Sony's request for an injunction against Connectix
over their Playstation Emulator for the Mac has been rejected!
In what is being called at least a minor victory for emulation fans, a judge
in San Francisco has rejected Sony's request to block shipment of Connectix's Virtual GameStation emulator for the Mac. While
this does't mean the entire lawsuit is over, this is still encouraging. Quoting Connectix directly from
the article: "We will continue to fight for the customer's right to this
choice". Thanks to Jason Wambach and HuangBaoLin for the news.
Donkey Kong Jr Simulator Demo v1.00 released!
Another great simulation of a Game and Watch has been released, this time
for Donkey Kong Jr. To play: Press A on the keyboard or push the left mouse button on Game A to play.
Use arrows keys to move Donkey Kong Jr. Push Enter to Jump. Press mouse on the frontend to exit.
Truely awesome, especially if you owned one like i did many years ago! According
to the docs, coming soon is: A Home Page; The definitive version of Donkey Kong Jr. Simulator with sound;
Mario Bros Simulator; and Mario's Bombs Away Simulator! Get it from our Game and Watch simulator
page at the above link.
Nicola Salmoria interviewed!
JoseQ of Emuviews has done it yet again with a fabulous interview, with none other than
Nicola Salmoria, creator of the world famous MAME project. The interview
touches on many subjects, such as Nicola's first encounters with arcade
emulation (The Pacman emulator from the Arcade Emulation Programming Repository page by Allard
van der Bas), how MAME came into existance, his thoughts on the evolution of the emulation scene
since MAME got there, some of his most exciting things he has experienced
since starting MAME, and lots more. It is definetly worth a read. Check it out at the above link.
A new set of Carnival samples has been submitted, recorded in 44.1Khz (with
the exception of the bonus2.sam file). With the driver updated to support
this, Carnival now sounds better (especially the DUCK noise).
Another new game has been submited: Tropical Angel. At the present
time, there is no sound and colors aren't accurate.
New NoFrendo Screenshot:
Matt Conte has posted a new screen shot of Super Mario 3 running under NoFrendo with correct
sprite priorities. Click above to visit the page and view it. Thanks to Rick Martinez for the news.
BrSMS V1.17 (for registered users released!):
Ricardo Bittencourt has released from his page BrSMS V1.17 to registered
users! There are tons of changes, including the new Parrot graphics engine.
For a complete list of changes and additions, click here. In addition,
a new pack of SG1000 games has been release at the page. The pack includes such titles as
Champion Baseball, Congo Bongo, Monaco GP, Pop Flamer and others. Remember, registering for this emulator is FREE. Thanks
to Icehawk and others for the news.
Famicom renamed and updated:
The emulator once known as Famicom has been renamed to Fantasia due to Nintendo's now public stance
on emulation. The emulator is still Windows based and has been updated
to V0.5 beta 2. According to Too Much Tang's website, this is what's new:
support for NES mappers #21, #22, #23, #24, #25, #26, #75
(sound VRC6 emulation has some bugs)
FAM mappers #7, #9
numerous bug
fixes and the MAJYANG pad.
Thanks to Scott Vieth for the news, and Too Much Tang for the file and what's new.
Thursday, February 4, 1999
PMAME and AMAME updated!
Rodimus Prime has updated his Pentium and AMD/P2 optimized versions of MAME.
This is the second release of 0.35 beta 2 and includes the joystick fix, as
well as support for Breakers and Money Idol Exchangers sound rom fixes for Neo Geo!
Get the emulators from our MAME page at the above link. Thanks to Rodney Hester for the news.
New Danji with sound released!
The old sound code is back in Danji. However, according to the author, it is
buggy, unstable sound effects, and certainly not complete. To convert
KOF '98 for use with this emulator: KOF98 Sound Rom
ren kof98_m1.rom z80.bin
copy /b kof98_v1.rom + kof98_v2.rom + kof98_v3.rom + kof98_v4.rom pcm.bin
Get the emulator from our Neo Geo emulation page at the above link. Thanks
to ReGNaSTa and Park Kyungjae for the news and translation.
