Best setup for play SHMUPs in 2021? (2025)

Hi, I'm new here!
Recently I decided to play SHMUPS seriously, 1CC, fight for score, etc. I would like to ask for your help in directing me in the best way to play shmups, I have a preference for emulating arcades on my PC with Japanese ROMs (no console emulation). I read about GroovyMAME, but all the tutorials are outdated and I don't know if my PC is compatible.

My settings:
-Ryzen 5 2600
-RX 480 8GB
-16GB RAM 2x8 DDR4 2666MHz
-SSD
-Monitor Samsung T24C310
-Windows 10 64bits

I don't understand the CRT Emudriver (GroovyMAME) so I posted my settings to see if it is compatible. I see a lot of people talking about old AMD GPU and windows 7 are good for CRT Emudriver + GroovyMAME. I am afraid of my monitor getting stuck at 15khz since it is my only desktop, then there would have to be a way to toggle.

A few questions:
1 - Is there anything better than GroovyMAME in input lag, accuracy, etc?
2 - Base MAME with low latency function is equivalent?
3 - MAME without slowdown accuracy is playable?
4 - Would some shmups/bullet hell be impossible without slowdown accuracy?

Some considerations in choosing the best emulator:
I'm thinking of starting with Battle Bakraid in normal mode or R-Type or Darius Gaiden for my first 1cc. I have a list of interest in shmups and can share if you want.
I have no interest in emulating CAVE CV1000 (i have xbox 360 for Mushi Futari and DDP SDOJ), I will emulate the CAVE shmups pre-CV1000.
I am interested in emulate Taito FX (G-Darius, Ray Storm) and Taito G-NET (Ray Crisis).

Thanks in advance!

PS.: Sorry for my bad English, it is not my native language, I used my little knowledge with the help of DeepL translator.

Just vis-a-vis latency, as I understand it, the low latency mode in MAME actually originated in GroovyMAME, so they should be pretty equivalent. I believe that Groovy is better if you're planning on using a CRT monitor, but I know very little about it.

I would say that vanilla MAME low latency mode is quite good and probably the majority of games should be fine with it. It's worth mentioning, though, that Retroarch, when using the Final Burn Alpha core (doesn't support as many games as MAME, and probably less accurate) allows you to eliminate all lag from the emulator using run-ahead (there will still be lag from your monitor, game pad, etc). This is especially nice for games that have unusually high amounts of lag, like Mars Matrix or Battle Garegga. It needs to be the FBA core, because run-ahead is not supported in any of the MAME cores. Should also be noted that a lot of the lag optimizations in retroarch come at the cost of greater performance requirements, though I haven't found this to be a problem on my box with Ryzen 3 CPU, integrated Radeon Vega graphics, and 16GB RAM.

Just testing with frame advance (which is not really the most precise way to test lag, but is easy), there are plenty of games that already have only 1 frame of lag (which is the minimum you can get with frame-advance) in MAME, though, such as Gunbird 2.

YouTube | Restart Syndrome | 1cclist | Go Play Mars Matrix

Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score

I would say that vanilla MAME low latency mode is quite good and probably the majority of games should be fine with it.

Agreed. More complex solutions like GroovyMAME will get you less latency, but many games are forgiving enough to be reasonable with the latency found in the basic build of MAME, which is easier to setup.

Bakraid, the R-Type Series, and Darius Gaiden will all run just fine.

MAME without slowdown accuracy is playable?

MAME has pretty decent slowdown accuracy except for the CV1000 games where it varies considerably from game to game and depends on how much you want to play with blitter settings. Many games such as Giga Wing and Progear are well emulated in MAME for their slowdown (Giga Wing's Dreamcast version is actually missing slowdown in Stage 6 and 7, making it a tad harder to 1CC).

Would some shmups/bullet hell be impossible without slowdown accuracy?

It really depends on the individual game how much harder they'd be without slowdown, but none of them would be truly impossible. Many of the handheld ports of CAVE's games offered a mode to turn the slowdown off if you wanted.

YouTube Videos • 1CCs • SideLine game guide • Halley's Comet game guide

LordHypnos wrote:It's worth mentioning, though, that Retroarch, when using the Final Burn Alpha core (doesn't support as many games as MAME, and probably less accurate) allows you to eliminate all lag from the emulator using run-ahead (there will still be lag from your monitor, game pad, etc). This is especially nice for games that have unusually high amounts of lag, like Mars Matrix or Battle Garegga. It needs to be the FBA core, because run-ahead is not supported in any of the MAME cores.

This is interesting!
But how do Mars Matrix and Battle Garegga behave in vanilla MAME with low latency function compared to FBA with run-ahead in Retroarch?

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Agreed. More complex solutions like GroovyMAME will get you less latency, but many games are forgiving enough to be reasonable with the latency found in the basic build of MAME, which is easier to setup.

See Also

Shmup Junkie Ranks Every SNES STGST: BATSUGUN! - shmups.system11.org

Bakraid, the R-Type Series, and Darius Gaiden will all run just fine.

