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Welcome to The Official Site of the MAME Development Team

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.

MAME 0.277

30 Apr 2025

Have you been wondering what MAME 0.277 will bring? Well, now you can find out! First of all, we’ve added support for compiling on 64-bit ARM-based systems running Windows 11 using the MSYS2 CLANGARM64 environment. Updates to included third-party libraries should resolve some issues people were having with new compilers and development environments.

In improvements that you can see, Konami GX blending effects are now looking much nicer, Sega Model 2 3D geometry is behaving better, and some remaining issues with Philips CD-i graphics decoding have been fixed. You may be able to hear improved sound emulation in some Famicom, WonderSwan, and Game Boy games, too. If that’s too subtle, you should be able to hear the difference in the DMX and LinnDrum percussion synthesisers.

There’s a big update for the Apple II and Macintosh floppy disk software lists this month. A lot of Macintosh NuBus cards have been overhauled as well, so let us know if we’ve inadvertently broken your virtual Macintosh setup. There are plenty of other software list additions, including a batch of tapes for Sinclair computers.

That’s all we’re going to cover here, but much more has happened this month in MAME development. You can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, and source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page.

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MAME 0.276

31 Mar 2025

MAME 0.276 has arrived just in time for the end of March, and it’s full of emulation goodness! Remember that 64-bit ARMv8 recompiler we added a few months ago? Well now it’s even faster! This release fixes graphical issues in Konami GX arcade games and Philips CD-i software. We’ve added several IGS gambling games, as well as Chinese versions of some Dynax mahjong games. The LinnDrum percussion synthesiser is now working with interactive controls and sound output. And speaking of sound, audio emulation issues in several arcade games have been fixed.

PC-88VA emulation is progressing, with fixes for multiple graphics modes. A few more peripherals for the TI-99 computer family are now supported. There have been a few CPU/DSP fixes that should improve Sega 3D arcade game emulation. Psion hand-helds now correctly detect more memory configurations and give better-looking video output. We’ve also fixed some issues with CHD creation, floppy disk image handling, and XML system information output. Windows users now get an option to have debugger windows appear in the taskbar and window switcher.

As always, you can marvel at all the exciting development this month when you read the whatsnew.txt file. The source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages can be found on the download page.

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MAME 0.275

26 Feb 2025

MAME 0.275 is out now! It’s been a short month, but there’s still been plenty of interesting development. This release adds support for several arcade games on PlayStation-based hardware, a few PowerBook Duo sub-notebook computers, some hand-held LCD games, and a couple of Casio music keyboards.

Support for the Zorro II bus used in the Amiga 2000 has been improved, including DMA support and a few more emulated cards. Some graphical glitches in Konami arcade games have been fixed. The Oberheim DMX drum machine is now fully emulated. We’ve even optimised the recompilers a little more this month.

You can read about all the work that’s gone into this release in the whatsnew.txt file, or get source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.

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MAME 0.274

31 Jan 2025

Today’s the day you get to experience MAME 0.274 for the first time! As previously mentioned, our Windows binary releases now require a CPU with x86-64-v2 functionality. The most anticipated feature completed this month is almost certainly the 64-bit ARMv8 recompiler back-end. It’s been tested on macOS, conventional Linux and Android, and provides some very welcome performance improvements when emulating systems with RISC CPUs, including MIPS III, PowerPC and SuperH. In addition to the new back-end, we’ve fixed some bugs in the existing back-ends and made some performance improvements for x86-64. Keep in mind that the actual performance benefits you experience will vary substantially depending on your CPU and the emulated system and software.

While that was happening, emulation work continued to progress. This release adds support for numerous digital pets, a couple more Tronica LCD games, and several synthesisers. Several CD-i graphics formats have been fixed, and speaking of Philips, video emulation for their Minitel 2 terminal has been improved as well. Our NEC µPD17771C emulation has been completely overhauled, which is particularly noticeable in Star Speeder on the Epoch Super Cassette Vision.

Lots has been going on in computer emulation this month. We’ve taken a few steps along the road to emulating the first-generation Power Macintosh systems; the Heath/Zenith computers now have hard-sectored floppy formats and working joystick support; the JUKU E5104 now has mouse support; the Silicon Graphics Professional IRIS 4D workstations are now considered working. There’s also been some work on Amiga graphics emulation, although some of the improvements missed this release.

As always, you can read about all of the month’s development work in the whatsnew.txt file. If you’re excited and want to try it out, head right over to the download page where you can find the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages. See you all again next month for another thrilling MAME release!

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CPU requirements for Windows binary MAME releases

17 Jan 2025

If you’ve been following along, you’ll no doubt realise that MAME development is off to a flying start in 2025. Perhaps the most exciting feature coming in the next release is a native recompiler for 64-bit ARMv8 systems. This includes Apple Silicon, recent Raspberry Pi models, and the most popular Android devices.

After several years, we’ve decided it’s time to start taking advantage of features of newer (or at least slightly less outdated) CPUs. Starting with MAME 0.274, official Windows binary releases will require so-called x86-64-v2 features. These features have been available in all popular x86-64 CPUs for close to a decade. They were introduced in the following CPU families:

  • Intel “Nehalem” (2008), or “Silvermont” (2013) for low-power CPUs
  • AMD “Bulldozer” (2011), or “Jaguar” (2013) for low-power CPUs
  • VIA “Nano C” and “Eden C” (both 2015)

If you still want to run up-to-date versions of MAME on older systems running Windows, you’ll need to compile it from the source code.

MAME 0.273

31 Dec 2024

It looks like MAME 0.273 has made it just in time for the end of 2024! First of all, if you want to build MAME with Microsoft’s IDE, you’ll need to switch to Visual Studio 2022 and ensure you have an up-to-date version of the Visual C++ compiler. (There’s lots more useful information about building MAME from source code on the relevant documentation page.)

Microcontrollers for Sun Electronics Kangaroo and Data East E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force have been dumped and emulated. This fixes several issues where the simulation was incorrect for Kangaroo, affecting gameplay and sound. Speaking of which, there have been quite a few fixes for sound issues in arcade games this month.

Regional variants of the Apple II computer line allowed the user to switch between US English mode and local mode, affecting the display character set and the keyboard layout. This release greatly improves support for language selection and adds support for several European Apple IIe and Apple IIc variants. In other Apple emulation news, the ’030-based PowerBook series is coming to life: you might want to try out the PowerBook 140, 160, 170 and 180 or variants thereof.

There’s lots more in this release, including more Amiga sound and video cards, CPU emulation fixes, and better DMA behaviour for emulated Sound Blaster cards. You can read about all the exciting developments in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.

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MAME 0.272

30 Nov 2024

The end of the year is almost upon us, but before that happens, make sure you try MAME 0.272! We’re very happy to announce that the early SNK game Tangram Q is now supported. This game was never widespread, and working examples are rarer than ever. MAME now gives you the unprecedented opportunity to experience this piece of gaming history. Another obscure system that’s starting to take shape is the Estonian EKTA Juku. This 8-bit educational computer was powered by a Soviet 8080 clone and ran the CP/M-derived EKDOS operating system.

The French Thomson computers have been receiving some attention lately, and software compatibility is starting to improve. Progress on the NEC PC-98 family is still coming along nicely. Our CD-ROM drive emulation has been getting better, which has a positive impact on numerous computers as well as game systems. The Epoch Super Cassette vision also got some nice fixes this month.

Numerous reported issues were fixed in this release, including some long-standing issues that had eluded developers for years. There are lots of new working bootleg arcade games to try out. Several TV games have been promoted to working this month, too.

You can read about all the exciting work that went into this release in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available on the download page.

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