The History of Arcade Emulators - Part 4

Raine (1998)

Raine (MS-DOS)

Raine, short for Rainbow Islands Emulator, was an emulator created in 1997 by the Englishman Richard Bush, Antiriad, to emulate mainly Taito arcade games that used the Motorola 68k and Motorola 68020k microprocessors. Later, he also added games from Jaleco and Capcom of the same profile. It all started when Richard tried the Rainbow Islands emulator. With its success, he tried to emulate other games that used the 68k processor. The emulator used Starscream, a program that emulated the M68k developed by Neill Corlett, and UAE, which emulated the M68020k developed by Bernd Schmidt. It also ran some boards with Zilog Z80 and Motorola 68705k CPUs, using Neil Bradley's MZ80 emulator, and Richard Mitton's 68705 recompiler. The sound part was mainly helped by Hiromitsu Shioya and Aaron Giles, with sound chips mainly from Yamaha and Motorola. Among others.

It all started when AraCORN posted the game Rainbow Islands on the internet, and Richard tried to emulate it. The first Raine release was in January 1998 for MS-DOS, releasing versions 0.06 and 0.07. In May 1998, he released his first front-end, which he improved in the following versions. The requirements for a good emulation were to have a Pentium II with 64/128 MB of RAM and Windows 9x. Among the arcade games he emulated are mainly from Taito, such as Unique, Z80, 68K, those from the System line, such as B, L, NZ, X, Z, F1, F2, F3, as well as themed games such as Ninja Warriors, Bonze Adventure, Bubble Bobble, Darius 2, Arkanoid and The New Zealand Story. From Toaplan, such as Toaplan Unique, Version 2 and the themed Snow Brothers. And from Jaleco, such as the Mega System 1, 1-B and 1-C lines. In addition to a few arcades from other brands, such as NMK (which also released games for the UPL board, also with emulator support), Excellent System, Technos, Tecmo, and TAD. Until December 1999, they ran 117 games.

Raine (Interface)

A difference. Raine emulated games that MAME could not emulate at the time. Richard, with his knowledge of arcade emulation, contributed to the creation of Retrocade, created in January 1998 by Neil Bradley to emulate arcade games from the 1970s and 1980s. Later in 1999, Mike Green, from the EmuDX project, where he worked in partnership with Neil, helped the Raine team add EmuDX content packs to their emulator. Among them were mainly Konami and Namco content. In January 2000, versions 0.28a and 0.28f were released, and the project was closed. At the time, the emulatronia website mentioned that Richard had been thinking about leaving the project for some time. The following month, the website was taken offline, and only the message Raine is dead was displayed. In July 2000, its source code was opened.

At the time, the CPS2 Shock! group was considering creating a patch to change the emulator as they had done with the closed-source Callus emulator, but after the release of its code, this was no longer necessary. Also in July, the Geoshock group emerged, which runs the emulator website of the same name, and modified and released the emulator with changes in the same month, under the name Raine - The Rainbow Islands Emulator, a reference to the first game played on the emulator. Perhaps this is why the CPS2 Shock! team did not change the emulator. Geoshock released two more versions in August 2000 and completed the port. Also after the release of the emulator's source code, Atani from the Atani Software website, responsible for porting emulators such as Genital and Generator for Mega Drive to Windows, began working on the Windows port of the emulator, which was released in February 2001, called Raine32. It was a port that became quite well-known at the time. Before that, in September 2000, a port for Linux was released by Haze, who also ported it until February 2001. Although Antiriad no longer worked on the emulator, in September 2000 he returned to the site and began posting about ripping arcade games, including those made by himself, and the progress of improvements for Raine. 

Raine32 (Interface)

In 2001, he decided to return to the project, and released version 0.30 for MS-DOS in February 2001. This version was helped by the MAME Team, which made Raine run all of its games with sound support. It was released together with Atani's Windows version, Raine32, which became the official Windows port of the emulator and was later continued by the Raine Team. In June, the first official port for Linux was released, made by teammate Emmanuele Anne. From then on, the releases of the project were confusing. Sometimes only for DOS, sometimes for Windows, sometimes for Linux, and sometimes for all three systems. He abandoned the Linux ports in November 2001, and only for DOS in March 2005, releasing only versions for Windows. It was perhaps one of the last emulators to have a port for MS-DOS. Versions for DOS were released in later years. Perhaps as a form of homage/nostalgia. DOS versions were released in 2009, 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2020, finishing in August 2020.

Also in November 2001, the name of the Windows version executable was changed from Raine32 to RaineW. In December 2001, a version for BeOS was released by Caz Jones. Regarding the Geoshock group of unofficial ports of the emulator, although they no longer continued their ports, they released all the official versions of Raine on their website until their closure, which was around 2006/2007. Over the years, several other boards from companies such as Banpresto, Capcom, SNK, Williams, Cave, Data East, Gaelco, Hudson Soft, Irem, Kaneko, Konami, Midway, Mitchell Corporation, Namco, Psikyo, Sammy, Sega, Sunsoft, among many others, becoming in fact a great multi-arcade emulator. In 2006, the emulator already supported 578 games.

