14 DAY TRIAL // A new maintenance update of the open-source and multiplatform MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) computer emulator tool landed to kick off 2017, with even more improvements and support for lots of arcade games.
MAME 0.181 comes exactly one month after the release of the MAME 0.180 series, but it's not just a bugfix version addressing those nasty issues reported by users lately, and promises to be an extra-special build that adds emulated, real sound to the Teki Paki, Fire Shark, and Toaplan’s Vimana arcade games, as well as proper emulation of Tokio / Scramble Formation and M-chip emulation for Taito Extermination.
MAME 0.181 also brings MCU emulation for Sega's Golden Axe and Altered Beast titles, M-chip emulation of the Plump Pop and Dr. Toppel arcade games, and partial sound in World Beach Volley. Votrax SC-01 emulation is also possible based on reverse-engineering die photographs, promising great improvements to the Votrax speech synthesis emulation.
"Happy new year from the MAME team! To help you celebrate, we’re unwrapping an extra-special release this month, with enough improvements to put anyone in a good mood. The exciting news that’s got people talking is that protected microcontrollers (MCUs) from a number of games have been read out and hooked up in MAME," said the devs in the release announcement.
Gameplay experience improved for Archimedes-based arcade games
Other notable changes of the MAME 0.181 release include better gameplay experience for Archimedes-based arcade games thanks to the implementation of floppy drives and sound support in the Acorn Archimedes driver, and it looks like MAME’s discrete netlist emulation library received great improvements and there are now default NVRAM images for the US Aristocrat Mark 5 games.
On the game support front, MAME 0.181 lets users enjoy the Simpson Junior (a Korean bootleg of J. J. Squawkers), Eeekk!, Power Flipper Pinball Shooting (an updated version of Grand Cross), Miss World 2002 (an adult Qix game), a version of Momoko 120% that offers English text, Real Bout Fatal Fury, Flicky, Space Dungeon, Turbo Force, and alternate versions of The NewZealand Story.