MAME

After almost two months, we’re ready to release MAME 0.252, the first MAME release of 2023! As promised, there are some big updates, and some of them may require you to make a few adjustments to your MAME setups. In particular ... [More] , the modules MAME uses to handle input and output (e.g. video, sound and controllers) have been cleaned up, fixing lots of bugs and resource leaks. First of all, the BGFX video module has had a serious overhaul. Numerous issues affecting artwork rendering have been fixed, and toggling full-screen mode no longer crashes. MAME now saves many BGFX video settings to your CFG files for each emulated system. Game controller handling has also been overhauled. The downside is that you may need to reconfigure inputs for MAME. The upside is that things should work better out-of-the-box, with better default input assignments for more controllers: For Windows users, more XInput controllers are fully supported, including guitars, the DJ Hero turntable, and the Rock Band keyboard. For people using SDL builds, like our lovely macOS and Linux users, there’s a brand new joystick input module using the SDL game controller API. This gives consistent assignments for popular gamepads, and allows you to supply your own button and axis assignment schemes if the defaults don’t suit you. If want the old behaviour, it’s still available: just set the joystickprovider setting to sdljoy in your mame.ini file. For everyone, it should be easier to navigate MAME’s UI using a game controller, and MAME should choose better default game input assignments for more gamepads. Of course, we haven’t stopped working on emulation. Newly supported systems include the NABU PC (a Canadian 8-bit home computer and cable network terminal), the I-Star Chess King (a Taiwanese hand-held chess computer of dubious quality), Computer Othello (one of Nintendo’s earliest video games), YoYo Spell (a prototype of the arcade game Little Robin), the very rare English language version of SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter (dumped from the unit previously operated at Sega World Sydney), and Saturn: Space Fighter 3D (a Space Invaders variant from Data East). The MSX updates haven’t stopped: this release includes support for MSX-DOS2 and RAM expansion cartridges. The Hyper Neo Geo 64 has had some welcome fixes for both 2D and 3D graphics, and there should be more coming in the next release. At the other end of the spectrum, Apple II video has seen a number of improvements, and somewhere in between, S3 ViRGE reached a point where 256-colour mode works in Windows 98. That’s all we have time for here, but you can read about the whole two months’ worth of changes in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

Hi everyone! Hopefully you all had a great New Year if you celebrate that kind of thing, and hopefully you’ve had some time to enjoy MAME 0.251 as well! All of us at MAMEdev agree 2022 was a massive year for MAME development ... [More] , and we want to thank everyone who’s helped achieve that. MAME wouldn’t be what it is without all your contributions, whether it’s bug reports, pull requests, pre-release testing, helping out new users, or just letting us know that you appreciate our work. We’ve got some really big stuff in the pipeline, but it’s going to take a bit longer than usual to make sure it’s ready for prime time. As such, there won’t be a January MAME release this year, but we’re fairly confident we can have MAME 0.252 out by the end of February. If you want a taste of some of the things that are coming, you can get the very latest source code from our repository on GitHub and compile it by following the instructions on our documentation site. Once again, thanks for your continued support, and have an awesome 2023! [Less]

It looks like MAME 0.251 has made it out the door just in time for the end of 2022! December felt like a long month in MAME development, because so much happened! Nebula, an elusive DECO Cassette game, is now emulated. With ... [More] working steering controls, Magical Pumpkin: Puroland de Daibouken is now playable. Two members of the HP 9825 family from the 1970s have been added, and issues with keyboard input on localised versions of the HP 86B have been fixed. One of the most interesting systems added this month is the so-called Gerät 32620, make by the Institut für Kosmosforschung of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. This device was used to read coded messages to be broadcast via shortwave radio numbers stations for reception by undercover agents. If a human were to read the numbers, they could inadvertently disclose knowledge about the nature of the messages or the coding scheme in their speech patterns. This device gives a small glimpse into the shadowy world of espionage. Konami fans have a lot to be excited about. Firstly, two more hand-held LCD games have been added: Skate or Die, and Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Racing. Secondly, Windy Fairy has been making steady progress on the PowerPC-based arcade systems, with gun controls now working in Teraburst. Finally, various refinements and fixes to the CPU core for Konami’s custom 6809 processor have fixed a subtle parallax scrolling effect in the classic Padodius DA! Several systems have been fleshed out noticeably this month, including the NEC PC-8801mkII SR family of Japanese computers, the 3com Palm IIIc and Palm m100 PDAs, and the Yamaha DX100 synthesizer. Additionally, the NEC PC-88VA2 can now boot most software, and the work on the Palm systems has allowed the VTech IQ Unlimited to show signs of life. Quite a few systems have had pluggable controller support added this month, and support for some additional controllers has been added, including: Pluggable controller support for consoles and computers from Sega, NEC and Sharp. Sega Mega Drive mouse and 4-player adaptor support. Support for an ATmega-based paddle controller that works with export versions of the Sega Master System. NEC PC Engine mouse support. Support for the Dempa Micom Soft XE-1AP, the first analog gamepad. Can be used with compatible software for the Sega Mega Drive, NEC PC Engine, Sharp X68000 and FM Towns families. Of course, there are lots of other fixes and emulation improvements. The Apple IIgs has better ADB and real-time clock emulation. Sega’s Turbo and Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom have better controls, and the latter has had graphical priority issues fixed. The NES APU frame counter interrupt is now emulated, fixing issues with dozens of games. For developers, debugger command and expression history is now saved between sessions. As always, you can read about all the changes this month in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

