DUDE®'S M.A.M.E. PAGEWhat is M.A.M.E.? In a nutshell, M.A.M.E. (or "Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator") is a FREE emulator which allows you to play classic arcade games on your home computer. (Versions are available for Win95/NT, DOS, Mac, UNIX, and Amiga.) You'll have an endless supply of quarters as you relive your youth with over 200 games including Pac- Man, Asteroids, Dig Dug, Centipede and many, many more. And these are not cheesy home computer versions of these classic arcade consoles. No, the games are essentially the same as the arcades! Download a copy of M.A.M.E. today and find out why M.A.M.E. has become the best and easiest to use emulator, period. Please note: If you want to redistribute MAME, do not include ROM files with the copy of MAME!
What's Here?
Not very much, but MAME is so cool that it deserved a page of its own!
What You Need
First of all, you'll need the latest copy of MAME, which is available from several sites, including The Official MAME Emulator Page. And, yes: it's FREE! All the hard work that goes into making MAME the best emulator available is done by the MAME creator, Nicola Salmoria, and the myriad of programmers who code the actual games.
Next, you need ROM's. These are the actual games which are based on the original ROM chips found in the arcade consoles. Without ROM's, MAME is useless. You can download all the ROMS from Dave's Video Game Classics. Make sure that when you unzip all the ROM's that you put them in individual directories in your MAME directory with the exact name of the zip. In other words, Ghosts 'N' Goblins would be in C:\MAME\GNG. Another alternative: get a front-end which supports zipped ROM's such as MAME/W (see below).
Getting Started with MAME
Essentially you have three choices to play individual games: 1) get a front-end to use all those cool ROM's, 2) make shortcuts for each game, or 3) go to a DOS-prompt and do it from there. My recommendation for running MAME? Get the front-end MAME/W.
The front-end I have is simply called MAME/W (v0.30a - 233 K). It has a great, fast-loading interface which displays a screen shot of all available games (screenshots optional with graphix pack - 1015 K). In addition, when a new version of MAME is released, it's simple to change MAME/W to update the games. (With other front-ends you have to wait until the new version is released.) One of the excellent features in this front-end is its ability to customize the settings for each individual game with ease. Use the default options for most games, but tweak a few independently of the rest. For example, I set my default options to VESA off, but to play Joust, Defender, Stargate, Ghosts 'N' Goblins and a couple of others I uncheck the box in the Settings screen for each game and change it to VESA on at a resolution of 640x480 which is much better because it fills the screen. One downside to MAME/W: unless you want all the available games listed (i.e. all MAME-compatible games, not just those you have), you have to delete the lines from the roms text file. Not very difficult, but a little time-consuming. Still interested in MAME/W? Go to Jeff Miller's Homepage for a screen shot and to find alternate download sites. Follow the directions to set it up and go! Note: Jeff Miller is a busy guy so he's not actively developing MAME/W any longer. However, rest assured, this version of MAME/W will work with the latest version of MAME (v0.31).
You can also go to a DOS-prompt under Win95 (i.e. not shutting down Windows). From the C:\ prompt, change the directory to the MAME directory like this:
cd mame. Then type the following for Galaga, for example: mame galaga. You will be prompted for your soundcard and the game will start. To use with any other game, just change the command line to the exact name of the zip. You can also tell MAME which soundcard you have from either the DOS-prompt or the shortcut by using the line below where "n" is the number of your soundcard in the menu. In other words, I would substitute 7 for the n because I have an Ensoniq soundcard: cd mame galaga -soundcard n. There are other options you can use on the command line too. See the MAME readme for details.
The way to make your own shortcuts is easy. Right-click on the MAME executable (Mame.exe) and choose "Create Shortcut". Right-click on the shortcut, choose Rename, and name it, for example, Pac Man. Right-click on the shortcut again, choose Properties, and click the Program tab. On the command line enter the name of the game you want the shortcut to be associated with (see the DOS prompt instructions above for more info). So, for example, the line for Pac Man would read C:\MAME\MAME.EXE pacman plus any soundcard info, etc. Create a unique shortcut for each game you have.
MAME Sites and More
Do you long for the days when gaming was about more than 3D worlds where you shoot everything that moves or one-on-one fighting games? Visit Dave's Video Game Classics. The Arcade and Console Emulation section features a ton of emulators, including (of course) MAME, Atari 2600, and Nintendo 8-bit. Other sections include SNES, Sega Genesis, Commodore 64, and Sony Playstation. Dave's is basically your one stop emulation page!
Yes, you saw a yellow spheroid with a wedge missing at the top of this page. That can only mean one thing: Pac-Man! Worship the god of the gaming world in c|net's GameCenter.com feature article, The Legacy of Pac-Man. They have traced Pac from his well-known beginnings in the classic arcade quarter-muncher all the way to his most recent incarnations on the home consoles. See the weird hybird Baby Pac-Man which combined a truncated pinball with the maze! Read about the Professor Pac-Man machine which tested your I.Q.! Read strange and humorous rumors about the Pacster which may or may not be true! Download sound bites from the game and watch a movie clip! All hail Pac-Man!
List of MAME Commands
Here is the list of commands that work for (almost) all games in MAME:
| 3 | Insert Coin | |
| 1 | Start 1 Player Game | |
| 2 | Start 2 Player Game | |
| TAB | Enter dip switch, keys and joy settings, and credits display menu. Pressing TAB again will take you back to the emulator, ESC exits the emulator | |
| P | Pause | |
| F3 | Reset | |
| F4 | Show the game graphics. Cursor keys change set/color, F4 exits | |
| F8 | Change frame skip on the fly (60, 30, 20, or 15) | |
| F9 | To change volume percentage thru 100,75,50,25,0 values. Keypad PLUS and MINUS change the volume with fine granularity | |
| F10 | Toggle speed throttling | |
| F11 | Toggle fps counter | |
| F12 | Save a screen snapshot | |
| ESC | Exit emulator |