Correct Money Puzzle Exchanger sound roms released:
Apollo69 has posted the CORRECT Money Puzzle Exchanger sound roms. Apparantly, someone released
another set of "fixes" to a newsgroup, which were infact wrong. The
archive is approximately 3.3megs. This sound fix will not run properly in the current version
of MAME or NeoMAME as the driver is incorrect. Unfortunatley, there will
not be a NeoMAME to support these. You will either have to wait until
an official release of MAME is made, or another Neo Geo only MAME is released.
This Glide wrapper might work:
While I haven't had any success getting this to work, FingerSoup who told me about this. He says
that it doesn't look pretty, but it doesn't crash Mario after the start screens. You
also can't read text. But, people have claimed that this does in fact work,
from the various e-mails and messages in the message boards. In order
to get it to work, you must rename glid3d2x.dll and Glid3d3x.dll to glide2x.dll and glide3x.dll
respectively. Then copy them, as well as gamebios.dll to your windows directory and run the config.
You can download it at the above link. Good luck ;-)
KOF '91 added:
Several people alerted me to this new fighting game for DOS called KOF '91 written by
Moah. This is game is comprised of fighters from some other famous fighting games such as Street Fighter 2, Killer Instinct,
Mortal Kombat, etc. This version adds:
added AIR-KICK / air-fighting
added rounds , finishing matchs
no loading time ! (well , depends of your system maybe)
added 18 character slots
redone the select screen
the game is even more editable : you can now change all the graphics
but the characters names had to be removed (back in next version)
added fonts / text display
fixed Joystick detection bug : non-joystick users can now go past
the select screen .
various minor updates and bugfixes
added Ranma 1/2 char (Genma)
added Last Blade char (Lee)
added SFZ3 char (Guile) thanks to [VK]
added KOF 97 char (Shermie) thanks to [VK]
Get it from our Games and Clones page at the above link. Thanks to everyone
for the e-mail.
More free Arcadia ROMs:
Eight new Emerson Arcadia console game roms are online and freely downloadable.
They are: 3d Bowling, Brain Quiz, Capture, Football, Hobo, Route 16, Soccer and Vulture.
Grab them from the Arcadia roms page at the above link.
And the articles continue:
AGN Hardware has posted yet another article regarding last week's release
of UltraHLE. This one however is quite intelligent. One of the article's
suggestions is that instead of threating lawsuits, Nintendo should hire the
programmers of the emulator to finish the project. This emulator could
be a marketing goldmine for Nintendo. Sound too good to be true? It probably
is. Read the article at the above link.
Bleem news:
Apparantly not affected by the Connectix case, the BLEEM site has had a news update. Now that Direct X 6.1 has been
*officially* released, Bleem will require it. Does this mean that Bleem's release is just around the corner? Only
time will tell. Thanks to Mark Williamson, Adrox and others for the news.
Nemu64 V0.009 released:
While one N64 emulator has grabbed all the headlines for the last week or so,
this one gets an update. New in this release:
much faster due to a hack
more RSP, no results yet
did some more cpu and cop1 opcodes, now almost all
important opcodes are implemented
implemented automatic crc fix
changed many internal things
speed increased again
bugfixes....(for example rpa bug is fixed)
Thanks to lordkur for the news.
C.L.E.A.R. sends another message to Doug Lowenstein:
C.L.E.A.R. has sent an "official" letter to Doug Lowenstein of the IDSA, asking him whether, since IDSA is happy
to act on behalf of the games industry as a whole when it comes to shutting
sites down, if it's also happy to act on behalf of the industry as a whole
when it comes to legitimising - either by permission or licensing - the
emulation of old systems. We can only wait to see if there is even a response.
If you want to read the letter sent, click above.