November has passed us by, and it’s time for MAME 0.250, with a distinct Konami flavour! On the arcade side, the third and fourth player positions are supported in NBA Play By Play, and lots of regional variants have been added ... [More] for games running on Hornet hardware. We’ve also added support for a Konami hand-held LCD game, a Tiger LCD game based on a popular Konami franchise, and a prototype of an unreleased Game.com title in the same series. In addition to the Castlevania-themed LCD game, we’ve added licensed Tiger LCD games featuring Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Superman and Gargoyles characters, although the latter two are different skins for the same game. MSX computer emulation has had a major overhaul, with more supported systems and peripherals, including lots of cartridge port floppy drives. As a bonus, the Fujitsu FM Towns family gained support for more controllers, including the Marty Pad and the twin-stick Libble Rabble joypad. Hard disk issues affecting the FM Towns family were also tracked down and fixed. Atari 8-bit computer cartridge emulation has been modernised, and a few more unlicensed Game Boy cartridges are supported (you can now play some very famous unauthorised translations in MAME). The Quantel DPB-7000 is looking much better, with lots of progress on video output and peripheral support. Namco’s Alpine Surfer is now playable in MAME, and several graphical glitches that had plagued System 22 emulation have been banished. Support for Italian versions of Quizard has been added, and German versions of Quizard 3 and Quizard 4 Rainbow are now working, as well as a Czech version of Quizard 4 Rainbow. A missing line scroll effect in Seta’s Caliber 50 is now emulated, and some flickering graphics in Atari’s Return of the Jedi have been fixed. Other improvements include lots of fixes for invalid memory accesses, function keys for the Franklin Ace (Apple II clone) computers, proper DIP switch labels for Nintendo Vs. Mahjong, and much, much more. You can read about all the changes this month in the whatsnew.txt file, and you can download the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

After a whirlwind four weeks of development, MAME 0.249 is ready for release! Highlights this month include improved Atari 8-bit family emulation, a newer version of Kyukyoku Tiger with a two-player cooperative mode, another ... [More] version of The Crystal Maze promoted to working, and lots of prototype cartridge dumps for consoles including the Atari Lynx, Nintendo Game Boy and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. There are also eight e-kara cartridges, including a rare e-kara Web cartridge containing twelve youth-oriented songs. The modernisation of Apple II and Macintosh emulation is progressing steadily. This month, the last of the legacy floppy devices were phased out; various ADB emulation issues were resolved, making mouse/keyboard input more reliable; and the Apple IIe standard 80-column card now works properly. Brian Johnson has added some hard disk and sound cards for the Epson QX-10 and improved the keyboard support. Thanks to holub, MAME now emulates the ZX Evolution: BASECONF, another successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. As an added bonus, there’s also better I/O emulation for the ATM-Turbo family. All the little fixes and newly supported features this month add up to make this a must-have release. There’s better display emulation for the Victor 9000, data cassette support for the Casio RZ-1, proper emulation for the K051316 tile flip configuration flags (allowing an old hack to be removed), better video emulation in Jaleco’s Field Combat, fixes for sample playback on the Yamaha MU-5, and the German UI translation has been brought up to date. Of course, there’s far more than we have time to mention here, but you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, you can download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

