Raspberry Pi and MESS – Multi Emulator Super System – NES, GameGear, Genesis

Posted on July 1, 2012 by SSilver2k2

UPDATE: New Raspbian Binaries Available

Hey All!

Today I present the binaries for AdvanceMESS. The Multi Emulator Super System. MESS can emulate somewhere around 250 different home consoles and computers. It’s not perfect in any sense, but it works for most consoles.

I have currently tested:

NES (some games are slow, but it works).
GameGear (works)
Genesis (slow but works)
SNES (couldn’t get it to work…yet)

Instructions:

Download MESS Binaries.
Unzip MESS to the ~/MESS directory.
chmod 777 /dev/fb0
Put your console bios’s into mess/share/advance/rom/
Put your console games into mess/share/advance/image/<console>/ (ie mess/share/advance/image/nes/
CD into mess/bin/
Run advmess with ./advmess
1. The first time it’s run it will generate a set of folders and files into ~/.advance
edit your ~/.advance/advmess.rc to include the proper display configuration
1. For HDMI try:
  1. device_video_clock 5 – 50 / 15.62 / 50 ; 5 – 50 / 15.73 / 60
2. For NTSC TVs try:
  1. device_video_clock 5 – 50 / 15.73 / 60
While still in the mess/bin directory, type ./advmess <console> -cart <filename>
1. ./advmess nes -cart file.nes
ENJOY!!!

This is one of the weirder setups I’ve tested, but once setup, it works. If you have any issues, let me know and I will try to help you.

-Shea

P.S. I will NOT help you find console bios or roms. Please don’t ask.

Official MESS Site

30 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi and MESS – Multi Emulator Super System – NES, GameGear, Genesis”

Florian on July 4, 2012 at 7:58 am said:

Hi,

so far, I just tried out the RetroArch emulator. Thank you for this post – I will also test the AdvanceMESS!

You might be interested in my post about connecting a SNES controller to the Raspberry at
http://petrockblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/snesdev-rpi-a-snes-adapter-for-the-raspberry-pi/.

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USiT on July 11, 2012 at 1:32 pm said:

Hello Shea

I have tried to follow your guide above but getting a error on step 7

“pi@raspberrypi:~/mess/bin$ sudo ./advmess” gives me the error
sudo: ./advmess no: command not found

Any hint on what im doing wrong?

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- SSilver2k2 on July 14, 2012 at 1:54 am said:
  
  Don’t use sudo. It shouldn’t be needed. just do ./advmess
  
  Let me know if that helps.
  
  Reply ↓
  - James on November 11, 2012 at 5:32 am said:
    
    I have the same issue (running raspbmc in my case, which ultimately may not work but should get past this step…)
    pi@raspbmc:~/mess/bin$ ./advmess
    -bash: ./advmess: No such file or directory
    pi@raspbmc:~/mess/bin$ ls
    advcfg advj advk advm advmess advs advv
    pi@raspbmc:~/mess/bin$
    
    Reply ↓
    - Joseph on January 11, 2013 at 3:10 pm said:
      
      You probably forgot to put execute permissions on the file. ls -lha will show you the permissions of each file.
      
      chmod +x advmess will do the trick.
      
      Reply ↓
Pingback: Raspberry Pi and MESS – Multi Emulator Super System – NES, GameGear, Genesis #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi « adafruit industries blog
faetron on July 27, 2012 at 8:06 am said:

Great new!!! I’m planning to put my raspberry pi into and old Nintendo 64.

It will be so cool to play N64 games with a raspberry pi into an original case of N64.

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- will on December 18, 2012 at 3:01 pm said:
  
  i wish too but alas slow processing.
  it would be epic though if someone managed to get it to work though!
  
  Reply ↓
Casey Borders on July 28, 2012 at 4:09 am said:

Do the BIOS’s get put into folders too? How does MESS know where to find them?

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- SSilver2k2 on July 28, 2012 at 4:42 am said:
  
  The BIOS’s get put into the ROM folder. The game roms go into the IMAGES folder under the system’s name. So NES roms go into the images/nes folder. MESS knows what to look for when you call the program.
  
  ./advmess system -cart filename
  ie: ./advmess nes -cart filename.rom
  
  Reply ↓
Anrijs on August 8, 2012 at 10:14 am said:

I cant get any bios to work. I have put them in mess/share/advance/rom/ but when I try to start advmess it shows .rom NOT FOUNT, but I have .bin added.
What could be the problem and how can I solve it?
(I’ve also tried to change locations of rom/image folders in advmess.rc but it also didn’t help)

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Paul Lancaster on August 10, 2012 at 11:53 pm said:

How do you edit the file in step 8 . New to Linux , Thanks for the help

also i type /.avdmess famicom -cart famicom.rom and id does not find the file. the bios is in the rom folder
please help !

