The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Part 3

Generator (1998)

Generator (MS-DOS)

Generator was an emulator that began in November 1997, created by James Ponder for a third-year college project. Its first version was released in March 1998 for UNIX (also running on Linux), and was among the first emulators for the Mega Drive. The project was born from open source and was built to be portable to other systems, such as Solaris, Net, Risc and Open BSD and RiscOS. Its first versions did not support sound, the joypad, or the save state, and were also very buggy. In 1999, it was ported to the Amiga by AmiDog and MacOS by Richard Bannister. In January 2000, it began to support sound by emulating the Zilog Z80 processor (by Neil Bradley's Multi-Z80) and the YM2612 chip (by Tatsuyuki Satoh).

Generator (Interface/Gargoyles)

Also on the same date, improvements were made to the M68k processor and palettes, among others. The first version for Windows was released in February 2000 under the name Generator32, and was created by Atani (which closed in May). This version ran too fast for slow computers of the time, making it impossible to play anything executed on it on modern computers. In April 2000, James released a second original port of the emulator, now for MS-DOS. This version had a fixed front-end that remained on the screen along with the game. It could be disabled by a keyboard shortcut. In addition, it also had NTSC/PAL video support, region selection between US/EU and JP, full screen, reset, save state, screenshot and video quality changes.

Generator (Windows)

Interestingly, James' emulator used his own 68k emulator, unlike other projects in the emulation world. It was even born with this proposal, to create processor emulation techniques (like the 68k, for example) in an optimized way. In August 2001, it began adding Z80 emulation through Richard Mitton's Raze Z80. Its latest version is dated May 2003 for Linux and MS-DOS. The emulator also had several other ports, such as for Pocket PCs, iPAQ and Cassiopeia (the precursors of smartphones) in 2001 by Domenico Dato as PocketGenesis, two ports for Dreamcast in 2002 by Atani Software and Metafox, for Playstation 2 in 2002 by Sjeep (and in 2010 also working on PS3 compatible with PS2, by aries2k), PSP in 2005 by sougen, in addition to the UNIX system by Christian Biere. The curious thing is that from August 2003, Richard, who ported the emulator to Mac, began to develop it on his own (now on the MacOS X system). The last update of the emulator by Bannister was in November 2022.

Megasis (1998)

Megasis

Megasis (a mix of Mega and Genesis) was a Mega Drive emulator released on November 11, 1998, by Japanese developers JT and Bori. Interestingly, it was released for Windows, when at the time most emulators were released for MS-DOS. To run the emulator correctly, a Pentium 133MhZ was required at least, and a Pentium 2 was recommended. A graphics card with DirectDraw support and, if possible, hardware acceleration was also required. For sound, DirectSound support was required. The emulator only really started working in the December 1998 update, when it started emulating the Z80 processor, and the PCM and FM sound chips, as well as fixing bugs in the 68k processor. The emulator had perfect emulation of the YM2612 chip (the console's FM chip), as well as stereo sound with up to 44,100hz quality.

Megasis (Interface/Menus)

It also had save states (in .GSV and .KSB formats) and ran BIN and SMD game formats, as well as ZIP and LZH compressed formats. In addition, it also supported pause, reset, frameskip (with great acceleration for low-end computers), full-screen mode, multiple window modes, multiple game regions, sound recording in .WAV format, as well as FM and PCM sound recording, echo effect, changing the 68k processor clock, support for a six-button joypad, VDP emulation (which is the console's GPU), editing shortcut keys for various emulator functions, among others. Megasis had six versions in total, the last one being released in April 2001. From November 1998 onwards, fans were asking for a MacOS version. It seems that there was some signaling from the creators for this at the time. In January 2000, it was posted on the project's home page that this version would be developed, but by June of the same year this information had already been taken offline.

VGen (1998)

VGen

VGen or Virtual Genesis began development in 1997 by Jason Meehan, and was released in March 1998 for MS-DOS. From May 1998 onwards, it began running games via the command line, and in the November 1998 version it began emulating sound using the Zilog Z80. The emulator also emulated the console's two sound chips, the PSG and the YM2612. The processors it used were Neill Corlett's 68k and Neil Bradley's Z80.

