"Happy 25th anniversary, MAME!"

[youxia]

Indeed... And thanks for all the fish roms!

 

 

[Zoyous]

It's a beautiful thing! I think it was probably about '98 or '99 when I first found out about MAME, and its brought me years of fun and learning. I can't thank all the developers enough so I'll just go all caps for a moment: THANK YOU!!!

[Steven Pendleton]

lol that means that MAME and DoDonPachi both were released on the same day, as DoDonPachi was also released on Feb. 5, 1997.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

MAME - the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator turned 25 years old. In this episode we take a look at the early days and its importance to emulation.

 

 

?️

Just seen this video posted and had to share, I still to this day fire up MAME and randomly pick games, some classics, some unknown, some gems and sure, some stinkers but man, just having all those Arcade games at your fingertips is pretty sweet ! - Rob. ?

Edited February 7, 2022 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[Keatah]

Without going on an evangelistic rant about emulation overall, I can tell you all that MAME is important in many different ways to many different folks.

 

It is/was a way to enjoy arcade games we thought we'd never play again. After all, what's a kid to think when the local establishments kept closing down? Making matters worse, the city council didn't like videogames - pretty much ensuring that new arcades wouldn't be constructed. Not until 2008'ish. Then it was all D&B stuff.

 

Seeing these games become available for play again was nothing short of marvelous. Bonus points 'cause they could be played in the comfort of home without hour-long treks in inclement weather to seedy arcades. Nothing sucked harder than going to an arcade to play a specific game only to find it not there anymore or getting thrown out by security. Boss points for adding new games with every version. Level-up for the accuracy, the sound, the graphics.

[Cynicaster]

On 2/7/2022 at 3:52 PM, OldSchoolRetroGamer said:

I still to this day fire up MAME and randomly pick games, some classics, some unknown, some gems and sure, some stinkers but man, just having all those Arcade games at your fingertips is pretty sweet ! - Rob. ?

 

 

Agreed - it never gets old, does it?  

 

I remember around this time of year in 2011 I was toiling away in my freezing cold garage building my MAME cabinet.  I was between marriages and had lots of time, ha.  

 

And damn, did that project ever take a lot of time.  Countless hours.  I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "I hope I'm not spending all these hours on this project only to play it for a few weeks and get bored of it."

 

As it turns out, that concern was unfounded.  Here we are, 11 years later and that cabinet has moved with me to 2 other homes and continues to get played at least a few times a week.  To this day, it still feels like a bottomless pit of potential for discovery, as cheesy as that sounds.  And it's all made possible by the MAME project.  Seriously, those guys deserve the Nobel Prize.  

[DanBoris]

I was a member of the MAME dev team for a couple years back in the 90's working on games like Cloak and Dagger, I-Robot, Return of the Jedi, Starfire and a few others. It still doesn't register with me that I worked on a piece of software that is used by so many people. I remember the days before I joined the team when I would anxiously await each new release to see what new games were added. For a lot of people, myself included, this was the first time getting to play these games again since they had played them in the arcades. Once I joined the team I was privy to what was coming in each release but had to keep it a secret. 

[zzip]

I remember using the single-game Mame precursor emulators too.   Then suddenly they all got folded into Mame, and they added what seemed like 10,000 new games every week since then, and required you to use entirely new romsets every third week  ?

 

I was always one of the most ambitious open source projects ever and glad to see it still going strong!

[Keatah]

I filed a bug report some 12 years ago. So I'm damned proud to say I had a hand in the development of MAME. Woot!

Edited February 19, 2022 by Keatah

[retrorussell]

I remember when it was brand new.  I hated using DOS commands.  Thank God for front ends!

[Stiletto]

On 2/18/2022 at 11:58 AM, DanBoris said:

I was a member of the MAME dev team for a couple years back in the 90's working on games like Cloak and Dagger, I-Robot, Return of the Jedi, Starfire and a few others. It still doesn't register with me that I worked on a piece of software that is used by so many people. I remember the days before I joined the team when I would anxiously await each new release to see what new games were added. For a lot of people, myself included, this was the first time getting to play these games again since they had played them in the arcades. Once I joined the team I was privy to what was coming in each release but had to keep it a secret. 

DAN!

You are well remembered here, sir! Not just your emulation achievements, but I obsessed over your "How to write a MAME Driver" tutorials back in the day
(now at: https://atarihq.com/danb/emulation.shtml#emuarticles , which are woefully outdated now, and the best replacement MAMEdev has so far is https://docs.mamedev.org and a few odd wiki articles.)

The next time I am out your way (VCF East 2022 in Wall, NJ? that'd be a first time for me, provided I can make it) we should meet up! I'm still in Central PA.

[DanBoris]

23 hours ago, Stiletto said:

DAN!

You are well remembered here, sir! Not just your emulation achievements, but I obsessed over your "How to write a MAME Driver" tutorials back in the day
(now at: https://atarihq.com/danb/emulation.shtml#emuarticles , which are woefully outdated now, and the best replacement MAMEdev has so far is https://docs.mamedev.org and a few odd wiki articles.)

The next time I am out your way (VCF East 2022 in Wall, NJ? that'd be a first time for me, provided I can make it) we should meet up! I'm still in Central PA.

 

I will probably be at VCF East this year, would be cool to meet. I was thinking the other day it would be cool to do a MAMEdev "reunion". I have never met anyone else from the dev team in person.