Tuesday, September 30th 2003 - Last updated @ 22:37 EST
KiGB v1.52 - Today celebrates the one year birthday of KiGB, the multi-platform Gameboy emulator. And what better way to celebrate it than with a new release? There's a ton of changes and updates in this release, most importantly being much improved sound and speed enhancements.
- Griking
Monday, September 29th 2003 - Last updated @ 21:14 EST
Mame WIP Update - There's been another Mame W.I.P. Update today. "Olivier Galibert fixed the interrupt stack, some floating point operations and added the NEGF opcode to the V60 CPU core, and he fixed the looping samples in the SegaPCM sound core. Tomasz Slanina sent in a driver for Jumping Cross, it's playable but has some graphics glitches."
- Griking
Mupen64 - A Mac OSX port of the N64 emulator Mupen64 has been released bringing it up to version 0.3. Also, the Windows port has been updated to version 0.3.1 which solves a few "annoying bugs".
- Griking
Nebula Model 2 v0.9a - Nebula Model 2 has been updated today. Changes in this release are;
Added Top Skater sound roms and Digital Sound Board 2 emulation.
Added experimental force feedback for model 2B games.
Fixed some bugs in the 2C DSP regarding Sega Touring Car Championship stopwatch.
PDROMs Coding Competition - Kojote emailed me about the new coding competition at PDROMs! He also told me "allowed are games & demos/intros for Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance & GP32. Filesizelimit = 256kb. Deadline of the competition is still the 31st Oct 2003. There are cash prizes and item prizes as stated on the compo page."
- prophet
Saturday, September 27th 2003 - Last updated @ 12:24 EST
Steem Engine v2.61 - A new version of Steem Engine, the Atari ST emulator has been released but good luck being able to reach the homepage as it seems to be up maybe one hour a day. Changes in this release are;
Bugs:
Fixed extended features Windows 98 crash finally
Stopped crashing on complex 60Hz screens
Corrected extended monitor reset display
New Features:
Close disk manager after insert, reset and run option
Atari 800 Win Plus beta - This appears to be a few days old now but a new beta of Atari800 Win Plus has been released. Changes in this release are;
Some GUI changes for new Atari800 kernel features.
Cycle-exact emulation upgrade by Perry McFarlane!Fixed display bugs in "Master of the Lamps", "Mail Order Monsters" etc. Cycle-exact changes to colours, GTIA modes, player horizontal positions, player graphics, even cycle-exact GTIA11_DELAY ("Demonic Laughter"). Improved handling of DMACTL changes in the middle of a scanline ("Decathlon", "Mail Order Monsters"). Emulation of a DMACTL width change bug.
New high-quality POKEY sound emulation by Michael Borisov!You may still choose the old sound engine by Ron Fries - use Sound Quality in the Sound Options dialog box.
H: emulation enhancements by Mark Grebe!Full support for the standard Atari DOS functions: Rename, Delete, Lock, Unlock, Note, Point, and Open for Update. Full support for subdirectories: CREDIR, RMDIR, CWD, ?DIR work in SpartaDos and BW-DOS ('>' and '>>' are used as directory separators). Changed the directory listing to look like the standard Atari DOS 2.0 listing (the sector count is based on 256-byte sectors). Support for the binary load commands.
Fixed MultiJoy and PORTB ("Road Race" works in XL/XE mode - didn't in 3.1).
Fixed Atari 5200 crash after pressing SHIFT and * in "Super Pacman".
Swapped GTIA and CTIA artifacting modes, because they were swapped by mistake in version 2.6b.
Thursday, September 25th 2003 - Last updated @ 13:00 EST
Cheap Cubes - Nintendo has officially cut the price of it's Gamecube console to $99 USD according to this CNN article. Not exactly retro, but then again Nintendo is the oldest of the current "big three" console manufacturers. I'd expect similar cuts from Sony and MS as the holidays approach.
- metallik
Tuesday, September 23rd 2003 - Last updated @ 16:03 EST
MESS 0.74 - A new MESS has been released. Changes include:
[A7800] Implemented Kangaroo and transparency modes. [Eric Ball]
[A7800] Removed use of plot_pixel(), resulting in performance gains. [Nate Woods]
[APPLE2] Writing to disk images and ProDOS order (*.po) disk images are now supported. [Nate Woods]
Beware of Duck Dragons - Adventure II, sequel to the famous Adventure on the Atari 2600, is coming along very nicely, according to the project's website. A progress update and new demo were released yesterday. This is one release I'm looking forward to, having spent many an hour back in the days touring the kingdom in the original version. A release is set for the next Phillyclassic in March 2004.
