Tetris The Grandmaster Roundup Download (Every Game)

   Since they're one of my favorite games and I already posted the third in the series a couple of years ago it only makes sense for me to upload the other installments of Tetris the Grandmaster.
Even though they're not the most recent game they are still played and beloved, in fact, KevinDDR just got a new PB on the first game. So here they are in chronological order:

Tetris: The Grandmaster (Arcade)

The game that started this whole series, released in 1998.
Download

Tetris The Absolute: The Grandmaster 2 (Arcade)

The 2000 sequel to the TGM, it added a few modes and tweaked the mechanics of the original game. This was the game that introduced master mode

Download

Tetris The Absolute: The Grandmaster 2 Plus (Arcade)

An update of the previous game, added a few extra modes as well as Grandmaster+

Download 

Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura Eternal Heart (PS1)

This is the only game in the series that was not originally made for the arcades, this PS1 game was made as a tie in game for the popular anime Sakura Cardcaptor and is the origin of the popular sakura game mode in tetris games.

Download

Tetris The Grandmaster 3 (Arcade)

The latest and last addition to the franchise, I already made a post about it here






Technically there is another game, Tetris: The Grand Master Ace which was an Xbox 360 Japan launch title, but it is rarely run and there are no decent emulators for the Xbox 360 yet, so I left it out of this list, if anyone wants it I can probably get it and post it.

So there you have it, these are all the TGM games yet. To play these you'll need these emulators:
MAME (for TGM 1, 2, 2+)
Epsxe (for Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura)

As always, all my links are hosted on mega for ease of download, thanks for reading.

So long trusty GPU :'(

After 16 years (yes, you've read that right) my GPU finally died. It was an ugly death and I tried to prolong its life as best as I could, but no GPU was made to endure 16 years of usage. What this means now is that I'll either have to find a new GPU, which you would think is the easier thing to do, but you'd also be wrong because my motherboard is so old that it only has AGP, so good luck find a card with a connector that stopped being manufactured in about 2005. My other option is to find a new computer, which is also not easy because everyone thinks that their 10 year old pentium 4 desktop is worth 100€. So, wish me good luck in getting this thing running again.

Control Your Cabinet From Your Phone!

I know I haven't posted in a while, to be fair, I haven't been playing that much and haven't found anything really noteworthy to post here, but today I found something really useful.

Some guys have a whole suite of controls and macros on their arcades to control lots of different functions. I don't. Some guys have drawers where they keep their mouse and keyboard easily acessible or have a small keyboard to control their arcade. My mouse and keyboard are in the back of the arcade and are a pain to get at. But what I do have (now that I've found it) is an amazing phone app.
 Enter unified remote, probably the most useful app ever. I had heard of this app, but never gave it a shot, and what made me try it today was the volume of the games. MAME has a serious problem with rom volume normalization, some are super quiet and others are super loud, and I was tired of always having to reach for the knob on my speakers, but with this app I can do it from my phone. Hell, I can even control the mouse keyboard and basically anything I want! Talk about a time saver.

The app is free though it has some limitations, but you can always shell out for the pro version and you have to install a program on your computer, but once you've done that you don't need to configure anything else, just open the app on your phone and do whatever it is you want, just make sure that you set it so that it starts when windows starts, otherwise you have to open the program every time you want to use the app.

The app is available for android, iOS and windows phone, and the pc program is available for *takes a deep breath* Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Raspberry Pi and Arduino Yún,

Get it here

PSA.: Defrag Your Hard Drive Right Now!

     A couple of days ago I turned on my cab, which I hadn't turned on for at least a month and it felt slow and took way too long to boot and start MAME.
     This is happened because the HDD was heavily fragmented. You see, modern computers defrag themselves automatically when you aren't using them, so fragmentation won't make much of a difference, but on a windows xp machine which normally isn't even connected to the plug, it can make a HUGE difference.
    If you don't know how to defrag your hard drive, simply go to the start menu, then all programs, then accessories, and there should be a program there called disc defragmenter tool, or something along those lines. Alternatively,  you can always just download Defraggler, which does an even better job at defragging your HDD than the standard windows tool.

Useful Tools And Sites

Here are some tools which I found made my life easier while working on my cabinet.

TeamViewer- Even if you have an usb port on the front of your cabinet like I do moving files and configuring stuff is always a chore because I have to walk back and forth and sit uncomfortably while configuring everything. TeamViewer is a life saver because it allows you to move files and remote control your cabinet from another computer, thus making everything way easier.

EmuMovies Downloader- Whenever you see a MAME cabinet, with every game there's at least one picture depicting it so the player knows what the game looks like before launching it and also looks better than just a list of titles. Those images are called snaps and there's one program that can download one for each game, and can also download pictures of control panels, marquees and promotional pictures for arcade games and most other systems.

Progetto Snaps- This is a site which provides full sets of snaps for MAME. If you have downloaded a ROM fullset, definitely check this site out, it's super useful and a good alternative to the emuMovies Downloader if you only want arcade games.

