MAMEdev.org | Home of The MAME Project
News
" rel="next" href="/?p=563" class="btn btn-success btn-sm">Older >
MAME 0.288
29 May 2026
We’re proud to present MAME 0.288 today. We’ve already mentioned it<br>before, but in case you forgot, we’ve migrated to C++20 and raised the<br>requirements for development tools and operating systems. Windows users<br>will now need an up-to-date version of Windows 10 or later. We’ve also<br>switched to compiling our Windows x64 releases with clang, using the<br>UCRT and libc++ libraries. This makes our Windows x64 and Arm64<br>releases more consistent. One other benefit of the updated runtime<br>libraries we’re now using is that whatever was causing MAME for Windows<br>Arm64 to be almost unusably slow with the debugger active is fixed.
There are some noticeable changes to MAME’s user interface in this<br>release, too. The most significant is that many options are shown in a<br>de-emphasised colour if they currently have default or inherited values.<br>This is the opposite of the previous behaviour for the input<br>assignments menus. The menus for controlling mounted media behave a<br>little differently, but hopefully more intuitively. There are a couple<br>of additional settings for how menus are handled (find them in the<br>Miscellaneous Options menu or change them in ui.ini). There’s<br>also a slight change to how MAME loads settings from INI files, but<br>most users shouldn’t notice the difference.
It’s been two months since our last release, so a lot has changed.<br>Rare Bubble System versions of Konami’s Galactic Warriors and RF2 -<br>Red Fighter have been dumped. MAME now supports the linked play<br>deathmatch mode in Taito’s Gunbuster over a network. The Sony SMC-777<br>home computer can run a reasonable selection of software from disk. If<br>you like classic synthesisers, you’ll be thrilled to know that the<br>Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 is now working.
It’s been a big two months for computer emulation. The Epson QX-10,<br>HP-98x6 and GRiD Compass have additional media options available. There<br>have been a lot of small updates for the Spectrum Next that all add up.<br>Several issues affecting the Apple II family, and particularly some of<br>the clones, have been fixed. The Research Machines 380Z now supports<br>stepping one instruction at a time in its debugger. Canon X-07 sound<br>output now works with more software. And speaking of sound, the sound<br>chips used in Macintosh models from the Macintosh II onwards should be<br>working better than ever before.
To find out about everything else we’ve been working on (including<br>some rare arcade games that are now playable), read on, and make sure<br>you check out the whatsnew.txt<br>file. As always, the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages<br>are linked from our<br>download page.
MAME Testers bugs fixed
02085: [Crash/Freeze] (namco/namcos21.cpp) solvalou: The emulator crashes during the first level. (hap)
05446: [Gameplay] (pacman/jrpacman.cpp) mschamp, mschamps: The timer setting and player speed control do not work. (Liron486)
06084: [Crash/Freeze] (commodore/plus4.cpp) c264 / plus4 / c16 and clones: Emulated system freezes loading tapes. (Curt Coder)
06302: [Crash/Freeze] (namco/namcos21.cpp) cybsled: The emulator crashes after completing round 3. (hap)
07311: [Flip Screen/Cocktail] (taito/marinedt.cpp) marinedt: The screen image is inverted in upright cabinet mode. (Angelo Salese)
08005: [Graphics] (namco/namcos2.cpp) finalap2j: Text is not displayed correctly. (Devin Acker)
08087: [Sound] (namco/namcos21.cpp) winrun: The engine sound pitch is too high. (hap)
08796: [Media Support] (sord/m5.cpp) m5, m5p: Cartridge-based software that requires 36K RAM does not work. (dlabi)
09302: [Sound] (ausnz/mbee.cpp) mbeepp, mbee256, mbee128p: The SN76489 emits a continuous tone. (hap)
09408: [Sound] (cave/cv1k.cpp) pinkswts: Noise is audible at the beginning of some speech samples. (hap)
09416: [Sound] (universal/cosmic.cpp) nomnlnd and clones: The music pitch is too low and the tempo is too slow. (hap)
09419: [Crash/Freeze] (apollo/apollo.cpp) dn3000, dn3500, dn5500 and all clones: The emulator crashes on start. (hap)
09421: [Documentation] (namco/namcos1.cpp) splatter and clones: The game title is usually written as a single word. (125scratch)
09422: [Documentation] (namco/rallyx.cpp) rallyx and clones, nrallyx, nrallyxb: The game title is hyphenated. (125scratch)
09429: [Crash/Freeze] (yamaha/ympsr150.cpp) psr75, psr76, psr78, pss11, pss12, pss6: The emulator is unresponsive. (O. Galibert)
09430: [Crash/Freeze] (namco/namcos86.cpp) rthunder0: The emulated game resets during attract mode. (hap)
09431: [Crash/Freeze] (dataeast/liberate.cpp) prosporta: The emulated game crashes during attract mode. (hap)
09432: [Crash/Freeze] (thomson/thomson.cpp) mo5nr: The system fails to boot. (AJR)
09439: [Crash/Freeze] (astrocorp/astrcorp.cpp) skilldrp, skilldrp_g10s, luckycoin: The program is not decrypted. (Ivan Vangelista)
09441: [Gameplay] (sega/segas32.cpp) kokoroj, kokoroja: Playing a game...