IDSA boycott page:
CpnCrunch has set up a IDSA boycott page, and apparantly one company has noticed. Crystal Dynamics has responded to the boycott,
announcing that they do not support the IDSA. However, they do not produce
classics, and only produce current games, as they have only been in business
for about 10 years are so. Read more above, or discuss in our message board.
Just like lyrics...
With regards to the Lyric site shutdowns, there has
also been something else shut down. It is known as OLGA, or the Online
Guitar Archive. It's a place where guitarists post music for songs that
they figured out for themselves, not by buying books. Just another example
of how things are going lately.
UltraHLE FAQ updated:
Apparantly the previously released FAQ for UltraHLE had some errors. The FAQ has since
been updated by Zorkwiz. Some URLs and a couple of questions are missing in the previously linked
version.
Wednesday, February 3, 1999
PSEmu Pro V1.0.21 public beta released!
Just a few days after Duddie left the project, a new version has been released.
Since this is a public beta, you will also need the full release of V1.0.20, which
is still provided. New in this beta:
CD XA audio finally works ..in most cases
New CDR plugin using Peter Barrett (Psyke's) CD-ROM routines.
This plugin is best suited for IDE CD-ROMs when XA audio is enabled (less CPU
usage)
New version of DirectSound and GamePad plugins
Improved compatibility
Improved debugging: PSEmu will notify if a GPU plugin is the source of a
crash
Thanks to Antti Pulkkinen, FireballX, Autumn Child and Kurt Wolf for the news.
DBoy V0.41a released:
No English docs yet for this DOS based Game Boy emulator, so I don't know
know everything thats new. But according to Fireball X it now emulates
the HUC3 chip. Thanks to Kosh, and FireballX for the news.
WARNING:
It has come to my attention that earlier in the day on Tuesday there was
an alleged utility released called: UHLE Fix v0.1. What it was SUPPOSED
to do was improve UltraHLE performance without 3DFX and give speed increases
with or without 3DFX and finally give graphic improvements in lower end systems.
As it turns out, this utility was nothing more than a trojan. If you use it,
it will just delete your Windows System directory. If you find this ANYWHERE
or have already downloaded and not yet run it, make sure you avoid it and DELETE IT
immediatley. Thanks to everyone for the info.
Retrocade news!
I have just been given some great news from Neil Bradley regarding Retrocade!
All Z80 games in Retrocade 1.2 will be 30-60% faster than 1.1! And in addition
to this, Galaga is will now run full speed on as low as a 486/66 with 128k of cache!
Impressive to say the least. No release date is known as of yet.
New Game Boy emulator for Windows debuts:
This one came out of nowhere, but its a new Game Boy emulator called: Hello Gameboy. The emulator
appears to be by a Japanese programmer, but the docs are in English. As I haven't really tried it
yet, it don't know how it compares to other gameboy emulator, but it appears
to have joystick support, save states, etc. Also, according
to Lilia, it has CGB and SGB support also. Get it from our Game Boy emulation
page at the above link. Thanks to Lilia, Kohs, Ims, IceHawk, and others for the news.
Yep, another UltraHLE article:
Here we go again. The title of the article from the above link is: "Nintendo May Sue Emulator Makers". This time however, Beth Llewelyn of Nintendo is quoted
as saying "Emulators such as this are illegal, They
obviously had to circumvent our security chip. It promotes continued piracy."
This issues just doesn't want to seem to go away does it? You can make your
deductions and give your opinions in our General emulation message board.
MAMEWIP News:
Ghosts and Goblins as well as Ninja Gaiden have been sped up a bit
thanks to a new tilemap code.
Pentium optimized X-MAME 0.35b2.1 released:
Vicente Aguilar has updated his Pentium optimized ports of XMAME. (IE: The
Unix equivilent to Rodimus Prime's PMAME). Both the SVGALIB and X11 versions
have been updated. Get them from our MAME page at the above link.
iMAME 0.35b2 released:
I_Morriz has released the latest update to his Italian language version of DOS
MAME. You can get it from our MAME page at the above link if this interests you ;-)
UltraHLE FAQ released:
ZorkWiz has created a FAQ (V0.1) for those who still have UltraHLE. Click above to read it.