Mr. Do's Arcade- This is a wonderful site for MAME users, but it is especially useful because it hosts all those ini files like catver.ini and controls.dat which are hard to find sometimes. It also hastons of info about MAME, derivatives and frontends.

BYOAC- BYOAC is a forum dedicated exclusively to arcade games and can help you with anything related to arcade games, wheter it be building a cabinet or deciding which frontend to use.

Add Authenticity By Removing Nag Screens

For a couple of months the software part of my cabinet has been stable, I haven't changed much, nothing ever crashes and everything works the way it's supposed to. However, there was one thing that had been nagging me to no end ever since I started using MAME, about a year and half ago. The thing that was nagging me so much is called (very fittingly) "nag screens", those messages that pop up when you start a game and lecture you about how playing ROMs is illegal and tell you the information of the original hardware that ran the game. That is probably very useful to developers and whatnot, but when building a cabinet you want simplicity and having to move your joystick left and right and pressing a button every time you start a game can be tiring, not to mention how ugly it looks. Because of that I set out to find a MAME version which had been compiled to remove the nag screens. Luckily, I found it, so I didn't have to compile it.

These are what I'm talking about

If your cabinet is already running MAME 0.149 and you have everything set up and running, then you can just replace  the MAME executable, otherwise just copy the whole thing and put everything (roms snaps and .ini's) in their appropriate folders.

Download (0.149 32bit)
If you're running anything other than the version I have specified above, try this blog and see if they compiled it for the version you use-

Setting Up The Software For Your MAME Cab

Here's a breakdown of what we're gonna do:

• Installing an OS
• Installing/ configuring a frontend
• Setting up your control panel

*Reasoning behind the software I use*

 For an OS we'll be using the now very outdated Windows XP, because it takes little space, boots fast, runs on basically anything with a x86 or x64 architecture and is dirt cheap these days. We will also be using MaLa as our frontend because it also runs on almost anything, is free and very customizable. 

    1. Installing the OS

 First, get yourself a copy of windows XP and burn it to a cd or a USB drive (which I prefer). If you're going to use a USB drive, download Rufus, select NTFS as your file system, make sure your partition system is MBR and then click on the little disk icon and select your windows xp iso.

 Now that you have a bootable windows xp device, insert it into your computer and go into the BIOS(it's different for every pc/motherboard, check your manual) and in there select boot device/boot order or however it appears in your BIOS and put your USB drive or CD in the first place. Remember to put this setting the way it was after you installed Windows XP(put your Hard Drive in the top of the list)

 Get out of the BIOS and your pc should boot into the windows xp instalation screen. Press enter to install, read the licensing agreement, select your C:/ drive and press D to delete the current partition (warning, if you have anything on your hard drive, it will be erased)- Now you'll need to press L to confirm the deletion of the partition. Select the now empty partition and then select the option to format it in NTFS, press enter and then windows will install. It'll reboot your pc a few times and then it'll take to a few menus to choose your language, keyboard, user definitions etc. Windows is now installed.

If you have any trouble installing windows, try this guide.

    2.Installing and configuring the front end

 The frontend is the program which will lauch all your emulators and ROMs using your control panel, think of it as an OS whose only purpose is launching games

 Start by downloading MaLa and then extract them  Mala174 folder into your desktop or wherever you want it. Now you'll want to download and install MAME, which is the program that runs the arcade games.

 After you've installed MAME, run MaLa and a windows should pop up asking for some basic configuration. On the field that says MAME executable, click the three dots and then find the mame.exe file which will be in the folder where you installed MAME. A window will then pop up asking you to create an .ini file and then a .xml file, say yes to both.
 Now is a good time to get a few ROMs which are the actual arcade games. Go on emuparadise, and download a couple of them. After you've downloaded a ROM, take the zip file and put it in the folder called roms which will be inside the folder where you installed MAME. Remember, never unzip the ROMs.
 Now that you have a couple of games, you can now set a ROM path in MaLa. To do this, Click on the three dots next to the ROM Path field in the MaLa configuration window and select the roms folder where you put your previously downloaded ROMs. Press ok at the bottom of the page and then yes on the windows that pops up. Wait a bit and MaLa will open, displaying all your games. If any windows pop up, just press ok, as they are not essential.
 MaLa is now set up, and will launch your games. It looks ugly, so you'll probably want to download a few layouts and set thing up a little better, but for that you'll have to consult the MaLa wiki over at BYOAC

    3. Setting up your control panel

Assuming you've already wired everything and have it connected to your computer open up MaLa, right click anywhere and then select the controller and then joystick tab. On the joystick tab go to the check tab and make sure every button and joystick direction is working. Go back to the basic tab and configure your controls however you like. Remember to check the "check" tab to check your button numbers. After that's done, load a game and then press tab on your keyboard. Using your keyboard select Input(general) and from here configure your controls. Remember to set a coin and start button, which are in the the "Other Controls" menu. 

If you've done everything right you should now have a very basic MAME cabinet running