Talking about the philosophy behind MAME ROMs and MAME in general is one of the most interesting things about the history of video games. Some people may still think that video games do not deserve to be taken seriously, but it is becoming more and more obvious that video games have become a huge part of the modern entertainment and that they can also be regarded as a form of art. Therefore, talking and dealing with an important part of their history is something that is completely justified and, in fact, desirable.
And that is what MAME basically is. It is taking care of a part of history of video games that is behind us, for the most part. It is the part of the video game history that can be summed up in the word arcades. These first video games are an integral part of this history and MAME project is a way of preserving this history which is interesting, educational and also very entertaining.
MAME was developed as a way of teaching people as to how these games were developed and how the programming involved in their creation was done. It is something that many people are interested in, especially those people who are into video games and their history. The goal of MAME is to show how these machines worked and how the games on them were programmed and developed.
As such, MAME Project is totally non-profit and should actually be regarded as an educational tool. In order to do this, it was essential to emulate the behavior of those machines and the games with perfect accuracy, which will prevent that knowledge and those practices from disappearing, which would otherwise definitely occur.
Of course, one thing that completes this emulation of the inner workings of these machines are MAME ROMs that actually allow you to play these old games and that is what ROMs are all about. They are the indication that the MAME project is a success as you can actually have a go at these games and enjoy in all the addictive gameplay that made them so great.