UltraHLE on Gametime!
At 6pm (EST) tonight, ManBeast and The Fox of Emulators Unlimited will be
be talking to the folks at AGN (AllGames). The topic of discussion will
obviously be UltraHLE. Read the story at the above link. Thanks to Lepper
for the news.
VB '98 page updated again:
The VB'98 page has been
updated. It starts off by discussing Rich Lawrence's legality page (posted yesterday) and
also asks people NOT to bundle his emu with roms (for obvious reasons). NO
emulator should EVER be bundled with roms, unless the game authors
have granted specific permission to do so. After this, David Tucker goes
on to mention that there are new bugs discovered to squash, and that
he will be out of town for a few days, so don't expect much until next week.
Thanks to Adrox for the news.
Tuesday, February 2, 1999
King of the Fighters '98 sound roms released!
You waited for it, and now Neo Charity has released the sound roms for Kof '98! The archive is about
13megs, so good luck getting it! ;-)
NeoMAME V0.35 beta 2a released:
Apollo69 has released an update to his Neo Geo ONLY version of MAME.
If you downloaded the latest release from NeoCharity called Breakers, you
can play it with this NeoMAME update. :-)
Duddie to leave the PSEmu project:
Stunning announcement from the official PSEmu page, that now Duddie is leaving
the PSemu project. This of course is the second significant blow to the project as
Tratax had left it also weeks ago. Duddie is going on to his new life, and new job, so
we here wish him the very best. Duddie also mentions how in the last few
days how bad things have gotten, especially with the childish flame wars
of late. If there is any silver lining here, it is that Kazzuya will
continue with the project. Thanks to Saulo Benigno, Bob Feagins and numerous
others for the news.
Legend of Kage is now working better, and is now playing until
the end. However, while the title screen shows up just fine, te biggest problem is with background
graphics during gameplay.
16bit color support is being added to the Neo Geo games. Currently, 3 games support it: Gowcaizer, KOF97 and KOF98.
Also, a few NG games have been renamed: sidkicks->ssideki, sskick3->ssideki3
nam_1975->nam1975, kingofm->kotm, realbou2->rbff2, artfight->aof, karnov_r->karnovr
wheroes->wh1, worlher2->wh2, worlher2j->wh2j. So be prepared when the
next MAME is released. ;-)
The Street Fighter driver has been submitted to developers today, but
I haven't compiled it yet. ;-)
New FREE Amiga game!
Here is a new game called Furball in .ADF format. It is a scrolling platform game created using AMOS,
featuring a little cat called Furball. Nice cartoon graphics and addictive gameplay. Furball runs,
jumps, splats and rolls. Collect the power ups and pop the baddies but watch out for the giant
centipede. Keyboard or Joystick control. Thanks to Dith for the news.
You can get it from our Amiga images page at the above link.
Dump/step window (for debugging programs written for
Vectrex)
Docs edited (updated from 1.40 to 2.0 beta 7)
Other binaries added to archive (under 'test' in the
'bin' folder)
Please note, if you had already downloaded both parts of the emulator in the
past, you only need to download the first part for this release. Thanks to
baronvr for the news.
C.L.E.A.R. (The campaign to leave emulation alone +R):
In case you read that huge thread on our MAME board yesterday regarding Doug Lowenstein's statements
about emulation, you should know that the original source of that story
is C.L.E.A.R. (their link is provided above). For those who don't know
what C.L.E.A.R. is, they a pressure group set up to try to persuade IDSA and their members that
emulation is a good and healthy thing for the games industry, by reasoned argument rather than flaming and force. Everyone
is urged to go and visit their site at the above link if you have any interest
at all in the subject matter.
