What Is MAME?

MAME is short for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. As computer games evolved, the hardware they ran on did too and, for the most part, the new hardware was not backwards-compatible with the old games. Many classic games, cherished in the memories of an emerging geek generation, became almost inaccessible to most people.
One solution was simply producing new versions of the old games for the new hardware formats. This was done often but the new versions were often felt to lack the exact flavour of the old games. A solution was emulation. An emulator mimics, not the superficial aspects of a game, but the underlying realities and methods of operation of a piece of hardware. If the emulation is done correctly, the net result should be a piece of software capable of executing the original game code. Several emulators were produced, emulating home gaming systems as well as those in the arcade. These tended to focus on specific games or families of games which ran on similar hardware.

In 1996, Nicola Salmoria grasped the potential of a software framework which could provide the basis for emulating a variety of games running on disparate hardware. The open source project MAME was born. Today, on a variety of platforms, it provides almost perfect emulation of most of the early coin-operated arcade games, and dozens of programmers across the world work continuously to improve it.