MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Its purpose is to document the inner workings of those pioneering games of the video arcade era. Remember Pacman, Space Invaders, DigDug, etc, well, they are all documented and what's more fully playable in the MAME project.

MAME is software, written in 'C' and 'ASM', which emulates the hardware of the original machine the games were built with. This enables the original game programs (often called ROM images) to run quite happily on a PC. The other advantage is that these games will be preserved forever, thanks to this project.

MAME is co-ordinated By Nicola Salmoria of Italy, but there are well over 100 people contributing to this project. The code is written in a manner which allows several people to submit 'drivers', and are merged with the current code. MAME currently emulates over 2500 sets, however, some of these are clones, bugfixed and bootleg versions. Still, there are well over 3000 individually different games emulated by MAME.

This site is to be used as a resource for arcade enthusiasts and for owners of the original machines. You see, these arcade machines will not last forever, so the emulator and ROM Images are here to preserve these games.

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Remember, MAME is FREE. Please, the first and foremost request here is respect for the programmers who work hard on this project for FREE. From the M.A.M.E. readme.txt file:

M.A.M.E. - Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator Copyright (C) 1997, 1998 by Nicola Salmoria and the MAME team Please note that many people helped with this project, either directly or by releasing source code that was used to write the drivers. We are not trying to appropriate merit that isn't ours. See the acknowledgments section for a list of contributors, however please note that the list is largely incomplete. See also the CREDITS section in the emulator to see the people who contributed to a specific driver. Again, that list might be incomplete. We apologize in advance for any omission. All trademarks cited in this document are property of their respective owners.

Usage and Distribution License
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I. Purpose
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MAME is strictly a no profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done for educational purposes and to preserve many historical games from the oblivion they would sink into when the hardware they run on will stop working. Of course to preserve the games you must also be able to actually play them; you can see that as a nice side effect. It is not our intention to infringe any copyrights or patents pending on the original games. All of the source code is either our own or freely available. To work, the emulator requires ROMs of the original arcade machines, which must be provided by the user. No portion of the code of the original ROMs is included in the executable.

II. Cost
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MAME is free. The source code is free. Selling it is not allowed.

III. ROM Images
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You are not allowed to distribute MAME and ROM images on the same physical medium. You are allowed to make them available for download on the same web site, but only if you warn users about the copyright status of the ROMs and the legal issues involved. You are NOT allowed to make MAME available for download together with one giant big file containing all of the supported ROMs, or any files containing more than one game each. You are not allowed to distribute MAME in any form if you sell, advertise or publicize illegal CD-ROMs or other media containing ROM images. Note that the restriction applies even if you don't directly make money out of that. The restriction of course does not apply if the CD-ROMs are published by the ROMs copyrights owners.

IV. Source Code Distribution
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If you distribute the binary, you should also distribute the source code. If you can't do that, you must provide a pointer to a place where the source can be obtained.

V. Distribution Integrity
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This chapter applies to the official MAME distribution. See next chapter for limitations on the distribution of derivative works. MAME must be distributed only in the original archives. You are not allowed to distribute a modified version, nor to remove and/or add files to the archive.

VI. Reuse of Source Code
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This chapter might not apply to specific portions of MAME (e.g. CPU emulators) which bear different copyright notices. The source code cannot be used in a commercial product without a written authorization of the authors. Use in non commercial products is allowed and indeed encouraged; however if you use portions of the MAME source code in your program, you must make the full source code freely available as well. Derivative works are allowed (provided source code is available), but discouraged: MAME is a project continuously evolving, and you should, in your best interest, submit your contributions to the development team, so that they are integrated in the main distribution. Usage of the _information_ contained in the source code is free for any use. However, given the amount of time and energy it took to collect this information, we would appreciate if you made the additional information you might have freely available as well.