MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve gaming history by preventing vintage games from being lost and forgotten
. MAME's purpose is to preserve decades of software history by documenting the hardware and how it functions. The fact that the software is usable serves primarily to validate the accuracy of the documentation
. MAME is not intended to be used as a tool for mass copyright infringement, and it is strongly against the authors' wishes to sell, advertise, or link to resources that provide illegal copies of ROM, CD, hard disk, or other media images
