MAME (an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. The intention is to preserve gaming history by preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten. The emulator supports 4266 unique games and 8286 MAME ROMs you can find online. MAME can be ported to many different platforms. There is a version for UNIX-like systems named XMAME and the version for Mac OS X – MacMAME. MAME, or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, is a program that makes it possible for you to play arcade games on your Windows computer by emulating the hardware of the popular retro consoles. Now you can turn your comp into a time machine by visiting the MAME’s official website and downloading the emulator file onto your computer. Play MAME Games Online in high quality. All the retro Classic Arcade games for the retro gamer, there are many MAME games in the collection. Start playing favorite MAME emulator games now and use the menu on the right to browse game collections.

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MAME is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The intent of this emulator is preservation; the ability to play games is considered a 'side-effect.' MAME supports thousands of classic arcade games, although not all of them are playable.

Every once in a while, we get a question about those old games that were once the bleeding edge of entertainment in arcades and bars. Invariably from someone who played them and misses them—not from the current generation of cell-phone gaming addicts.

But even if you’re the latter, you might want to see how your parents amused themselves in the days when Pong, Asteroids, and Galaxian were the height of gaming technology. You can easily do so right on your PC. Adventurous programmers have long sharpened their skills by writing emulators for a vast array of computers, game machines, and gaming consoles. For the last decade or so, however, the big project has been MAME.

Note: While this article touts MAME's arcade and console emulation, it’s also intended to emulate just about anything that’s ever computed: various computers, calculators, and even chess machines.

[Have a tech question? Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.]

Put the blame on MAME

For emulating arcade games, there’s nothing remotely as competent as MAME, or the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The program supports literally thousands of arcade and gaming console titles by emulating their hardware and loading their ROMs (Read-Only Memory). These are now actually files that contain dumps of the code or data in the chip/chips from the original console or cartridge.

Yes, software once came hard-coded in chips and in the form of a cartridge. Can you imagine that happening in this day and age of release-it-before-it’s-ready, user-tested software? Believe it or not, a bug in your code used to be a mark of shame.

MAME is available from the MAME Development Team's website. At the time of this writing, the latest version was beta 0.184, but don’t let the not-finished status throw you off—this is a project that’s likely to be in beta forever. Emulating everything that’s ever existed in the gaming world, from Pong, to the Atari 2600, to the Amiga and beyond, is a daunting task.

MAME has its own rather primitive GUI that appears if you run it on its own, but there are more pleasant-looking and easier-to-use front-ends. I opt for QMC2 because it’s cross-platform (like MAME: Windows, OS X, Linux), updated regularly (the MAME catalog and ROMs change frequently), and easy on the eye. Initially, you must point the QMC2 to the MAME directory and its subdirectories, but that’s a relatively simple task.

Probably the trickiest part of the whole deal is finding the games. MAME doesn’t provide them because they don’t have legal access to most of them, and the developers are more concerned with providing the means. But if you search the Web, you’ll find sites dedicated to providing MAME ROM files, as well as ROM files for other emulators.

When you find the ROM files, they’ll most likely be ZIP archives. Don’t unzip them, just save them in the MAMEROMS directory. MAME can read the archives, and it’s a nice way to hide what can be a confusing array of files (some games used multiple chips), and keep things neatly organized.

You’ll see a vast list of games when you run MAME, which represents all those supported or being developed by the project, but there should be an indication of which are actually in the ROMs directory. You can also search. Once you find the game, simply double-click on it, hit the spacebar to scoot past the game info, and you’ll be good to go. As far as keyboard commands go: 5-9 insert coins, 1-4 start the game, arrow keys move, and the left Control and Alt keys do things like fire cannons and invoke hyper-drive.

Lawyer bait

As I mentioned, there is a bit of a legal issue involved here. Unless you own the game and any firmware and software required, you’re breaking copyright rules. Does anyone care? Unless you’re making money off of it, probably not. The whole idea behind MAME is to save an important part of computer history, and it’s doing that quite nicely. If left up to the original developers and copyright holders, it’s highly doubtful many would survive. But you’ve been warned.

This must be the fault of the original novel. The 'mystery' is simply too obvious. The great lie full movie. Sadly, although they were both good, as was Peter Bowles, the whole did not live up to its promise.

Regardless, MAME allows you to relive the days when arcade games were simple, graphically challenged (we didn’t think so at the time), and readily recognizable for what they were—a fun way to waste time and quarters.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. MAME can emulate thousands of games that otherwise would have been lost in the ash-heaps of history.

