MAME/Variations
From StrategyWiki, the free strategy guide and walkthrough wiki
Please note that besides the official MAME site, one of the best sources for MAME related news, if not the best, is MAMEWorld.net. There, you can find information about the latest updates to MAME, as well as many of the alternate versions and derivatives listed here.
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[edit] MAME
This is, of course, the official MAME. The first version of MAME was released on February 5th, 1997 and supported just five games. By 2001, MAME had grown to support several hundred games, had a much larger development team, and a lot more popularity. At that time, the developers choose to migrate the source code from a DOS based application to a Win32 console (command line) application. Originally it was called MAME[w] and the DOS version continued to be called MAME, but eventually the Windows version dropped the [w] to reflect it's official version nature, and DOS MAME became known as DMAME. Official MAME has no user interface and therefore must be used from a command prompt, or with a front-end. New official versions of MAME typically come out before any other versions, and can be downloaded from the official MAME site.
[edit] MESS
MESS is, of course, not an actual version of MAME, but it has the distinction of being born from, and based entirely on, the same emulation engine as MAME. While MAME emulates several different arcade systems, MESS uses the same architecture as MAME to emulate several different home console and computer systems. In addition to selecting a system to emulate, it is also usually necessary to select a piece of sotfware to work in conjunction with the system. You can find out more about MESS and download it from the official MESS site.
[edit] MAME32
MAME32 was the first port of Mame to the Microsoft Windows platform. It originally came out in August of 1997, adding the GUI and a considerable amount of new code to transition to Win32. The original Mame32 was authored by Chris Kirmse and later integrated Michael Soderstrom's Win32 command-line port of MAME. Michael then coordinated, maintained the source, and produced the releases. Mike Haaland and John Hardy IV joined the project in late 1997. Mike would wholly revamp the user interface to its current state and continue collaborating on core development. John provided testing, WIP updates, artwork, and served as the external point of contact for the team.
After the official MAME was migrated to Win32 code, MAME32 was re-positioned, with the familiar GUI grafted onto the new Mame Windows engine. MAME32 is currently maintained by Kirmse, Haaland, and Hardy and is now released by John IV shortly after MAME on the Mame32QA site.
[edit] DMAME
After the official MAME was migrated to Win32 code, maintenance of the DOS version of MAME was handed off to one person. Updates of DMAME continued until version 0.100, and then they dropped off. Up until version 0.100, DMAME could be downloaded from the official MAME site.
[edit] XMAME
XMAME is the official linux distribution of MAME. It gets its name from the popularity of the X Windows Manager that is popular among linux users. Every feature and improvement that is added to official MAME makes it in to XMAME. Like regular MAME, it does not contain its own front-end, and downloading one of the many XMAME front-ends is recommended. Links to several of them can be found on the official XMAME site along with the download to XMAME itself. Due to the similar nature of the relationship between MAME and MESS, XMAME is distributed with XMESS as well.
[edit] MacMAME
MacMAME is the official Mac distribution of MAME. It is not always updated in sync with official MAME, but the supported ROM list is kept up to date. After major changes to the MAME source in version 0.103u2, development of MacMAME has halted indefinitely. You can download the latest version of the official MacMAME site.
[edit] AdvMAME
AdvanceMAME (and consequently, AdvanceMESS) is a special build of MAME that can actually be built in conjunction with DOS, Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It is written primarily by Andrea Mazzoleni, with contributions from various other peopleIt enhances MAME's already robust video options with a plethora or additional configurations that make MAME compatible with just about any combination of video hardware. It serves two primary groups of users; users who wish to make their video display look as authentic to the original arcade as possible, and users who wish to use actual arcade monitors as their display device. Advance MAME gives users incredible control over the exact method that MAME uses to display graphics to a video device and is not intended for novice MAME users. More information can be found at the official Advance MAME site.
[edit] FastMAME
FastMAME was a derivative build of MAME that sought to achieve full frame rates on slower machines and old processors. It does so by sacrificing certain aspects of programming that makes the emulation more authentic and faithful in favor of speed optimizations. As of version 0.98, it no longer appears to be updated. You can find it at Geoshock.
