Welcome to the Cane and Rinse grand MAME Tournament 2013!

Welcome to the first round of the MAME tournament! I'm guessing that most people on here will have tried MAME at some point, but I'll write this guide from the point of a total novice. It'll be a step by step, that even the most incompetent buffoon should have no trouble following! So what is MAME? MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and it can be used to play pretty much all of the classic arcade games you can think of, from the earliest of the early days right up to some pretty recent releases.

The first thing you need to do is download MAME, from here : http://upload.drarok.com/files/download ... meUI32.rar

Once you've downloaded this RAR file, just unpack it to your desktop, or wherever. Once it's open, double click the MameUI32.exe file, and you'll be greeted with the main MAME screen. Now will follow a step by step guide to getting the game working.

1. In MAME, click File > Audit All Games (You need to do this every time you add a new ROM / game. For the purpose of round 1, I've already placed the game ROM in the 'roms' directory so you wont need to worry about that. Next week I'll run through the steps needed to add a game. It's very simple).
2. After MAME has finished checking all the games (this does take a couple of minutes, and you can ignore any error messages it throws up), you need to click the 'Available' button on the left hand side of MAME. Then, all you do is double click the name of the game you want to play.

It really is that simple.

With the game itself, there are a few things a newcomer will need to know. These are exact emulations of the original arcade machine, so you'll need to insert a coin before you can play. Don't start trying to push 10p's in to the disc tray of your computer, it wont work. The default button for inserting a coin is '5'. This is the '5' on the number line above the letters on your keyboad, not the number pad on the right. Once you've inserted a coin and bought yourself some credits, you need to press the '1' button to start your game.

The default controls for most games are arrow keys for movement, CTRL for button 1, SHIFT for button 2. You can edit the controls to your liking by pressing the TAB button from within the game. This brings up the MAME menu and a whole host of options. You can edit global settings, or settings for that particular game. There are far too many options to go in to here, but all you'll really be interested in are the controls. Once you've changed settings, pressing ESC will take you back to the game. Be careful not to press ESC whilst in game, as that will exit MAME.

Whilst in the game, pressing F12 will take a screenshot. This is your evidence of your high score. This screenshot will be save in your MAME directory>SNAP>GAME TITLE. Upload the screenie anywhere you like, and link to it in your post. You can choose to post screenshots throughout the week, or save your high score as secret till just before the deadline. When entering your name in the games high score table, try to use initials that are recognisable as your forum user name.

Erm, I'm pretty sure that's it really! If you get in to any troubles just ask, and I'm sure someone will be able to help pretty quick. I'll check the thread a few times throughout the day anyway.

Ok, so, hopefully everyone will be up and running soon. The next post in this thread will be the details of the game we'll be playing this week!

C&R MAME TOURNAMENT - ROUND 1 - DONKEY KONG



Ok, so round 1 sees us battling it out on probably my favourite coin-op of all time. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily any good at it though, haha. Donkey Kong, a true classic in every sense of the word. Subject of the brilliant King Of Kong documentary, and with the possible exception of Pac-Man the holy grail of high score chasers. Everyone must know this game, but I bet not many have really put time in to mastering it. Every level has it's own tips and techniques you need to learn for success. Do you grab the hammer and go for the points? Do you rush for the time bonus? Can you master the elevators? Or the cake factory? Find out here!

Wikipedia wrote:Donkey Kong (ドンキーコング Donkī Kongu?) is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1980. It is an early example of the platform game genre, as the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging and jumping over obstacles. In the game, Jumpman (since renamed Mario) must rescue a damsel in distress, Lady (now named Pauline) from a giant ape named Donkey Kong. The hero and ape later became two of Nintendo's most popular characters.
The game was the latest in a series of efforts by Nintendo to break into the North American market. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's president at the time, assigned the project to a first-time game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto. Drawing from a wide range of inspirations, including Popeye, Beauty and the Beast and King Kong, Miyamoto developed the scenario and designed the game alongside Nintendo's chief engineer, Gunpei Yokoi. The two men broke new ground by using graphics as a means of characterization, including cut scenes to advance the game's plot, and integrating multiple stages into the gameplay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_(video_game)

THE RULES

The rules in these MAME tournaments will be pretty much standard every week. You must play the game on the default settings. There is a way to cheat in MAME and access the arcade machines settings mode to alter game difficulty, starting lives etc. We're relying on honesty here, as high scores are submitted only via a screenshot of the high score table at the end of the game. Strict tournaments accept only video footage or input recordings, but we're playing for fun so please guys, I implore you not to cheat and keep it fair! You can pause MAME using the 'P' button. I think that for your high score run you should try to do it without pausing, but again, there is absolutely no way to regulate this so on your own conscience be it!

So, the rules for Donkey Kong is one credit, one shot, highest score wins! The deadline for this competition is 1pm next Saturday. Any entries submitted after that will not count. Have fun.

It's on!

Will this work on a Mac?

Ah. Bugger.

No.

Gimmie 5 min and I'll find a MAC MAME.

EDIT : Is this any use?

http://flatfootfox.com/2011/how-to-get- ... rt-1-of-3/

Unfortunately I have no way of testing a Mac version of MAME. If you manage to get one up and running, download that file I linked to in the original post, and then just copy the Donkey Kong ROM from the roms folder of my version to the roms folder of your version. Let me know how you get on!

Cheers, I won't be able to try it till Monday so I'll let you know.

Great stuff Alex. I'm rubbish at DK though!
How are we choosing future games - winner picks? Apologies if I missed this in the blurb.

I might duplicate this thread in Community as well btw.

Yeah I think winner picks is a good way of doing it, I didn't put that in the post oops! Yeah I'm pretty poor at Donkey Kong. I love it though, I can see how to do each stage, and it's my own indecisiveness most the time that loses me lives. Hesitating will finish you off! I think my highest score is around the 100k mark, but even that was some time ago!

Actually, this might have been better in Community, yeah. Feel free to just move the whole thread there if you want?

For people using OSX, "MAME OS X" works fine.

Ok, shall I go first?



People can submit as many scores as they like, I'll just take their last posted screenshot as their entry.

Do you mean "best", not "last"?

Roy42 wrote:Do you mean "best", not "last"?

I assume the idea is that you would only post a screenshot when the score is higher than your previous efforts.

Fair point. Suppose I should get to it myself.

This is such a great idea, thanks for the guide. I'll try and get mine up and running this evening.

I'm in! I used to be quite good at DK (It was in DK64 and you needed to be decent in order to win some banana pickup or some stupid thing) and it's one of those Nintendo titles which you get for farting into a biscuit tin, like Balloon Fight, so we should all be good, right!!!?

Yeah but the NES version is missing a stage.

I had a quick go earlier, I was awful (I too did the thing in DK64).

Aye, I just had a little blast and failed, miserably!

Lol. You can get a lot of tips from watching YouTube videos of high score runs. I can clear the barrels and rivets stages every time without losing a life, and the elevator stage almost every time. It's just the last spring that you need to time perfectly. The Pie Factory though is where I lose the lives. A decent high score really relies on clearing that without losing a life at least a couple of times before it gets more difficult.

You already sound like you've won!

Decent start, considering I lost all but my last life on the second barrel screen. I'm surprised I kept going, actually; normally I just scrap the game if I die that often, that soon.