See Also: FinalBurn-Alpha, Neo Geo

There are a variety of arcade emulator versions available in RetroPie. There are significant differences in performance, compatibility, and configuration between them. If you're getting started with an arcade emulation project, begin by reading the Arcade page.

This page is a resource for additional details on RetroPie's MAME emulators including configuration paths, controls, and the ROM sets which each emulator requires.

All Arcade ROMS Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

Arcade ROM paths

Five of the available arcade ROM paths in RetroPie are shared directories which are used by more than one emulator: arcade, mame-libretro, mame-advmame, fba, and neogeo. In order to successfully load zipped ROM sets in these locations you must specify the arcade emulator version which matches your ROMs.

To avoid having several menus for different arcade emulators, all arcade-based ROMs can be placed in the arcade ROM folder, but you will have to specify which emulator each zipped ROM set will use from the Runcommand Menu.

Emulators

mame4all-pi

MAME Version: 0.37b5 (July 2000)

Active Sets: 2241

• BIOS: 1
• CHDs: 0
• Samples: 35

Based on the MAME4ALL-PI Compatibility list below:

• 1126 Parent Roms
• 1025 Clones Roms
• 129 NeoGeo Roms (Parent+Clone)

MAME 0.37b5 DAT File: mame4all-037b5-RetroPie-260.dat

MAME 0.37b5 XML File: mame4all-no-clones-no-neogeo Does not include clones or NeoGeo romsets.

MAME4ALL-PI Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

Controls

While in a game press Tab to open the menu to set up controls. The MAME4ALL tab menu configuration is stored in:

Other files in this cfg directory are ROM specific configs.

Note: Should your input configuration or other aspect of the configuration need resetting to defaults, remove the default.cfg or ROM specific .cfg file, and it will be re-created with default values next time you start MAME4ALL or modify the ROM configuration.

lr-mame2000 (MAME 2000)

MAME Version: 0.37b5 (July 2000)

Active Sets: 2241

• BIOS: 1
• CHDs: 0
• Samples: 35

MAME 0.37b5 DAT File: mame4all-037b5-RetroPie-260.zip

MAME 0.37b5 'Lite' DAT File: mame4all-no-clones-no-neogeo - Does not include clones or NeoGeo romsets.

lr-mame2000 Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

Controls

lr-mame2000 utilises RetroArch control configuration. Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in:

lr-mame2003 (MAME 2003)

Please see lr-mame2003 on RetroPie for information on how to configure specific features of this emulator.

MAME Version: 0.78 (December 2003)

Active Sets: 4705

• BIOS: 15
• CHDs: 30
• Samples: 56

MAME 0.78 XML DAT File: MAME 0.78.dat

MAME 0.78u5 DAT File: mame2003-lr-working-no-clones - Working romsets only. Does not include clones.

MAME 0.78u5 'Lite' DAT File: mame2003-lr-lite - Working romsets only. Does not include: clones, NeoGeo, PlayChoice NES/multiplay, romsets with rotary/dial/trackball/lightgun controls, or romsets classified as casino/quiz/mahjong/fruit_machines/rhythm/mature.

lr-mame2003 Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

The mame2003 catver.ini also contains data on games definitively known not to work, as well as sorting data for pornographic games and other less desirable romsets.

Controls

lr-mame2003 utilises RetroArch control configurations. Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in:

lr-mame2003-plus (MAME 2003-Plus)

MAME 2003-Plus (also referred to as MAME 2003+ and mame2003-plus) is a libretro arcade system emulator core with an emphasis on high performance and broad compatibility with mobile devices, single board computers, embedded systems, and similar platforms.

In order to take advantage of the performance and lower hardware requirements of an earlier MAME architecture, MAME 2003-Plus began with the MAME 2003 codebase which is itself derived from xmame 0.78. Upon that base, MAME 2003-Plus contributors have backported support for several hundred additional games as well as other functionality not originally present in MAME 0.78.

Please see the libretro MAME 2003-Plus core documentation for information on how to configure specific features of this emulator.

MAME Version: 0.78-0.188 (MAME 0.78 as a baseline with other ROMs backported from later MAME romsets)

Active Sets: 4850

• BIOS: 15
• CHDs: 30
• Samples: 66 + 6 Optional 'Soundtrack Samples'

The mame2003-plus catver.ini also contains data on games definitively known not to work, as well as sorting data for pornographic games and other less desirable romsets.

