Mame is an arcade machine emulator: it includes a Z80, 6502 and lastly I86 uP emulators, joined to several arcade machine hardware emulators. Each arcade emulator contains a full description about hardware, mem maps, video, sounds and so, making possible that if you have original ROM images of a supported arcade game, you can play the game.
You NEED the rom images to play a game: this is not a game emulator, just an arcade machine one.
This package provides files common to all versions of the emulator. To get the actual emulator, install one or more of xmame-x, xmame-svga or xmame-sdl.