It must be that time of month again – time for MAME 0.248! The Hartung Game Master was one of several hand-held game consoles positioned as low-cost alternatives to the Nintendo Game Boy. It was notable for its somewhat ... [More] unconventional choice of an NEC µPD78C11 CPU, its low screen resolution, and the poor quality of its software library. And now, for the first time, you can relive the disappointment of all eighteen games released for the system in emulation! Speaking of hand-held consoles, MAME now supports more Game Boy cartridges, including the Pocket Camera, the EEPROM and two-axis accelerometer used by Kirby Tilt ’n’ Tumble and Command Master, and several memory controllers used for unlicensed games and compilations. Still on the topic of Nintendo, MAME now emulates the earliest version of the RP2A03 audio processing unit, used on arcade boards as well as early production runs of the Famicom console. Several games play sounds incorrectly with the later RP2A03G used in the NES and the majority of Famicom consoles. Several issues with Famicom peripherals have been fixed, too. MAME’s Win32 debugger can now save your window arrangement, and there’s an option to use light text on a dark background. On recent versions of macOS, MAME’s Cocoa debugger now follows the system colour scheme. You can read about all the exciting development this month in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

With a change of season just around the corner, it’s time to unveil MAME 0.247! This is a huge release, and should have something for everyone! Newly added systems, and systems promoted to working, include: ... [More] The M&D Monon Color – a low-cost Chinese hand-held console. This required finding an exploit to extract the CPU’s internal ROM as audio. Said CPU is a high-performance derivative of Intel’s MCS-51 architecture. A prototype version of Tecmo’s Super Pinball Action that used separate screens for the simulated backglass and playfield. This version was presumably poorly received due to the need for an expensive dedicated cabinet. An initial driver for second-generation Sony NEWS workstations based on MIPS processors. This one has been a long time coming, with a lot of preparatory work, but it’s finally here! The Dracula and Game Pachinko – two Tsukuda hand-held games with vacuum fluorescent displays. Micom Mahjong – an example of an early CPU-based TV game, and possibly the first dedicated electronic mahjong system. Three new Casio synthesisers. Several Impera Magic Card games. This one’s also been a while coming, requiring several new devices to be emulated. A few Astro Corp. gambling games, including Dino Dino, Magic Bomb, Stone Age, and Zoo. Some previously missing NO CD versions of Capcom’s Red Earth. You’ll also find numerous bug fixes and emulation improvements across the board. There’s better support for low-cost Macintosh models based on the V8 chipset (including the LC, LC II, and Classic II). There are quite a few fixes for issues with Nintendo’s NES/Famicom-derived arcade systems, the VS. System and PlayChoice-10. Several ZX Spectrum derivatives from the Eastern Bloc are in better shape. The Atari POKEY sounds better. The PC Engine pachinko controller from Coconuts Japan is now supported. There’s also an important fix for extracting CHD CD-ROM images. The stream of prototype cartridges is still flowing, with a number of Atari 2600, Game Boy Color, NES, and Super NES additions landing this month. You’ll also find the Scholastic Microzine disks for Apple II, and several PC magazine cover disks. The new VGMPlay music rips include music from the recently-emulated Poly-Net Warriors arcade game. As always, you can read about everything that’s happened this month in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

Just in time for the end of July, MAME 0.246 makes its grand entrance. The biggest upheaval this month was the reorganisation of the source code to match the project structure. If you’re paying attention, you’ll see the change ... [More] on the system information screens. Apart from that, it should be transparent to users, while simplifying life for developers. Several audio issues have been fixed this month, including a big overhaul for Fairlight CMI IIx synthesiser channel card emulation, and DAC sound for JPM Lucky Casino fruit machines. The latest enhancements for the crt-geom and crt-geom-deluxe shaders have been belatedly integrated, and the Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese user interface translations are once again up-to-date and complete. Software list updates this month include more prototype console cartridges, half a dozen newly dumped e-kara cartridges, and quite a few metadata cleanups and corrections, as well as the usual batches of Apple II floppies, Commodore 64 tapes and vgmplay music rips. You can read all the details about development activity this month in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Until next time, happy MAMEing! Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