Controls

lr-mame2003-plus utilises RetroArch control configurations. Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in:

lr-mame2010 (MAME 2010)

MAME Version: 0.139 (August 2010)

Active Sets: 8782

• BIOS: 67
• CHDs: 406
• Samples: 70 (4 more samples are not in circulation)

MAME 0.139 DAT File: MAME 0.139.dat

lr-mame2010 Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

Controls

lr-mame2010 utilises RetroArch control configurations. Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in:

Default Player 1 and 2 Controls:

Default Player 3 and 4 Controls:

Native MAME UI Controls:

Note: these controls are only operational for Player 1

lr-mame2015 (MAME 2015)

Visit mame2015-libretro on githubNote: This emulator is considered 'optional' in RetroPie and has limited functionality. It requires more processing power than earlier MAME versions and will not run as many games at full speed on rPi hardware.

MAME Version: 0.160 Linear program polynomial interpolation calculator.

Active Sets: ??

• BIOS: ??
• CHDs: ??
• Samples: ?? (4 more samples are not in circulation)

MAME 0.160 DAT File: Coming soon

Controls

lr-mame2015 utilises RetroArch control configurations. Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in:

lr-mame2016 (MAME 2016)

Visit mame2016-libretro on githubNote: This emulator is considered 'experimental' in RetroPie and has limited functionality. It requires more processing power than earlier MAME versions and will not run as many games at full speed on rPi hardware.

MAME Version: 0.174

Active Sets: ??

• BIOS: ??
• CHDs: ??
• Samples: ?? (4 more samples are not in circulation)

MAME 0.174 DAT File: Coming soon

lr-mame2016 Compatibility List: Coming soon

Controls

lr-mame2016 utilises RetroArch control configurations. Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in:

AdvanceMAME 0.94

MAME Version: MAME 0.94 (March 2005)

Active Sets: 5563

• BIOS: 25
• CHDs: ?
• Samples: ?

AdvanceMAME 0.94 DAT File: advmame-0.94-RetroPie-260.7z

AdvanceMAME 0.94 Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

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Controls

While in a game press Tab to open the menu to set up controls. AdvanceMAME configuration for controls are all stored in the .rc file corresponding to the version of AdvanceMAME you are running. Changes to specific games result in .rc file entries with a prefix for the ROM (i.e. bwidow/input_map[p1_doubleleft_up] keyboard[0,up])

Note: The .rc file can also be edited manually. Any config can be made ROM-specific using a romname/ prefix which is handy for overriding a setting for a specific ROM or class of ROMs, such as vertical/. However, a single mistake in the .rc file will stop MAME from launching. It is always best to make a backup of the .rc file before manual edits.

AdvanceMAME 1.4

MAME Version: MAME 0.106 (May 2006)

Active Sets: 6166

• BIOS: 26
• CHDs: 86
• Samples: 64 (3 more samples are not in circulation)

AdvanceMAME 1.4 DAT File: advmame12-106.7z

AdvanceMAME 1.4 Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

Controls

While in a game press Tab to open the menu to set up controls. AdvanceMAME configuration for controls are all stored in the .rc file corresponding to the version of AdvanceMAME you are running. Changes to specific games result in .rc file entries with a prefix for the ROM (i.e. bwidow/input_map[p1_doubleleft_up] keyboard[0,up])

Note: The .rc file can also be edited manually. Any config can be made ROM-specific using a romname/ prefix which is handy for overriding a setting for a specific ROM or class of ROMs, such as vertical/. However, a single mistake in the .rc file will stop MAME from launching. It is always best to make a backup of the .rc file before manual edits.

AdvanceMAME 3

MAME Version: MAME 0.106 (May 2006)

Active Sets: 6166

• BIOS: 26
• CHDs: 86
• Samples: 64 (3 more samples are not in circulation)

AdvanceMAME 3 DAT File: same as AdvanceMAME 1.4 -- see above

AdvanceMAME 3 Compatibility List: same as AdvanceMAME 1.4 -- see above

Controls

While in a game press Tab to open the menu to set up controls. AdvanceMAME configuration for controls are all stored in the .rc file corresponding to the version of AdvanceMAME you are running. Changes to specific games result in .rc file entries with a prefix for the ROM (i.e. bwidow/input_map[p1_doubleleft_up] keyboard[0,up])

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Note: The .rc file can also be edited manually. Any config can be made ROM-specific using a romname/ prefix which is handy for overriding a setting for a specific ROM or class of ROMs, such as vertical/. However, a single mistake in the .rc file will stop MAME from launching. It is always best to make a backup of the .rc file before manual edits.