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MAME v0.129

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

MAME

About 5 years ago, I came across game emulation software. The baddest of the emulators was the arcade emulator called MAME. Back then, I was able to come across 3,227 ROMs that worked to some degree on PC hardware of that age.

Fast forward to today, and version 0.129 of MAME has 7,443 active ROMs that just fly on today’s hardware. Dual and Quad core processors, Nvidia cards that scream pixels and enough memory to juggle everything, make for an excellent experience.

A ROM, is the read only memory in arcade machines, it’s where the game programming resides. Over the years, the vast family of MAME aficionados have collected ROMs from dead or aging machines that they share openly. Possessing a ROM and running it in an emulation program is illegal, so be forewarned.

Today, sites like Mininova have torrents that make it really easy to put together what you need. Doing a search on “MAME 0.129” yields a 17.44 GB ROM torrent and the 2.62 GB extras torrent, which contains the artwork, screen shots and what the game cabinets look like.

The last piece of the puzzle is the emulator, MAME. Personally, I like MAMEUI32, it’s the dos based MAME with a nice GUI front end. Version 0.130 of MAME just came out, but you shouldn’t have a problem finding the debugged 0.129 of the UI somewhere.

Jump over all the barrels and let out a little scream
Duck underneath the pie, ‘cause it’s a coconut cream
You pick the hammer up and then you put the fire out
Now we think you know what Donkey Kong is all about