The highly-anticipated release of MAME 0.245 has finally arrived! As I’m sure many of you are already aware, we’ve added support for two elusive arcade games that didn’t see widespread release: Megumi Rescue and Marble ... [More] Madness II, and the Konami Polygonet system has finally come to life. But before we get to that, there are some changes to MAME’s user interface that you should be aware of. Input options have been moved off the main menu to a submenu of their own. Depending on the system, there can be quite a few of them, and they weren’t all grouped. There’s also a new option to see the input devices recognised by MAME, which should help with diagnosing issues. Megumi Rescue was exhibited at a trade show, but apparently never sold as an arcade game. A home system port was released, but only in Japan. The original arcade game uses a vertically-oriented monitor, and lacks the life bar system and vertical scrolling found in the home version. Despite the arcade version remaining unreleased, and the home version never being widespread, the game was widely copied for TV game systems. It’s nice to see the original preserved all these years later. Marble Madness II was considered a failure on location test. It demonstrates Atari’s complete failure to understand what Mark Cerny got right when he made the mid ’80s classic. A few examples survived in the hands of collectors, but the game was never seen widely. The Polygonet system was Konami’s first foray into 3D arcade games. It was quite apparent that their in-house system wasn’t able to compete toe-to-toe with offerings from Sega and Namco. Polygonet Commanders was added to MAME almost twenty years ago, and saw sporadic progress for a few years after that. Regular contributor Ryan Holtz has written an engaging blog post about his adventures bringing it up to a playable state this month. The two games haven’t been promoted to working yet as they haven’t been extensively tested, but we’d love it if you try them out and post your experiences, good or bad. We’ve got more complete emulation for three Mac NuBus video cards this month: the Apple Macintosh Display Card, the SuperMac Spectrum/8 Series III, and the SuperMac Spectrum PDQ. The Macintosh Display card, which MAME uses by default for the Mac II, now supports configuring the amount of video RAM installed, as well as a selection of monitors with correct resolutions, refresh rates and colour profiles. The SuperMac Spectrum/8 Series III supports on-screen resolutions up to 1024×768, and virtual desktop resolutions up to a massive 4096×1536 in Black & White mode. Virtual desktop panning and desktop zoom are hardware-accelerated. The Spectrum PDQ supports resolutions up to 1152×870, with hardware acceleration for things like moving windows in 256-colour modes. Please be aware that MAME currently has trouble with some combinations of Mac video cards – if you want to use multiple monitors on your emulated Mac, it’s best to stick with the Macintosh Display Card or Radius ColorBoard. If you’re you’re just looking to jump into Mac emulation, there’s some helpful information to get you started on our wiki. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Ignacio Prini and Manuel Gomez Amate, the ZX Spectrum cassette software list now includes the Spanish MicroHobby magazine cover tape and type-in program collection. A number of prototypes cartridges have been added for the Game Boy, Super NES and other consoles. Commodore 64 tapes, Apple II floppies, and game music rips in VGM format have each seen a batch of additions. Other highlights include: Support for Space Duel’s cocktail mode from Ian Eure. Proper inputs for Sidam’s Space Invaders hack Invasion from Janniz. Playable Classic Adders & Ladders gamblers from David “Haze” Haywood. A team effort to fix some performance bottlenecks, particularly affecting the IGS PolyGame Master. SD Card reader support for Acorn computers from Ramtop and our very own Nigel Barnes. Working light gun inputs for Rapid Fire (not that anyone wants to play it). Fixes for more glitches in the ZX Spectrum family from holub. Major improvements to several IGS games from Luca Elia. Hitting GitHub pull request number #10000 – congratulations, holub. As always, there’s far more in this release than we can fit on the front page, so go and read about it in the whatsnew.txt file, or grab a source or 64-bit Windows binary package from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]

Given how many exciting updates have gone into MAME 0.244, it’s hard to believe it’s only been a month since the last release! Only one disk has been added to the Apple II software lists, but it comes with a very engaging story ... [More] involving physically damaged media and manual data repairs. The Zilog Z80 CPU has had a bit of an overhaul this month, allowing more accurate memory access timings for the ZX Spectrum family. This fixes a lot of broken visual effects and other glitches. The HP 9000/300 series computers have had the necessary floppy disk image formats hooked up, allowing them to mount floppy disks from their software list. MAME’s driver for JPM’s first CPU-based fruit machine platform, dating all the way back to the late 1970s, has been almost completely rewritten this month. Four games are now playable, albeit with minimal internal artwork. Colour video output has been implemented for Zilec’s Vortex. Don’t get too excited, though – while the approach they used to produce colourful graphics without adding any video memory is technically interesting, the results are very ugly and don’t make a bad game any better. Other improvements in arcade emulation include: Score display and diorama control outputs have been hooked up for Bubble Trouble (this means you’ll need updated artwork for Golly! Ghost! as well). Layer offsets in Slap Fight and Alcon should be fixed, and cocktail mode now works for the original sets. The communication board for Super Street Fighter II: The Tournament Battle is now supported, allowing it to actually run in eight-player tournament mode. SDL builds (the default for Linux and macOS) now detect game controller reconnection. Note that due to limitations of SDL itself, MAME may confuse similar controllers, potentially causing issues if multiple controllers are disconnected at the same time. Issues using MIDI input or output with 64-bit Windows builds should be fixed. You can read about everything else that’s happened in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry » [Less]