MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Running this program, in conjunction with a game's related data files (or ROMs) will more or less faithfully reproduce that game on your PC. In other words, with MAME you can actually play over 400 classic arcade video games on your PC. These are NOT recreations; these are the actual games that appeared in arcades in the 70's and 80's. The game's code is dumped into ROM files that MAME loads and replays on your computer. The purpose of MAME is to actually pretend to be the CPU and support chips that these games need to play. MAME is the "hardware" of the arcade game, the ROMs are the "software". It was designed to digitally preserve games and gameplay that would otherwise be forgotten in the modern day rat race of console games and computers. Back

 For more informations an english FAQ is available at http://www.davesclassics.com/mamefaq.htm.