The main purpose here is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology speeds ahead, MAME prevents this vintage software from being lost or forgotten by documenting the hardware and how it functions and then the source code serves as this documentation.

Contrary to popular belief, MAME is primarily usable to validate the accuracy of the documentation. To expand, MAME and its sister-project MESS (Multi Emulator Super System) merged, allowing MAME to document many other computers, video game consoles, and even calculators on top of the arcade video games that were its initial focus.