[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Getting, installing

Get the latest version in the first post of the the official FinalBurn thread at Modaco – it’ll always have the latest version (you will need to register your nick in there).

That there are four RAR files there. One is named FinalBurn.rar. This is the WM executable. The other three contain the desktop Windows version of the emulator, are named fbauds.part01.rar … fbauds.part03.rar and should only be got if you will need to create cache files of the titles you’d like to play. Use WinRAR.

Note that the latter emulator does differ from the official desktop Windows version of FinalBurn Alpha downloadable here. The latter is far newer (and is, therefore, preferred to the version available at Modaco) but doesn’t support creating cache files. That is, do download the fbauds.partX.rar’s too. (And, again, you may also want to download the official desktop Windows version of FinalBurn Alpha here, should you want to play the titles on your desktop computer.)

To play NeoGeo games in the emulator, you will also need to acquire the ROM BIOS file, Neogeo.zip (you won’t need to do this if you ONLY want to play CPS games!). This ZIP is different for the desktop Windows version (downloadable here; also see THIS) and for the WM version (accessible here). Put the ZIP file (do NOT decompress it!) in the ROMs subdirectory of FileBurn (with the desktop version, you can also put it in the home directory where the main executable EXE file resides – it’ll find it. The WM version won’t), which is auto-created upon the first execution of the emulator (see later).

Finally, for the desktop version, you will also need kailleraclient.dll. It’s for example available in the official desktop FinalBurn Alpha distribution - just download the ZIP file and it’ll be right in it. You won’t even need to start the main executable, fba.exe. Or, alternatively, get it HERE as a separate download. Again, this only applies to the desktop version – with the WM version, all you will need to do is getting Neogeo.zip and copying it to the ROMs directory. Note that you may also need to download and install the free DirectX 9.

Game ROM’s you download must be put under the ROMs dir as ZIP files (that is, you don’t need to decompress them). This directory will be automatically created when you start the executable on both the desktop (fba.exe with the official FinalBurn version, fbaud.exe with the cache-generating debug version) and mobile (FinalBurn.exe) Windows.

Getting games (ROM images)

Probably the best ROM source is emuparadise.org, where you can download a lot of games from. The games there are all in a format compatible with the emulator. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean ALL the available titles are indeed compatible: it’s only with CPS games that they are. There are still a lot of NeoGeo games that are just plain incompatible (and aren’t even listed by FinalBurn as compatible). Nevertheless, the ones that are recognized are, in general, really worth playing.

CPS-1 ROMs should be here (but seems to be empty now); CPS2 here. Finally, NeoGeo ROM’s are here.

Keep in mind the following while downloading files from emuparadise.org:

you can only download one ROM image at a time. emuparadise.org, in addition to checking the same browser instance, also check for the same IP. That is, you can’t fool the server into thinking it’s serving another completely independent user when you leech images from IE and Firefox at the same time.

don’t use Internet Explorer to download images because it’ll very often time out. Prefer Firefox (Mozilla) – it has never timed out on me, as opposed to (the latest version of) Internet Explorer.

There are a LOT of very cool games in there; games that are MUCH better than most (or, with horizontal scrollers, ANY) comparable, native titles on Windows Mobile. There is nothing on Windows Mobile comparable to, say, Metal Slug. Yes, FirePower-onrush uses a lot of textures / graphics from Metal Slug (see Sponge’s comments HERE, after my review, for more info on this) but is still WAY worse.

I’ve also tested many titles under the emulator, in the next subsection, I list and elaborate on them.

NeoGeo titles, links & compatibility reports

Captain Tomaday: works great (kids’ vertical scroller)

Ghost Pilots: great, even at 44 kHz (let alone 8!) (vertical scroller)

NAM – 1975: Operation Wolf clone: works great, even at 44 kHz, highly recommended if you like

Metal Slug 2: One of the BEST! A MUST!

Metal Slug 3 : in order to run this title on anything with less than 128M RAM, you will also need to download the non-encrypted version in addition to the default one. Make sure you run the latter on devices with free RAM less than 40 Mbytes.

Metal Slug X: Great game, working also great

Samurai Shodown: works great, even at 44 kHz

King of the Monsters: OK, even at 44k

A list of, as of the current version, some non-recognized games:

Metal Slug 1

The Last Blade

Blazing Star

Metal Slug 4

(both versions of PocketCultMAME recognize them but can’t run. The desktop MAME runs them all. The desktop FinalBurn Alpha doesn't.)

As of now, it’s pretty futile to try to download these games. The situation may change in the future, though: FinalBurn Alpha is constantly been updated to support as many NeoGeo games as possible.