MAME 0.149

MAME - Arcade Machine Emulator

Arcade Machine Emulator that recognizes over six thousand game ROM sets.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with an arcade game's data files (ROMs), MAME will more or less faithfully reproduce that game on a PC.

MAME can currently emulate over 3000 unique (and over 5400 in total) classic arcade video games from the three decades of video games - '70s, '80s and '90s, and even some from the current millennium.

The ROM images that MAME utilizes are "dumped" from arcade games' original circuit-board ROM chips. MAME becomes the "hardware" for the games, taking the place of their original CPUs and support chips. Therefore, these games are NOT simulations, but the actual, original games that appeared in arcades.

MAME's purpose is to preserve these decades of video-game history. As gaming technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents these important "vintage" games from being lost and forgotten.

This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions, thanks to the talent of programmers from the MAME team and from other contributors. Being able to play the games is just a nice side-effect, which doesn't happen all the time. MAME strives for emulating the games faithfully.

Even though MAME allows people to enjoy the long-lost arcade games and even some newer ones, the main purpose of the project is to document the hardware (and software) of the arcade games.

There are already many dead arcade boards, whose function has been brought to life in MAME. Being able to play the games is just a nice side-effect.

MAME as an emulation program is also pretty simple and easy-to-use.

Requirements:

- Intel Celeron / AMD Duron 1000 MHz
- 128 - 256 MB RAM
- a varying amount of hard drive space (a complete MAME ROM set would take over forty gigabytes, but most individual ROM sets are quite small)
- DirectX (Windows version) or VESA 2.0+ (DOS version) compatible graphics card
- Any sound card that works in Windows (Windows version) or Sound Blaster compatible sound card (DOS version)

MAME 0.149 is licensed as Freeware for the Windows operating system / platform. MAME is provided as a free download for all software users (Freeware).