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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.

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MAME 0.145u8

07 May 2012

MAME 0.145u8 is now posted to the Latest Updates page.
There was major ioport change so please report any incorrectness at MAMEtesters
It also includes decompression fix for chdman

Passing the Torch

26 Apr 2012

Due of real life issues and concerns, I've decided it would be best to step back and give coordination of the project to someone else who can keep the project moving forward. So, effective immediately, I am passing the leadership of the MAME project to the current MESS project leader, Miodrag Milanovic (Micko).
I would like to extend a word of thanks to everybody that has contributed to MAME this year including developers, testers and individual users alike. I also would like to assure you all that I will not be leaving the project and my stepping back is simply to allow myself a temporary break so that I might concentrate my time on other issues.