==Supported systems and compatibility==
Currently, over 450 660 systems are supported, including the CPC and CPC Plus ranges and the GX4000.[http://www.mess.org/mess:drivers:amstrad] This is probably the main reason for using MESS, that a single download is enough to emulate more or less every home computer and gaming console that ever existed in the late 1970s and 1980s—provided one can find a ROM set that works (see below). MESS does not have the depth of other emulators, but it sure has enormous breadth.
MESS runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. If you also use MAME, you may want to get [http://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/latest-ume-mame-mess-binaries UME] instead, which combines MESS and MAME into a single executable with a shared configuration file, ume.ini.