- metallik
Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL v1.0.6 - Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL is a portable Jaguar emulator which is based on the source code released by Cal2 of Potato Emulation. Changes in this release are;
Added support for gzipped ROM files.
Added OpenGL support. Because of this, aspect ratios in the various graphic modes should be correct now.
Moved all platform specific video code to video.cpp. This should make it easier to add functionality to the video subsystem without having to chase code around in places where it didn't belong.
Key bindings are now customizable.
VJ now uses a config file (vj.cfg) for commonly used settings. Settings in the config file can still be overridden by command line switches.
Preliminary GUI mouse support.
Fixed an off-by-one bug in the Object Processor when dealing with scaled bitmap objects.
Fully virtualized screen size. What this means is that we can keep the Jagaur screen displayed in a convenient size (320 x 240) and the graphics that various ROMs display will now be properly centered (more or less, they were really centered for a TV display).
Border color is now displayed properly.
Fully pipelined DSP core. Because of this, Wolfenstein 3D now has sound. To use the old core, use the -nopipeline switch.
Mame WIP Update - A new Mame W.I.P. Update has been posted. It's not very large but Its nice to see new progress on older games.
- Griking
Atari++ v1.29 - Atari++ is is a multi-platform emulator of the Atari eight bit computers, namely the Atari 400 and 800, the Atari 400XL, 800XL and 130XE, and the Atari 5200 game console. Changes in this release are;
The console key "keypress generator" is now a bit more conservative and tries to avoid faked key events for warm starts.
The analog joystick interface and its SDL counterpart support now up to 16 buttons.
The binary loader analyses and checks now the images before loading them into the emulator. This test is now also able to perform some simple repair algorithms on the images for typical failure cases.
The H: device supports now the XIO 41 "binary load" command using some higher trickery. This emulation should be compatible to some auto-loaders, e.g. TurboBasic.
Fixed another bug in the pattern matching code of the H: device.
Added open mode modifiers for the H: handler similar to those supported by Dos 2.XL:
/A: Open in append mode,
/D: Open for directory,
/N: Do not run programs.
- Default for win32 architecture frontend is now the window'd mode, full screen can be enabled by the user in the full configuration menu.
Added emulation of the 1200XL and its 1200ROM. This ROM requires special threadment due to an Os bug.
Monday, September 22nd 2003 - Last updated @ 15:23 EST
FreeDOS Kernel 2032 - The FreeDOS Project has released kernel v2032 which fixes a few bugs and adds new features. Thanks to OS News for the news.
- chris
Added OpenGL support. Because of this, aspect ratios in the various graphic modes should be correct now. Thanks goes to Niels for enlightenment in this area. :-) [Shamus]
Moved all platform specific video code to video.cpp. This should make it easier to add functionality to the video subsystem without having to chase code around in places where it didn't belong. [Shamus]
Key bindings are now customizable. [Shamus]
VJ now uses a config file (vj.cfg) for commonly used settings. Settings in the config file can still be overridden by command line switches. [Shamus]
Preliminary GUI mouse support. [Shamus]
Fixed an off-by-one bug in the Object Processor when dealing with scaled bitmap objects. [Shamus]
Fully virtualized screen size. What this means is that we can keep the Jagaur screen displayed in a convenient size (320 x 240) and the graphics that various ROMs display will now be properly centered (more or less, they were really centered for a TV display). [Shamus]
Border color is now displayed properly. [Shamus]
Fully pipelined DSP core. Because of this, Wolfenstein 3D now has sound. To use the old core, use the -nopipeline switch. [Shamus]
There is some WIP pics here as well. Thanks to nwagenaar for the news.
- chris
Namco TV Game: Short Review - Emulation veteran Paratech emailed me about a short review at EmuChrist he posted for the Namco TV Game I mentioned a while back. Apparently it's not everything we might have hoped for, but still quite nice.
