The History of Multi-Console Emulators - Part 1

MESS (1998)

MESS (MS-DOS and Windows)

MESS, Multi Emulator Super System, previously mentioned in the Arcades section, was created by Richard Bannister alongside Brad Oliver and the MESS Team in 1998, and was released in March 1998 for MS-DOS. Its purpose was to emulate computers, consoles and portables, and was the first major emulator to come with this purpose. Bannister and Oliver had been part of the Nintendo xNES project since 1997, and from there the idea of ​​a multisystem emulator emerged. To do this, they used some elements of the MAME source code. The first system to be emulated in MESS was the NES itself, which was created from the old XNES code. Richard was also already a well-known name for porting emulators to MacOS, such as Gameboy, Mega Drive, NES, and others, and it was with this knowledge that he supported so many hardware. After more than a year without releasing any version, he returned in October 1999 with a completely reformulated version, and using all of the MAME source code. Since this version, MAME has been released simultaneously using the same version numbering as the source code emulator. Several cooperations have taken place between the two projects, bringing them closer together over the years. In April 2000, they finally released the Windows version. From January 2002 onwards, it gained an interface, previously working only through command line, by the hands of Michael Soderstorm and Christopher Kirmse, who were inspired by another of their creations, MAME32. In December 2007, MAME32 became MAMEUI and also gained a version for MESS, called MESSUI. The partnership between emulator and GUI continued until May 2015, when MESS merged with MAME and the project ended. Despite this, MESSUI continues to release versions of MESS using the updates made in the MAME project. About the systems that run on the emulator, in its first year of life it already supported the Mega Drive, NES, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, Master System, Game Gear, and Vectrex systems, and some computers such as Apple Series and Atari 800. In the following years we have the addition of the PC Engine, Atari 7800, and several computers such as Commodore Amiga and Apple II in 1999. The Gameboy portable, followed by CPS Changer and ZX Spectrum 48K in 2000. Atari 2600, TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine, the third variant of the NES, and the 13th variant of the ZX Spectrum in 2001. Atari Lynx I and II, MSX 1 and 2, Arcadia 2001 and SNES in 2002. Gameboy Color, Pocket, and Super Gameboy, PSX, Odyssey, Intellivision and Sega Mark III in 2004. Atari Jaguar in 2006. N64, 3DO, Sega Saturn, SC-3000, SuperGrafx, and WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color in 2007. And Dreamcast and SG-1000 1 and 2 in 2008. One of its distinguishing features was being the first multisystem emulator to emulate fifth and sixth generation games. In 2002, four years after its launch, it already supported 239 systems, most of them computers. Among the illustrious people who contributed to the project are Dan Boris,Ernesto Corvi and Charles MacDonald, respectively creators of Atari 2600, SNES, and Sega 8 and 16-bit emulators, among many others. In addition to MS-DOS and Windows, the project also had ports for MacOS, Unix, ARM systems, AmigaOS, RiscOS, Solaris, among others.

Darcnes (1998)

Darcnes

Darcnes was created in 1998 by Alastair Bridgewater, aka Nyef. Its first version is dated December 1998 for Linux, based on the NES documentation, Nes.Doc, and the 6502 emulator, both by Marat Fayzullin, and the NES documentation called Nestech.txt by Jeremy Chadwick, aka Yoshi. Right at its launch, Alastair made it clear that the emulator would be multisystem, considering later launching support for the PC-Engine and Master System consoles. From 1999 onwards, the emulator began to support the Game Gear, PC Engine/TurboGrafix 16, Master System, ColecoVision, SG-1000, Apple II PC, PC Engine CD (only on UNIX), Famicom Disk System, SC 3000 and MSX PC systems, added respectively in January, March, May, June and November 1999, January, February and June 2000, and March 2001 (the last two systems mentioned, SC and MSX, were released in this same version in March 2001). Its DOS version (the best known) ran on command line, with only additional functions of volume control and frameskip. It supports both keyboard and joystick control. The games, specifically NES, SMS and GG, performed well, without bugs and with great sound. PC Engine ran well, but without sound and ColecoVision and FDS did not work. The Windows version was very simple, with a menu just for loading ROMs and no other additional functions. It was controlled only by keyboard. The games performed well on NES, SMS, GG and SG-1000, but the buttons didn't work on GG and SG-1000. On the PC Engine, not only did the buttons not work, but the emulation was also very fast. And ColecoVision and FDS didn't work either (at least in the tests I performed). It was also another prototype project with a great future ahead.

SG-1000 and Master System

NES and PC Engine

Gamegear

In addition to the UNIX version, Darcnes was also ported to several other operating systems, such as MS-DOS in January 1999, Amiga in March 1999, BeOS in June 1999, Linux in August 1999, Windows in January 2000 and NetBSD in April 2001 Some of those responsible for the ports are famous people in the field, such as AmiDog, who ported emulators such as Handy, Frodo, MAME, MESS and FPSE to the Amiga, Abazan who ported DOS and ZX Spectrum games and the Dgen emulator to the BeOS, the Brazilian Rafael Rigues, Sephiroth, who worked in companies that spoke of Linux, such as Conectiva and Revista do Linux, with the ports of the emulator to DOS and Linux, and the creators of the Japanese system NetBSD, as well as Vector with the Windows version. Alastair also made two official ports, for Windows in January 2000 and for BeOS in May 2000. The latest version of the emulator was released on April 1, 2001, the same day as the NetBSD port mentioned earlier.

MAME (2003)

MAME

The MAME emulator, Multi Arcade Machine Emulator, previously discussed on Random Lives, was started in February 1997 by Nicola Salmoria, combining previous emulation projects by its creator. The emulator was initially released for MS-DOS, and in May 2001 for Windows. It works with the main arcades launched in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, such as boards from Sega, Nintendo, Taito, Konami, SNK, Atari, Williams, Irem, Data East, Namco, Kaneko, among many others, but it was only in 2003 that it began to add home consoles to the project. Initially, it included the Atari Jaguar and PS1 (through the Arcade Capcom Sony ZN-1), Mega Drive, Game Gear and Master System (through the Arcade MegaTech coming from MESS), Sega Saturn (through the Arcade Sega Titan) and Super Nintendo (through the Arcade Nintendo Super System also coming from MESS). From 2004 onwards, they started emulating the NES. In 2005, the N64 (using the Seta Aleck64 board). In 2006, PC Engine/TurboGrafx16. In 2007, Atari 2600 (with a better emulator than Stella in some cases) and Dreamcast. In 2009, 32X. In 2013, PC Engine CD. In 2014, Gameboy and Gameboy Color. In 2015, Sega CD and Xbox. In 2016, Game Boy Advance, SG-1000 and Virtual Boy. And in 2017, PC-FX. Among others. Some systems never worked well in MAME, which is the case of the Sega CD, 32X, Playstation, N64, Dreamcast and Atari Jaguar. Among others. Many of them came about because of arcades that were similar to console hardware, such as the PS1, Mega, SNES, N64, Master, Game Gear, Saturn, and others. In 2015, MAME formally merged with MESS, with which it had been a partner for the past few years, acquiring its entire programming library. It currently runs over 8,000 games, out of a total of 10,000 listed games (some of which still don't run). The emulator was the one that gained the most forks, over 70! Many of them for specific emulations, such as Neo Geo or CPS2, for example. It also works on several operating systems, such as MacOS and MacOS portables such as GP2X, PSP, among many, many others. Its last release was in October 2024.