God, arcade emulation is a fucking pain. You have to decide on whether your romset should be merged/split/non-merged/full non-merged, then commit to using either MAME or FinalBurn, then decide which version/core of MAME or FinalBurn you want, then hunt down the correct romset for your specific version of your specific emulator, then make sure you never ever update the emulator or the romset because God forbid the devs just decide to not make your roms unplayable because of arbitrary name changes. And if you decide you really need to update, better make sure you learn how to use a program that parses your entire 100GB+ romset so it can rename everything to match the new names. Then it all gets even more complicated if you have multiple devices that can’t all handle the same versions of MAME/FinalBurn.
Is there an easier way to do all this, or is it just “get the latest MAME, download the full set, and stick with it”? I just want to play stuff going up to the early 90s, plus some mid-late 90s. The MAME 2003-Plus RetroArch core looks like a good compromise, but it’s missing some of the games I actually care about.