- prophet
PocketNES 9.7 - FluBBa released a new version of PocketNES, the amazing NES emulator for GameBoy Advance! New stuff:
-Fixed some things with the accumulator in the CPU core.
-Changed Y and X registers (hopefully a little bit faster).
-Moved PCM buffer and code to IWRAM (faster).
-Added check for GameBoyPlayer.
-Added Exit to normal PocketNES.
AdvanceMAME 0.74.0 & AdvanceMENU 2.2.12 - Andrea updated his AdvanceMAME projects again! Both are available for Linux, Mac OS X, DOS, Windows and all other platforms supported by the SDL library. New stuff:
AdvanceMAME
* Added a bunch of new video effects: `lq2x', `hq2x', `lq3x' and `hq3x'.
They are interpolation effects. Slower than `scale2x'
but with a nicer image.
They are derived from the HQ3X effect made by Maxim Stepin.
* The Linux fb video driver is now able to wait for vsync also if
the low-end driver doesn't support this feature.
You must run the program as root.
* Increased the number of supported event [by Filipe Estima].
* Fixed support for SiS boards 530/630/730 in the DOS vbeline/sis
driver.
* Revised the list of supported cards.
* Removed the `display_rotate' option.
AdvanceMENU
* Added a new set of `ui_*' options to define an user interface skin
with a background image.
* Added a new `misc_exit' option which substitute the old `exit_press'.
Saturday, September 20th 2003 - Last updated @ 17:11 EST
ZodiacGamer.com Launched - ZodiacGamer is a brand new website devoted to the Tapwave Zodiac portable gaming system and multimedia PalmOS PDA! We have some exclusive content, messageboards etc. and you'll find some familiar names on staff, including me (Prophet!), GuyFawkes & Atrkid! Please stop by and take a look. :) (Apologies to folk who emailed me Retrogames news, I've been working on the new site)
- prophet
Thursday, September 18th 2003 - Last updated @ 22:54 EST
YAPE 0.51 - A new version of Yape (Yet Another Plus/4 Emulator) has been released today. Changes in this release are;
Frame "sparkle" emulation
Drive LED indicator on the status bar
Reorganised, more informative status bar
Initial write support in 1551/CPU drive emulation (D64 will not be updated, yet!)
Option to enable/disable drive unit 9 (as IEC only)
Wednesday, September 17th 2003 - Last updated @ 18:04 EST
MESS Sord M5 WIP - Tim Schuerewegen has posted some screenshots of his recent work with updating the Sord M5 driver in MESS.
- chris
Tapwave Zodiac Launches - The powerful new Tapwave Zodiac portable (gaming/multimedia device & PalmOS PDA) launched today in the USA! Right now they're taking pre-orders, in case anyone is interested. I believe this will be a useful and enjoyable system, with a good emulation scene down the road, so I pre-ordered one. :) In fact, I'm collaborating on a new site dedicated to the Zodiac and its fans, more news in a few days. In the meantime, check out PDArcade's story about Stunt Car Extreme, one of the games that comes pre-installed on the Zodiac.
- prophet
AdvanceCD 2.0.0 - Andrea Mazzoleni updated his bootable ISO image of a minimal Linux distribution containing the AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMESS emulators and the AdvanceMENU frontend, available now from the AdvanceMAME Projects Homepage! (Andrea emailed me 1st, but thanks to TheInformer as well)
- prophet
New Atari 2600 Title: Backfire - Get it here! "Backfire is a homebrew game for the Atari 2600 written by Chad Lare. In Backfire you have two guns, one on the top of the screen and one on the bottom. To control the gun on the top of the screen, press up, to switch to the other gun, press down. Once you are controlling a gun, you can move horizontally and shoot. If you have a clear shot all the way across the screen, you can accidentally blow up your own gun. Also if you shoot one of the barriers, your shot is reflected back at you and you have to get out of the way (hence the name Backfire)." (Thanks TheInformer & AtariAge)
- prophet
CCS64 V3.0 Beta 1.1 - This Commodore64 emu now has Multiplay over Internet, windowed mode, more screen resolutions, increased compatibility, & is more Windows friendly! CCS64 Homepage. (Thanks TheInformer)
- prophet
Tuesday, September 16th 2003 - Last updated @ 14:02 EST
BeS9x 1.41-1 - Caz has released another version of the BeOS version of SNES9X. To read up on what's new for this version, and for a download, head on over to BeEmulated.
