Unless you've had your head in a hole for the past couple years, you probably know about the new genre of computer gaming that's swept the community: Emulation.

Lately people have been 'bringing back the classics' - The Star Wars trilogy was re-released, cable TV channels dedicated to preserving classic television, classic game libraries like Namco Museum, and a general fascination with things from times past. Emulation preserves software that is long forgotten; namely old arcade games. You just can't find the original arcade games around anymore, and if you do it's likely they're in a musem and not playable. So, thanks to dozens of talented and generous programmers here and there on the internet, we have programs that emulate the full experience of these golden oldies.

Emulation is not all that new; however emulation for gaming purposes is. Previously, emulation was for debugging and other more bland needs. Emulation for the sole purpose of playing old arcade games was introduced only a few years ago, when a man named Dave Spicer wrote a program called Sparcade!. Sparcade! emulated about a dozen original arcade games, some with sound. You were actually able to play the game that was being emulated as if you were playing the original arcade machine. Inspired by the possibilities, the classic gaming community has started programming dozens of emulators, some for single arcade games, and some, like MAME, supporting over 1000 games.

[more to come later]
For the moment, check out the Links page, the Get Started page, or the Namco Museum page to find other ways to play your favorite classic game.

However, all the data in the ROMs for these arcade machines is still copyrighted by the respective companies who produced the games. This means that unless you own the actual arcade machine itself (or the original ROM chips) you cannot use them in the emulator. For this reason, MAME is not distributed with any ROM files. This is rather disappointing, but perhaps in the future these ROMs will run out of copyright, or the arcade companies will allow the use of them in MAME and we can all play. Please don't ask me for ROM images. If you're determined enough to find ROM images to play in the emulator, I'm sure nothing can stop you; I just can't help you.:)