VGen (Interface/Menus)

VGen also provides a GUI that you control with your mouse, as well as support for two controllers, supporting various joypad styles, various screen size modes and formats, frame rate, reset, up to 44,100Hz sound, changing the game region and access to various technical information about the emulator, among others. Despite this diversity of options and information, the emulator was very deficient in speed, sound and compatibility, and never left the alpha state. VGen also supported the Sega CD bios without running the games. It is said that the emulator was the first to run the Sega CD bios in the first version released in 1998, when in fact the first to run it was the NextLEVEL emulator in October 1997. 

VGen (Flicky)

Some information about Sega CD was brought by Christian Schiller, owner of the website Eidolon's Inn. In addition to Sega CD, Master System and Game Gear were also planned for the emulator. The emulator was executable on a Pentium 1 with 8Mb of RAM. Its last version was released in June 2001. As far as we know, the emulator had four versions released in total, the launch version, two in 1998, in the months of May and November and the closing version.

 

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The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Part 2

KGen / KGen98 / Kega / Kega Lazarus / Kega Fusion (1997)

KGen

KGen, short for Kega Genesis, was released in August 1997 by Steve Snake, alongside Kode (coudei) and Muzak Ltd for MS-DOS. The project was developed over a two-month period, from June to August. Describing the emulator, it works on the command line, without its own interface (gaining a GUI from September 1997), had a VSync function to run games on a Pentium 200 with twice the speed of a regular Mega Drive, and the regular console speed on a Pentium 133, as well as screenshots (in .PCX format), keyboard and joypad control configuration, frameskip, region switching, and good emulation of the YM2612 sound chip, and from October 1997 of PSG Sound. The emulator also had save states, however, unlike other emulators, here it was called snapshots, and saved them in KSS format.

KGen (Interface/Menus)

From September 1997 onwards, save states began to be loaded in GSV format, corresponding to the Genecyst emulator. In May 1998, a front-end (interface) for Windows mode of the emulator was released by Airds, called Kgen Loader, and was updated until August 1998. The same person also created versions for GenEm for Mega Drive and ESNES and Snes9x for SNES. Steve had help from some people on the project, such as Colin Rodgers and Stuart McKenna with information about the Z80A and 68K microprocessors, his friend Warren Mills for information about his own Z80 emulator, and the creator of the Magic Engine for PC Engine, David Michel, helping with some questions, among others. The emulator had eight versions between August and October 1997, when it ceased its activities.

KGen98

In late 1997, Steve began to create an emulator for MMX processors, a new Intel technology released earlier that year. Due to several optimization tricks used in the emulation, the speed gained by MMX processing was barely noticeable, causing Steve to give up on the idea, which was called KGen-X. After that, he began to develop KGen98, completely rewritten and with better performance than KGen-X, releasing it in June 1998 for MS-DOS. In addition to better performance, it also rewrote and improved part of the GUI, added support for Game Genie, improved video quality, with the addition of scanlines, 8/16-bit mode, among others, and brought stereo sound quality to the emulator. Your save state can now be created and accessed within the game, no longer needing to go to the main menu. KGen98 had only four versions, all in June. Also in June, the Kgen Loader front-end also began to support Kgen98.

KGen98 (Interface/Menus)

Due to the success of his emulator, Sega called Steve to be the lead programmer for the Sega Smash Pack project for Windows. To do this, they used Steve's Kgen98, which received some changes and got a new look. The collection was released in 1999, with eight games: Golden Axe, Shinobi, Phantasy Star II, OutRun, Columns, Sonic Spinball, Altered Beast and Vectorman. Next comes Sega Puzzle Pack, also released in 1999, with the games Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Columns III, as well as the puzzle Lose Your Marbles created by Sega in 1997. And finally, comes Sega Smash Pack II, which contained the games Comix Zone, Flicky, Kid Chameleon, Shining Force, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Super Hang-On and Vectorman 2, in 2000. At the time, he receives a proposal from Sega to create a new emulator especially for the future Sega Smash Pack packages, which would be released for Dreamcast and GBA, but Steve refuses and the project is developed by other creators. These releases without Steve were Sega Smash Pack Volume 1 in 2001 for Dreamcast and Sega Smash Pack in 2002 for GBA.

Kega

After almost four years away, Steve resurfaced alone with the launch of Kega in January 2002 for Windows, which came with the Sega CD feature, already used in the competitor Gens. Kega did not use any of the KGen98 source code, except for parts of the 68k and Z80 cores. The rest was completely rewritten from scratch, and now with Windows support. The difference was its speed and compatibility with games.

