[MAME] Support for JAKKS Pacific Plug & Plays

[noddy360]

Summary

I know that the MAME core for BizHawk currently supports arcade machines only, but... hear me out.

Merits

I think the Jakks Pacific Plug & Plays don't get that much attention. They're like... little arcade machines you can plug in and play on your TV! That should count for something... right? Also it would be pretty funny... right?
Also I just want to TAS the Nicktoons plug n play. I grew up playing this one specifically so I have a special interest in this.

Technical details

MAME added support for some of these systems since 2019 I believe.
Here's a list of some of the plug n plays that currently work fine:
http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php?game_sourcefile=spg2xx_jakks_gkr.cpp&arcade_only=0&current_version=0
http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php?game_sourcefile=spg2xx_jakks.cpp&arcade_only=0&current_version=0

The Nicktoons plug n play also lets you insert a Game Key cartridge to access more games (in MAME it uses the default plug n play as the BIOS, and then the Game Key is loaded as a regular ROM.)

Currently the drivers don't support save states in default MAME, so perhaps that could be a problem.

[nattthebear]

Why does our MAME port only support certain cores? There may be a practical reason for it, but I'm not aware offhand.

[vadosnaprimer]

We only support Arcade because it has the highest demand and doesn't have insane amounts of overhead we need to know how to test (and then support) for its 693876985768734967509375698473506974985769835 non-arcade machines.

The plan was adding specific new systems on request so we can at least figure them out first, and then just build with them. Also there are usually more accurate TAS emulators for them already.

[SergioFLS]

The V.Smile uses a chipset that's near identical to some some Jakks hardware (you can boot SpongeBob the Fry Cook Games on an emulated V.Smile as an example, although inputs don't work due to different communication protocol), so maybe it's worth supporting that as well.

[coyoteclan]

@noddy360 hi I want to talk to you. Is there a way I can contact you?