- dhalamar
MAMEINFO.DAT 0.74 - M.A.S.H. updated his MAME information dat file!
- prophet
STeem 2.6 - The superb Windows/Linux Atari ST emulator STeem was updated last week! Here's what's new:
Emulation Bugs
. Improved accurate disk access time emulation
. Improved high frequency PSG envelope emulation (Auto 408 Menu)
. Changed length of floppy disk tracks (North and South)
. Improved PSG register write emulation (The Toyottes)
. Fixed hard drive quit with monitor running freeze up bug
. Fixed hard drive wildcard bugs
. Added hack for more programs affected by IKBD reset
Other Bugs
. XSTEEM: Fixed uppercase disk manager extension bug
. Fixed bordered monochrome to bordered colour when loading snapshot crash
. Fixed change CPU speed when stopped freeze
. Fixed r/l control/alt disable bug
. Speeded up complex drawing under some drawing modes
. Fixed returning from fullscreen bugs that affected some video cards
. Stopped the auto-updater from crashing so much
. DEBUG: Toggle breakpoint in history doesn't make a mess any more
New Features
. 14Mb memory option
. Automatic extraction of files from archives to ST hard drive
. Added script to disk imager for Linux users
(Thanks Targaff)
- prophet
Monday, September 15th 2003 - Last updated @ 19:17 EST
King Of Fighters ZEV 1.2 - UPDATE: - The link went down soon after this news post last night. And I've also been informed there are some political issues with this game so I've removed the link. If it makes anyone feel better, I didn't get to download it either. You can discuss it further in this NeoGeo board thread.
Here's an interesting MUGEN project using graphics and sprites from the KoF series. Tons of characters, as well as the use of transparency and reflection effects that would elude the real NeoGeo MVS hardware. Looks like fun, although expect about 250MB of downloading. (Thanks pixeljunkie)
- prophet
MAME History.dat 0.74 - Fandemame posted an updated history.dat file! This dat is viewable via the TAB menu, and via many frontends - it contains all sorts of info including trivia, secrets etc. Want to contribute to the history file? Go here!
- prophet
Sunday, September 14th 2003 - Last updated @ 15:54 EST
New MAME - MAME 0.74 has been released! No nickname for this version yet. Info on changes can be found here and the goods can be found here on the official site. Appears to mostly contain bugfixes and cleanup.
- metallik
SSF 0.07 prototype R5 - SSF, the japanese Sega Saturn emulator for Windows, has been updated.
- MetaFox
Saturday, September 13th 2003 - Last updated @ 18:37 EST
Dreamcast Taito MAME Build - Reaper has released another MAME Pack build supporting New Zealand Story, Arkanoid 2, Extermination, Insector X, Kageki, Chuka Taisen, Dr. Toppels Adventure, and Plump Pop. This is built from Ice88's MAME 0.72 up-port from Jame Surine's MAMED, which was based on work from MAMEDev.
- MetaFox
Thursday, September 11th 2003 - Last updated @ 23:31 EST
Translation: Labyrinth NES Beta - Suicidal Translations has released a patch completely translating this shooting game based on the George Lucas movie Labyrinth. It is in beta, simply for the fact that it hasn't been thoroughly beta-tested, and inverse wants to make sure that there are no bugs before an official release is made.
FakeNES v0.3.0 - FakeNES is a portable, Open Source NES emulator which is written mostly in C, using the excellent Allegro library for cross-platform capabilities. Current officially supported platforms are DOS, Windows 9x/Me/XP, Linux, FreeBSD, QNX, BeOS, and MacOS X. Changes in this release are documented here. Thanks Hawq for the news.
- Griking
Wednesday, September 10th 2003 - Last updated @ 21:51 EST
Devil Whiskey - After what seems like years of waiting, a demo of The Bard's Legacy: Devil Whiskey is now available for download. What is Devil Whiskey you might ask? Well for classic computer RPG fans it's the closest thing to The Bard's Tale IV that we may ever see. Beware, the demo is 120mb but if you have high speed broadband the download is worth it. The full version of the game is scheduled to be officially released on this Halloween.