Kega (Interface/Menus)

It came completely revamped, with a completely different interface and several other options included, such as bios configuration for emulated consoles, various screen sizes, TV mode, the selection of quality in hz for sound, giving the choice between 11025, 22050 and 44100Hz, the Perfect Sync option, which synchronized the two 68k SegaCD cores for perfect synchronization (being suggested only for powerful PCs and for specific games), among others. Kega also had support for games compressed in .zip format (only for SMD games). The differential of the project was that the code had been created by Steve himself.

Kega (Master System/Aladdin)

In March 2002, Kega included the Game Gear and Master System consoles, having later depopularized the Meka emulator, which had been used until then for games on these consoles, mainly the Master System. The project has five versions released, the last one in March 2002.

Kega Lazarus

In September 2002, Steve came up with an alternative version called Kega Lazarus. It was a new beginning for the emulator, and yet another new beginning for a Mega Drive emulator in Steve's history. Steve had suffered a hardware failure and lost all of Kega's source code, with the exception of the code for version 0.02 from January 2002, the third version of the emulator. Many of the changes from the emulator remained, and new ones appeared, such as a completely new Z80 core, faster Master and Game Gear emulation, and improvements to Mega and Sega CD emulation.

Kega Lazarus (Interface/Menus)

It was basically identical to Kega in terms of interface and options. The second version of Kega Lazarus came out only seven months after the first, in April 2003. This version was specifically for Master and Game Gear, with all sorts of improvements for the consoles, from compatibility, graphics, to performance. In the May 2003 version, it also added support for Sega's SG-1000 and SC-3000 consoles. In the latest version from June 2003, it improved support for the Sega CD, adding Bin/Cue support, improving ISO support, among others. Steve said that this version surpasses in every aspect the last version released by the old project, Kega.

Kega Lazarus (Game Gear/Ninja Gaiden)

The emulator had six versions, from the second to the fourth version, that is, three of them, dedicated almost exclusively to the optimization of the Master and Game Gear consoles. It is mentioned on some websites that the project would have added support for the 32X, but neither in the "readme" files, nor in the emulators themselves, this support was mentioned or implemented.

Kega Fusion

After a year without updating Kega Lazarus, Steve released his latest emulator, the acclaimed Kega Fusion, in July 2004. The project is the merging of part of the Kega and Kega Lazarus emulators with Kega Fusion. Much of the source code was rewritten from scratch, remaining as close as possible to Kega's previous projects, while maintaining the user interface and the emulator's functions. It was only after this new phase that Steve was able to support 32X in one of his emulators, releasing it in the first version of Fusion.

Kega Fusion (Interface)

As he described, it was the most accurate emulator of all at the time for emulating the add-on. In addition to all the console support, chip and processor emulation, tools and performance also present in Kega Lazarus, it adds many other functions to the emulator. Also in 2004, it supports rendering plug-ins such as 2xSai, hq2x, and two created by Snake, such as Double and DoubleRaw. At this time, it begins to overtake the Gens emulator, which until then had been the priority for games on the 16-bit console. Over time, all other Sega console emulators below the Sega Saturn begin to lose popularity due to Steve's emulator. From 2005 onwards, the emulator changes its numbering from 0.1 to 3.0.

Kega Fusion (Menus)

The reason is that this numbering is linked to emulators that are still in a very early stage, which caused people to lack interest in downloading it. Steve then had the idea of ​​changing this, and since Fusion was the third emulator in its Kega series, he put it as 3.0. In this version, from February 2005, it adds support for MP3 format in Sega CD game audio, in addition to the Pro Action Replay cheat. In February 2006, it adds support for Netplay, unlike many emulators that used to use the Kaillera server.

Kega Fusion (32X/Primal Rage)

In this version, users could choose the server they wanted to host their games. There were no updates in 2007. In 2008, there were also important updates, such as in December 2008 with support for SVP (Sega Virtua Processor), used to run the game Virtua Racing, which originally came in a special cartridge to generate 3D graphics. This support was initially brought to the PicoDrive emulator, Fusion's latest competitor. Also in the same month, Fusion began running on MacOS X.

Kega Fusion (Sega CD/The Masked Rider: Kamen Rider ZO)

In September 2009, it was Linux's turn to run the emulator. That month, Mac also got another version. The emulator also supported Direct3D thanks to its collaboration with DirectX. Its latest version, which is still used today, was released in March 2010. The emulator has had sixteen versions in total.

 

Come and discover the history of KGen, KGen98, Kega, Kega Lazarus and Kega Fusion in video on our YouTube channel.