Visual Pinball - Visual PinMAME

Modern pinball machines (especially those made after 1992 and using DMD animations) usually require the Visual PinMAME (sometimes referred to as VPinMAME or VPM) program in order to work. VPinMAME adds to Visual Pinball's system requirements and, like other MAMEs, uses image files of the actual ROMs from the physical pinball machines, executing them as simulations of the embedded CPUs, sound chips, and displays from the physical machines.

Visual PinMAME is a program (a COM class) that works in combination with Visual Pinball (or in theory any other program that can make use of the COM class) that allows for 3D renderings of actual pinball table designs. PinMame also now supports compilation under the Linux Kernel and can be used for pinball simulation under a Linux/Unix/BSD based OS, thus opening the door for future possibilities on Android/IOS etc. Specifically, Visual PinMAME is for emulating CPUs and the connected ROMs used in modern pinball tables, as opposed to tables with solid-state electronics/electro-mechanical mechanisms that contain no ROMs or advanced ICs in their hardware design. Visual PinMAME displays the LEDs and/or DMD of the machines in a separate window and also delivers emulation of the integrated sound chips. In order for Visual PinMAME to work properly with a rendered pinball table, it requires that table's ROM images. Without VPinMAME, Visual Pinball can be used to make original pinball and pinball-like games (such as pitch-and-bat baseball, pinball bingo, and pachinko).

Visual PinMAME was written by the team of programmers including Steve Ellenoff, Tom Haukap, Martin Adrian, and Gerrit Volkenborn and was started March 30, 2001. The program is named after the original MAME program for emulating arcade games. Visual PinMAME runs on top of the PinMAME software engine which again uses some parts of the MAME core. Visual PinMAME is written in C++ programming language.