How does the High-Score saving work in MAME?
There are two kinds of High-Score saving used in MAME, depending on whether the real arcade machine saved the High-Scores or not. Some arcade machines had some type or another of Non-Volatile RAM, that kept game settings and High-Scores when the arcade machine was turned off. This function of the original machine has also been emulated in MAME, and the contents of each arcade machines NVRAM is stored in the /nvram folder. Arcade machines without NV-RAM did not keep High-Scores when turned off. MAME only supports High Score saving for these machines, if they are included in the “hiscore.dat” file. The latest version of this file can be downloaded at http://www.mame.net/downmisc.html. You may want to try MARP – the MAME Action Replay Page at http://marp.retrogames.com, with thousands of Game recordings available to view. Also, anyone can register and start submitting. See the page for more information.
