MAME is a program that can emulate a large number of arcade machines.

Arcade rooms lived their golden age in the early and mid-90s. In this type of room, there was all kind of video games: platforms, fighting, shoot 'em ups, adventures, and more. All these games were developed for work on a particular machine, and even though there were versions for home consoles, those versions did not have the graphic/sound quality of the original arcade games.
Unlike video game consoles, arcade games are difficult to find and get to work, as we need to have all the arcade boards needed to run the games.

MAME comes as an initiative to preserve arcade games in digital format. The name of the program reflects its purpose: Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Thanks to this software, we can emulate the games of the main arcade developers such as Capcom, Konami, Sega, Atari, Acclaim, Atlus, Irem, and more.

We must have the video game ROMs we will emulate to start using the program. We must copy ROM files into the “roms/” directory within the main MAME. The program displays a message and exits if we do not copy any ROM to that directory.
When the program starts, it displays a list of the games we have copied into the “roms/” folder. To start playing, we must select a game and press “Enter.”

Emulator's key configuration can be on the “ Configure General Inputs ” option in the main menu. Here we can configure the keys that will be used on games. In addition, we can configure other keys to save and load a game, take a screenshot, or capture a video.

Once we're playing the game, pressing the “ Tab ” key, we will access to game's menu with several options. In these options, we can configure the keys that will be used in the game so that the game will be controlled using a set of keys different from the general keys. We can also see information about the game: name, year of development, developer company, CPU, sound, resolution, and screen refresh rate.

We must be aware that these games worked with credits. In the original arcade machines, each credit was equal to one coin. To start the game, we must insert credits; to do this, press the “5” key on the keyboard. Then, we need to select the players that will play the game. Press the “1” key to start playing with player 1, and press the “2” key to start playing with player 2.

The emulator launched using the command line, which accepts many parameters that can be passed to the executable. These parameters allow you to silence the sound, change the screen resolution, create a list of games, check the ROMs, etc. More information about arguments in the command line can be found at “mame_directory\docs\config.txt”.

MAME configuration is extensive, so there are front-ends and GUIs, which are programs that allow configuring the emulator using a graphical interface. That is why MAME is not usually used alone; if not, it's combined with a GUI or front-end.

This emulator will undoubtedly bring hours of fun and back some good childhood memories for those who lived in the golden age of arcade rooms.