MAME has pretty decent slowdown accuracy except for the CV1000 games where it varies considerably from game to game and depends on how much you want to play with blitter settings.

Is there any game that is not CV1000 and requires clock/blitter settings?
Since you mentioned R-Type series, what would you say about In the Hunt on MAME?

Thank you LordHypnos and BareKnuckleRoo, you are helping me to clarify my mind!
I really want to get into this world of shmups, but first I want to get everything prepared and organized, that's why I ask so many questions, sorry to disturb the forum.

Dettless wrote:This is interesting!
But how do Mars Matrix and Battle Garegga behave in vanilla MAME with low latency function compared to FBA with run-ahead in Retroarch?

Testing with frame-advance (again, imprecise but still gives the general idea), Mars Matrix shows 4 frames of lag in MAME (w/ low latency on), and can be brought down to 1 in Retroarch with run-ahead (anything can be brought down to 1 frame with run-ahead). To me this feels just outside of what I find playable, but could probably be adapted to. I mean people managed to counterstop Mars Matrix in wolfMAME way before MAME had a low latency mode, after all.

Actually Garegga isn't even bad. lol. This has improved a ton since I last tried it (should have probably tested it before mentioning it), 3 frames in MAME with low latency on. I think it was worse than Mars Matrix in ShmupMAME 4.2.

For a bit of context, in low latency MAME, Giga Wing has perceptable lag to me but still feels very playable at 3 frames, Mars Matrix feels unneccessarily difficult at 4 frames, 1-2 frames is usually not noticeable. These numbers will vary from person to person, I'm sure.

The real numbers are probably a little higher, because there's presumably lag being added by the monitor and other stuff, and of course lag can be measured in sub-frame amounts with the right equipment.

YouTube | Restart Syndrome | 1cclist | Go Play Mars Matrix

Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score

Lethe wrote:The lag in Bat* games is a part of the game.

While this is pretty well documented in Garegga (apparently the Saturn version and maybe also the ShotTriggers version (?) removed 1 frame of lag compared to the arcade), and we always assumed this was true in Batrider because of how laggy it used to be in MAME, in current MAME it really isn't (it's on par with most CAVE games that I've tested and one frame less of lag than Garegga at 2 frames). Perhaps it's really just a Garegga problem.

By using run-ahead in this way you're removing lag that would be present on the PCB. I expect Mars Matrix is exactly the same. Strictly speaking run-ahead "should" be used to compensate for lag from your LCD or whatever and not from the game itself.

This is a perfectly legitimate perspective to have, but I don't like assuming that the lag in MAME is correct, especially since we know that emulated games often do have more lag than original hardware, and also your third point:

Of course it's not like most emulator setups are accurate to arcade play (no matter how careful, every emulator player inevitably develops distorted perceptions of something somewhere), so whether you take an issue with this or not is up to you. And it's a totally moot point when we start talking about games that aren't emulated properly anyway e.g. are missing slowdown.

I also (probably) wouldn't enforce it on the Mars Matrix leaderboard even if we did have the real PCB data, just because I don't want to make it even less appealing for people to play it at all. For the record I'm using only 1 frame of runahead for Mars Matrix (I didn't want to get used to less latency than the Dreamcast version).

Still though, I would agree that, in general, it's best to play in MAME (with low latency on) in the majority of cases.

YouTube | Restart Syndrome | 1cclist | Go Play Mars Matrix

Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score

LordHypnos wrote:While this is pretty well documented in Garegga (apparently the Saturn version and maybe also the ShotTriggers version (?) removed 1 frame of lag compared to the arcade), and we always assumed this was true in Batrider because of how laggy it used to be in MAME, in current MAME it really isn't (it's on par with most CAVE games that I've tested and one frame less of lag than Garegga at 2 frames). Perhaps it's really just a Garegga problem.

They're all the same for me - either 3rd or 4th frame response circumstantially, with Batrider being the laggiest (most consistently 4th frame), Garegga the least consistent and Bakraid in the middle. How are you getting 2 frames out of it? For comparison I get 2 frames on DDP/DOJ/Ketsui and 3 frames on Esprade.
Edit: Overclocking the emu CPU gets Batrider and Bakraid down to 3 frames consistently, but never 2.

Dettless wrote:Is there any game that is not CV1000 and requires clock/blitter settings?

As far as I am aware, blitter settings are only really a thing with CV1000 games.

I'm also unfamiliar with In The Hunt; I've not heard any reports of MAME inaccuracy, so I would imagine it runs fine. I've never played a copy of In The Hunt in an arcade so I have no way of knowing for sure, whereas I've played the arcade version of Giga Wing a ton and can attest to its accuracy in MAME (as well as the accuracy of CPS2 games in general).

YouTube Videos • 1CCs • SideLine game guide • Halley's Comet game guide

When I was looking for a MAME-version Shmupmame was the way to go. Obviously things must have been improving since (it's almost ten years ago) and I've heard there are downsides to it and that it's not really used anymore... but I personally haven't had any reason to leave it behind as of yet. I've been able to have a good time with all the shmups I've tried so far, I don't know how accurate it is in terms of "I need perfection dammit!!" but games work fine for my needs.

