GUI for MAME using Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I installed MAME via:

sudo apt-get install mame

I have several dozen roms. When I start up the user interface, I can arrow up and down through the games shown on the screen, but the items do not "scroll", i.e. I can't get to the rest of the games. What am I missing?

I can type letters in to "filter" the list and find the games that way, but that is not very conducive to building a cabinet.

Help? Thanks.

Solution

One of the many options for front ends for MAME is AdvanceMenu which has several features that make it seem an attractive choice for a cabinet project such as yours.

It runs on Linux, Raspbian, Mac OS X, DOS, Windows and on all the other platforms supported by the SDL library.

With the Linux FrameBuffer, (fb driver) you can use custom video hardware like Arcade monitors or TVs, programming the video board with the right resolution and frequency.

The package has an adequately commented install script, all the sources to build on supported platforms and contains :

advmame - The AdvanceMAME emulator.
advmess - The AdvanceMESS emulator.
advmenu - The AdvanceMENU frontend.
advcfg - The automatic video configurator.
advv - The manual video configurator and tester.
advm - The mouse tester.
advk - The keyboard tester.
advs - The sound tester.
advj - The joystick tester.

Here's a snapshot:

Note: I have not tested this personally as I don't have a similar project. Be that as it may, the research indicates that this could be a good choice for you.

If it's not quite what you are looking for there are several other options listed here.

Sources:

http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/mamefrontends.htm

http://www.advancemame.it/menu-readme

The content of the aforementioned package

Comments

[Elder Geek]

It sounds like you are looking for a front end for MAME. Software recommendations are typically well received at softwarerecs.stackexchange.com be that as it may, there's a list of them here

[Eliah Kagan]

@ElderGeek, reviewers: This question is on-topic for Ask Ubuntu. See Are software recommendations on topic or not?, Why are software recommendations on topic?, and How to run the Software Recommendation tag? It's OK to suggest other sites, but not to push away on-topic questions people have chosen to ask here--see the "Respecting your own community" section of this official blog post.

[Eliah Kagan]

@ElderGeek I addressed my comment not just to you, but also to reviewers. Your comment appeared around the time that an off-topic close-vote was cast. I didn't assume that you had cast it, and I would've commented in exactly the same way even if I was sure no one would interpret your comment to mean software-recommendation requests are off-topic. With that said, I feel confident that your comment actually does express that falsehood, even though you didn't intend it. Most readers will probably interpret your "be that as it may" to mean "even though this is on-topic there and not here."

[Elder Geek]

@EliahKagan Understood. My views are here