Emulators: MAME - Hiscore.dat

Here is another MAME support file for you to add to your MAME setup - Hiscore.dat. When you entered you initials for a high score in most arcade games it is saved into non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) so that when the game was turned off the high score remained (unless it was intentionally reset). But quite a few of the games emulated in MAME - mostly older games - did not have this NVRAM capability and if you turned off the arcade game it erased the high scores (remember the Seinfeld episode where George tried to keep the Frogger game plugged in so his high scores stayed intact?).

So for these games some folks developed a file called hiscore.dat which allows games without NVRAM support to save their high scores to a folder named 'hi' so that when you turn off your computer your high scores on these games are saved too.

This file used to be supported by the official MAME build, but a while back the MAME developers removed this function since it violated their goal of true emulation - if you turn off the machine the high scores on these particular games are SUPPOSED to be erased. So that's the main reason I use the MAMEUIFX alternate build because it is tweaked to keep this functionality.

Click HERE to download the Hiscore.dat file and save it to your MAME root directory (the same folder where MAMEUIFX.exe is located). That's all - you are good to go. So go get some new high scores.