As the years progressed, MAME updated its codebase to replicate the exact behaviors of original arcade motherboards down to the individual transistor. While this vastly improved accuracy, it drastically increased the computational power required to run the games.
MAME 0.72 was released on . At the time, it was a landmark release, supporting 4,083 ROM sets and covering 2,319 unique games . This was an era when the emulation scene was transitioning from a niche hobby to a mainstream movement. PCs were becoming powerful enough to handle more complex arcade hardware, and the MAME development team was making significant leaps forward in emulation accuracy. mame 072 roms exclusive