13 Facts About MAME

MAME is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms.

At first, MAME was developed exclusively for MS-DOS, but was ported to Unix-like systems, Macintosh and Windows .

MAME has been ported to other computers, game consoles, mobile phones and PDAs, and at one point even to digital cameras.

MAME has pioneered the reverse engineering of many undocumented system architectures, various CPUs and sound chips .

MAME developers have been instrumental in reverse engineering many proprietary encryption algorithms utilized in arcade games, including Neo Geo, CP System II and CP System III.

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MAME's popularity has gone mainstream, with enthusiasts building their own arcade game cabinets to relive the old games, and even with some companies producing illegal MAME derivatives to be installed in arcades.

Information within MAME is free for reuse, and companies have been known to utilize MAME when recreating their old classics on modern systems.

Since 2012, MAME has been maintained by former MESS project leader Miodrag Milanovic.

In May 2015, it was announced that MAME's developers planned to re-license the software under a more common free and open-source license, away from the original MAME license.

MAME complied with the request a day later, making both unplayable on the emulator outside of command line, as of version 0.

The approach MAME takes with regards to accuracy is an incremental one; systems are emulated as accurately as they reasonably can be.

MAME itself has thus far not been the subject of any court cases.

MAME community has distanced itself from other groups redistributing ROMs via the Internet or physical media, claiming they are blatantly infringing copyright and harm the project by potentially bringing it into disrepute.