Gaming Console Icons for Mame

One of the most time consuming aspects of building any Mame machine is collecting all of the “necessary” files. A short list of the digital files would include working game roms, bezels, cabinet photos, marquees and of course character art. The coolest Mame machines have all of the classic arcade artwork including icons of the different gaming console systems that will be used in the menus for selecting different emulators.

I came across a topic on the Arcade Controls forums (BYOAC) where a user had a collection of these icons that he had been editing on an on-going basis. I thought I would download the zip and take a gander at what I expected to be amateurish looking graphics. I was pleasantly surprised, check out a few of the icons of the consoles below;

I don’t know where the console images came from, maybe they came from an include with a front end or maybe they were generated from photos. Source doesn’t matter, there are a ton of console icons in this archive and here is the complete list of the gaming systems. All of the icons are at a fair resolution with transparent backgrounds (PNG files), great for use in Mame or even in a design for a website about video game news. You can download the icon collection here.

• Amiga CD32
• Atari 2600 Jr.
• Atari 2600
• Atari 5200
• Atari 7800
• Atari Jaguar
• Atari Jaguar CD
• Atari Lynx
• FM Towns Marty
• NEC PCFX
• NEC TurboDuo
• NEC TurboGrafx CD
• Nintendo DS
• Nintendo Game Boy Advance
• Nintendo Game Boy Color
• Nintendo Game Boy
• Nintendo GameCube
• Nintendo N64
• Nintendo NES3
• Nintendo SNES2
• Panasonic 3DO
• Philips CDi 450
• Sega CD
• Sega CDX
• Sega Dreamcast
• Sega Game Gear
• Sega Master System II
• Sega MegaDrive II
• Sega Saturn
• SNK Neo-Geo CDZ
• SNK Neo-Geo
• Sony PS2
• Sony PSone

Related Gaming Console Icon Links

These console icons are all over the place, but the quality lacks in comparison. A quick 5 minute search turned up a couple of websites for vector based icons of video gaming systems. These links contain a variety of images, from more modern systems like Playstation to consoles of the last 5-8 years like Game Cube, as well as some icons for game controllers and handheld gaming systems.

But again, someone created these icons with Illustrator or another vector package instead of using real photos. These are low res web images that would take some reworking, like cutting out backgrounds or re-drawing, to incorporate into your Mame system, ever more increasing your appreciation for the above icons.

• Max Themes
• Icon Archive – Consoles 1
• Icon Archive – Consoles 2
• Icon Archive – Handhelds and Controllers
• Shopping.com Consoles

Have any more websites with gaming console icon images with similar quality and preparation as the ones listed above? Did you generate images for your own Mame system of the individual consoles, or did they come with your front end? Did you find the original topic thread and can give me the link since I must have not bookmarked it? Leave a comment.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• University of Michigan’s video game library
• Scans of Ms. Pac-man Sideart
• Alan Murphy live chat at Coinopspace – August 8th, 2009
• Interesting Arcade Links – 2008-05-06
• Local Arcade Pac-man Sideart Illustrator File Inaccurate

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