With the MAME emulator for PC it is possible to play the original versions of the old Arcade Coin-ops Arcade games
Many years ago it was not as easy to play video games as it is today. You had to have a lot of coins and go to the games rooms or bars while queuing to play your favorite video game.
Video games in arcades were almost all Arcade genre and there wasn’t much to figure out or think about: you picked up the joystick or pressed buttons, guided the character or a spaceship, and continued through the footage killing enemies.
Today these old games which marked the youth of those who are now 40 or 50 years old can be played on the PC via the MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), a free and open-source program. which lets you emulate arcade cabinets, so you can play those old arcade titles and savor what it was like to game in the 80s.
How to download MAME
MAME, an easy-to-use PC emulator, which allows you to play always beautiful and unforgettable retro video games like Street Fighter 2, Final Fight, Shinobi, Toky, Samurai Shodown, Bubble Bobble, Fatal Fury, Pang, Gals Panic, Golden Axe, R-Type, Mortal Kombat, Puzzle Bubble and many more. To run these games, you need to download the ROMs, i.e. the digital file that contains the entire game (usually a few megabytes). These ROMs can be found on Emule or on the Torrent network but also by launching a targeted search on DuckDuckGo (the alternative search engine.
MAME can be downloaded from the official website . Once the site is open, click directly on the link mameXXXX_64bit.exeto download the 64-bit version of the program.
After downloading the self-extracting file, click on the file and extract all the contents of the archive into a folder of your choice, taking care to choose a new folder (called for example MAME ). At the end of the extraction go to the folder and launch the executable mame.exe.
The interface does not tell us anything, but from there it is possible to start new games by downloading the ROMs and placing them in the correct folder, as we will see in the next chapter.
How to download new games for MAME
The mentioned ROMs can be downloaded from eMule or BitTorrent but we can also find the ROMs available for download using DuckDuckGo like an anonymous search engine .
After downloading a ROM (in .zip format), simply copy it to the Roma folder without unpacking it; this folder is present in the directory where the MAME emulator was extracted and is used to store all compatible files Games.
After copying the game, click the mame.exe file to start playing. On startup, in the first startup screen, there is the list of games that have been copied to the rom folderfrom which you can choose one and press enter to play.
Some free and open source games that we can download for free (without infringing copyrights) are available at MAME’s website .
How to play on MAME
the ROMs downloaded from the Internet are faithful reproductions of arcade game rooms so at first the hardware emulator shows that the video game is on and then, inside the game, we will end up with the typical writing” Insert part “.
Obviously, we don’t need to insert any coins into the PC! The “virtual” currency is inserted with the F5 key single player mode starts with key 1, CTRL on the left is the main button, Alt is the second and so on then the bar and the letters ZXCV, the keyboard arrows move the player and ESC quits the game.
All the keys can be remapped and changed in mame’s initial configuration menu but, at first, you need to familiarize yourself a bit, try out the different keys by seeing what they do and follow the instructions here .
You can also use a gamepad or joystick to play more comfortably.
If, when starting MAME, the lower part of the prompt is red when a game is highlighted, chances are the ROM is not working; if it’s green, it should go instead. Some games start in a flash, others load a little longer because they require hardware emulation but, in general, always within a reasonable time.
The screen, sometimes, may flicker a bit with the appearance of strange messages but there is nothing to worry about, after a while they disappear, just wait for the configuration to finish and go to the game screen initial.
conclusion
MAME is an excellent program that allows you to savor the first real video games, and rediscover the taste of yesteryear: you can not imagine the huge amount of coins thrown in the cabinets to be able to score a new record or to be able to complete a particular game. hard!
Some old arcade games are fun because they are fast and straightforward, simple yet more engaging than some of today’s complicated and hard to understand games. Those who love retro games and the 80s in particular must have the MAME installed on their computer, in order to be able to enjoy the games that marked more than one generation.
