[EdY]

Disclaimer: Running Game Roms you do not own is against copyright rules. These instructions are for informational purposes only. Please ensure you abide by the respective laws in your jurisdiction.



While many of us have enjoyed retro Arcade gaming already on our PC's, RaspBerry Pi, Android and other systems, some of you may still be unfamiliar with how to run it on BlackBerry 10. Here's a weekend project that will bring you back to all that nostalgia and you can easily do it! I know there are tons of instructions already in other threads, but I wanted to update it since some of the other links may be broken.

First, you will need to download and install the APK for MAME4droid (0.139u1) here:

MAME4droid download | SourceForge.net

Once you have installed the APK, you can download some copyright-FREE roms here and put them in your "misc/Android/MAME4droid/roms" folder:

MAME | ROMs for Free Download

Use the joystick to select roms and hit the "A" or "B" buttons to launch games, add COIN and use START to begin playing. Hit COIN and START buttons at the same time to access extra game settings menu in MAME and to access DIP switches and cheats. You can also change general settings to allow full screen mode, change the size of your buttons and joystick, the positions and many other settings.



Remainder for advanced users:

If you feel like breaking the law, there are some people circulating entire RaspBerry Pi images containing thousands of games. For example, you can download one from this Instructable (see the link to "pimame.img" SD card image at the bottom of the page):

MAME gaming table with Raspberry Pi

The idea is to extract all the roms from this Linux image and copy them to your BlackBerry. You will have to mount the image in Windows using any of these methods:

3 Ways to Access Your Linux Partitions From Windows

One way I found works easily is to download and install OSFMount from here:

OSFMount - Mount CD and Disk images in Windows, ISO, DD

Then load up your pimame.img in OSFMount to a drive. The problem is because it is Linux you will need to still get a driver to let you read the image, otherwise Windows will not recognize the content and want to format the drive when you open it. So go here to download the ext2fs driver for Windows so it recognizes the contents of the drive after you mount it:

Ext2 File System Driver for Windows - Browse Files at SourceForge.net

Then once you have mounted "pimame.img" you navigate to the folder containing the roms (I believe it is under "/usr/local/share/advance/rom") and copy all 1000+ roms over to your BlackBerry 10, right to the MAME4droid folder I mentioned before. And voila! Retro-Arcade Gaming heaven on the go. The controls suck a bit on a touch screen, so if anyone knows how to get a joystick working with this (via BlueTooth or something) please share.

[howarmat]

thanks for the write up!

[minttea]

Thanks for this thread!

I've tried a few times unsuccessfully to get Mame4droid and/or Mame4All working on my Passport, but I need help.

2 issues, firstly, it doesn't pick up the rom location.
Secondly, the on screen controls taking up most of the screen. Would much rather use keyboard only.

EDIT: despite my best efforts today, I've not been able to resolve the first (main) issue. (the on screen controls can be adjusted in the settings).
All the more frustrating as I just tried it on someone's android phone, and it worked straight away!


Any help greatly appreciated.
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[anon(4067838)]

Nice thread and great work! Many will appreciate this.

 Posted by Passport, BlackBerry's Beast 

[minttea]

Ok, to return to this thread with a few findings and what I've learnt last few days. It's a bit complicated.

Firstly, not all Mame is the same. There are a number of 'standards' if you like, e.g. 0.139, 0.37b5 and others, which means the ROMs you have must be compatible with the emulator you are using.

There are 2 versions of Mame4droid in Play Store. I have got Mame4droid (0.37b5) to work only (Mame4All).

When you install, as mentioned above, Mame4droid will create a directory, which it says is on your sd card. Without this folder in which to put your rom files, it won�t work. HOWEVER, on my Passport, the folder wasn't created on sd card at all but in device memory, specifically: device/misc/android/ROMs/Mame4All. Rom files go in Mame4All/roms.

The end result is that I can now relive my youth playing Narc and Final Fight!

NB: as in screenshot, I've hid bar, and in rectangle view.