I recommend it especially to Take No Prisoners and Shumps fans - CS/GS is like something between them:

And if you manage to run this one below you'll have a lot of fun , it's a hell worth of try. Spawn is basically and arena deathmatch (botmach) seen in third person perspective, a heavy PC-centric geam. Personally I haven't manage to run it a few yeas ago on MAME but there is an alternative in decent Dreamcast port.

 

[Azalin]

Early 3D beat'ups suffer from slow speed, bad camera and overall clunkiness but Die Hard Arcade is a glorious exception to the rule - meaty moveset, fast-paced combat, excellent controls mad this geam worthy successor of its 2D bros. Since Saturn emulation still sucks ass MAME is the only way to go. Its only flaws are QTE's (in 1996!) and blocky graphics but gameplay mechanics is so good that they don't really matter.

Its sequel Dynamite Cop was great too,I don't know if they have managed to emulate it with MAME properly

 

[A user named cat]

The only gaem in existence that reached similar level of quality is Cadillacs & Dinousars:

Just played through that yesterday actually. Pretty fun still.

Most of players know Battletoads as NES platformer infamous of its brutally hard difficulty but this one is 1994 arcade game beat'em up with violent/gory finishing moves. It's pretty obscure for a RARE game though. Do not be deceived by its cartoonish look, B1994's just one big splatter massacre.

This is one of those games that is finicky in MAME. For anyone wanting to play it, make sure to also grab bsmt200.bin (Google it) and just stick the zip in the same folder as the game. If it still doesn't run, try grabbing the game off a different site.

There are a few others which will require extra files like that in order to run, so keep your Google Fu ready. They're usually for audio emulation.

Also this game, along with others like from Midway, are way too quiet in MAME. So hit tab and go to slider settings after starting the game, then adjust to 2.00db for each channel and it should save.

 

[Gragt]

Not exactly about MAME but someone remade and improved the Outrun engine and it’s a pleasure to play the game that way; aside from fixing some bugs, it’s just the right blend of enhancements and faithfulness. You need the original ROMs to play it.

https://github.com/djyt/cannonball/wiki

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO DIEHARD ARCADE RUNS LIKE ASS IN MAME FOR ME BUT GREAT IN SSF

SATURN ENULATUIN IS A LITTLE HIT AND MISS BUT IVR GOT PLENTY OF GAMES RUNNING FINE

 

[Trash]

Wow, what a response. Thanks a lot everyone. There has been a much bigger and better amount of recommendations done than I ever imagined. Pretty awesome. What’s also awesome is to play a lot of the classics I remember seeing and sometimes even having played in the arcades back when. Many of whom have aged considerably well. The art of 2d games especially has hardly been surpassed. The amount of amazing fighters is also a big surprise. Capcom was king here in the west and with the NeoGeo being bloody expensive I pretty much only knew fighting games like the many Street Fighters. To find out there are so many more, with some even better than those classics is amazing. Games like Last Blade II and Garou: Mark of the Wolves are any way as good as the classic SF games. Also nice to finally be able to play SFIII: 3rd Strike. Awesome stuff.

Pretty much everything good has already been mentioned, but I just want to add a bit of further incline here. At the MAME ADDICTS forums there is a pretty decent thread with game recommendations with good descriptions thrown in. Check it out: http://mameaddicts.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=271

Thanks to this and that thread I now have got a MAME library up and running with games like Parodius, Last Blade 1+2, Cadlillacs and Dinosaurs, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Windjammers, The Punisher, Metal Slug and Spy Hunter. I'm sure I'll find many more new favs.

 

[pakoito]

This is the best thread on the codex and should be pinned.

 

[Matalarata]

Yaes, thos where teh timez

Spoiler

Mazic!

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS LAST BLADE IS MY FAVORITE FIGHTER BUT HERE UIS ONE THAT STANDS OUT BECAUSE IT IS THE ONLY ONE AS WELL ANIMATED AS SF3

 

[Valestein]

Here's a good Contra and Metal Slug-ish run and gun shooter(has the same graphic style as the latter)



The original isn't too shabby either.



