Mame is an arcade machine emulator: it includes a z80, 6502 and lastly i86 up emulators, joined to several arcade machine hardware emulators. each arcade emulator contains a full description about hardware, mem maps, video, sounds and so, making possible that if you have original rom images of a supported arcade game, you can play the game.

you need the rom images to play a game: this is not a game emulator, just an arcade machine one.

this package provides files common to all versions of the emulator. to get the actual emulator, install one or more of xmame-x, xmame-svga or xmame-sdl.