Is this just something to be expected? Was it an issue with older MAME versions and sets like this? Like before, I am able to use trial and error on different cores with the ones that don’t work with 2003, but then I’m right back where I started with the hassle I’m trying to get rid of, but at even a much larger scale! So far, 40%-50% of the ones I’ve tried either wouldn’t work or crashed the emulator. After scanning it all in, I assigned MAME 2003 to that playlist and started trying out some games. It also seems to be the only one that Retroarch as a database for. I went with the 0.78 set since I read in a couple places it was a good one to try.
Even though I didn’t really want an entire library, I thought my issues would be fixed by getting a full ROMset designed for a specific core. They had come from different sources and it was a real hassle to figure out which core would play them through trial and error. I was adding arcade games one-by-one before.