Just a few days ago Capcom Arcade Stadium, a collection of Capcom’s classic arcade games, came out for the Nintendo Switch. Shortly after release, attentive fans noticed that this was no ordinary in-house port, but in fact the collection was utilizing MAME for emulation!
If you have not heard of MAME before, the name stands for Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. It started off as an open-source project to emulate retro arcade-cabinets, later expanding to also vintage computers and calculators. MAME can be run on a variety of systems. Notably, the Internet Archive uses MAME to allow users to emulate video game prototypes from the comfort of their browser.
The MAME team was quick to send Capcom a thank you for the acknowledgement:
It truly is a heartwarming moment to see fans of these retro games coming together like this. On one side we see those who have grown up to work for a company who made games of their childhood, and on the other side we see those who have engineered solutions to make those beloved games playable, despite the obsoleteness of arcade cabinets. Let us hope this monumental moment will inspire the video game industry to take a less hostile stance towards emulation.
To learn more about MAME, check out their website or development repo on GitHub.