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- Paul Lancaster on August 10, 2012 at 11:59 pm said:
  
  I did correct the line to be ./advmess famicom -cart disksys.rom and still it says
  
  Device cartridge load (disksys.rom) failed: File not found
  
  Reply ↓
P@sNox on August 25, 2012 at 7:36 pm said:

Why are you basing your build on +3 years old source code (AdvanceXXX) ?
Currently i’m setting up cross build environement and i will try to provide very recent mame/mess builds.
If you have some info on cross build, i will be plaised to got them.

Thanks,

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Dan W on September 9, 2012 at 7:40 pm said:

Following your previous directions I was able to get Advmame up and running but Advmess is giving me problems. When I try to run an nes image (say “./advmess nes -cart Super_mario_brothers3.nes”) I get the following:

AdvanceMESS – Copyright…etc
MESS – Copyright…etc
MAME – Copyright…etc
No video modes available for the current game.
Unable to start video emulation

If run startx and type the same command into the terminal I get the same first 3 copyright lines followed by a different error:
Signal SIGBUS[ADRALN], fault at 0x9a8323e6, from code at (nil)
Compiled Jun 21 2012, 19:26:16
No stack backtrace: compile without CFLAGS=-fomit-frame-pointer and with LDFLAGS=-rdynamic

Any ideas what could be amiss?

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- Mark Routledge on September 30, 2012 at 8:23 pm said:
  
  I have the same problems as you Dan W, run from Terminal ‘No Video Modes’ from within X and using a terminal same message about ‘No stack backtrace:’, is this due to the new build of Raspbian Wheezy. I was trying to run a Genesis Rom (Sonic Compilation)
  
  Anyone smarter than me able to help? I hope so, was looking forward to some Sonic action!
  
  Keep up the great work, was waiting for someone to make this possible. Now I really can get rid of my old Xbox (no need for XBMC for Xbox or the emulators with it) Farewell old box, you have served me VERY well for a very long time!
  
  Reply ↓
- Carles Oriol on October 28, 2012 at 9:57 am said:
  
  I’m on the same situation running on sdl on terminal. Using hdmi 1920×1080 tv display.
  
  Reply ↓
- Tex Coco on November 17, 2012 at 3:04 am said:
  
  I am also having the same problem. Has anybody been able to resolve this?
  
  Reply ↓
Mark Routledge on September 30, 2012 at 8:38 pm said:

Ignore my stupidity, just found the latest build. Run sonic, but verrrryyyy slooooow. Am I running with the wrong settings? Has anyone done any optimisation with this?

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mark on November 5, 2012 at 9:30 pm said:

I am getting error: bash: ./advmess: Permission denied despite changing the permissions for my user. is there anything I can try to get this permission error to change? all folders/files(console bios / roms) are in the right locations stated above so this should be a simple fix! please help

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SteelPaladin on December 1, 2012 at 10:07 am said:

So I guess it’s safe to say that not only does this not work, but it’s also not being supported or upgraded? That’s ok, I don’t expect anyone to work for free if they’re no longer interested in a project – I just want to know where we stand here.

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- SSilver2k2 on December 2, 2012 at 9:46 pm said:
  
  It’s still workign and still being supported. This is an old post. I’m hoping to push a new deb package this week.
  
  Reply ↓
MindChild on December 2, 2012 at 12:45 pm said:

The sluggishness is obviously due to using the framebuffer. Have you attempted to use OpenGL (-video opengl)? I haven’t given it a try yet, and it may need some code editing, but I’d just like to see if it was even attempted

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- SSilver2k2 on December 2, 2012 at 9:45 pm said:
  
  OpenGL is not available on the Pi, only OpenGL ES.
  
  Reply ↓
Fritz on December 30, 2012 at 12:06 am said:

Hi,
I’m new to linux and dont know a lot about it,
How do I unzip a file?
I was also wondering what step 3 means 3. chmod 777 /dev/fb0 ?

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Mario-Fan on January 27, 2013 at 11:24 am said:

I tried it (I extracted a Famicom BIOS from a zip in an archive, it’s still called disksys.rom and there’s a copy in */rom and */rom/nes) and I got this (File Manager window to prove the file is actually there):
http://tinypic.com/r/2ir838w/6
What am I doing wrong?
* = mess/share/advance

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- SSilver2k2 on January 27, 2013 at 5:58 pm said:
  
  try advmess nes -cart nes/game
  
  Reply ↓
MikeG on August 16, 2015 at 10:35 am said:

To get advmess working on Adafruit PiTFT 320×240 add this to your ~/.advance/advmess.rc:

device_video_clock 0-100/0-100/0-100

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bwa on December 25, 2015 at 1:25 pm said:

can i do it without the terminal?

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Chris on December 25, 2015 at 4:45 pm said:

I do the command in step 3, and it says in the terminal:
“Changing permissions of `/dev/fb0′: operation not permitted”
HELP!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!

-Chris

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