games Mame is an arcade machine emulator. Started in 1997 by Nicola Salmoria, mame started out as a series of emulators for individual games. This series of emulators was combined into a simgle multi-game emulator. This is the current form of mame; no longer a one-man show, there are over 100 contributors to the project. Mame was created by Nicola Salmoria. Mess is just like mame---a virtual machine emulator, only it doesn't emulate arcade machines but rather computers and consoles. Xmame/xmess are the Unix/X11 ports of the mame and mess projects. It makes mame/mess available on *ix machines using the X11R6 X-Window System (and SVGAlib/ggi/XF86-DGA/OpenGL/SDL too). Mame was orginally ported by Allard Van Der Bas, Dick the Ridder, Juan Antonio Martinez, and Hans de Goede. Xmame/xmess is currently maintained by Lawrence Gold. Xmame/xmess is based on the mame/mess source code. Due to technical reasons beyond the scope of this document, the mame/mess source may not compile under Unix. That's why the xmame/xmess project exists. Each time mame/mess is updated, the code is tested (and patched if needed) under Unix. This way xmame/xmess releases are always the same as their mame counterparts. There are no plans for the independent development of xmame/xmess.