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Play classic games right on your Mac with this handy one-click emulator

Play classic games right on your Mac with this handy one-click emulator

Vote: (11 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Mameosx

Version: 0.124

Works under: Mac

Vote:

Program license

(11 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

Mameosx

0.124

Works under:

Mac

Pros

  • Native port
  • Delivers a true MAME experience
  • Many games available

Cons

  • Fewer games supported

MAME OS X is a Mac port of the popular emulator for Windows.

MAME is an acronym that stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The MAME program is freeware and open-source. The goal of the program is to emulate the hardware environments that allowed classic arcade games to run as well as provide a convenient user interface. The games themselves are ROM images, which contains the data that was once stored on a ROM chip.

MAME OS X is a native port of MAME, which is a Windows application, for the Mac operating system. The goal here is to recreate the MAME experience in a way that is native to Mac. The native aspect is important if ROM support parity is ever to be achieved with the original MAME program.

One of the most exciting aspects of MAME and thus MAME OS X is that there are thousands perhaps tens of thousands of classic arcade video games available. These are often referred to as ROMs, and there are many sites online where you can download these ROMs and add them to your collection. Peer-to-peer sharing is also a popular way to download and share these games.

ROMs are in somewhat of a legal gray area, and the facts for you will depend on your local jurisdiction. In theory, you should only have a ROM image if you own the ROM chip. In practice, many of these games have been abandoned and their copyrights are no longer challenged. This is not meant as legal advice. We just want to give you awareness of this gray area that exists.

In terms of the user interface, the developers have done a great job of adapting MAME for Windows to the Mac aesthetic. It looks the same but different. A collapsible side window provides access to your game library, which you can filter by Good and Favorites. The main window contains the game and can be resized or even full-screened. In addition to keyboard and mouse as well as similar input devices, controllers are supported but must be configured through the OS to work properly in MAME OS X.

MAME continues to be a work in progress. There are some games that still do not load, and some that perhaps never will. MAME OS X is a work in progress too. It is not as far along as the original. It is also worth noting that the last update was some years ago, and no has picked up the torch. There are ROMs that work perfectly on MAME that will not load or have issues on MAME OS X. The community does maintain a list of working titles that is specific to MAME OS X, but we found that this list was often inaccurate, and we had trouble accessing it through the MAME OS X program itself.

Pros

  • Native port
  • Delivers a true MAME experience
  • Many games available

Cons

  • Fewer games supported