Add MAME to the growing list of emulation software gracing Sony’s portable thanks to our software hacking friends in the OSS community. MAME now runs on the PSP.

This means the PSP can run most arcade machine ROMS from the last 3 decades, including PacMan, Donkey Kong, the original Asteroids and my favourite, Time Pilot, (as was playing at the Fish and Chip shop on Friday nights, when I was ages 4 - 8, while we were waiting for our takeaways to be cooked). Ah, the memories.

More modern ROMs, such as Street Fighter 2, TMNT, Virtua Fighter and Tekken will also run under MAME (or so I hear). So as long as you have the ROMs, through legal means, you have the ability to play them anywhere, which is not what I imagine Sony had in mind for the PSP, since they make nothing on the hardware, and people have turned it into a mighty fine emulation machine which means no software revenue.

All we need now is Playstion, N64, SNES and a Mega Drive emulators and I may just have to start saving for a PSP. Y’argh!