# Mame32 Overview & History

Mame32 is an emulator. Simply put, it allows a PC to mimic the internal hardware of a large number of stand-alone arcade machines from 1975 to 2003+. Combined with the original ROMs from these arcade machines, Mame32 will display and play the games on a PC. The software thinks it’s still running on its original box. Mame32 is the GUI version of Mame™, the M.ultiple A.rcade M.achine E.mulator. It has an attractive, elegant, graphical interface which allows the user to forego having to type command line parameters, although it can still be passed these arguments, for example. ‘Mame32.exe dkong -r 1024x768x32 -refresh 85 -effect sharp’. For many, it’s easier to click the icon of the game.

1997.02.05 - In the beginning, Italian programmer and arcade preservationist, Nicola Salmoria, combined his individual game emulators into the DOS based multi-game emulator, Mame. It was released Feb. 05, 1997. Since the source was also released, numerous people contributed new drivers to add support for more and more games. The number of contributors grew into the hundreds and has continued to increase over the years.

1997.08 - Mame32 was the first port of Mame to the Microsoft Windows platform. It originally came out in August of 1997, adding the GUI and a considerable amount of new code to transition to Win32. The original Mame32 was authored by Chris Kirmse and later integrated Michael Soderstrom's Win32 command-line port of Mame. Michael then coordinated, maintained the source, and produced the releases. Mike Haaland and John Hardy IV joined the project in late 1997. Mike would wholly revamp the user interface to its current state and continue collaborating on core development. John provided testing, WIP updates, artwork, and served as the external point of contact for the team. Mame32 releases followed the Mame DOS releases by a few days to a few weeks over the next four years.

2001.05.24 - With the inexorable phasing out of DOS, the authors of the DOS based Mame ported it to the Microsoft Windows platform as a command line application. Evolutionally similar to MameDOS, it is run by typing in arguments from a command prompt, and has no GUI. [many people try to double click it, which opens up the command line window briefly, displays a message, then closes]. Its original name was Mame[w], it is now again known simply as Mame.

2001.07.24 - Mame32 was re-positioned, with the familiar GUI grafted onto the new Mame Windows engine. Mame32 is currently maintained by Kirmse, Haaland, and Hardy and is now released by John IV shortly after Mame on the Mame32QA site.

2006-08-01 02:38 PM -0700 / john iv