Good vs No-Intro vs CHQ

[shaunopp]

Like many of you I'm in the (neverending) process of re-organizing/re-validating my console roms and am looking to get some feedback about No-Intro vs. Good sets. I understand the basic differences, No-Intro sets have a simpler naming structure and exclude hacks, trainers etc. but am looking for any specific reasons you may have for keeping them one way or the other.

No-Intro seems more my speed. I've been organizing my console roms by No-Intro DATs where possible and leaving them in Good format where not (Atari2600). Since I'm not a collector I'm mainly interested in a nice clean list with the most common workable games.

As a test I organized 3 full separate sets for comparison of Genesis roms:

one is a full No-Intro set

one is a full GoodGen GoodMerged set

one is a rebuild of the No-Intro set using Adultery's CHQ DAT

I was surprised to see that the GoodGen set was considerably smaller 1075 roms versus the No-Intro set's 1615. I thought it would be the other way around since No-Intro supposedly weeds out the junk. Adultery's CHQ Dat for Genesis is 822 and tells me 4 roms are missing after rebuilding off the No-intro set which is odd. From browsing these roms it basically looks like the No-intro set with the alt languages (mainly Japan) pulled out. Although it has cleaner naming I'm not sure that's an advantage since you can remove the bracketed info with GameEx anyway.

Any feedback/links/insightful info welcome.

[KriSX]

Like many of you I'm in the (neverending) process of re-organizing/re-validating my console roms and am looking to get some feedback about No-Intro vs. Good sets. I understand the basic differences, No-Intro sets have a simpler naming structure and exclude hacks, trainers etc. but am looking for any specific reasons you may have for keeping them one way or the other.

No-Intro seems more my speed. I've been organizing my console roms by No-Intro DATs where possible and leaving them in Good format where not (Atari2600). Since I'm not a collector I'm mainly interested in a nice clean list with the most common workable games.

As a test I organized 3 full separate sets for comparison of Genesis roms:

one is a full No-Intro set

one is a full GoodGen GoodMerged set

one is a rebuild of the No-Intro set using Adultery's CHQ DAT

I was surprised to see that the GoodGen set was considerably smaller 1075 roms versus the No-Intro set's 1615. I thought it would be the other way around since No-Intro supposedly weeds out the junk. Adultery's CHQ Dat for Genesis is 822 and tells me 4 roms are missing after rebuilding off the No-intro set which is odd. From browsing these roms it basically looks like the No-intro set with the alt languages (mainly Japan) pulled out. Although it has cleaner naming I'm not sure that's an advantage since you can remove the bracketed info with GameEx anyway.

Any feedback/links/insightful info welcome.

yeah i'm a bit confused with all this too... usually i just grab whatever is the latest set for whatever system...

but i do get confused with the no-intro and good sets

[Stu1983]

I've recently gave Ungoodmerge a try and was really pleased with the results, it will take a GoodMerged set of roms and extract just 1 rom from each 7zip archive using the rules you tell it.

Really it all depends on what you're after, I personally only want 1 version of a rom, I don't see the need to have the US, Europe and Japanese version, actually I'm not interested in the Japanese version at all unless it's translated, so Adultery's sets are perfect for me but for the other systems that he hasn't created a dat for then Ungoodmerge yields similar results.

Stu

[greatflash]

Like many of you I'm in the (neverending) process of re-organizing/re-validating my console roms and am looking to get some feedback about No-Intro vs. Good sets. I understand the basic differences, No-Intro sets have a simpler naming structure and exclude hacks, trainers etc. but am looking for any specific reasons you may have for keeping them one way or the other.

No-Intro seems more my speed. I've been organizing my console roms by No-Intro DATs where possible and leaving them in Good format where not (Atari2600). Since I'm not a collector I'm mainly interested in a nice clean list with the most common workable games.

As a test I organized 3 full separate sets for comparison of Genesis roms:

one is a full No-Intro set

one is a full GoodGen GoodMerged set

one is a rebuild of the No-Intro set using Adultery's CHQ DAT

I was surprised to see that the GoodGen set was considerably smaller 1075 roms versus the No-Intro set's 1615. I thought it would be the other way around since No-Intro supposedly weeds out the junk. Adultery's CHQ Dat for Genesis is 822 and tells me 4 roms are missing after rebuilding off the No-intro set which is odd. From browsing these roms it basically looks like the No-intro set with the alt languages (mainly Japan) pulled out. Although it has cleaner naming I'm not sure that's an advantage since you can remove the bracketed info with GameEx anyway.

