MAME vs Retro-Go
MAME
mamedev.orgRetro-Go
github.comSide by side
| Figure | MAME | Retro-Go |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · TurboGrafx-16 Emulators | 8.6 (#4) | 6.5 (#26) |
| Emulated systems | MAME can emulate over 32,000 individual systems from the last five decades. | Supported systems include NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game & Watch, Sega systems, Colecovision, PC Engine, Atari Lynx, and DOOM. |
| Intended users | The debugger documentation identifies diagnosing emulation, developing vintage-system software, creating cheats, ROM hacking, and investigating software behavior as use cases. | The project provides build and porting instructions for people who want to build, modify, or port the firmware to ESP32 devices. |
| License | 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. | The project says it is licensed under GPLv2 except for the fMSX emulator, which uses a custom non-commercial license, and the Lynx emulator, which uses zlib. |
| Purpose | MAME is a multi-purpose emulation framework intended to preserve software history by documenting hardware and how it functions. | Retro-Go is firmware for playing retro games on ESP32-based devices. |
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.