To answer each question as best I can: 1. Usually the same as mame but not always 2. I wouldn't presume anything. I can tell you what roms are needed, but as to whether they are encrypted or not, I couldn't say. 3. don't know 4. Loaders are unofficial, they are usually different from an official release. 5. Yes 6. No The rom requirements for kawaks are very similar to mame. All that matters is that each zipfile has the correct name, and that each rom is the correct size and crc. The filename of an individual rom is irrelevant. Kawaks, like mame, has parent and child relationships. The changes per version are not as profound as with mame. For example, the other day I downloaded the complete set for kawaks 1.53 ; when checked against 1.52 there was one game changed (matrim). Against 1.50 there was 4 games missing. Against the unofficial 1.48dev, there are dozens of differences. Kawaks is good on older computers; on my 333 all kawaks games run at what appears to be full speed (no fps display available). On mame, most neogeo games run at 4 fps, which is noticeably slow. I think Kawaks is a good emulator, it all depends if you consider the rom requirements too difficult.