Emu author gives his opinions on the legality of emulation:
Atari800Win author, Rich Lawrence has written a page of his own views of
the legalities surrounding emulation and related things in general. He is not a lawyer himself, so
he is asking if anyone would like to add any corrections to his statements, please give examples and e-mail him.
You can read it yourself at the above link. Thanks to Rich himself for the link.
Danji ROM converter updated:
The Danji Page has been updated with news that the Rom Converter
has been updated to support the latest rom release: Breakers. Get it from
our Neo Geo emulation page at the above link. Thanks to Park Kyungjae for
the news and translation.
Simpsons schematics help needed:
Dave, author of DTMNT (not me) needs to help find out which files are what on the PDF
of the Simpsons Arcade schemtics. Visit his page at the above link if you
can help. Thanks to gumbi911 for the news.
ManBeast interview by Wired:
Wired has interview ManBeast regarding last week's developments with UltraHLE. The article also
discusses the Sony Vs. Connectix case. Read the story at the above link.
Yet another UltraHLE story:
Panix has written in with an open letter to the Emulation community on Slashdot.org
where he addresses the recent rise and fall of the UltraHLE- the N64 emulator, ROM piracy, and the real
reason for console emulators. Visit the slashdot site at the above link
to read it. Thanks to maud_dib for the news.
Virtual Boy emulator news:
David Tucker has updated his page with
some news about the emulator. IT seems that work on the emulator is
progressing slowly but steadily. However, Jason Nelso the official author of the Windows
port, has added in Zip support to the emu, along with squashing many bugs and
making the whole thing all around better. Thanks to Adrox for the news.
Monday, February 1, 1999
Shark V3.0? released!
Shark is back!! This is the first update in nearly a year (the last update was issued in April of '98)!
This emulator now supports: Fire Shark, Flying Shark, Hishou Zame,
Kyukyoku Tiger, New Zealand Story, OutZone, Same Same Same, Shark,
Sky Shark, Tatsujin, Tiger Heli, Twin Cobra (Japan and USA),
Vimana, ZeroWing, Hellfire, and Tekipaki. There are possibly others
supported too, but no docs were included in this zip file. Get it
from our multi-game arcade emulator page at the above link.
PMAME updated:
Rodimus Prime is back and has released his Pentium optimized version
of MAME 0.35 beta 2. If you remember after MAME's release, Rodimus only
released the AMD version because of trip he had to take. Get it from
our MAME page at the above link.
Breakers for Neo Geo released!
Apollo69 has done it again dumping Breakers, a rare fighting game for Neo Charity! They currently
have 5 mirrors available for downloading (if you can get through to any of them ;-) Thanks to Rafael Prado Rocchi
for the news.
Connectix responds to Sony's lawsuit:
Things continue to get more interesting by the day, as in the article at the above link, Connectix issues a response to
Sony's lawsuit. They also discuss their updates to Virtual Game Station such as adding
security technology to prevent piracy for version 1.1. Thanks to Buff_Baud
for the news.
One month down, 11 to go.
Well, the first month of 1999 is in the books, and WOW what a first month
it was. Who would have thought we'd see the first ever N64 emulator that
PLAYED games on current computer systems? Or of course the leaked version
of Bleem which amazed PSX emulation fans. Of course there was MAME, Raine
and other emulators. What's ahead for February? ;-)
DarcNES v990131 released:
Both the Linux version and the DOS port have been updated adding preliminary support
for TG16/PC Engine as well as a new pallete (from the linux version), which looks a LOT better! The DOS
version only also adds support for screen shot captures in .PCX format,
with up to 999 images captures. Get it from our multi-system emulation
page at the above link.
Gameboy Fan name change and new version:
GBFan '98 has changed its name to GBFan PLUS and has been updated to
version 1.06b. Being that it is in Japanese, I don't know what's new.
Thanks to KEL for the news.
