ARAnyM vs MAME
ARAnyM
aranym.github.ioMAME
mamedev.orgSide by side
| Figure | ARAnyM | MAME |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Multi-System Emulators | 8.3 (#10) | 8.5 (#7) |
| Intended users | The project describes its goal as providing Atari power users with faster and better machines and keeping TOS/GEM applications usable on a new platform. | The debugger documentation identifies diagnosing emulation, developing vintage-system software, creating cheats, ROM hacking, and investigating software behavior as use cases. |
| License | The project repository states ARAnyM is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or any later version. | The project as a whole is distributed under GPL-2.0, and the site says over 90% of its files, including core files, are under BSD-3-Clause. |
| Purpose | ARAnyM is a software virtual machine for running 32-bit Atari ST/TT/Falcon operating systems and TOS/GEM applications on host computers. | MAME is a multi-purpose emulation framework intended to preserve software history by documenting hardware and how it functions. |
| Support | The project directs questions, bug reports, ideas and discussions to its Google Groups mailing list and accepts GitHub issues. | Users can report information or code through the MAME GitHub page, MAME Forums, or the project contact page. |
Plans
In their own words
MAME
MAME is a free emulation framework intended to preserve software history by documenting and reproducing the inner components of arcade machines, computers, consoles, calculators, and other electronic amusement systems. It can emulate over 32,000 individual systems from the last five decades. Alongside emulation, it includes an interactive low-level debugger for investigating software behavior, diagnosing emulation issues, and developing software for vintage systems. Its Lua interface can inspect device state, access CPU registers, read and write memory, and draw overlays, though the API may change without notice. Plugins support uses such as external-program communication and alternate interfaces; included examples are Discord Presence and a GDB Stub. MAME can save and load states, record inputs for playback, and capture screenshots or video. It is available for Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows; official Windows binaries require Windows 10 or later. BIOS dumps and copyrighted software are generally not included. The project is distributed under GPL-2.0 overall, while more than 90% of files, including core files, are under BSD-3-Clause.