Welcome to The Official Site of the MAME Development Team

MAME 0.188 comes to you with tales of perseverance, blind luck, and the kind of insanity you’d get from no-one else. By sheer chance, a DECO Cassette system Brian Troha picked up cheap happened to come with a set of graphics ROMs for Explorer. While the Explorer program cassette was dumped sixteen long years ago, the graphics ROMs have proved elusive until now. We can finally all enjoy this Tempest-inspired title from the early ’80s.

After much effort and rendering several boards inoperable, Peter Wilhelmsen and Morten Shearman Kirkegaard successfully extracted the programs from the DS5002FP protection modules on Gaelco World Rally 2 and Touch & Go. Yet another seemingly impenetrable protection scheme has been been emulated. Persistence has paid off. This is also a boon for people wishing to repair Gaelco games that have ceased to function after the lithium cell in the protection module has failed. After extracting the program from a working board, it’s possible to reprogram other boards running the same game.

As for MAMEdev-brand insanity, we are (to the best of our knowledge) the world’s first and only emulator for the INTELLEC® 4. This system was used to develop software for Intel’s earliest microprocessor family, the 4004 and 4040. We’ve even put together a user manual of sorts if by chance you want to see what interactive debugging was like in the ’70s. It has lots of fun LEDs and switches!

Fans of handheld LCD games will be pleased to see the steady stream of improvements: 0.188 adds support for several Konami and Tiger handhelds, and vector backgrounds have been added for Game & Watch titles Mario Bros, Mickey & Donald, and Cement Factory.

On the arcade side, we’ve added support for Operation Wolf SC, a version of the military-themed shooter Operation Wolf with reduced difficulty intended for small cabinets located in shopping centres (hence the SC). Children could stay out of trouble storming concentration camps and powder magazines while their parents shopped in peace. Another interesting addition from Taito’s history is a very rare prototype of Bubble Bobble on Tokio hardware. It has different graphics and music, and includes a functional stage editor. Of course we’ve added an assortment of clones as usual, including versions of Act-Fancer, Kageki, Logger, Solar Assault, Street Fighter II, Taisen Idol-Mahjong Final Romance 2, and Xevious 3D/G.

I’ll finish by mentioning that save states and scheduled exits should now work properly in Emscripten builds (thanks to James Baicoianu), colours are fixed for Time Limit and Omega (thanks to ShouTime dumping the PROMs), and ROM identification (-romident verb) is even faster (under ten seconds on my old notebook). That’s really all we’ve got space for here, but you can read about the rest of the exciting improvements from July in the whatsnew.txt file, get the source/Windows binaries from the download page and try it out.

And now for something completely different: our midyear MAME release. The most notable new working machines are beloved Game & Watch titles Donkey Kong Jr. (new wide screen) and Mario Bros., and the ultra-rare Kaneko prototype Jump Kun (thanks ShouTime). There are also some newly supported clones of existing systems, like additional versions of DECO Cassette games (including the more Puck-Man-like Japanese version of Lock’n’Chase), Spanish bootlegs of Rally X and Scramble, a Korean release of Macross II with Japanese text removed (to meet “cultural import” restrictions), and a simplified version of Operation Thunderbolt for smaller cabinets in shopping centres aimed at younger children.

Another very exciting development in this release is support for running original protection programs for a number of games using MC68705P5 microcontrollers. A technique to exploit glitches and read the programs out of a protected MC68705P5 with reasonable success rate was discovered, and brizzo built a device implementing it. Games now using real protection programs include Get Star, Chack’n Pop, Rumba Lumber, Onna Sanshirou (Typhoon Gal), Field Day, Prebillian and others. Some of these games were known to be using poor simulation, so improvements to gameplay can be expected.

Other improvements include support for a MIDI output card on the Sharp X68000 (allows game soundtracks to be played through an external synthesiser), English BIOS support for the Sega VMU, fixes for several xBR shaders with bgfx, working Dragon 64 Plus and Goupil G1/G2 support, Tandy CoCo Speech/Sound Cartridge support, and a big update to the Interpro driver.

Of course there’s more, which you can read about in the whatsnew.txt file, or experience when you get the source/Windows binaries from the download page. Thanks for being part of the MAME community.