Edit: I realize now the whole point is to discuss the very best option in terms of pure numbers, my "it's good enough if you ask me" approach is redundant. Whoops!

1CC | Neocities

I used a MAME romset for around 15 years, because it just worked, but now I use finalburn neo on retroarch, mostly because of the shaders and more video options.

It works absolutely fine, the only issue is that FBN doesn't support high score for as many games as MAME, and you can't rely on highscore.dat rom list. Some games work, others don't.

I don't notice any input lag, and FBNeo has much better retroarch integration compared to mame. It also supports retroachievements, which is nice since some games have online leaderboards.

Lethe wrote:

LordHypnos wrote:While this is pretty well documented in Garegga (apparently the Saturn version and maybe also the ShotTriggers version (?) removed 1 frame of lag compared to the arcade), and we always assumed this was true in Batrider because of how laggy it used to be in MAME, in current MAME it really isn't (it's on par with most CAVE games that I've tested and one frame less of lag than Garegga at 2 frames). Perhaps it's really just a Garegga problem.

They're all the same for me - either 3rd or 4th frame response circumstantially, with Batrider being the laggiest (most consistently 4th frame), Garegga the least consistent and Bakraid in the middle. How are you getting 2 frames out of it? For comparison I get 2 frames on DDP/DOJ/Ketsui and 3 frames on Esprade.
Edit: Overclocking the emu CPU gets Batrider and Bakraid down to 3 frames consistently, but never 2.

You're totally right! I was getting the same number of frames in Garegga and Batrider (and Giga Wing, though it maybe feels more responsive anyway? Hard to say), and just probably counted poorly. Mars Matrix has one more, Guwange, Progear, and MMP have 1 less, ESPgaluda, DOJ, and Gunbird 2 have 2 less. This is with no optimizations other than "low latency" in vanilla MAME 0.229. The tests use this methodology (how many times you press frame advance minus 1, basically).

YouTube | Restart Syndrome | 1cclist | Go Play Mars Matrix

Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score

Yeah, those are the same results I get.

I tried playing Garegga at 200% CPU - which like the other games cuts the 4th inconsistent frame of lag besides obviously making it run faster - whether it's due to better consistency or simply less lag, it makes a pretty amazing difference. I felt confident about going for risky dodges where I wouldn't usually, such as the stage 6 wall, Mad Ball fights, and Junkey Monkey, even though they were going much faster than normal (and the dodges worked out too). I was hoping run-ahead could spoof this "smoothing" effect somehow without affecting slowdown, which alone would be a good argument for using it, but it looks like it would only do that if you push right down to 1 frame.

This is going off-topic but I'm reminded of Blue Revolver's 2 frame native lag, no slowdown, fast movement and quick speed switching, and how good it feels to just move about in that game. Makes me wish it had harder patterns and less speedkilling so I had an excuse to enjoy it more.

Lethe wrote:Yeah, those are the same results I get.

I tried playing Garegga at 200% CPU - which like the other games cuts the 4th inconsistent frame of lag besides obviously making it run faster - whether it's due to better consistency or simply less lag, it makes a pretty amazing difference. I felt confident about going for risky dodges where I wouldn't usually, such as the stage 6 wall, Mad Ball fights, and Junkey Monkey, even though they were going much faster than normal (and the dodges worked out too). I was hoping run-ahead could spoof this "smoothing" effect somehow without affecting slowdown, which alone would be a good argument for using it, but it looks like it would only do that if you push right down to 1 frame.

This is going off-topic but I'm reminded of Blue Revolver's 2 frame native lag, no slowdown, fast movement and quick speed switching, and how good it feels to just move about in that game. Makes me wish it had harder patterns and less speedkilling so I had an excuse to enjoy it more.

Interesting about going up to 200% CPU. I'm kind of curious to try that now. Does it speed everything up, or just remove any slowdown?
I remember enjoying Blue Revolver a lot. Have you tried parallel difficulty? I only ever did normal and hyper, but if you're looking for a more challenging experience maybe that's it.

YouTube | Restart Syndrome | 1cclist | Go Play Mars Matrix

Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score

LordHypnos wrote:Interesting about going up to 200% CPU. I'm kind of curious to try that now. Does it speed everything up, or just remove any slowdown?

It just removes slowdown. I recommend turning the slider up on the ship selection screen - the sound will bug out if you do it too early, and it has some weird interactions with doing it elsewhere. Makes me wonder how much of a house of cards Garegga is programatically. Batrider and Bakraid behave fine.

Blue Revolver talk below:

Starfighter wrote:Obviously things must have been improving since (it's almost ten years ago) and I've heard there are downsides to it and that it's not really used anymore... but I personally haven't had any reason to leave it behind as of yet.

Radiant Silvergun doesn't lock up at 2C in newer versions of MAME.

Indie hipsters: "Arcades are so dead"
Finite Continues? Ain't that some shit.

RBelmont wrote:A little math shows that if you overclock a Pi3 to about 3.4 GHz you'll start to be competitive with PCs from 2002. And you'll also set your house on fire