Software update: MAME 0.249

Version 0.249 of MAME has been released. MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and is a program that makes it possible to create a large amount of classic arcade games to play. MESS stands for Multi Emulator Super System and emulates a large number of old ones computers, such as the Commodore 64, Atari 2600, Gameboy and ZX Spectrum. The extensive list of changes is available here; the release notes can be found below.

MAME 0.249:

After a whirlwind four weeks of development, MAME 0.249 is ready for release! Highlights this month include improved Atari 8-bit family emulation, a newer version of Kyukyoku Tiger with a two-player cooperative mode, another version of The Crystal Maze promoted to working, and lots of prototype cartridge dumps for consoles including the Atari Lynx, Nintendo Game Boy and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. There are also eight e-kara cartridges, including a rare e-kara Web cartridge containing twelve youth-oriented songs.

The modernization of Apple II and Macintosh emulation is progressing steadily. This month, the last of the legacy floppy devices were phased out; various ADB emulation issues were resolved, making mouse/keyboard input more reliable; and the Apple IIe standard 80-column card now works properly. Brian Johnson has added some hard disk and sound cards for the Epson QX-10 and improved the keyboard support. Thanks to holub, MAME now emulates the ZX Evolution: BASECONF, another successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. As an added bonus, there’s also better I/O emulation for the ATM-Turbo family.

All the little fixes and newly supported features this month add up to make this a must-have release. There’s better display emulation for the Victor 9000, data cassette support for the Casio RZ-1, proper emulation for the K051316 tile flip configuration flags (allowing an old hack to be removed), better video emulation in Jaleco’s Field Combat, fixes for sample playback on the Yamaha MU-5, and the German UI translation has been brought up to date.

You can read all the details about development activity this month in the whatsnew.txt file.