- Griking
Atari800 v1.3.1 - Atari800 is an Atari 800, 800XL, 130XE and 5200 emulator for Unix, Amiga, MS-DOS, Atari TT/Falcon, SDL and WinCE. Changes in this release are;
Rewritten and much improved configure script
New cartridge types supported (38 types now!) - see DOC/cart.txt
Disk Sets - loading and saving of D1-D8 set is possible in the UI
R: as the Atari850 serial port emulation added - see DOC/r_device.txt
Updated and improved m68k assembler emulation of the CPU
Tuesday, September 9th 2003 - Last updated @ 19:11 EST
Vacation... - Just a notice that I'll be away until next week. So if anyone emails me etc., don't expect a response till then. See ya...
- prophet
Arcade In A Box - Jakks's TV Games is offering some very cool little devices that resemble miniature arcade panels, plug directly into a TV, and let you play 5 Namco arcade classics including PacMan and Galaxian! There's also a similar device modeled after the original Atari VCS joytsicks containing 10 old Atari games. Personally, even though I have MAME running to a TV and an arcade cabinet, I still want the Namco TV Game... Maybe it's the shiny red ball on the joystick. :P
- prophet
AdvanceMAME 0.73, AdvanceMESS 0.73 & AdvanceMENU 2.2.11 - Andrea Mazzoleni updated these great programs again, downloads are on the Advance Projects homepage! The primary focus of these projects is compatability with arcade monitors and other non-standard computer display types.
- prophet
Monday, September 8th 2003 - Last updated @ 23:31 EST
Apple 1 Reborn - Woz Still Super Cool - Seems a fellow named Vince Briel has gotten Steve Wozniak's blessings to begin selling traditional garage built Apple 1 replicas beginning October 11th! Check out this Wired article for more details. Woz is also quoted as saying "Sure you can use the ROM's," which I'm sure sends shivers of delight down some spines around here. Heh :P (Thanks TheInformer)
- prophet
Stupid Thing of the Day - Someone is selling a new folder for Windows XP at eBay. Makes no sense whatsoever, just the way I like it :) Thanks to TheVagueOne for the link.
- atila
Sunday, September 7th 2003 - Last updated @ 16:42 EST
MacMAME Unofficial v0.73 has also been released for MacOS 9/X. You can download it from right here. Thanks to MacEmu for being such a great site for Macintosh newbies such as myself for emulation news. Hopefully they won't get too mad at me. :)
- dhalamar
SNES9X Custom v1.41-1 (v39) - Man, that is one hell of a long version number. =P Anyways, this emulator for MacOS 9/X has been updated. I'll go ahead and post what's new right here since the page is in Japanese.
- Added two options in Open ROM dialog, and removed related options from Preferences dialog. (zones)
- Added memory usage limitation for SPC7110 graphics packs. (zones)
- Fixed the bug that the automatic fire doesn't work after you restart your Mac. (zones)
- Added an option that saves windows' positions. (zones)
- (OSX) Modified the detection of hat switches. (zones)
- (OS9) Fixed the problem that open dialogs are eager to search volumes via network. (zones)
You can download either the MacOS 9 or MacOS X version of this emulator right here.
- dhalamar
Saturday, September 6th 2003 - Last updated @ 17:47 EST
TapwaveDev - Following up from my Tapwave Zodiac post the other day, if you're interested in software development for this upcoming portable gaming/PDA device, check out the TapwaveDev group at Yahoo. You can receive the SDK by signing up here. If anyone out there codes any emulators for this thing, drop me an email. :)
- prophet
MESS 0.73 - MESS 0.73 has been released! The changes can be read here. Enjoy!
- chris
Friday, September 5th 2003 - Last updated @ 21:25 EST
MAMEPlus 0.73 - The great MAMEPlus / MAME32Plus was updated to the latest MAME sources! Classic scanlines are back, and some small SSV updates included. This is an unofficial version of MAME with numerous extra features. It's really good stuff, and my personal favorite MAME flavor these days.
- prophet
Professor McPhail Teaches MAME - Talented MAMEdev & professional software engineer Bryan McPhail wrote a superb article on MAME programming techniques! It is geared toward VCMAME and Visual C++. Link: Bryan's CodeProject article. (Thanks Bryan!)