The two helicopter shmups Twin Eagle were mentioned previously, here's another pair of helicopter shmups.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I would recommend the few Cave shooters that made it on Mame as well, especially DoDonPachi. Awesome 2D graphics, great art direction and no bullshit hentai crap (lol) like their more recent shooters.

 

[Great Deceiver]

A particularly classy early Cave offering is Guwange.



I'm partial to Raizing shmups though, probably my favourite is their first game, called Sorcer Striker in the west (Mahou Daisakusen); it's got an awesome soundtrack, great background interactivity and tons of personality, plus it spawned a lot of sequels, most notably Dimahoo:

 

[Lyric Suite]

I like Cave because i know hipster faggots want to be different and think stuff like DoDonPachi is beneath their superior tastes.

 

[Valestein]

Here's one of my top arcade favorites, I would actually go the local arcade to just play this game back in the day. You play as four distinct characters, two humans and two predators.



And here's another decent beat 'em up.

 

[pakoito]

Sonic Blast Man wasn't terrible either

 

[Valestein]

Just discovered this metal slug clone, looks promising enough.

 

[circ]

A lot of SNK games, let me try and remember a few...

Metal Slug +sequels
Alpha Mission
Samurai Shodown
Art of Fighting
Fatal Fury
King of Fighters
Last Resort
World Heroes

Not SNK, forget developers/publishers

Bionic Commando
R-Type
Salamander
Galaxian/Galaga
Elevator Action (think there were sequels too..)
Rolling Thunder I/II
Side Arms
Strider
Shinobi
Asteroids (remake is more interesting: Blasteroids)
Xenophobe
Solomon's Key
Dig Dug
Mr Do's Castle
Golden Axe
Gauntlet
Street Fighter II
Space Harrier
Rastan Saga

 

[Valestein]

A lot of SNK games, let me try and remember a few...

Metal Slug +sequels
Alpha Mission
Samurai Shodown
Art of Fighting
Fatal Fury
King of Fighters
Last Resort
World Heroes

Not SNK, forget developers/publishers

Bionic Commando
R-Type
Salamander
Galaxian/Galaga
Elevator Action (think there were sequels too..)
Rolling Thunder I/II
Side Arms
Strider
Shinobi
Asteroids (remake is more interesting: Blasteroids)
Xenophobe
Solomon's Key
Dig Dug
Mr Do's Castle
Golden Axe
Gauntlet
Street Fighter II
Space Harrier
Rastan Saga

Yup.

 

[toroid]

Didn't know a sequel existed. Pretty good game.

 

[Valestein]

Here's several games from the third person shooting gallery genre(not many of these kinds of games exist).









And lastly, we have one of the greatest oddball arcade classics ever made, Alligator Hunt, that takes this genre into whole new territory. This involves two skateboarding kids whom end up piloting starfighters against alien alligators.

 

[Siveon]

Wow, thank goodness for Wild Guns introducing me to that little sub-genre.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Updated my "must play 7th times" list.

Battle Garegga.

Everythings seems to be all right for a shooter. Difficulty is on a good level. But here comes the level 4, with the boss that takes tons of ammo and has eye raping attacks. Later on he makes a come back as a mid boss. Plust the soundtrack is awesome. Many games from the subgenre don't have memorable tracks but this one is great. Rule #1 - Don't blink!

Hi there little fellow, It will just take a minute or two.

Here is the soundtrack.

 

[Old One]

Joust, a timeless classic.
Krull, especially if you enjoy the movie.
My favorite fighting game was Yee-Ar Kung Fu.

I always liked Discs of Tron, but I'm not sure it's playable because it had a special dial controller for aiming. You could turn it left and right, but you could also pull it up and push it down to aim up or down. Maybe someone has figured out a way to simulate that by now.