GXMame Documentation: Introduction

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## 1. Introduction

## 1.1 what is it ?

GXMame is a GTK+ based front end for X Mame (X version of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) It allows you to create a game list using your current executable of Mame, display specific games (neo-geo, CPS1/2, working, by version...), view the status of a game, change its preferences and launch it. The goal is to provide the same GUI than Mame32.

## 1.2 History of MAME and X-MAME

1996, December 24th Nicola Salmoria an Italian programmer began working on single hardware emulators, and decided to merge them into one single program.

1997 February 05th First release of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator or MAME a DOS based multi-game emulator open source and with a modular and portable driver oriented architecture allowing other people to help and contribute to this project.

April of 1997 Allard van der Bas, Dick the Ridder and Juan Antonio Martinez port this emulator to Unix platforms.

August of 1997 Mame32 was the first port of Mame to the Microsoft Windows platform. Adding the GUI and a considerable amount of new code to transition to Win32. The original Mame32 was authored by Chris Kirmse and later integrated Michael Soderstrom's Win32 command-line port of Mame. Mike Haaland joined the project and would wholly revamp the user interface to its current state. Mame32 releases followed the Mame DOS releases by a few days to a few weeks over the next four years.

October of 1998 XMess is merged with X-Mame.

December of 2001 I didn't like the various frontend for X-Mame, for some of them, I didn't like their look and feel, for other they didn't worked on my computer. I decided to began to write my own GUI that looked like Mame32 and with the goal of providing the same environment under Windows and Linux.

2002 May 07th First release of GXMame, very simple and basic but enough to select a game.

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