MAME AND GAME

It would be remiss of us not to mention the colossus that is MAME—the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The hardware of older arcade machines could vary wildly between games, so an emulator was needed that covered all these different machines.

MAME differs from other emulators in that it uses a modular approach, where individual cores are installed that power and control different machines. This approach is an effective new path that may prove more reliable than constantly writing new emulators with different interfaces.

MAME has been around since the 1990s, and is command-line driven, so you’ll want a GUI front end for it; MESS has been on the scene for ages, but RetroArch is now the most popular.

RetroArch is probably in your Linux distro’s repository, but if not, check the instructions at www.retroarch.com for multiple installer options. To save time and avoid frustration, choose the Development version over Stable. If you choose the Stable version, you may not have the Core Updater function, which is where you can choose from a large list of regularly updated emulation cores.

However, not everyone is a fan of RetroArch—it can require a lot of tinkering, and may mess with your control layouts. If you fancy an alternative, try Attract-Mode ( http:// attractmode.org) — it’s a newer front end that is still open source, but has a strong community behind it, and support for scripting.