MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)
Discussion
Im sure its good if people are recommending it... how good though? (theres always one like me to ask, I know ;))
Last I checked (years ago) there were dozens of emulators for various systems, I spent hours reading about which ones were good, which were buggy, which crap etc before getting the emmy I needed. Whats this one like? And er... is it for 'arcade games' and no system in particular?
Last I checked (years ago) there were dozens of emulators for various systems, I spent hours reading about which ones were good, which were buggy, which crap etc before getting the emmy I needed. Whats this one like? And er... is it for 'arcade games' and no system in particular?
MAME disc for Xbox isn't too bad but some of the games don't work cause there isn't enough memory in the xbox to run the bigger games which p1ssed me off at first but there are some games on it.
Though for some reason streetfighter series wasn't one of them again not happy since that was the reason for getting the MAME disc in the first place.
But the metal slug series made up for it though.
overall 3/5
Though for some reason streetfighter series wasn't one of them again not happy since that was the reason for getting the MAME disc in the first place.
But the metal slug series made up for it though.
overall 3/5
UKBob said:
Im sure its good if people are recommending it... how good though? (theres always one like me to ask, I know )
Last I checked (years ago) there were dozens of emulators for various systems, I spent hours reading about which ones were good, which were buggy, which crap etc before getting the emmy I needed. Whats this one like? And er... is it for 'arcade games' and no system in particular?
As Plotloss said..... Mame is a peice of freeware that can interpret the information from the ROM chips from the original arcade machines, and make your PC behave in exactly the same way as the original arcade cabinet machine would have done, so the games are identical to those that you remember from years ago.
The harder part is actually getting hold of the ROM images..... but as others have suggested, they can be found if you know where to look
UKBob said:
What games are available? Surely its interpretational ability is limited to a piece of architecture of a certain design? IIRC, arcade systems were evolving all the time, which surely had different code etc to play them?
Mame is a collection of hardware emulators in a single packege, the Code structure allows new devices to be emulated and added as required. To run each game you use the required combination of emulators, ie soundcard CPU GPU etc.
(yes I know thats basic and simplistic, but its aproximatly what happens)
And the list of games is extensive
The original coding allowed the emulation of a handful of machine roms (I believe that the original plan was to create an emulator that could decode the ROM images from PacMan - thereby making a PacMan emulator)
The original coder (Nicola Salmoria) discovered that many machines used the same format, and therefore his original emulator would allow several differt romsets to run.
With further development, further Mame releases had the ability to emulate different types of romsets, and as the project developed, the more modern machines and advanced romsets were also emulated.
The project still appears to be very much "Work In Progress" and the ability to emulate new romsets are being added all the time.
Further reading here and part of the history of the development of the software is here
HTH
The original coder (Nicola Salmoria) discovered that many machines used the same format, and therefore his original emulator would allow several differt romsets to run.
With further development, further Mame releases had the ability to emulate different types of romsets, and as the project developed, the more modern machines and advanced romsets were also emulated.
The project still appears to be very much "Work In Progress" and the ability to emulate new romsets are being added all the time.
Further reading here and part of the history of the development of the software is here
HTH
yep i just downloaded all of mame 0.95 from
www.mininova.org/
was about 12 gig so took a week to download
basically it covers nearly all arcade machines from 1975 to 2002
all of the games are 100% arcade perfect
must be a couple of thousand games in total
the games from the mid eighties really bring back some memories (paperboy etc)
www.mininova.org/
was about 12 gig so took a week to download
basically it covers nearly all arcade machines from 1975 to 2002
all of the games are 100% arcade perfect
must be a couple of thousand games in total
the games from the mid eighties really bring back some memories (paperboy etc)
I can see myself spending forever playing MAME is brilliant, I first got it 7 years ago with about 300 ROMs of some of my favourite arcade games.
If, like me you had a bit of a misspent youth the games are exactly like the way you remember them.
Ones that spring to mind are Outrun, Bank Panic, Galaxian, Hypersports, Star Wars etc.
If, like me you had a bit of a misspent youth the games are exactly like the way you remember them.
Ones that spring to mind are Outrun, Bank Panic, Galaxian, Hypersports, Star Wars etc.
www.mame.net/downmain.html
There are a few large files, Im assuming one of the bigger ones is the program? How are roms loaded, via the command line? And does one have to learn some bacis commands to run the roms?
I suppose I should just download it
but wanted to check which file was the right one first. Any good rom site links would be appreciated too 
There are a few large files, Im assuming one of the bigger ones is the program? How are roms loaded, via the command line? And does one have to learn some bacis commands to run the roms?
I suppose I should just download it
but wanted to check which file was the right one first. Any good rom site links would be appreciated too UKBob said:
www.mame.net/downmain.html
There are a few large files, Im assuming one of the bigger ones is the program? How are roms loaded, via the command line? And does one have to learn some bacis commands to run the roms?
The only thing you need (assuming Window) from that page is the first one - mame097b.zip. That's the emulator itself. You'll have to search for the roms and google is your friend here.
The command line is pretty simple - 'mame <game_name>' from memory but there's no shortage of frontends if you'd rather.
I downloaded the GUI version, and found california games for the atari lyn as a .rar file.
Does anyone have the time to guide me step by step, how do I get the game into mame32, and do I need to unzip the file first? seem to remember rar being a compressed format which winzip isnt recognizing.
Once unzipped, then how do I load the game?
>> Edited by UKBob on Sunday 19th June 22:49
Does anyone have the time to guide me step by step, how do I get the game into mame32, and do I need to unzip the file first? seem to remember rar being a compressed format which winzip isnt recognizing.
Once unzipped, then how do I load the game?
>> Edited by UKBob on Sunday 19th June 22:49
UKBob,
If you are still talking about MAME here, I would suggest using MAME32, which is a stupidly easy to use WIndows based version of MAME.
It can be downloaded from here:
www.classicgaming.com/mame32/download.htm
Once you have installed it, you will find that it creates a sub-folder called "Roms"
Just put you ROM files in that folder, leaving them zipped, and the programme will then happily run your games.
Your ROM files should be in ZIP format (rather than RAR) and make sure that the ROM files that you "aquire" are for the ARCADE versions of the games, rather than for computer versions of the games.
If you are still talking about MAME here, I would suggest using MAME32, which is a stupidly easy to use WIndows based version of MAME.
It can be downloaded from here:
www.classicgaming.com/mame32/download.htm
Once you have installed it, you will find that it creates a sub-folder called "Roms"
Just put you ROM files in that folder, leaving them zipped, and the programme will then happily run your games.
Your ROM files should be in ZIP format (rather than RAR) and make sure that the ROM files that you "aquire" are for the ARCADE versions of the games, rather than for computer versions of the games.
meeja said:
UKBob,
If you are still talking about MAME here, I would suggest using MAME32, which is a stupidly easy to use WIndows based version of MAME.
It can be downloaded from here:
www.classicgaming.com/mame32/download.htm
How up-to-date is mame32? According to that website it's on v0.62 and is copyright 2002. Mame itelf is onto 0.97 and was updated this month.
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