MAME, the popular emulator for retro arcade systems and computers, just released a new update. MAME 0.278 has a completely new sound system, several new emulation additions, and more.
MAME 0.278 also has several systems and clones now marked as working, including several JAKKS Pacific TV games, Mattel Hot Wheels with the steering wheel controller, the Roland TR–707 Rhythm Composer, a Japanese release of Tekken 3, and some Bomberman clones. If there was a game or system you couldn’t previously get running in MAME, now might be the time to try it again.
The team said in a news post, “There are some nice fixes for graphical issues in 3D systems, including Sega Model 2 and Taito Type Zero. But it doesn’t stop with 3D – the 2D classics are still getting love. Quite a few Konami games are looking nicer, including often-overlooked cocktail mode support, and all the missing graphics in the iconic IGS mahjong game Long Hu Bang are finally fixed.”
Computer emulation has been improved as well. The Victor 9000, an Intel 8088-based PC from the early 1980s, received overhauled floppy and SASI hard disk support. The POKEY serial communication used by Atari 8-bit computers is also now “implemented properly.”
MAME is still primarily built around arcade machine and game console emulation, but its list of supported computers is becoming more impressive with every release. If there’s a retro game or application that won’t work properly in other computer emulators like DOSBox or Mini vMac, you might be able to set it up in MAME.
You can download MAME for Windows from the project’s official website, which includes both a graphical interface version and a command-line version. The easiest way to install it on Mac is with Homebrew, using the unofficial formulae. The Linux version is available through the software repositories on most distributions, and it’s also available on Flathub.
Source: MAME
