MAME is a multi-purpose emulation framework.
MAME’s purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this important "vintage" software from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions. The source code to MAME serves as this documentation. The fact that the software is usable serves primarily to validate the accuracy of the documentation (how else can you prove that you have recreated the hardware faithfully?). Over time, MAME (originally stood for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) absorbed the sister-project MESS (Multi Emulator Super System), so MAME now documents a wide variety of (mostly vintage) computers, video game consoles and calculators, in addition to the arcade video games that were its initial focus.
The MAME project as a whole is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, 2 (GPL-2.0), since it contains code made available under multiple GPL-compatible licenses. A great majority of files (over 90% including core files) are under the BSD-3-Clause License and we would encourage new contributors to distribute files under this license.
Please note that MAME is a registered trademark of Gregory Ember, and permission is required to use the "MAME" name, logo or wordmark.
A big update this week! We have some significant progress on Sega Model 2 emulation from Ernesto Corvi (with thanks to El Semi), major Namco System 21 improvements from Phil Stroffolino, and several new shooting games on Seta hardware from Luca Elia. On top of that, quite a large number of Mahjong games and clones of existing games have shown up in the last week. Plus the usual collection of internal fixes and improvements, including a preliminary 64-bit recompiler for the MIPS3 CPUs. Have fun!
Recent testing indicates things are looking good, so it's time for a final 0.119 release. Download it from the Latest Release page. The official binaries are now compiled with the updated build tools, based on gcc 4.2.1. As always, if you see problems with this update, please go to MAME Testers and log a report on their message board.
Okay, so the last release needed a little more bake time before we were ready to go out the door. Thus we have MAME 0.118u6, now available on the Latest Release page. This one fixes all of the reported issues I could find. It also features keys for the final two CPS2 games, thanks to Haze and Nicola, a bunch of new clones now that Haze is back from holidays, and a long-lost Exidy 440 game Yukon, thanks to the sharp eyes of long-time dev at a local flea market (seriously!)
This is definitely your last chance to report bugs before 0.119 is released, so please give it a one-over and report issues over at MAME Testers. Thanks!
(Edit: Oops, looks like there was a little mix-up in putting this together, and a few of the clones [turpins, opwolfa, starforb] plus the srmp6 update didn't actually make it into this update; they will be in 0.119.)
One more (last?) update release for 0.118 has been posted on the Latest Release page. This update features more progress on the Cubo CD32 games, thanks to Ernesto, some additional Subsino games and a couple of Mahjong games from Luca Elia, a fixed Mappy driver with priorities working again, and some significant cleanup in the internal palette management code. There is also as promised a new parameter -refreshspeed which automatically adjusts the -speed of gameplay to keep it under your monitor's refresh rate. Give it a whirl.
This update should also compile cleanly with the latest development tools, based on gcc 4.2.1. Make sure you grab the latest tools to ensure that your builds go smoothly.
As this is expected to be the final intermediate update in the 0.119 development cycle, please give it a try and report any problems to MAME Testers.
After being stuck using gcc 3.4.5 for a very, very long time, the MinGW developers have released a "prerelease" build of gcc 4.2.1. After some basic smoke testing, this version of gcc appears to work fine for building MAME, minus a couple of minor warnings which have been cleared up for the next release. The Development Tools page has now been updated with a fresh package of build tools and links to all the components.
If you download these tools now, you should still be able to build MAME, but you will need to disable -Werror with any version of MAME prior to 0.118u5 (which is not yet released), since there are some new warnings which need to be dealt with (really, not that many).
The most recent update to MAME 0.118 is now available on the Latest Release page. This update consists primarily of a number of nice internal updates, including better Amiga system support (heading toward getting the Cubo CD32 games working eventually) from Ernesto Corvi, more DIP switch improvements and cleanup from stephh and Alex Jackson, some more improvements to the MIPS CPU cores, and a greatly expanded i386 disassembler. Check it out, and visit MAME Testers to report any issues.
A new update to MAME 0.118 is now available on the Latest Release page. This release features mostly internal fixes, notably some significant DIP switch cleanups in Taito games from stephh, better CD-ROM emulation for the CPS3 driver thanks to Ernesto Corvi, and a long-postponed change to the V30 and I8086 CPU cores to give them proper 16-bit data busses. Make sure you test affected drivers and report any issues to MAME Testers.