Open the Terminal application Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

Double-click the SDL2-2.0.3.dmg file which will mount it as a drive.

From the SDL website download SDL2-2.0.3.dmg or the latest version.

Follow the instructions at the top of the page and install the “ SDL runtime library”.

Visit and click on the URL for “Apple Macintosh OS X Intel” with a build target of “MAME”.

These instructions are for SDLMAME version 0.156 64-bit which was released on November 28, 2014. You will also need admin privileges on the computer, this is not absolutely necessary to run MAME, but that is how I am going to cover it here. You will have to use the terminal app and the console to get MAME working, but it is very easy following the steps below. I am going to use Robot Bowl as an example. You can download the ROMs of some games from the website.

MAME uses data dumps from the Read Only Memory chips (ROMs) that were used in the original arcade games. A side effect of this is that MAME can be used to play old arcade games if you can find the games. Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) is a free and open source application used as a reference of the inner workings of arcade gaming systems.

Mac os mame emulator