MAME .30 News
(12/27) Well, it's been quiet over the course of the last few days, not only on the MAME front, but with the EMU scene in general. Of course, there's still no sign of an impending MAME release, apparently still because a couple of the older games were discovered to have been broken in the final release candidate (Rastan is one of them, I believe.) All of the indications of the rumor mill say that in addition to the record number of new games and ROM sets that will be supported, equally impressive will be the addition of sound suppot to a lot of other games that really need it. As it has for the past couple of weeks, the rumor is that the new version is due for a release next Monday, but there's also a rumor floating around that it will be a couple more weeks after that... Who knows? I'm not sure that even Mirko knows anymore...

(12/23) As the MAME faithful patiently (?) await the release of MAME .30, the latest I've heard on MAME .30 is that there are currently 84(!) new games and variants, and that there are apparently still 2 of these games that are not working yet. MAME Parallel alpha 6b was released today, implementing full sample support in Phoenix, as well as implementing sound in the other Bubble Bobble vairants. In addition to this, I have also conducted an interview with Alex Judd of the MAME Parallel project. This interview can be found here. I just get the feeling that we'll be seeing MAME .30 sometime this week, possibly even tomorrow (of course, for three days now, we've been saying that...)

(12/19) Well, it's been a few days since I updated this page, and there's plenty of news to put on here! According to a source that would prefer to remain anonymous, MAME .30 is now in final release candidate, and should be ready for release within a week, probably by this weekend! Among some of the highlights we can expect in the new release are EMULATED voices in Star Wars, excellent sound in Gauntlet, and a rumor that the Nintendo games may also have sound! Some samples will be needed to fill in some spots where the sound emulation isn't complete, but nonetheless, a welcome addition. I have updated the list of games below. Judging from the dialogue on the MAME message boards, it is already sounding like there are two games that are the most anticipated additions: Mat Mania and Food Fight (with Food Fight being my choice for the best addition. I only ever played the Atari 7800 version of this one, but remember this one to be one of the most frantic and hilarious action games ever.) Again, if you're looking to stock up on ROMs for MAME .30, then most of them are to be found at Insert Coin.

Also, on the MAME front, the Alpha 6 release of MAME Parallel came out today, with support for parallel port joysticks, but more significantly, full Bubble Bobble sound via samples! The samples are excellent, and this game just didn't seem complete without sound! It's definitely worth the 2.2MB download! I have put up MAMEP alpha 6 and the Bubble Bobble samples for download, in case other servers have heavy traffic.

(12/8) Today, John Den Hartog of Atmospherical Heights added some more classics to the list of what will make the cut for MAME .30, including the long sought-after Mat Mania! In addition to Track & Field, Hyper Sports, Rock 'n Rope, and Circus Charlie have also made it in (no word about Juno First yet). Also, Colony 7, Make Trax (we've had the bootleg of this one for many versions as Crush Roller) and Astro Fighter. Also added is preliminary support for Quantum, the last and the rarest (as well as the best, according to many arcade afficianados) of the Atari vector games. I can imagine that this one, being 68000-based, will likely run slowly on all but high-end systems. Nonetheless, along with Major Havoc, means that all of Atari's vector games but TESB will be in MAME .30! Also, the speculation around the Internet is that MAME .30 will be released on the 15th. Seeing that I've already got this day off work, if this does hold true, I should be ready to have a full report up pretty dang fast.

(12/5) It has long been speculated that MAME .30 would be coming out on Christmas. The bad news is that this apparently isn't the case, but the good news is that we will most likely be seeing it sooner than that! At this point, the indications seem to point to next Monday (12/15) being the release date for MAME .30. Already the ROMs for the games already announced as being supported are showing up. In case you want to beat the rush when .30 does come out, you can get almost all of the supported ROMs at Insert Coin.

(11/26) OK, so I missed a few when I put up the last update. John den Hartog of Atmospherical Heights has posted on his site a more complete list of what to expect in MAME .30. Still no release date has been announced (I'm guessing the release date won't be announced until MAME .30 is released) but the speculation on Dave's board seems to indicate that we may be expecting .30 a little sooner than we may be thinking... See below for the most recent list of what's already in MAME .30 (despite the rumors for weeks to the contrary, The Empire Strikes Back and Pole Position will not be in MAME .30.)

(11/24) Tomorrow will be one month from the day when MAME .29 was released, and finally, the rumor mill has issued forth some news! No release date has been announced (although the sentements on the message board seem to indicate that people are dreaming of a MAME Christmas... Heck, with MAME, every day a new version is released seems like Christmas!) but now we have an idea for what to expect in MAME .30. First of all, it is rumored that .30 may be the release where MAME reaches 300 games emulated! According to Dave's Classics, Some of the new games being worked on include Frenzy (the sequel to Berzerk, running on very similar hardware), Bump 'n Jump (the driver for this one has existed for several versions, according to what I've heard), Track & Field (and hopefully the rest of the games in the Juno First emulator, which is currently working on R-Type II emulation) and several others such as Super Zaxxon, Food Fight, Traverse USA (also known as Zippy Race in some parts of the world) as well as several others as yet unknown to the MAMEing public (even though Dave seems to suggest that he knows... Enhancements to existing games will include a working Radarscope (which will require a new ROM set) and correct colors (finally!) for Vulgus and Gunsmoke. The Namco sound driver should be improved to make the Pacman games sound better, and games such as Three Stooges and Yie Ar Kung Fu will also have sound (hopefully, Berzerk and Frenzy will also have voice support via samples.) It sounds like there is plenty to look forwardto in MAME .30, presumably with more news to come!

(11/15) It's been quiet for the past few days on the MAME front (but there's nothing new in that regard.) The prospect of a Christmas release of MAME .30 is looking more and more likely. However, today JROK released his standalone Gaplus emulator, thus bringing yet another frequently requested game into emulation. The emulator is fast, with an assembly CPU core (just one more reason why this should be done for MAME) and complete from version 1! And since the last time JROK released an emulator, Dig Dug 2 appeared in MAME, it is a safe bet to assume that Gaplus is headed in the same direction.

(11/5) Still, an unearthly stillness reigns as far as MAME rumors go. Despite this, it recently slipped through the crasks that The Empire Strikes Back may find it's way into .30 (this makes sense, since ESB was a conversion kit for Star Wars machines, which means that at least in theory, this should be practically a drop-in job. Unfortunately, thanks to one of those Atari slapstics we all love so much, this may also take several versions to get working properly in MAME, as did Star Wars.) Unfortunately, the rumors don't get much better from there. It appears that we may not be able to expect MAME .30 before Christmas.

(11/1)-So far, the rumor mill has been almost nonexistent for MAME .30. A couple of possibilities that have been mentioned are Arkanoid and Karnov (neither of which sounds very likely at this point, since I haven't heard much. Stay tuned...