M.A.M.E.

The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME), is ported to the Acorn by Gareth S. Long, from the original version by Nicola Salmoria's-led MAME development team, an enthusiastic group of programmers and hackers. With entry into the MAME team being fairly easy (so long as you can prove your worth), many programmers have worked on the project, improving or writing their own driver for each arcade game. This emulator has been ported to almost every system in common usage today, there is even a cutdown Psion 5 version in the works.

Before you read on, I really must first say that this emulator will blow your mind! With this emulator you can play hundreds of arcade games on your Acorn, ranging from the golden oldies of the late 70s to hits of the 90s like Strider and Final Fight to name but two. The range of games supported is staggering, and the growth of this project has been nothing short of phenomenal with emulation even getting into the news because of it.

The emulator is only really usable on a StrongArm Risc PC, though Arm700 users shouldn't find too much difficulty either. Gareth is trying to optimise it for the lower end machines, but one of the major strengths of MAME is its portability, permitted by the fact that it is written in 100% C, which unfortunately keeps it a little slower than an ARM coded emulator. Developments are taking place fairly regularly every few weeks adding many games with each new version, and Gareth Long has ported nearly all of them to the Acorn. The MAME team recently decided to release their beta (test) versions to the public, so as to avoid new versions of MAME every 2 months with over 100 new games, instead every few weeks we get another 20 or so games.

Since MAME is still under development, it is supplied as a single executable file rather than with a WIMP frontend. You really need a front end to use this easily, and there are several available, written by 3rd parties (see below) though Player1 is probably the most popular.

Since the emulator runs too slow on many acorns, as there is no handcrafted assembly in it, there is a turbo module, called 'TurboMAME' being developed to try and speed the emulator up, without damaging its development time by reducing portability. This module being written in pure assembly to emulate the 6502 and Z80 processors, so that it will work faster on a lot of systems, particularly those slower than a StrongARM! This will be called from the ported code, and therefore not reduce portability and slow down development time.

It's important to remember that the MAME project is primarily a preservation exercise to try and retain detailed information about as many arcade games as possible into the future, rather than letting the information fade and the classic games die. Since this is the case, the speed of the emulator is not the teams primary concern, but accuracy of information and as much of it as they can get their hands on! Gareth however, as he has said many times, is committed to bringing MAME to low end users.

Latest changes: Version 0.34 beta 6.1 has been released, it now emulates over 1000 games and has improved NEO GEO emulation. Note NEO GEO emulation needs vast amounts of RAM, 64Mb+ to get even close, otherwise you're liable to get some very strange errors. Executable size, now over 4.5Mb!

Speed Rating: is irrelevent, some games will play too slow, some too fast since the complexity of games varies from 20Kb ROMs upto 2Mb+ ROMs. To put it bluntly you need a RISC PC, an ARM610 will be quite slow, likewise an ARM 710, to get the best you need a StrongARM, but then, don't you always!

ARM MAME homepage
List of games supported by v0.33 beta 7.0
The Official MAME page
The Official MAME work in progress page
The unofficial MAME homepage

FrontEnds:
Richard Cassidy (X-man's) Player1 MAME front end
Richard Sharpe's simple front end
R.R.Chasmer's MAME play
R.R.Chasmer's File Lower

ROMs:
AROM MAME roms
General ROM list from MAME homepage
Brian Peek's ROM
Loadsa MAME ROMs
Lord 13's MAME page
ftp://ftp.tant.com
Dave's Arcade Classics
Katson's MAME page
Arcade @ Home MAME ROMs

Recommended software:
1943, Silkworm, Starwars, Return of the Jedi, Strider, Wonderboy, Final Fight, Ghoul's and Ghosts, Rampage, Tapper, LWings, Mr Do, Commando, Amidar, Pacman, Frogger, Donkey Kong 3, Robocop.