Download MAME 0.256

Version 0.256 of MAME has been released. MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and is a program that makes it possible to create a large amount of classic arcade games to play. MESS stands for Multi Emulator Super System and emulates a large number of old ones computers, such as the Commodore 64, Atari 2600, Gameboy and ZX Spectrum. The extensive list of changes is here here; the release notes can be found below.

MAME 0.256:

Yes, it’s already time for MAME 0.256, our midyear release! Several very rare and exciting things have turned up this month. Remember that rally racing game Top Driving that was added last month? This month, Mortal Race, an earlier, rarer game based on the same codebase has been found and dumped. The rare Gamate cartridge Mighty Boxer has finally been tracked down and dumped, which means all Gamate games known to have been released are accounted for. Taiko no Tatsujin RT: Nippon no Kokoro has been dumped, bringing us closer to completing the Namco System 10 collection. This offshoot of the popular series was designed for venues like hospitals and aged care facilities. It doesn’t accept coins, and it features easier songs. Four more versions of the prototype arcade game Turbo Sub have also been dumped and added.

For computers, there are lots of software list additions, particularly for MSX and ZX Spectrum. The Heathkit H89 now has enough functionality emulated to be marked working. You can now add ROM cards to your emulated Apple II computers, and FLEX now works on the TRS Color Computer family.

There are also lots of emulation improvements, including fixes for a few more Taito F3 graphical glitches, and better graphics layer mixing on Sharp X68000. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on support for wait states in the MOS 6502 and Hitachi H8 CPU families and there have been some changes to streamline the code.

As always, you can read all about everything that’s changed this month in the whatsnew.txt file.