Any feedback/links/insightful info welcome.

Like you, I tend to go for no-intro, but I will also turn to Tosec for some sets. The Only exceptin is iso's. With them I try to use gameex's mdb files for naming adding the region in brackets at the end of the filename. Unfortunatly not all dats cover all systems so you cannot use the same naming convention for all roms.

[fRequEnCy]

Like you, I tend to go for no-intro, but I will also turn to Tosec for some sets. The Only exceptin is iso's. With them I try to use gameex's mdb files for naming adding the region in brackets at the end of the filename. Unfortunatly not all dats cover all systems so you cannot use the same naming convention for all roms.

Very true. I use no-intro except when systems aren't supported. In that case I use tosec and Goodmerge as well. It's all preference really.

[chriss]

i use adulterys chq sets, because they seem to have all roms in there and it cleans up all the stuff you never need (like japanese roms and so on). I just pulled out some of the super mario world hacks of the goodsnes set since i sometimes like trying out new levels...

for consoles in gerneral no-intro is good, but for amiga and c64 you run into problems like still having the copy protection enabled. from a collectors point of view this is a good thing since the roms are the closest to the original, bu i tend to want to play my games so i use alternatives over there (goodgb64 for c64 and kgwhd for amiga)

[frosty-theaussie]

I usually just 7zip up the "verified" [E], and [J] ROMs from my Goodsets, as well as the different versions for each (if they exist) and all available Japanese-to-English fan translations. Then I can select whichever one I want by enabling 7zip support in GameEx! Having the Japanese ROM is just for the completist value, and having the European ROM is for nostalgia value since back in the day, games released in the PAL regions had a few differences due to the differences between 50hz and 60hz.

[chriss]

how do you choose between the roms when you use 7zip support in gameex? does it give you a list or does it just use the first rom?

[fRequEnCy]

how do you choose between the roms when you use 7zip support in gameex? does it give you a list or does it just use the first rom?

It gives you a list.

[shaunopp]

I usually just 7zip up the "verified" [E], and [J] ROMs from my Goodsets, as well as the different versions for each (if they exist) and all available Japanese-to-English fan translations. Then I can select whichever one I want by enabling 7zip support in GameEx! Having the Japanese ROM is just for the completist value, and having the European ROM is for nostalgia value since back in the day, games released in the PAL regions had a few differences due to the differences between 50hz and 60hz.

You manually 7zip all of the alt language versions for a whole rom set? This seems like a lot of work.

For those that are new to rom tools, there's a couple good tutorial links for Clrmame below. They're a bit dated but the basics are very good.

http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/

ClrMame_Tutorial.pdf

[frosty-theaussie]

You manually 7zip all of the alt language versions for a whole rom set? This seems like a lot of work.

For those that are new to rom tools, there's a couple good tutorial links for Clrmame below. They're a bit dated but the basics are very good.

http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/

ClrMame_Tutorial.pdf

No, just Goodmerge them again excluding the ones I don't want. It just takes a couple of presses.

[JK1974]

Hi,

one basic question because I am new to GameEx (and new to retro console games as well as I was a A2600/C64/Amiga player): I started collecting GoodSets, but I do not like the mentioned alternative dumps. Furthermore I believe, that there seem to be more complete screenshot and packshot collections for No-Intro sets.

So I started using clrmamepro for reorganizing my sets from GoodSets to No-Intro sets. But what I am really missing now is the language selection in GameEx that I had when using GoodSets - now I get duplicate entries for US, Japan and Europe. Is there any way to get the files merged into one menu entry and getting a language version selection like it was with GoodSets? Alternatively, I also have to check how this map file filtering works in GameEx, or is there a more simple option like with mame roms to exclude certain languages?

Or would I even have to use the GoodTools again on the No-Intro sets to get this behavious again? I don´t hope so

EDIT: Ok, I just found out that the roms have indeed to be merged into one zip/7zip file. Is there any alternative left? And how could this be done automatically?

Thanks in advance for any reply - and I don´t hope that this question is too offtopic, but as it is a discussion about Good vs. No-Intro I thought it might fit here...