Current Guides
Holy Cheat! - syndromtr's guide on how to make cheats, contains lots of nice in-depth examples on making ROM cheats (Last Updated on 17th September 2014)
Old Guides
FAQ - Tourniquet's FAQ (Last Updated on 19th Sept 2001)
Cheat Guide - kelvSYC's Guide to using the MAME and MESS Cheat Engines (Last Updated on 23rd Apr 2004)
Useful Files
NEC CPU Instructions - Useful Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the NEC V20/V25/V30/V33/V35/V40/V41/V50/V51/V53 processors for a whole host of MAME games and other consoles/home computers (Last Updated on 12th Oct 2014)
68000 CPU Instructions - Useful 68000 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive and a whole host of MAME games and other consoles/home computers (Last Updated on 19th Mar 2011)
Z80 CPU Instructions - Useful Z80 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Sega Master System/Gamegear and a whole host of MAME games and other consoles/home computers (Last Updated on 19th Mar 2011)
2A03 (6502) CPU Instructions - Useful 2A03 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Nintendo NES (Last Updated on 19th Mar 2011)
5A22 (65C816) CPU Instructions - Useful 5A22 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Nintendo SNES (Last Updated on 19th Mar 2011)
LR35902 CPU Instructions - Useful LR35902 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Nintendo Gameboy (Last Updated on 19th Mar 2011)
SH-2 CPU Instructions - Useful SH-2 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Sega Saturn and various MAME games (Last Updated on 20th Mar 2011)
SH-4 CPU Instructions - Useful SH-4 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Sega Dreamcast and various MAME games (Last Updated on 24th Apr 2011)
HUC6280 CPU Instructions - Useful HUC6280 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the NEC TG16/Hudson PC-Engine (Last Updated on 25th Mar 2011)
6800 CPU Instructions - Useful 6800 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for a small amount of MAME games (Last Updated on 25th Mar 2011)
6809 CPU Instructions - Useful 6809 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for a large variety of MAME games and various emulated MESS systems (Last Updated on 27th Mar 2011)
8080/8085 CPU Instructions - Useful 8080/8085 Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for a large variety of MAME games and various emulated MESS systems (Last Updated on 27th Mar 2011)
ARM7 Thumb CPU Instructions - Useful ARM7 Thumb Instruction Look-Up to aid quick hand-assembling of ROM cheats for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance and various MAME games (Last Updated on 6th Jul 2010)
Utilities
1. PS1 Joker Finder (Pugsy 21st May 2017) - Win64 commandline tool that makes finding PS1 joker cheats with the MAME debugger less of a hassle.
Obsolete Utilities
All these utilities are no longer relevant with the latest MAMEs.
1. CheckCDB Version 2.2 (Release Date : 22nd February 1999) - the one time essential cheat file maintenance util by Mac LAK. This utility is intended to perform a check on MAME's cheat databases, in order to avoid loading errors/cheat losses and shows which games have no cheats (nifty!).
2. MAME Cheat Database Converter for DOS Version 1.1B - old PRE 0.34B8 cheat file converter from JCK to fix the non working cheats from 0.34B8 in 0.37 FINAL.
3. MAME Cheat Database Converter for DOS Version 3.3B (Release Date : 12th of May 2002) - old PRE 0.38B1 cheat file converter from JCK to fix the non working cheats prior to 0.38B1 due to a major rewrite of the cheat engine allowing several new powerful cheat types.
4. Kiwi NEO Genie -> MAME 034 RC1 Cheat Database Converter Version 1.0B (Release Date : 16th December 1998) - JCK's converter that'll convert a Neo Genie cheat file to MAME 0.34 RC1 format.
5(a). MAMERAIN Version 3.1B (Release Date : 4th August 1999) - utility from JCK that will convert cheats from a MAME 0.37 BETA 16 format cheat file into the pre 0.32A RAINE emulator cheat format.
5(b). MAMERAIN Version 4.0B (Release Date : 19th July 2001) - utility from JCK that will convert cheats from a MAME 0.37 BETA 16 format cheat file into the RAINE 0.32A emulator cheat format.
6. RAINMAME Version 1.0B (Release Date : 19th July 2001) - utility from JCK that converts cheats from RAINE format into the MAME format. Once again it is a beta program and should be used with care and in conjunction with the instructions. V1.0B will make a cheat file suitable for use with MAME 0.37 BETA 16 from a RAINE 0.32A cheat file. Read the text files for more information.
7. MAME2KN Version 1.0 (Release Date : 20th September 2001) - quick utility I (Pugsy) knocked up to convert cheats from a MAME (upto 0.55) cheat.dat file into the .dat files for KAWAKS/NEBULA + maybe some others - it's only been tested on cps1/cps2 and neogeo games (it may work for other arcade systems...it may not).
8. FIXGEN V1.0 - CLRMAME Pro DAT Fix Generator (Release Date : 05th May 2002) - a quick non-cheat related tool I made(Pugsy) made. Completely obsolete as Roman has now followed my suggestion and added this feature to CLRMAME.