It’s been one of those long, five-week development cycles, but it’s finally time for your monthly MAME fix. There’s been a lot of touched in this release, with improvements in a number of areas. But before we get to the improvements, we have an embarrassing admission to make: the game added in 0.185 as Acchi Muite Hoi is actually Pata Pata Panic, and the sound ROM mapping was incorrect, making the game unplayable. That’s all sorted out now though, thanks to occasional contributor k2.

New working arcade games include Epos Revenger ’84, Jockey Club II, Hashire Patrol Car, the Mega Play version of Gunstar Heroes, and the much-awaited Taito Classic Space Cyclone. Improvements to emulation make Legionnaire and Heated Barrel fully playable at long last, and Megatouch XL 6000 is working in this release. There are also plenty of new versions of supported games, including a world release of the puzzle game Star Sweep, the Taito licensed version of Bagman, the Japanese release of Top Landing, the Italian release of Penky, and European bootlegs of Amidar and Phoenix. We’ve got some exciting improvements to supported arcade games this month, too. Sound effects for Universal’s Cheeky Mouse are now supported, and the analog section of the melody synthesiser used in Zaccaria’s Jack Rabbit and Money Money has been implemented, although it’s still missing the cassa (bass drum) sound at the moment. We need schematics and quality PCB photos to add support for analog sound synthesis in more games, so if you find any we’d really appreciate if you could send them our way.

New working home/handheld games include Jungle Soft Zone 60, Gradius, Lone ranger, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Top Gun, and the Game & Watch titles Mario’s Cement Factory, Boxing, Donkey Kong II and Mickey & Donald. The CoCo Games master cartridge is supported as a CoCo slot device, support for the French Minitel 2 terminal has been added (thanks to Jean-François Del Nero), and there’s some more progress on the InterPro systems from Patrick Mackinlay. Peripherals for the TI-99 home computer family have been overhauled, making the PEB a slot device that plugs into the I/O port – this will require changes to your configuration if you use this family of computers.

Finally, the -listroms verb supports device sets (e.g. mpu401 or m68705p3), -listroms, -verifyroms and -listxml support multiple patterns on the command line, -verifyroms is much faster when a small number of sets are specified, and the romcmp tool has seen several improvements.

These are just the highlights of course – you can find the rest of the changes in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source/Windows binaries from the download page and enjoy all the improvements. Thanks for continuing to use and support the one and only MAME.

Today’s the day for our April MAME release, bringing some important fixes as well as the usual assortment of emulation improvements. A bug preventing multiple keys from being mapped to subdevice inputs has been fixed, which means you can now assign multiple keys to buttons in NeoGeo games and consoles/computers with controller/keyboard/mouse slots. Software loading has been reworked in this release, and the user-visible issues in 0.184 should be addressed. An improvement to the debugger allows more cheats in games with encrypted program ROMs.

Newly supported systems include the Galaxy Games StarPak 4 prototype (thanks to Keith Kolmos), Acchi Muite Hoi (a jan-ken-pon game), the HP 9845T computer, Tekken Card World, and Pirate Ship. This release also restores working support for Omori Popper, the driver rewrite having been completed just in time (the old driver had to be removed due to licensing issues). New clones includes the export release of Mach Breakers, an earlier world release of Rastan, the US release of Sonic Blast Man, and Up Maguila (a Spanish bootleg of Donkey Kong Jr.).

Emulation improvements include improved netlist performance, a fix for classic Mac keyboard input, a fix for the Apple I cassette interface, and fixes for regressions in Thomson floppy support and Apollo SIO. The N-Sub driver now supports sound sample playback and the gradient generator simulation uses PROM data. There are also some fixes for bugs in the Intel MCS-51 and 8086 family CPUs.

Of course that’s not all, and you can read about everything else in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source or Windows binaries from the download page and have a look yourself.

Well, it’s the last Wednesday of the month, and I hope you know what that means: it’s time for your regularly scheduled MAME release. There aren’t a huge number of new working machines in this release, but there are some significant improvements. Thanks to kazblox, MAME now emulates some of the peculiarities of Famicom clone hardware, and thanks to shattered, emulation of the Agat-7 Apple II clone is improved. Peter Ferrie provided a superior Apple II language card implementation. We’ve got lots of additions to the BBC and PC software lists from Nigel Barnes and darkstar.

We’ve made substantial improvements to some of MAME’s non-emulation features. The -romident verb is now much faster when used on a folder or archive containing multiple files, and will identify ROMs for emulated slot devices that aren’t inserted by default. The -listxml output now includes all linked devices, and is produced at least 30% faster. We’ve also improved -verifyroms so it covers more devices and is faster when verifying ROMs for a subset of drivers/devices.

