Comment 2 for bug 326000

x-mess is still available in natty (but not in oneiric). Also, I can find no form of mess available in oneiric (in particular, I can find no /usr/bin/mess in the mame package, or in any other package).

Since as far as I can see mess has not been merged into mame upstream, this suggests that the mame package does not provide the functionality of mess.