MAME
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 4 of 20 emulators by recommenders
Free emulator that preserves arcade games and vintage hardware, and is used to reverse-engineer devices. Critics note replays only run on the version that recorded them.
Free emulator that preserves arcade games and vintage hardware, and is used to reverse-engineer devices. Critics note replays only run on the version that recorded them.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Covers arcade games and vintage hardware
“The MAME project doesn't just capture the arcade games everyone thinks about, but it captures things like the old Tiger LCD handhelds”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “It's Cool to Care” “You can emulate the Victor 9000 / Act Sirius 1 computer he talks about in the article with mame.”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Byte Interviews Chuck Peddle, Father of the MOS 6502 and Commodore PET (1982)” “just use a PC with the Duckstation, Mesen, Dolphin, MAME, Final Burn Neo, and PCSX2 emulators”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “You probably don't want to buy a retro console” - Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died”
- Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “Writing a "clear room" Z80 and Spectrum emulator with Claude Code”
Used for reverse-engineering arcade hardware
“It's generally accurate enough that MAME is regularly used to emulate vintage hardware when reverse-engineering devices.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Eight More 8-bit Era Microprocessors (2024)” “MAME is doing some amazing reverse engineering work on some more recent arcade boards”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Resident Evil 4 (GameCube) – complete byte-identical decompilation to C/C++” “Projects like MAME and RetroArch have existed for decades doing truly wonderful work.”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Anthropic's Claude AI blocks video game cloning and reverse-engineering” - Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “The West Forgot How to Make Things. Now It's Forgetting How to Code”
Accurate emulation of vintage systems
“It's generally accurate enough that MAME is regularly used to emulate vintage hardware when reverse-engineering devices.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Eight More 8-bit Era Microprocessors (2024)” “MAME have good emulation of Model 3 and 2, respectively, these days”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died” Free, open source, no lock-in
“Platform emulators can't be locked-in: MAME, Dolphin, RPCS3, Eden, etc offer user freedom”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc” “there are several correct open source emulators, eg MAME”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “Writing a "clear room" Z80 and Spectrum emulator with Claude Code”
Other emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 20 emulators, rankedWhat people said
21 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Projects like MAME and RetroArch have existed for decades doing truly wonderful work.”
“MAME is doing some amazing reverse engineering work on some more recent arcade boards”
“Platform emulators can't be locked-in: MAME, Dolphin, RPCS3, Eden, etc offer user freedom”
“Mame if you want to try it out!”
“I fondly remember loading up a janky version of MAME that only ran Pac-Man”
“It's generally accurate enough that MAME is regularly used to emulate vintage hardware when reverse-engineering devices.”
“Do you know MAME that is documenting the arcade consoles as code?”
“The MAME project doesn't just capture the arcade games everyone thinks about, but it captures things like the old Tiger LCD handhelds”
“You can emulate the Victor 9000 / Act Sirius 1 computer he talks about in the article with mame.”
“just use a PC with the Duckstation, Mesen, Dolphin, MAME, Final Burn Neo, and PCSX2 emulators”
“If you want to relive it then simh with mame might be an option.”
“there are several correct open source emulators, eg MAME”
“MAME have good emulation of Model 3 and 2, respectively, these days”
“Yes, it works, but it's too slow and too old to be usable.”
“For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros”
“MAME is such fun code to work with.”
“Game replays are only guaranteed to run under the version used to record them”
“I can't even get 0.283 CHDs downloaded in a reasonable time”
“Forget MAME; I'd love a forked project for this minus the shaders for old machines.”
“This also looks closer to the original with some shaders to add pincushion distortion and Gaussian scanlines.”
“I would avoid doing the PTY thing and instead do this (works on WSL if MAME is the windows version)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.