I compiled, installed and configured xmess as i did for xmame, and it dont works. Always telling that something is missing... I tried many times since 2003 and now i'm going to think mess/xmess is some kind of april fool, or a fake.

1- I compiled and installed well
2- I edited ~.xmess/xmessrc as usual
3- I filled the good folders with roms
4- I filled the good folder with all bioses from earth
5- I looked at man pages and documentation
6- When i launch a megadrive/genesis game i got a complaint about an apple file:
info: trying to parse: /usr/local/share/xmess/rc/apple2cprc

So if someone here played ONE game, please tell us how.

Aren't xmess and xmame the same thing? I remember playing metal slug and kof on xmame but don't know about xmess.

Mame and mess got the same philosophy:
Mame emulate all arcade systems.
Mess emulate all home systems.

On the download site I found only xmame.

It's the same source code...you edit the Makefile to say whether to build mame or mess.

I seem to remember I also had trouble getting mess to work.

It's been a while, but I've played several MSX games using xmess. Send me an email to remind me, and I'll see if I can get things up and running again this weekend, and let you know what I did. Then I may be able to help you out with your game if you can send me the needed files.

The syntax is:
xmess <system> [game] [options]

OK, if you don't already have the bios for the system you need then get it. Then, assuming you compiled from source and didn't change the install prefix, put the bios zip file (in my case amiga.zip for an amiga 500) in /usr/local/share/xmess/bios/ then run
This works for me.

My MSX games/bios are stored elsewhere; I used the following command to play salamander:
xmess.x11 -bp games/mess/bios -cart /home/phulshof/games/mess/games/salamander.rom msx
or with more screen options:
xmess.x11 -ef 2 -fullscreen -bp games/mess/bios -cart /home/phulshof/games/mess/games/salamander.rom msx