Games
Groovy MiSTer Setup Tips
You might remember the last post where I went through the Groovy MiSTer setup. After getting it working, I found a few things that needed tweaking for the best experience. And here they are, in case you find yourself on the same journey.
Start & Coin Controls
My specific MiSTer installation uses the awesome Irken Labs JAMMA Expander which makes the MiSTer compatible with any JAMMA cabinet. Part of how it works is acting like a keyboard, sending the standard keystrokes to the MiSTer as if you’ve pressed a key on a keyboard. It’s very effective and most games work without any configuration.
But the Groovy MiSTer setup doesn’t listen to the MiSTer keyboard by default. For a while I had to have the PC nearby so I could press 5 to ring in a credit, and 1 for Player 1 start. These are standard MAME controls, but I needed them to work on the MiSTer. Turns out there’s a config option for this in the mame.ini file:
Set keyboardprovider to mister. By default it’s set to auto.
Game Shortcuts
After the basic installation, Groovy MiSTer is run from the PC command line, or by navigating the MAME GUI (which is shit at the best of times, worse on a low resolution arcade monitor). BossRighteous has created a tool called Groovy MiSTer Command, which makes it possible to launch games from the MiSTer end, requiring no PC intervention at all.
It operates as a lightweight server, sitting and listening for the MiSTer’s requests. You can create shortcut files and put them on the MiSTer, and load them up as easily as any other core or game. Launch Groovy MiSTer, bring up the menu, and launch a game. It’s fast and transparent.
Game Shortcut Menu
There are two files that are key to making this work. One is on the PC, and it’s a config file for Groovy MiSTer Command (GMC) caled config.json. It tells GMC where to find MAME, or your other emulators. The other file is placed on the MiSTer system, one per game. The MiSTer loads the game shortcut file (and any specific commands it contains) and passes it to the PC, which then launches the emulator and sends the video back to the MiSTer.
GMC Config
This is pretty simple, and contains the location and handling for every emulator you use with it. Since I only use MAME, I only needed to change one line, pointing GMC to the location of the Groovy MAME executable:
For example, "work_dir": "C:\\ProgramFiles\\MAME",
Note the double backslashes. On linux, you would use /path/to/mame/.
GMC Shortcut Files
Game Shortcuts
Each game shortcut is a single file, located in /media/fat/games/groovy/. The name of the file is what’s shown on the screen when you select a shortcut. If the file is called Gyruss.gmc, then the shortcut shown would be Gyruss. Each file contains two important lines: the name of the emulator, which matches the name in the first file, GMC’s config, and the name of the ROM file for the game.
"cmd": "mame", The emulator name.
"MACHINE_NAME": "gyruss" The game’s ROM name.
These are just the two important lines. There are additional and important details as well, check out the official GMC page for the full contents of these files.
Game Rotation
This only really makes a difference if your monitor is physically rotated to be vertical instead of horizontal. A lot of games, especially older titles, do not have settings to support monitors that are rotated clockwise or counter clockwise. Sega games always prefer one way, Konami games are usually the opposite. Luckily MAME supports this rotation, and it’ll do it automatically if you tell it how your monitor is rotated.
Special thanks to Calamity for showing me the easy way.
There are two settings you need to change in mame.ini: rotate, and autoror or autorol.
By setting rotate to 1 you allow MAME to rotate the image as required.
By setting either autoror or autorol you tell MAME how your monitor is rotated when it’s in vertical mode. In my Astro City cabinet I set autoror to 1.
#
# CORE ROTATION OPTIONS
#
rotate 1
ror 0
rol 0
autoror 1
autorol 0
flipx 0
flipy 0That’s it!
Go play. =)
--NFG
[ Nov 7 2025 ]
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