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Welcome to The Official Site of the MAME Development Team

What is MAME?

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.

License

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.

MAME 0.116

10 Jun 2007

A new full MAME release, both source and official binaries, is now available over at the Latest Release page. Since the last update there has been mostly internal changes, but I did want to highlight an unexpected and very much welcome addition from couriersud: discrete sound emulation in Donkey Kong and Radarscope, and full emulation of the Radarscope grid graphics. Wow!

And if you are a fan of older games and haven't had time to update since 0.115, you'll find a lot to like in this release as a number of older drivers have been given a good scrubbing over the past month. There are already several exciting things brewing for the 0.117 development cycle, so keep an eye out for updates, and keep those bug reports flowing at MAME Testers.

MAME 0.115u4

06 Jun 2007

A new update to MAME 0.115 is now available on the Latest Releases page. This release features connected inputs in Ace Attacker, thanks to Barry Gemma; some more driver improvements from Zsolt; and some code simplification throughout the system. There is a small chance of a regression or two as a result, so if something looks odd, please make sure you report it to MAME Testers, as always.

MAME 0.115u3

10 Jun 2007

Time to grab the latest MAME release from the usual spot. Zsolt Vasvari has been busy recently, and this release is no exception, with significant updates to several drivers including Berzerk, Beam Invaders, Clay Shoot, Embargo, Tora Tora, and R2DTank. Additional updates this time include more ARM fixes from R. Belmont and a new driver for G-Stream G2020 from Haze. As always, keep those bug reports coming to MAMETesters!

MAME 0.115u2

10 Jun 2007

A bit early this week, MAME 0.115u2 is now available. Big changes this time include a substantial improvement to the New York! New York! driver, thanks to Zsolt; some nice internal updates to the 6845 CRTC emulator, the 74123 timer emulator, and the 6821 PIA emulator; and some further improvements to Gorf and Wizard of Wor.

MAME 0.115u1

16 May 2007

The first update to the MAME 0.115 source base is now available. Featured in this release is a new driver for the JPM Impact system thanks to Philip Bennett; a bunch of ARM core fixes from R. Belmont and Ryan Holtz; proper sound in Inferno at long last; and a bunch of cleanups and improvements to a several old drivers: Space Firebird, the GamePlan games, and Spiders thanks to Zsolt; Magic Fly thanks to Roberto; and my long-planned rewrite of the Bally Astrocade driver.

Have fun! And keep those bug reports coming into MAMETesters....

A Pair of Exidy Classics

10 May 2007

This month I'm proud to add two more classic Exidy games to the collection of freely-available ROM images. The first game is Side Trak, which shares some common elements with Crash, but features trains instead of cars and a bit less control over your destiny thanks to the fact that track changes by the computer's train affect your path as well.

In addition to Side Trak, we have also added a page for Star Fire, an obviously Star Wars-inspired game that represented a number of firsts in the industry, including the first environmental cabinet and the first game to let you enter your initials when you got a high score. The ROMs for the unreleased "sequel" (really just a small revision) Star Fire 2 are also available on the same page.

As a gentle reminder, I want to point out that although these Exidy ROM images are freely available here for non-commercial use, there is no implied license for other sites or mechanisms to distribute them. If you are interested in distributing or making use of these ROM images apart from running them in MAME for your own personal use, please fill out the contact form on this site with a description of what you wish to do, and we will make an effort to put you in touch with the appropriate people.

MAME 0.115

06 May 2007

Time for a new full release. Get it from the Latest Release page. In addition to a number of fixes for recent regressions, this update features some additional black & white game cleanups and a rewrite of the pmpoker driver. Onward to 0.116....