Log Message:
mame: update to 0.245.

The highly-anticipated release of MAME 0.245 has finally arrived!
As I’m sure many of you are already aware, we’ve added support for
two elusive arcade games that didn’t see widespread release: Megumi
Rescue and Marble Madness II, and the Konami Polygonet system has
finally come to life. But before we get to that, there are some
changes to MAME’s user interface that you should be aware of. Input
options have been moved off the main menu to a submenu of their
own. Depending on the system, there can be quite a few of them,
and they weren’t all grouped. There’s also a new option to see the
input devices recognised by MAME, which should help with diagnosing
issues.

Megumi Rescue was exhibited at a trade show, but apparently never
sold as an arcade game. A home system port was released, but only
in Japan. The original arcade game uses a vertically-oriented
monitor, and lacks the life bar system and vertical scrolling found
in the home version. Despite the arcade version remaining unreleased,
and the home version never being widespread, the game was widely
copied for TV game systems. It’s nice to see the original preserved
all these years later.

Marble Madness II was considered a failure on location test. It
demonstrates Atari’s complete failure to understand what Mark Cerny
got right when he made the mid ’80s classic. A few examples survived
in the hands of collectors, but the game was never seen widely.

The Polygonet system was Konami’s first foray into 3D arcade games.
It was quite apparent that their in-house system wasn’t able to
compete toe-to-toe with offerings from Sega and Namco. Polygonet
Commanders was added to MAME almost twenty years ago, and saw
sporadic progress for a few years after that. Regular contributor
Ryan Holtz has written an engaging blog post about his adventures
bringing it up to a playable state this month. The two games haven’t
been promoted to working yet as they haven’t been extensively
tested, but we’d love it if you try them out and post your experiences,
good or bad.

We’ve got more complete emulation for three Mac NuBus video cards
this month: the Apple Macintosh Display Card, the SuperMac Spectrum/8
Series III, and the SuperMac Spectrum PDQ. The Macintosh Display
card, which MAME uses by default for the Mac II, now supports
configuring the amount of video RAM installed, as well as a selection
of monitors with correct resolutions, refresh rates and colour
profiles. The SuperMac Spectrum/8 Series III supports on-screen
resolutions up to 1024×768, and virtual desktop resolutions up to
a massive 4096×1536 in Black & White mode. Virtual desktop panning
and desktop zoom are hardware-accelerated. The Spectrum PDQ supports
resolutions up to 1152×870, with hardware acceleration for things
like moving windows in 256-colour modes. Please be aware that MAME
currently has trouble with some combinations of Mac video cards –
if you want to use multiple monitors on your emulated Mac, it’s
best to stick with the Macintosh Display Card or Radius ColorBoard.
If you’re you’re just looking to jump into Mac emulation, there’s
some helpful information to get you started on our wiki.

Thanks in large part to the efforts of Ignacio Prini and Manuel
Gomez Amate, the ZX Spectrum cassette software list now includes
the Spanish MicroHobby magazine cover tape and type-in program
collection. A number of prototypes cartridges have been added for
the Game Boy, Super NES and other consoles. Commodore 64 tapes,
Apple II floppies, and game music rips in VGM format have each seen
a batch of additions.