Changes

|platform = [[Emulators on Windows|Windows]]<br/>[[Emulators on Linux|Linux]]<br/>[[Emulators on macOS|macOS]]<br/>BSD<br>[[Emulators on DOS|DOS (Up until 0.37b14/0.50)]]</br>

Much like the name says, MAME was supposed to be for arcade machines like Pac-Man back when it was released in 1997. Over time, MAME has incorporated similar projects out of a necessity to keep development active and prevent duplication of work (as some arcade machines often shared hardware with consoles to ease development of games); the first project to be merged was [[MESS]] at the end of May 2015 starting with version 0.162 and it functioned almost exactly like MAME but for home consoles and other esoteric devices that never got emulated elsewhere. MAME also had a policy against emulating gambling machines, but that decision has since been reversed and the project that aimed to get them working, <abbr title="Arcade Gambling Extensions for MAME">AGEMAME</abbr>, has also been merged. Gaelco Futbol 3 hardware (their rides had nothing to do with soccer), Falgas M89 and Happy Video are only "very small" motion simulators added to the MAME.

* [http://unmamed.mameworld.info/ List of arcade games that DON'T work] Last updated February 2014. Don't expect the most recent games (like [[Sega NAOMI and variants|Sega NaomiNAOMI]] ones) to run at full speed, MAME is very resource intensive.

MAME was first released on February 5, 1997 by Nicola Salmoria as a Pac-Man emulator,<ref name="worldofstuart">[http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/mameover.htm MAME 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 being required 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's1970s, 1980's 1980s and early 1990's 1990s supported.

* [https://smitdogg.mameworld.info/du/donate.html The Dumping Union] (Based in the USA. Monthly donations start from $10 US.)

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20230711205725/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/thanks.html Guru] (Top-quality [https://web.archive.org/web/20230522164442/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/forsale/index.html dumper and repairer of arcade PCBs from Western Australia]. He also repairs many other electronic equipments. Better reliability than The Dumping Union. Important pages: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160331200139/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/faq.html FAQ], [https://web.archive.org/web/20160331200505/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/decap/index.html Decapping Status Page], [https://web.archive.org/web/20160331200203/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/DumpingProject/wantedlist/wanted.html Wanted Dumps List], all links under 'Guru Status' drop-down menu. For custom one-off PayPal donations with option to make it monthly.)

Many emulators other than MAME are beginning to support Compressed Hunks of Data, mainly because compared to the alternatives, it offers compression (or ''better'' compression) on all fronts. [[Libretro]] is making an initiative to support them thanks to a successful bounties initiative, and in many cores such as their [[Mednafen|Beetle]] fork, they've begun rolling it out for certain platforms like Saturn and PlayStation , so people can test it.

If you're interested in trying it out for yourself, this guide will show you how to convert to the format using MAME's command-line tool called <code>chdman</code>. We'll warn you now that you will need to know how to use either a Unix shell or the command prompt in order to use it. The developers of MAME seemingly don't have plans to give <code>chdman</code> an interface , so if the thought of going back to the DOS days scares you too much, you may have to wait.

MAME keeps a database of romsets including what each file should be named. If the ROM dump is obtained through a ZIP file, you can uncompress the files inside and transfer them to a 7-Zip file for better compression. The 7-Zip archive HAS to have the exact same name (not the same file extension , obviously).

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20230710083327/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/ Dev coverage] from Guru (Mainly repairs/decaps arcade boards and provides dumps of them for MAME. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230711205654/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/decap/index.html Decapping status page], [https://web.archive.org/web/20230522164427/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/DumpingProject/wantedlist/wanted.html Wanted dumps list].)

* [https://www.youtube.com/Sterophonick YouTube channel] from [https://web.archive.org/web/20210606211134/https://sterophonick.github.io/sites Sterophonick] (Began working on 2018 Gigatron TTL Microcomputer for MAME on [https://twitter.com/sterophonick/status/1290524729825062913 Aug 4, 2020].)