The MAME Team has announced that after 19 years – MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) has gone open source.

The arcade emulator is now available under an OSI-compliant and FSF-approved license. This means the source code for the long-running emulator is readily available to fans – you’ll now be able to modify, utilize, and distribute it for a variety of purposes.

MAME was first released publicly back on February 5th, 1997 by its originator, Italian developer Nicola Salmoria. The emulator now supports over seven thousand games and ten thousand ROM images – however not all support games are playable.

The goal of the emulator has always been to preserve games in the hopes of not losing them to the test of time. Salmoria is still the trademark owner of MAME, so you’ll obviously need permission to use its name, logo, or wordmark.

Editor’s Note: Header image is from The King of Dragons, a side-scrolling hack-slash classic which originally launched for arcades back in 1991.