Background

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Its purpose is to document the inner workings of those pioneering games of the video arcade era. Remember Pacman, Space Invaders, DigDug, etc, well, they are all documented and what's more fully playable in the MAME project.

MAME is software, written in 'C' and 'ASM', which emulates the hardware of the original machine the games were built with. This enables the original game programs (often called ROM images) to run quite happily on a PC. The other advantage is that these games will be preserved forever, thanks to this project.

MAME is co-ordinated By Nicola Salmoria of Italy, but there are well over 100 people contributing to this project. The code is written in a manner which allows several people to submit 'drivers', and are merged with the current code. MAME currently emulates over 2500 sets, however, some of these are clones, bugfixed and bootleg versions. Still, there are well over 1500 individually different games emulated by MAME.

Remember, MAME is FREE. Please, the first and foremost request here is respect for the programmers who work hard on this project for FREE. From the M.A.M.E. readme.txt file:

M.A.M.E. - Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator Copyright (C) 1997, 1998 by Nicola Salmoria and the MAME team. Please note that many people helped with this project, either directly or by releasing source code that was used to write the drivers. We are not trying to appropriate merit that isn't ours. See the acknowledgments section for a list of contributors, however please note that the list is largely incomplete. See also the CREDITS section in the emulator to see the people who contributed to a specific driver. Again, that list might be incomplete. We apologize in advance for any omission. All trademarks cited in this document are property of their respective owners.

My Story

I have always loved arcade games. I spent way too much time to mention in arcades as a kid - I was, uh, lucky to be in junior high in the mid-80's when arcades were the place to be. I had been looking for an arcade game to buy for my basement, but had a hard time trying to justify spending at least $500 for one game. The biggest problem was that I couldn't come up with a single game that I would like to play all the time.

So, the idea just stayed in the back of my mind for a while...

Then one day during lunch at work, I was playing a shockwave version of Spy Hunter online, when a co-worker told me he had an emulated version of it on his laptop. He emailed MAME to me, along with all his ROMS (about 15 games). Shortly after this, I found out that there were two guys I worked with who had a few arcade games each, and one had converted a Kangaroo cabinet into a MAME machine (see Josh's page from my Links section).

I began searching the web and was amazed at all the people who had built MAME arcade machines. This was exactly the kind of arcade machine I wanted in my basement, but could I do it? Then I realized I COULD do it, and I needed to do it... not sure why, but I needed to. There are so many guides and examples on the web - all it will take is time and money.

So I went home and told my wife that I had a new project to work on, and I gave myself one year to complete it.

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