- prophet
Euro Software Patents: Just Say No - A programmer emailed me about this site which explains plans to introduce patents for software in Europe, and why they should be opposed. Patents might not sound bad, but in the case of software (or music for that matter) they could lead to serious legal limitations on the creativity of software engineers. Including emulation development... (Thanks James)
- prophet
WineX Progress Report - Transgaming has issued their monthly progress report. They will be doing the updates at the beginning of each month from now on. Transgaming is also now signing beta testers up for the next version of WineX.
- chris
World Of Owen Rubin Update - Brian Deuel updated The World of Owen Rubin with new game stories and new mailbag entries! Owen Rubin is a former Atari programmer who designed arcade titles like Major Havoc and one of my personal old favorites, Space Duel.
- prophet
Thursday, September 4th 2003 - Last updated @ 22:24 EST
Tapwave Zodiac Unveiled - The Zodiac is a new portable game system with full Palm PDA and multimedia functionality. Aside from 20,000 Palm apps, it will also have its own line of games, and since it's open source and pretty powerful, some very good emulators. :) Or so I hope. C|Net posted a good video here, and PDarcade posted pics of a new 3D fighting game for Zodiac. The Tapwave Zodiac officially launches September 17th, when online pre-orders will start at their site.
- prophet
Wednesday, September 3rd 2003 - Last updated @ 19:18 EST
MAME 0.73 Released! - After about a month we get another MAME release which can be downloaded from MAME.NET. If you click here, you can see what's new and/or improved in this release :) (*removed the days since last release, the bot was faulty :x)
- atila
FORUMS FIXED! - Our admin has fixed the problems people were having with the boards. Click here to see what was going on.
- atila
EasyEmu MESS - The EasyEmu web site has added a new section for MESS. If you have always been a little intimidated about MESS' complex user interface, you should definately check this web site out! Thanks Mrv2K
- chris
AdvanceMAME, MESS & MENU Updates - Andrea Mazzoleni released the latest versions of his wonderful AdvanceMAME projects! AdvanceMAME & AdvanceMESS are now in line with 0.72 MAME sources, and his superb frontend AdvanceMENU is at version 2.2.1.0.
- prophet
Tuesday, September 2nd 2003 - Last updated @ 01:34 EST
sixtyfoce, a Nintendo 64 emulator for Macintosh has been updated with a public beta bringing it to version 0.7.0 beta 3. You can go right here to the official page to see what's new, or just to download ya a copy to try out. Thanks to MacEmu for the news.
- dhalamar
Monday, September 1st 2003 - Last updated @ 19:46 EST
Web Server Status - If anyone from ZTNet.com is reading this, would you PLEASE give the community some sort of update about the status of the message boards here? They have been broken for going on two weeks now and people are getting frustrated. Perhaps you can post an update on the ZTNet website if that's still running.
- Griking
Haze WIP - Some interesting progress on emulating Sega Titan hardware based arcades has been posted.
- chris
Atari++ v1.28 "The Atari++ Emulator is a multi-platform emulator of the Atari eight bit computers. The emulator is auto-configurable and will compile on a variety of systems (Linux, Solaris, Irix). Changes are;
Fixed a bug in the 130XE RamDisk handling that checked the wrong bit to test for CPU access.
Fixed a missing screen refresh in the SDL frontend.
Fixed H: device directory handling, win32 delivers an error code here unlike POSIX.
Added smarter speed control that also allows the emulator to run faster than a real Atari. Updated sound support for that.
RascalBoy Advance v1.2.7 - An update to RascalBoy Advance was released today. RascalBoy Advance is a Gameboy Advance emulator for Windows based computers. Here's a Babel Fish translation of "what's new" in this version.
Implemented OBJ Window + Implement transparent OBJ to you
Corrected errors in aplha blending + Corrected errors in Incremento/Decremento color
Adding to option selection ID SRAM + Adding to option configuration keys + Adding to audio management plug with two sonorous effects echo and super bottoms
Corrected error in audio rescue rows WMA.
Added options increase velocita' cpu 25%, 50% and 75% Corrected
In error in increase velocita' cpu + Adding possibilita' not to visualize windows 0 and 1
Corrected errors in mode3, mode4, mode5 + Adding management window mode 3 and mode 4
Corrected error for 3,4,5 ways if qualified the spin.
