​​The MAME Emulator

Arcade games have a long and storied history that dates back to the 1970’s. In that time span, countless thousands of games have captured the imaginations of users, and sadly many of those games have been lost in the annals of time. For those die-hard gamers who are looking to play thousands of arcade games, including those no longer available, they are able to do so with the MAME Emulator. With this application, MAME can recreate the hardware of arcade systems in the software on modern computer platforms.

History

The MAME emulator was the brainchild of Italian programmer Nicola Salmoria and was a continuation of an earlier emulator project called Multi-Pac. First developed for MS-DOS computer systems, MAME emulator technology is now available for Unix, MacIntosh and Window computer system and the MAME project is supported by hundreds of developers worldwide. With the MAME emulator, many home gaming enthusiast are able to build their own arcade gaming systems to relive their joy of playing the classic video arcade games of their youth.

How MAME works

The core of the MAME emulator works to replicate the behavior of the hardware in old arcade machines onto the software of personal computers. MAME is able to replicate and emulate the central processing units and other associate hardware and acts as a layer between the original game program and the MAME platform. This system also supports arbitrary screen resolutions, refresh rates as well as display configurations to play arcade games online for free.

How Does Game Data Transfer to MAME?

The original code and graphics of the old arcade games are stored on old-memory chips, floppy discs, hard discs and other older means of data storage. The contents of these files can be copied to computer files by a process called dumping. These files are called ROM Images are usually stored in zip files. Some of these files may also be cloned sets with different codes. This is usually seen in “sequels” of games such as Pac-Man and Street Fighter.