MAME

MAME: Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator

MAME is an arcade machine emulator that recognizes more than 6,000 games ROM sets on your computer and when used with an arcade games data files will reproduce the game on a computer.

The program can emulate more than 3,000 arcade video games some dating back to the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s along with some more recent.

The program dumps the ROM images that are originally circuit broad ROM chips. Due to the fact that the program becomes the hardware for each game, it actually takes the place of the CPU and the chips creating a game that is identical to the original game found in arcades.

The goal of the software to help preserve the history of the video game industry and ensuring these classic games are not lost to the world. The way in which the software does this is by documenting the hardware and the way it functions.

In order to use the program you must have an Intel Celeron / AMD Duron 1000 MHz, 128 to 256 MB RAM, and enough hard drive space according to the ROM set, DirectX or VESA 2.0+ compatible graphics card and a sound card.