| MESS | |
|---|---|
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| Developers | Originally MESSTeam, now MAME Team |
| Initial release | 1998; 28 years ago (1998) |
| Final release | 0.161 / 29 April 2015; 10 years ago (2015-04-29) |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Emulator |
| License | Since 2016:GPL-2.0-or-later[1] Until 2016: Custom[2] |
| Website |
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Multi Emulator Super System (MESS) was anemulator for variousconsoles and computer systems, based on theMAME core. It used to be a standalone program (which has since been discontinued), but is now integrated into MAME (which is actively developed).MESS emulatedportable andconsole gaming systems,computer platforms, andcalculators. The project strived for accuracy and portability and therefore was not always the fastest emulator for any one particular system. Its accuracy made it also useful forhomebrew game development.[3]
As of April 2015 MESS supported 994 unique systems with 2,106 total system variations.[4] MESS was first released in 1998 and was under development up until 2015.
MAME and MESS were once separate applications, but were later developed and released together from a single source repository.[5] MAMEDEV member David Haywood maintained and distributed UME (Universal Machine Emulator) which combined much of the functionality of MAME and MESS in a single application.[6] On May 27, 2015, MESS was formally integrated with MAME and became a part of MAME.[7]
MESS was distributed under theMAME Licence, which allowed for the redistribution ofbinary files andsource code, either modified or unmodified, but disallowed selling MESS or using it commercially.[8] The license is similar to othercopyleft licenses in requiring that rights and obligations provided in the license must be remain intact when MESS or derivative works are distributed.
In addition to the MESS Licence, The MESS Team required that: "MESS must be distributed only in the original archives. You are not allowed to distribute a modified version, nor to remove and/or add files to the archive. Adding one text file to advertise your web site is tolerated only if your site contributes original material to the emulation scene."[9] The MAME license required source code be included with versions of MESS that are modified from the original source, while the MESS legal page states that when distributing binary files "you should also distribute the source code. If you can't do that, you must provide a pointer to a place where the source can be obtained."
While MESS was available in both binary and source code forms, the restrictions on commercial exploitation cause it to fall outside of theFree Software Foundation's definition offree software. Similarly MESS was not considered to beopen source software if appraised according to the criteria of theOpen Source Definition.
Generally the emulation only includes rawhardware logic, such as for theCPU andRAM, and specializedDSPs such as tone generators or videosprites. The MESS emulator does not include any programming code stored inROM chips from the emulated computer, since this may becopyrighted software.
Obtaining the ROM data by oneself directly from the hardware being emulated can be extremely difficult, technical, expensive, and even destructive since it may requiredecapping ordesoldering ofintegrated circuit chips from thecircuit board of the device they own. A desoldered IC is placed into a chip reader device connected to aUSB orserial port of another computer, with pin sockets on the reader specifically designed to match thechip package shape in question, to perform amemory dump of the ROM to a data file.
Removal of a soldered chip is often far easier than reinstalling it, especially for extremely smallsurface mount technology chips, and the emulated device in question will be destroyed beyond recovery after the ROM has been removed for reading.
However, if one has a working system, it may be far easier to dump the ROM data to tape, disk, etc. and transfer the data file to one's target machine.
In 2013 theInternet Archive began to provide select gamesbrowser-playable viaJSMESS (aJavaScript port of the MESS emulator), for instance, theAtari 2600 gameE.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.[10]
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