MAME on the Mac in 2011 -- best method?

[Vercingetorix]

So I want to set up MAME for the first time in a bunch of years. I've got a new iMac running Lion. Looking into it, all my options appear to suck. As I see it, I can:

A) Run MAME OS X, which is easy to set up, appears to run okay, but which has been permanently orphaned at version 0.135. Since I've got to go back and go through the hassle of acquiring ROMs again, I'm worried about ending up with mismatched ROMs, which is by far the most annoying thing about MAME.

B) Run SDLMAME, which is supposedly kept updated. But then you have to either deal with the inconvenience and learning curve of launching it from a Unix shell, or use a front-end, and if there's a user-friendly OS X front-end for SDLMAME which doesn't suck out loud, I can't find it. I'm by no means scared of Terminal.app, but that just sounds like a lot more hassle than I'm willing to go through so my son and I can play Centipede and Space Invaders.

C) Punt and run MAME in Parallels, if the performance is up to snuff. (I haven't checked yet.)

Any other options I haven't listed? What do you guys do?

[gooch3265]

I have been using MAME OSX.

Could not get my head around SDLMAME.

MAME works fine under Fusion 4. Haven't tried it with Parallels. Should also work fine on Bootcamp.

[msalman]

I tried running MAME on Lion few weeks ago but lion didn't let me. It was complaining that it's not for an intel based computers.

I did use MAME on Parallels, 2 years back when I didn't not about MAME OS X version, and it seemed to run fine back then. I haven't tried since then.

[Vercingetorix]

Originally Posted by msalman

I tried running MAME on Lion few weeks ago but lion didn't let me. It was complaining that it's not for an intel based computers.

I did use MAME on Parallels, 2 years back when I didn't not about MAME OS X version, and it seemed to run fine back then. I haven't tried since then.

MacMAME is the old PPC version; that's definitely not an option on Lion. MAME OS X still works fine under Lion. My only concern is that since it's permanently stuck several versions back of the current MAME, it might be a constant hassle to deal with mismatched versions of ROMs. Since I'm basically starting out from scratch, I'd much prefer to go with a MAME port that's currently maintained. On OS X, that apparently currently means SDLMAME -- but if there's well written how-to to get that set up, I can't find it.

Tried MAMEUI (the current mainstream MAME Windows port) out under Parallels today, and it seemed to run okay. It's unsatisfying but that's what I may go with if I can't come up with anything else.

[Hansr]

What about SDL_Mame + MAME_Tunes?

[Vercingetorix]

Originally Posted by Hansr

What about SDL_Mame + MAME_Tunes?

I found MAME_Tunes to be absolutely impenetrable. I couldn't even get it to scan my directory of old ROMs to see what I had at all. I found this how-to, which looked potentially useful, but I still couldn't make any headway at all. And the app itself was so unintuitive, so annoyingly poorly translated into English, etc., that after 20 minutes or so of failure I just threw my hands up in the air and said, it's not worth it. I downloaded another frontend, but it looked like garbage too.

I don't doubt that SDLMAME is the way to go, theoretically, but I don't think there's a frontend that doesn't suck, and I am just too lazy and time-constrained to get into launching games in the terminal with command switches and everything.

Really a bummer that MAME OS X has been orphaned. Because it was pretty close to perfect.