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MAME 0.244

Given how many exciting updates have gone into MAME 0.244, it’s hard to believe it’s only been a month since the last release! Only one disk has been added to the Apple II software lists, but it comes with a very engaging story involving physically damaged media and manual data repairs. The Zilog Z80 CPU has had a bit of an overhaul this month, allowing more accurate memory access timings for the ZX Spectrum family. This fixes a lot of broken visual effects and other glitches. The HP 9000/300 series computers have had the necessary floppy disk image formats hooked up, allowing them to mount floppy disks from their software list.

MAME’s driver for JPM’s first CPU-based fruit machine platform, dating all the way back to the late 1970s, has been almost completely rewritten this month. Four games are now playable, albeit with minimal internal artwork. Colour video output has been implemented for Zilec’s Vortex. Don’t get too excited, though – while the approach they used to produce colourful graphics without adding any video memory is technically interesting, the results are very ugly and don’t make a bad game any better.

Other improvements in arcade emulation include:

Score display and diorama control outputs have been hooked up for Bubble Trouble (this means you’ll need updated artwork for Golly! Ghost! as well).
Layer offsets in Slap Fight and Alcon should be fixed, and cocktail mode now works for the original sets.
The communication board for Super Street Fighter II: The Tournament Battle is now supported, allowing it to actually run in eight-player tournament mode.

SDL builds (the default for Linux and macOS) now detect game controller reconnection. Note that due to limitations of SDL itself, MAME may confuse similar controllers, potentially causing issues if multiple controllers are disconnected at the same time. Issues using MIDI input or output with 64-bit Windows builds should be fixed.

You can read about everything else that’s happened in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page.

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