HOWTO: Old Arcade Games On The Mac With MacMAME
Author: Rees | Date: February 23, 2008A lot of people seem to think that the Mac isn’t very good for games. Well, for the most part they’d probably be right (although the ability to run Windows these days kind of eliminates that problem), but in the case of emulators for all your old favourites, this couldn’t be further from the truth. There are emulators for lots of classic systems available for OS X, and today I’m going to show you how to install and configure MacMAME, the Mac version of everyone’s favourite old arcade emulator.
For the record, I’m using Leopard on an Intel Mac Mini, but this will work the same on any Mac running a version of OS X version 10.2 (Jaguar) or above.
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Step 1: Downloading MacMAME
Okay, so first up, we need to go to MacMAME.org and download the latest version. You should probably do this periodically anyway to keep your copy up-to-date, as they’re constantly adding bug fixes and compatibility for more old games. As with all Mac apps, this comes in the form of a self-mounting disk image (or “dmg”) file. Double click it to mount the image and show the contents - MacMAME itself, some kind of script (don’t touch this!), and a couple of readme files.
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Step 2: Installing MacMAME
Now we need to drag the MacMAME application into the Applications folder, as always. MacMAME doesn’t touch any system files so there’s no need for an admin password or an installer or any of that stuff - just drag it in to your Applications folder (in Finder), and double-click to run it.
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Step 3: Running MacMAME For The First Time
(The first time you run the app, if you’re using Leopard, you’ll get a security warning that this application was downloaded from the internet… Just click Open and carry on.)
On first run, you’ll need to agree to a copyright warning and then you will be presented with the screen you see above. This is MacMAME itself, and we’ll need to configure a few options first. These may vary depending on your configuration, but I’ll give you an example of how I have mine set up.
- Everything in “Video” I leave alone. You’ll only need to change these settings if you have an older Mac and you’re having trouble with framerates or other graphical glitches.
- The same goes for “Audio” - the defaults will set the sound to maximum quality. If you’re on an older system and you’re having trouble with the sound cutting out or slowing things down, try turning your sample rate down.
- The “Reports” section is for people who like to get into the technical details of their ROMs (or “games”), and don’t really concern the average user. They’re useful if you’re having a problem, though.
- Under “Misc” I like to leave the first two options selected, as they’ll only come into effect if they’re needed (very, very, rarely on a modern Mac). I also select “Don’t display game info” and “Don’t display ROM disclaimer”, as these are just messages which come up before you can play your game and don’t really contain any useful information for the average gamer.
And we’re set! Now all we need to do is install some actual games, known as “ROMs”. That’s because they’re an exact copy of the original arcade games’ ROM chips, which is how software was stored back in those days.
Legal Disclaimer: ROMs are traditionally a very shady area, as a lot of the old arcade game companies are either not around anymore, have been taken over by bigger companies, or no longer offer their games for sale. That means that there aren’t any legal ways to buy a lot of MAME ROMs, and so they need to be downloaded. There are some services selling MAME ROMs for your legal peace of mind - but the FBI aren’t going to bust your door down for playing Bubble Bobble, if you get what I mean.
If you do want to go down the “illegal” route, read up on BitTorrent, and do a search for MAME ROMs on a Torrent tracker site. I find that a combination of Azureus and Mininova works particularly well… 
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Step 4: Installing A ROM File
Now we need to import some of our lovely new ROM files into MacMAME. Fortunately this is a very easy process! First up, exit MacMAME by selecting “Quit” from the bottom right corner, and open up your Documents folder in the Finder. You’ll see that there’s a folder called “MacMAME User Data” in there, and within that there is a folder called ROMs. This is where your game files need to go. The files should be zip archives with all of the game data in them - you don’t need to unzip them, just dump the files straight into the folder.
If you have a large collection of ROMs and need to link this folder to somewhere else (like an external drive), it’s handy to know that MacMAME will also follow standard OS X aliases. Just delete the ROMs folder, right-click (or option-click) the folder containing your actual ROMs, and select “Make Alias”. Name the alias “ROMs” and drag it into your “MacMAME User Data” folder in place of the original. Trust me, it works!
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Step 5: ROM Files Are Recognised By MacMAME
Now we need to fire up MacMAME again, and it’ll import all of the ROM files we just added. In this case, there’s only 1, but it’ll work the same if there are 1, 100, or even 1000 files.
Depending on where the ROM came from, there may be screenshots and other graphics embedded in it. You can have a look through these things within MacMAME by selecting the game from the left-hand pane, and using the drop-down box on the right to cycle through the information. The important part though is actually launching the game, which we can do by clicking on “Play” in the bottom right-hand corner.
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Step 6: Your Game Is Ready!
Hooray! Now for a very quick crash course in MAME. As this is an emulator, the game itself thinks it is running on the old arcade cabinet, so it’ll need to be told that a coin has been inserted before it’ll do anything. Do this by pressing 5 (you might want to press it a few times, after all, these virtual coins are free!), then press 1 for a 1-player game or 2 for 2-player.
By default, MacMAME is configured to use the keyboard arrow keys, and Ctrl, Option, and Spacebar as fire buttons 1, 2, and 3, respectively. You can press Esc to pause your game - this will also bring up the standard MacMAME menu across the top of the screen which will allow you to change sound, video, and performance settings on-the-fly. Finally, you can press Tab for an advanced configuration menu, which I won’t go into here.
Hint: This is the first place you should look if you want to change your controls.
As always, for more information consult the readme file included with the original installation package, or read the (outdated but still useful) documentation on the MacMAME website.
Happy gaming!
thanks so much for the first article that has actually enabled me to instal the thing and find the games - all perfect!
however … the assigned controls are quite odd i find (all the movement controls are right handed and shooting is left - the opposite to arcade consoles). anyway, i find the input screens very slow and buggy - they take 10 secs to register a command and often wont accept the keys i want to assign. Any thoughts?
Also I would like to get a USB arcade style joystick & button box - I’ve seen some on Ebay - anyone have any particular thoughts about this? Do they work or will I buy it and not be able to assign the keys on the thing?
Thanks for any help in advance!
I use the standard keyboard controls or, more usually, my Xbox controller (works just fine with the Mac with these drivers). I’ll have a go at remapping the keys and get back to you - if the built-in interface doesn’t work, you can do it by editing the config files but I’m not sure exactly how.
MAME has built-in support for most of the standard USB arcade controllers, so if you get a better-known one you should be fine. It should also work with most standard gamepads and joysticks out there as long as they are supported by OS X.