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It's worth pointing out that if you want to run MAME, specifically, RetroPie is a bad choice, as is using the Raspberry Pi in general. MAME's architecture does

It's worth pointing out that if you want to run MAME, specifically, RetroPie is a bad choice, as is using the Raspberry Pi in general. MAME's architecture does not lend well to it being converted into a core. Several features get weakened, disabled, or broken, and they generally don't function the way they're supposed to, especially with respect to controller input. The version of MAME available for RetroPie is considerably older and outdated. Many of the features have been altered or disabled in order to make MAME work on less powerful hardware. Even a low end PC running the latest version of MAME (222, at the time of writing) is going to give you a much better experience.

jhbadger 6y ago
It all depends on the era of game you want to play though. At least for me, I can't imagine a retro game I would want to play that a Pi couldn't easily handle, given that my idea of a retro game is Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and the like. Granted, if your idea of a retro game is a PS2 game from 2001, your mileage might vary.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  It's not necessarily about the experience of the specific game. (Although many of the games you name do in fact emulate badly on RetroPie. Galaga, for example, has a glitchy starfield and incorrect sounds.) It's also that the versions of MAMEs shipped are simply buggy, and have some features disabled. If you go digging around in the MAME menus, lots of things are not going to work properly.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    What kind of stuff is disabled?
CWuestefeld 6y ago
I've built my own cabinet (using 3/4" plywood, not cardboard :) initially powered by a RPi2B+, and later upgraded to a used PC but still RetroPie. I don't think the power of MAME is much of a concern here. RetroPie doesn't just have a single version of MAME, it support several of them, including some relatively newer ones. And while it is true that I've found a few games (Star Wars comes to mind) that wouldn't run on the default MAME, they do work on one of the alternates. For the games MAME is trying to address, I haven't found anything for which the computational power of my RPi 2B+ was insufficient. I wound up replacing the RPi with a PC not because of MAME, but because I wanted better emulation of other systems like Dreamcast. And even there, with the used PC off ebay, it's running well.

jhbadger 6y ago

It all depends on the era of game you want to play though. At least for me, I can't imagine a retro game I would want to play that a Pi couldn't easily handle, given that my idea of a retro game is Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and the like. Granted, if your idea of a retro game is a PS2 game from 2001, your mileage might vary.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
It's not necessarily about the experience of the specific game. (Although many of the games you name do in fact emulate badly on RetroPie. Galaga, for example, has a glitchy starfield and incorrect sounds.) It's also that the versions of MAMEs shipped are simply buggy, and have some features disabled. If you go digging around in the MAME menus, lots of things are not going to work properly.
- beervirus 6y ago
  What kind of stuff is disabled?

CWuestefeld 6y ago

I've built my own cabinet (using 3/4" plywood, not cardboard :) initially powered by a RPi2B+, and later upgraded to a used PC but still RetroPie. I don't think the power of MAME is much of a concern here. RetroPie doesn't just have a single version of MAME, it support several of them, including some relatively newer ones. And while it is true that I've found a few games (Star Wars comes to mind) that wouldn't run on the default MAME, they do work on one of the alternates. For the games MAME is trying to address, I haven't found anything for which the computational power of my RPi 2B+ was insufficient. I wound up replacing the RPi with a PC not because of MAME, but because I wanted better emulation of other systems like Dreamcast. And even there, with the used PC off ebay, it's running well.