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A JAMMA edge connector with fingerboard

The Japanese Amusement Machine Manufacturers' Association (JAMMA) is a trade association based in Japan; it also the namesake of a trade show hosted in Japan; additionally, JAMMA is a wiring standard for arcade machines.

The JAMMA wiring standard was introduced in the mid-1980s. Arcade cabinets wired to the JAMMA standard can be made to play all games built to this standard, simply by installing the circuit boards for the new game. By the 1990s, most new arcade games were JAMMA standard. As the majority of arcade games were designed in Japan at this time, JAMMA became the de facto world standard. Many games exist which almost conform to the standard but extend it in some way, for example by adding support for extra buttons. These games are sometimes referred to as JAMMA+.

Before the JAMMA standard, most arcade PCBs, wiring harnesses, and power supplies were custom built. When an old game became unprofitable, many arcade operators would rewire the cabinet and update the artwork in order to put different games in the cabinets. Reusing old cabinets made a lot of sense, and it was realized that the cabinets were a different market from the games themselves. The JAMMA standard allowed plug-and-play cabinets to be created (reducing the cost to arcade operators) where an unprofitable game could be replaced with another game by a simple swap of the game PCB, and an update of the artwork.

The JAMMA standard includes signals for two eight-direction joysticks, two player start buttons and six control buttons (three per player), with monaural sound.

As the JAMMA standard can quite easily be converted to a MAME emulator set-up on a P.C, the market for JAMMA boards has fallen dramatically, possibly almost collapsed^{[citation needed]}. With a MAME setup many games can be stored on the computer at once, and the conversion with fingerboards and joystick controllers is quite easy.

This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

• JAMMA Official Site
• Japanese Official Site
• PC -> JAMMA interface
• AMIGA -> JAMMA interface
• An Excellent resource of JAMMA information for beginners
• A listing of Arcade Game PCBs that are JAMMA pinout ready

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