After a busy four weeks, we’re ready to present the hotly-anticipated MAME 0.204 release. The most exciting stuff this month is definitely on the computer emulation side. We’ve added dozens of working cartridges to the BBC ROM software list, and ROMs required by expansion devices are handled more elegantly. Our HP9000/300 series emulation just keeps getting better: it’s now possible to install and use HP-UX 9, with X11 and the Vue desktop environment on an emulated HP9000/370 with accelerated window drawing and Ethernet networking support. There’s also been some progress on the road to Silicon Graphics workstation emulation. On top of that, we’re seeing preliminary emulation of standalone X Window System terminals.

Thanks to MAME’s modular, device-oriented architecture, improvements for one machine go on to benefit other machines using similar hardware. The Motorola 68k memory management unit improvements that allow HP-UX to run on the HP9000/300 series will also benefit Mac, NeXT and early Sun systems. The same AMD LANCE Ethernet controller is used in HP and Sun workstations, X11 terminals, the Amiga A2065 Zorro card, and numerous applications. This gives us a wealth of test cases, and a virtuous cycle where progress on one system can lead to a breakthrough on another.

With this release, all Tiger game.com games are fully playable. Two more Nintendo Game & Watch titles, Climber and Tropical Fish, have been emulated. XaviX-based TV game emulation continues to progress steadily: numerous e-kara karaoke cartridges have been dumped, preliminary sound output emulation has been implemented (sorry, no microphone support yet, but you can hear the tunes), and more systems have inputs connected.

Graphical effects in the bootleg arcade driving game Blomby Car have been improved, and bad dumps of graphics ROMs for Abnormal Check and the Korean version of Prehistoric Isle have been replaced. As always, you’ll enjoy support for more alternate versions of arcade games (including a version of Pinball Action that shows scores on external LED displays), bug fixes, and general emulation improvements.

You can read a more detailed account of this month’s changes in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page.