How is MESS related to MAME? How about PinMAME?
MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System) is a sister project to MAME that shares the core MAME emulation engine, but provides drivers and additional tools that are focused on the emulation of console and computer systems. The MESS project keeps up-to-date with changes to the core MAME system, and generally releases shortly after each major MAME release. PinMAME (Pinball MAME) is a MAME-derived project that aims to emulate the circuit boards that ran the displays and produced the sound for most modern-era pinball machines. Of course, with only the sound effects and score displays, you can’t actually play the pinball game, so there are mechanisms to connect PinMAME to various pinball simulators to complete the picture. PinMAME releases on its own schedule and has not kept sync with recent MAME developments, instead using the source code from an older MAME release as its basis.
