The History of ColecoVision Emulators - Part 2

Koleko (2000)

Koleko

Koleko was created in 2000 by Saverio Russo, also known as SiRioKD, and was released in December 2001 for Windows 9x, NT, 2000 and XP. The emulator works in full screen and has a list of supported games to choose from. Interestingly, there is no need to download the ROMs, as they are already built into the emulator. There are 50 supported games in total. It is recommended to have a Pentium 2 300MHz with DirectX 7, which at the time was a medium configuration.

Koleko

Koleko (Bolder Dash)

The project was supported by Marat Fayzullin, with his TMS9918 video chip core, also used in the MSX and Master System, Richard Mitton with his Z80 emulator, the Raze-x86, and Omar Cornut, for codes and technical support. Its latest version was released in October 2002, with twelve versions released in total. In January 2003, a port of the emulator for Xbox was released under the name Koleko-X.

Mugrat (2003)

Mugrat

Mugrat was the last ColecoVision emulator to arrive. It was the first emulator by Richard Bannister, known for porting several emulators to MacOS. It was created in August 2003 for MacOS X. He updated it until 2008, returning in 2018 when he rebuilt it using the Cocoa API for better performance between software and hardware. This API is used on Apple computers with Macintosh operating systems. The emulator has never been ported to any other operating system. Its latest version was made in December 2022. The emulator also runs on the iOS system.

Other Emulators

There were other ColecoVision emulators, such as CULT (MS-DOS) and Mission (MSX-DOS). There was also a project in 1998 called Omega Core, which initially intended to emulate ColecoVision. Its intention was to develop a multisystem emulator by gradually adding other emulators to it and allowing third parties to improve it through DirectX and OpenGL plug-ins (which would be its initial development). Something quite advanced for its time. The project did not go ahead and ended in November 1998.

The console also ran on other emulators, such as the multi-system MESS in 1998, Darcnes for NES and Meka and BRSMS for Sega 8 Bits in 1999, Freeze SMS for Sega and Nintendo 8 Bits in 2002, BlueMSX for Sega and Nintendo 8 Bits (for MSX) in 2003, CrabEmu for Sega and Nintendo 8 Bits (for Linux) in 2005, Phoenix for 3DO and Jaguar in 2006, DSP Emulator for multi-system and Cogwheel for Sega 8 Bits in 2008, Final Burn for Arcade in 2014, OpenEmu for multi-system for MacOS in 2015 and MAME for Arcade in 2019.

It also had its own versions for consoles and portable devices, such as PocketColeco for Pocket PC in 2002, ColecoTech for GBA in 2003, CoG for GBA in 2004, Colecods for Nintendo DS in 2005, Cologne for GBA in 2006, S8DS from Sega 8 Bits for Nintendo DS in 2009 and MSX.emu for Android in 2011.