Much like the name says, MAME was supposed to be for arcade machines like Pac-Man back when it was released in 1997. In the event you don't like MAME's own interface, there are many alternative frontends available. MAME is incredibly large, supporting thousands of machines and ROM sets, though what is supported is not what's playable your mileage may vary.
The philosophy behind the project is to focus on recreating the workings of various machines through emulation, with the software's ability to actually play console games being described as 'a nice side effect'. MAME (originally an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a multi-platform, open-source, multi-system emulator written in C++.
