Changes

Much like the name says, MAME was supposed to be for arcade machines like Pac-Man back when it was released in 1997. A similar project called [[MESS]] was made to do essentially the same thing for home consoles and other esoteric devices that never got emulated, but it has since been merged into MAMEby the end of May 2015 in version 0.162, and now it supports ''a whole lot more'' than arcade machines.

MAME was first put out in on February 5, 1997 by Nicola Salmoria as a Pac-Man emulator,<ref name="worldofstuart">[http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/mameover.htmMAME OVER] (0.99)</ref><ref name="History">{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgJF18Pm7MA|title=A Brief History of Emulation: MAME|publisher=Youtube|accessdate=2018-09-14|date=2017-12-02}}</ref> but before he could do any more work on the project, he handed it over to Mirko Buffoni in April 1997 after requiring to do National Service in the Italian army.<ref name="worldofstuart"/> Since then, even as early as 2003, the emulator has become very extensive, with the majority of arcade system boards from the 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's supported. On February 2016 in version 0.171, a new GUI was integrated into MAME which allowed users to launch games in it without the need for a third-party GUI application.

However... don't expect support for more recent boards like atomiswaveAtomiswave; the project and its team focuses on [[Emulation Accuracy|accuracy]] (preferably cycle-accuracy) and preservation, which often puts usability at a much lower priority for end users. The program is also '''very strict''' about what components of a ROM dump it needs to even function, and it may tell you if something is wrong with the files (i.e. a failed checksum); once developers know more about a system, they'll often have to dump more components like ROMs and BIOSes if necessary, and obtaining newer dumps from the boards isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world for users who only have traditional desktops, and the same goes for anyone with the actual arcade boards. Something as popular as Pac-Man will probably never need newer dumps beyond the current ones because it's been continually researched, and the dumps have been pretty widespread, but other machines you've probably only seen once at an arcade will probably need new dumps for a reason. Only ROM dumps with all the newest information will work in new versions of MAME. Even then, programmers may not have everything implemented. The native interface will tell you about the emulation status of the chosen romset, and whether the one you're using is even emulated at the current time.