MAME Emulator

Several thousand titles have been made available to the public, but the more recent games require very high-end computers in order to run them. This is because the MAME emulation team is not willing to sacrifice authenticity in the name of faster run times. It's quite surprising, but a home PC is said to need a 10 GHz processor in order to run certain ROMs. In any case, however, the main appeal of MAME is to run arcade classics like X-Men, Street Fighter II, Puzzle Bobble.

Where Can I Get It?

The official version is available from the MAME website and comes either as a Windows command line or DOS-based system. There are other variations that are also available, including one with a Windows-based graphic user interface (GUI). MAME itself, because it is only an emulator is perfectly legal to download and use, and there have been homebrew games that have been developed for the system. That said, MAME is utterly useless without any titles, just as having a GameCube but no games leaves you with pretty purple square collecting dust... or in the case of MAME, a bunch of 1s and 0s hogging up precious hard drive space.

Where Do I Get ROMs?

The original arcade machines made use of read-only memory chips (ROMs) on which individual titles were stored. Along the way, different media were also used. For use with MAME, there seem to be a small handful of LEGAL ways to get your grubby hands on an attractive ROM.

• If you own the actual arcade game board, you can rip the ROM using an EPROM reader.
• Certain ROMs are available for sale from companies like Capcom, sometimes packaged in with other products
• Some companies have allowed some of their games to be freely distributed
• If a game is not under copyright (or it has expired), then it is fair game.

However, most of the games are downloaded illegally. Of course, we here at LoveToKnow do not condone any of these shady activities, so I won't go too much into the details. As you would expect, downloading video game ROMs for MAME is much the same as illegally getting your hands on music CD content, movies, software, and the like. Popular sources include P2P (peer-to-peer) networks and newsgroups.

What's a MAME Cabinet?

While playing Pac-Man or Mortal Kombat on your home computer may be fun and all, it just isn't the same experience bashing at a PC-based controller or, worse yet, a computer keyboard than it was when you emptied out your roll of quarters at the local laundromat (Come on, admit it, we've all been there). In this way, many aficionados have invested in a mid-range powered, bare-bones PC, fitted it with MAME and a bunch of ROMs, and built themselves an arcade cabinet from scratch. There are arcade-style joysticks that are available, and it doesn't take too much effort to map the buttons to the controls. There are several tutorials available online (search engines are your friend) that can take you step-by-step, and help you build a MAME cabinet of your own.

Of course, you better be prepared to host a lot of parties and have a whole lot of "friends" over all the time itching to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Frogger on your MAME cabinet. Then again, you could always charge a quarter per credit. Just make sure you get those ROMs in a legal fashion, k? Play safe kids.