[edit] MAME32Plus
MAME32Plus is one of the larger collaborative efforts to create a feature-rich derivative build of MAME. The MAME 32 Plus project started in May 2002 (first version 0.60), and was initially intended to implement Unicode support for MAME. Pulling ideas from a number of other existing builds, and even including a quantity of original ideas, MAME32Plus is designed to enhance the experience of running MAME from a gamer's standpoint. You can find it at the official MAME32Plus site. The list of features (as of version 0.108u3) are too long to list in detail, but include changes to the Core, Multilingual Support, Enhanced Video (including extra video blitters), Enhanced Sound, Enhanced Input (including support for the command.dat which is maintained by StategyWiki's own Procyon, who helped with some of the coding for the enhanced western glyphs), Enhanced in-game UI, Enhanced GUI, IPS (International Patching System), and a number of other features such as extra games and BIOSes not supported by regular MAME.
[edit] MAME32FX
MAME32FX is similar in many ways to MAME32Plus except that it is more the product of the dedicated efforts of one developer who goes by the name Mamesick. He has implemented many Core changes, Driver changes and enhancements, User Interface changes, and enhancements to the official MAME32 GUI. Find out more about it at the official MAME32FX site.
[edit] MAMEAnalog
MAMEAnalog is a version of MAME that adds substantial support for multiple analog devices. Among other features, it adds support for multiple mice in Windows 98 and Windows ME (USB mice only), multiple mice in Windows XP, mappable mouse input (including changing the axis and player), and improved mouse simulation with analog joysticks. Like a few derivative builds of MAME, as the official version gains stronger support for the features that a derivative build tries to focus on, the derivative build tends to decrease in popularity. Such is the case with MAMEAnalog, which seemed to drop off around version 0.90, but you can still find and download it from the official MAMEAnalog site.
[edit] SDLMAME
SDLMAME is a special version of MAME under the development of one of the major MAME developers, Arbee. This version of MAME is designed to take advantage of SDL, or Simple DirectMedia Layer. SDL is something of a DirectX alternative that is cross-platform. Therefore, it is available on a variety of systems, but it lacks the rich feature set that DirectX can provide as a single platform solution. Nevertheless, it's still something of an experiment for Arbee, and should only be tried out by experts. You can find out more about it at the official SDLMAME forum.
[edit] AGEMAME
Formerlly known as MAGE, AGEMAME is a very unofficial build of MAME that seeks to provide emulation of more gambling associated video game hardware. It was decided some time in MAME's history that games which promoted gambling fell outside of the realm of games that MAME sought to preserve. Since code to enable such games was already contained in the MAME source code, when it was removed, a few programmers decided to take that code and turn it in to its own emulator that emulated nothing but gambling machines. While AGEMAME benefits from many of the technical updates that occur in MAME, it has a strictly unique set of supported games that will probably not be included in MAME, although a small number are included in MAME32Plus. You can find out more about it at the official AGEMAME site.
[edit] MiSFiTMAME
MiSFiTMAME is a version a mame (based on MAME0122 ) which contains games which are not included in the regular release of mame. Currently included are arcade rom hacks, gambling games and simulations. You can find more about it at the official MiSFiTMAME site.
[edit] MAME GP2X
The GP2X is a handheld gaming/multimedia system that became available for sale shortly after the PSP became available, and is the spiritual successor to the GP32. While programmers must take certain steps to maintain the PSP's ability to play unsigned (unofficial) software, the GP2X has been developed with the specific intention of playing home developed software. This means anyone with the ability to program the GP2X can run homemade software on it without making any modifications to the system. As a result, many talented programmers have flocked to the system, developing many "homebrew" games and applications, including emulators. Naturally, a version of MAME has appear on the GP2X, and it is quite remarkable. It can play over 1000 different games (due to the fact that the core of MAME GP2X and it's sibling, MAME4ALL, is based primarily around MAME version 0.35), and allows the game to presented on the screen in a horizontal presentation, or a vertical one by rotating the system ninety degrees counter-clockwise. For more information about MAME GP2X, check out the official MAME GP2X site.
[edit] MameOx
Not a front-end in an of itself, MameOx is Mame and a Mame front-end ported to the Xbox. Its functionality however, is limited by the low amount of RAM that the Xbox possesses. Newer titles, such as Garou Mark of the Wolves, may take 5-10 minutes to load, but then function fine afterwards, while other titles may be nigh-unplayable as a result.
