M.A.M.E.
Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator

Did you grow up in the late 70's through the late 80's?  Did you spend a lot of time playing Atari games, or in the arcade pumping quarters into Battlezone or Defender machines?  Well, I did.  I still have most of my original Atari games and computers around my house.  However, I've never been able to capture that "arcade feel" at home.  That is, until I discovered M.A.M.E.

M.A.M.E. is the short for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It is the granddaddy of all game emulators. As the name says, you can use this program to emulate many arcade games.

     
Screen captures of MAME emulating Road Runner, Marble Madness, Super Sprint, and Frogger
Click on image to enlarge

In January of 1997, Nicola Salmoria started what is now known as M.A.M.E. project. MAME born originally as collection of several emulators done by Nicola, and later, using a driver oriented architecture, grown up until the actual version that counts over 900 games supported.  The list of supported games includes Asteroids, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Tempest, and many others.

The game images on this page were captured on a PC while playing these games.  The emulation in most of the games is superb, as the colors are correct, and sound is included.  Some games require a set of sampled .WAV files, as the sound cannot be properly emulated.  (Sega's Star Trek would be an example of this.)

     
Screen captures of MAME emulating Punch-Out and Sinistar

M.A.M.E. is written in C, so that it may be easily ported to other platforms.  There is a downside to this portability.   Since it is written in C, you will need a powerful system to play some of the games.  For example, Pac-Man and Space Invaders run just fine on my Compaq P120 laptop.  However, a more complicated game, like Star Wars or Gauntlet II will require a low end Pentium II.  All games seem to run at full speed on my PII 300MHz desktop system.

Games that make heavy use of emulated sound will also require a faster CPU.  There are ways that you can speed up the games, however.   There is an option to perform a "frameskip."  You just tell the emulator to skip every other frame, or every third frame that is drawn on the screen.   Since the CPU has less to draw on the screen, the games speed up a bit.

M.A.M.E. wouldn't be possible without the talent of a group of programmers that joined to form what is known as the M.A.M.E. Team.   Buffoni Mirko and Nicola are the coordinators of the project.

     
Screen captures of MAME emulating Zaxxon, RoadBlasters, Pooyan, and Paperboy
Click image to enlarge

In order to play games, you must have the emulator, along with the original ROM images for the game(s) you wish to play.  ROM images are the central piece of every arcade emulation project. Think of a ROM as the same as a cartridge for an Atari or Sega home video game.  The ROM files are still the intellectual property (that's the small line of print with a © or a ® in it) of someone else.  I don't store ROM files on this site, but there are plenty of places to get them.   Remember, it is illegal to get ROM's that aren't yours.

Currently, there are several versions of M.A.M.E. available for Intel systems, including ports for DOS, Windows 32-bit, OS/2, and Unix/Linux.  I've found that the DOS version is better, and it also runs just fine under Windows 9x.   If you want to run the DOS version of M.A.M.E. under Windows 9x, I suggest that you get a front end program.  Front end programs are not written my the M.A.M.E. programmers.  they are written by 3rd parties, and they make the emulator much easier to use.  Instead of typing out a series of complicated DOS commands and command line switches, you just need to click on the graphic of the game you wish to play.  I like the Arcade@Home front end, and there is a link to it on my LINKS page.. 

Go to the MAME Homepage

This emulator can be downloaded directly from it's homepage.

NOTE: In order to run this emulator, you must have the emulator itself, and a copy of the ROM's from the original system.  The emulator itself is Freeware.  The ROM's are copyrighted by the programmer or the manufacturer. You are only legally entitled to do so if you own the actual game, or a PCB/ROM Cartridge from the game that you are emulating. If you decide to download ROM's to test out an emulator, you must delete the ROM's within 24 hours unless you own the equipment mentioned above.

ROM's may be found at many sites, including EMUCLASSICS.