MAME 0.184 includes support for plenty of newly dumped versions of supported arcade games, including a rare US prototype of Shanghai III, the world release of Super Crowns Golf, a version of Flashgirl that shows the Kyugo logo, a German version of Raiden II, the Japanese release of Radical Radial, and bootlegs of Bomber Man and Phoenix. There are also several new chess computers, and even more Aristocrat Mark V gambler sets. If you’re interested in the TI-8x graphing calculators, it’s now possible to get an emulated TI-82 or TI-85 to communicate with another emulated instance or with a program running on the host computer over a socket.

You can read about the rest of the improvements in the whatsnew.txt file, or grab the source or Windows binaries from the download page to try it out.

Hi everyone! It’s been a busy month for MAME development, and we’ve got a whole lot of surprises to unwrap today as we continue to celebrate twenty years of MAME. First up, we’ve added some incredibly rare systems to MAME. Omega is an Arkanoid-inspired arcade game with a production run of about ten boards. Dodge Man is a rare Omori title from 1983. The vertical version of Flash Boy, a DECO Cassette title that borrows more than a little from a well known anime is another very rare game that was at risk of becoming nothing but a memory. Westinghouse Test Console #5 is possibly a one-of-a-kind wire-wrapped prototype machine for field-programming some kind of interlocking equipment (it has a rude easter egg – press X|TRAN in calculator mode to see it). Less rare, but still awesome, are arcade titles Galaxy Games StarPak 3, Sega Sonic Cosmo Fighter, and a U.S. release of Puzznic with the digitised photos intact.

This release adds support for a number of electronic toys/handheld games, including Atari’s Touch Me (a clone of Simon, which is itself a clone of an Atari arcade game), GAF Melody Madness, Lakeside Le Boom, and with possibly the most awesome title if not gameplay, LJN’s I Took a Lickin’ From a Chicken. Many of these games have colourful, clickable artwork. MAME is dedicated to preserving more than just video games, and these systems are great examples of some of the other experiences you can relive through emulation.

If you use MAME’s computer emulation and have been frustrated by modifiers not working properly in natural keyboard mode, you’ll be pleased to know that this release addresses that. Natural keyboard mode now works properly with many more systems, including Amiga, Sun and RM Nimbus. Speaking of Amiga, we’ve emulated a 3rd-party variant of the Amiga 1200 keyboard and added support for many different language variants, so chances are you’ll be able to use keyboard that matches your Workbench language. And speaking of keyboards, the Zorba keyboard now works properly, so you can try out one of the last luggable CP/M machines.

Other improvements include fixing the crash on encountering invalid cheats, allowing multi-part software list entries to load each part on the correct interface, emulation of the Poly-Play light organ, a brand new preliminary Interpro 2800 driver and Clipper CPU core, support for VIC-20 and C64 speech synthesiser cartridges, support for the Osborne-1 Nuevo Video 80-column modification, protection MCU emulation in Bad Dudes vs. Dragonninja and Bouncing Balls, audio improvements to a number of supported games, and optimisation of the netlist emulation.

Some of these improvements might seem inconsequential, or apply to systems you don’t use, but they often lie in common components used by many other systems. For example, the Amiga 1200 and Zorba keyboards use the same MCU family used in a lot of arcade games published by Taito. The same change that fixes the Zorba keyboard also fixes enemy spawning and timing in Xain'd Sleena. The Nuevo Video board uses a common Motorola CRT controller, so improvements made to support it stand to benefit a lot of other systems.

Of course there are plenty of other improvements not listed here, and you can read all about them in the whatsnew.txt file, or grab the source or Windows binaries from the download page and join in our 20th anniversary celebration.

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the very first MAME release. We’d like to thank each and every one of you who’ve contributed to making MAME what it is today. When we prepared a list of credited contributors for MAME’s tenth anniversary, it came to just over 500 names. The number of credited contributors has more than tripled since then: over 1,600 individuals/groups have been credited with contributions. MAME is a truly inclusive, global team effort. We’d also like to thank the uncredited contributors – if you’ve filed a bug report, distributed binaries, run a community site, or just put in a good word for MAME, we appreciate it. It’s very humbling to realise that there are people on this list who were born after the initial MAME release. We’d also like to take a moment to remember the contributors who have passed on and are no longer with us.

We look forward to seeing this list grow even faster over the next decade: