Also, avoid MAME ports named MacMAME and MAME for OS X. It’s actually a commandline program that you run by typing in commands via the Terminal. Note: SDL MAME is not user friendly it’s not a matter of double-clicking and expecting it to run. You can run MAME using OpenEmu’s Experimental version or use the “official” version which is called SDL MAME for OS X compiled by r0ni aka In part 1, we’ll go over how to run SDL MAME at the very barest bones.
MAME is a program that “runs” or emulates a large library of arcade games. Download the SDL 2 Runtime Library for Mac OS X (Direct Link). This is a multimedia library that lets MAME display graphics, sounds and read keyboards and game controllers. They’re easy to use but they’re old, unsupported and abandoned. On Catalina the new built-in PS4 and Xbox1 controller support in the OS works great with MAME, and MAME 0.216 will support HLSL effects (CRT simulation) with the Metal graphics API when it comes out. MAME has been buildable on the Mac out of the box for over a decade.
