MAME 0.265

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MAME 0.265

It’s time for our very special MAME 0.265 release! April has seen development across numerous areas. MAME now has support for touch screens on Linux and Windows 8 or later, opening up new possibilities for interactive artwork. If you have a suitable multi-touch screen, you can now play chords on systems with on-screen piano keyboards. Check the documentation for specifics on how touch differs from mouse control in menus. You’ll need to turn on the enable_touch option to use touch screen support on Linux.

A pair of 1970s portable computers from IBM are now emulated in MAME: the IBM 5100 and IBM 5110. Based on a heavily microcoded 16-bit architecture, these systems ran APL software by emulating a System/360 mainframe and BASIC software by emulating a System/3 business system (ancestors of IBM Z and IBM i, respectively). Prior to the introduction of the IBM 5100, APL was exclusive to large mainframe computers. A self-contained 25 kg system running APL as well as BASIC was revolutionary.

You can now plug a virtual Super Game Module into your emulated ColecoVision, adding more RAM and better sound output. Many titles from the vibrant ColecoVision homebrew development community require or make use of the Super Game Module. There’s also a big update to the ColecoVision software lists, including lots of homebrew software to try out. Other software list additions this month include one of the remaining Bandai RX-78 game cartridges, two more GameKing III games, a batch of MSX2 floppy disks, and the latest Apple II floppy disk dumps.

Of course, we haven’t stopped working on arcade game emulation. For the first time, you can play Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial Oshiete Your Heart games. These spin-offs of the popular dating simulation series used heart rate and galvanic skin resistance sensors and printed the results from your game. What appears to be an early version of Visco’s Kokontouzai Eto Monogatari drop puzzle game has been found and dumped. This version has much less content in the data ROM and a smaller program. Another rare find dumped this month is a production version of the CES Galaxy Games StarPak 4 multi-game cartridge.

Other improvements this month include serial console support for the KIM-1 hobbyist computer and an option to use one binary file per track when extracting CHD CD-ROM images. You can read about everything that happened in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.

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Bob Zed’s video highlighting some of the work in this release: