I had the devil of a time getting “Joust” to work with Mame. I had the correct ROM version, but the game would start to load, the screen would say “Factory Settings Restored”, and then – nothing.
Finally, on an old forum I found the answer. If you hit TAB to bring up the menu, and then select “restart game”, Joust will load then, and there ever after (so far).
there are a couple other games that this works with as well.
Just thought I’d throw it out there in case it helps anyone.