MAME 0.287 is here: Darkstalkers Brazil, Time Crisis, and a ton of fixes
⚠️ Update as of September 22, 2026: two versions have shipped since MAME 0.287: 0.288 (May 28, 2026) and 0.289 (July 30, 2026), the current stable version. See MAME's GitHub releases.
It's only March 31 and MAME is already giving us its first big release of the spring. The version 0.287 has been available since last evening, and the changelog is as always impressive by its volume. Overview of what really deserves attention.
🕹️ Fixes that really change something
Several historical bugs have finally been fixed. Fans of X-Men (6 players) will be happy: the game was running clearly too fast at certain moments, this is fixed. Salamander and its clones no longer behaved correctly after a soft reset, also adjusted. And Marvel Land's graphics priorities have been crappy for years: it's clean now. style="user-select: auto;">On the sound side, a cracking bug persisting after a buffer overflow was audible for a while, MAME 0.287 eliminates it. The SDL 3 audio module also did not properly handle overflow samples,fixed by R. Belmont.
💿 New Dumped ROMs
This is often where collectors perk their ears. This version has a few notable findings:
- Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (Brazil 940818) - a 1994 Brazilian version never dumped before, recovered by a Brazilian preservation team
- Time Crisis (Japan, TS1 Ver.B) - a regional variation of the Namco classic finally preserved
- Gals Panic 4 (Asia) - dumped by f205v and the Dumping Union team
- Glass (ver 1.0, Break Edition) - an obscure Spanish brick-breaking game with its own unique checksum
- Power Drift (Japan, Rev A) - a further revision of the Sega classic
🖥️ Machine side
The ZX Spectrum Next makes its entrance in force with three variants (KS1, KS2, KS3) added simultaneously. The Nokia MikroMikko 2 M35D goes into “working” status. And for dark board lovers, Dirt Dash (World, DT2 Ver.B) is promoted from "non-functional" to fully playable.
More discrete but noticeable: the floppy drive on the Sharp X68000 had been broken for a while, AJR finally fixed it.
📥 Download
As always, MAME is available for free at mamedev.org. And the ROMs to run all that? You know where to look. 😏
Source: EMU618 Forum, mamedev.org
Image credit: “Taito Station (2812431296)” by DocChewbacca, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (resized).