NeoRaine

In 2007, Emmanuel Anne, a project partner since 2001, created the NeoRaine emulator, emulating Neo Geo CD games. After the end of NeoRaine in June 2013, it merged with Raine in the version released on the 30th of the same month. In December 2013, it gained a version for MacOS X, which was maintained until October 2015. The title Raine32 resurfaced in March 2020, when the 64-bit versions of the emulator were created, called Raine64, with the intention of simply differentiating them. And speaking of 2020, in that year, the emulator already had support for 1,067 games.

Raine/Raine32 (DOS/Win) (Front Ends)

In addition to the versions and ports of the emulator, its front-end changes over time should also be highlighted. Starting with the MS-DOS versions with two interfaces in 1998, one with 5 buttons and another with 7 buttons and without the white borders. Four in 1999, starting to have a background image, with four different backgrounds, boy, vampire, Darius and Raine. And one in 2000, with a Bubble Bobble background. The following versions released were simultaneous for the DOS and Windows versions. Two in 2001, one with the menu no longer on the left, but in the center and with a Darius background, and the second with the buttons on the left and right sides and a Megaman background. In the following years, only the background was changed, as in 2002 to qsound, 2003 to a fighter jet, 2004 to a bird and 2005 to block block.

Raine32 (32bits)

Starting in 2007, the NeoRaine front-end was used, a completely different interface from the previous ones, which uses the menu in the middle of the screen, has upper and lower bars in lighter blue and a black background. This same version was changed in the following years, such as in 2009, using the new NeoRaine front-end update, with more options in the menu and changing the upper and lower bars to dark blue and medium blue. In 2010, a white border was added around the menu. In 2013, when NeoRaine was merged with Raine, adding more options to the menu, such as loading and Neo Geo CD options. And in 2021, when the front-end size was increased and a black dimensional gif background with white lines was added.

Raine (2021)

Despite having lost its reputation when it went on hiatus in 2000 and not keeping up with the pace of updates that were expected of it compared to its competitors, the emulator is updated to this day, being one of the few pioneering arcade emulators that are still updated. Its latest version came out in November 2024.

NMK: Nihon Micom Kaihatsu 16 System (NMK16 System) / Universal Playland Arcade System (UPL Arcade System)

Technos: Custom Arcade Hardware / Double Dragon 3 Hardware

Taito: Taito Unique / Taito Z80 Based / Taito 68000 Based / Taito B System / Taito Z System / Taito F1 System / Taito F2-System / Taito F3-System / Taito L-System / Taito X System / Taito NZ System / Taito The Newzealand Story / Taito Ninja Warriors / Taito Bonze Adventure / Taito Bubble Bobble / Taito Darius 2 Twin Screen / Taito Arkanoid / Taito Licensed Games

Toaplan: Toaplan Unique / Toaplan Version 2 / Snow Brothers Arcade Hardware / Toaplan System / Toaplan System 2

Lab Coat: Lab Coat Mega System 1 / Lab Coat Mega System 1-B / Lab Coat Mega System 1-C

SemiCom: Cookie and Bibi / Hatch Catch / Choky Choky

Namco: Namco Galaxian Arcade / Namco Pac-Man

ESD: Multi Champ Deluxe / Jumping Pop / Head Panic

Capcom: CPS / CPS2

Cellar: CAVE 68000

Tecmo: Tecmo Gaiden Arcade Hardware

Excellent System: Excellent System

TAD: Tadashi Corporation

Nichibutsu: Nichibutsu 68000

Arrow: Arcade Arrow

Nintendo: Donkey Kong Arcade

Kaneko: Kaneko Galspanic Arcade

Mitchell Corporation: Mitchell System Arcade

Psikyo: Hitachi SH-2

Williams: Pacman Arcade

Gaelco: Gaelco Arcade

SNK: SNK Neo Geo MVS

Face: Nostradamus

Banpresto: Macross Plus

Sega: Sega Z80 Based

Rage (1998)

Rage

The Real Arcade Game Emulator, known as Rage, was a proposal to emulate SNK, Capcom and Irem boards from games between 1985 and 94. Created by Swedes Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela, it was first released on February 8, 1998 for MS-DOS. Janne was already known for having created emulators for specific games, such as Capcom's SonSon (by Capcom Unique), Stern's Tutankhamen (by Konami Framebuffer), and Konami's Yie Ar Kung-Fu (by Konami 6809). He was a pioneer in these games, except for SonSon, which already ran on MAME. The other two games were quickly integrated into MAME. At its beginning, Rage ran 6 games. In its last version, released in March 1998, it already had 20 games running. The project emulated SNK's Ikari Warriors, Triple Z80, and Psycho Soldier boards, Capcom's Commando and Unique boards, and Irem's M72, M82, and M92 boards. The emulator was a pioneer for SNK and Irem boards, while Capcom's boards pioneered MAME in 1997.

NeoRage and Neo RageX

After its closure, the emulator was redesigned and relaunched in May 1998 as NeoRage, focusing solely on the SNK Neo Geo MVS board, and also pioneering another SNK board. In April 1999, the name was changed to NeoRageX, due to its support for DirectX, and the project was closed in June 1999, supporting over 130 games. Its last version ran in Windows mode. NeoRageX had several hacks, the most important of which was handled by a group of Brazilians called SNK-NeoFighters Team from 2005 to 2009.