When we are talking about MAME ROMs, there is no way that we can skip talking about MAME, for which these ROMs are developed. MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and the name itself speaks volumes. It is an application, emulator application which is aimed at copying the way in which older arcade machines worked. Being a Multiple arcade machine emulator, it is aimed at emulating the workings of as many different older arcade machines as possible.
It is important to remember that this emulation has always been the primary goal of the people involved in its development. Their goal was to preserve the ways in which these machines worked, with their playability being only an added bonus. However, for the average user, a person who wishes only to play these games, this is the primary goal, the ability to actually enjoy in playing these games. In this article, we are going to talk about the history of MAME and also of the MAME ROMs which have been developed and introduced over the years.
The MAME project was initiated by an Italian programmer called Nicola Salmoria. Before that, he was working on a similar project with the name Multi-Pac. However, this project developed into MAME as more and more games and arcade machines became supported. The first release of MAME saw the light of the day on February 5, 1997 and it was called the 0.1 release. However, in 1997, due to certain commitments, Nicola had to step down as the main developer and he named Mirko Buffoni, another Italian programmer as the steward for the project. The main coordinator jobs changed hands several times later, with David Haywood taking over in 2003, Aaron Giles in 2005 and most recently Angelo Salese taking over in 2011. However, it is also important to note that these are only the main coordinators of the project, with the job being done by hundreds of developers and thousands of contributors from the outside.
Firstly, MAME was being developed solely for MS-DOS. However, over the years, Macintosh, Unix-like platforms have also been involved, with the biggest part of the work being done on Windows platforms currently. In addition to this, MAME has been translated to other platforms, such as game consoles, PDAs and even mobile phones, with digital cameras getting their version at one point, even.
As the main point of the MAME project is to give the people a look into how these older machines work, the code is constantly developing, with new versions coming within months from each other. However, to the end users who are only interested in playing games, this is of not too much interest. What is of interest to us are the MAME ROMs, which are in fact memory chips where the games are stored, as well as certain necessary codes for games by certain publishers. The end users are also interested in front-ends, which are in facts pieces of software which enable the end user to play the wanted game without having to bother with the source code or to have any programming skills or experience.
Today, you can get literally thousands of MAME ROMs with more than ten thousand games supported, available for different platforms. Some people even restore old arcade game cabinets and use them to play their favorite old games. However, we will speak more about this in another article. What you need to remember is that this is a project with a very long and interesting history which is constantly giving us more games to enjoy in. And for those who are interested in the history of video gaming the MAME project is much, much more than just playing vintage video games.