The History of Master System / SG-1000 Emulators - Part 2

Meka (1999)

Meka

Meka was an emulator for Master System, Game Gear, SG-1000 and SC-3000, developed in 1998 for MS-DOS by the Meka Team, composed of the Frenchman Omar Cornut, Zoop, who emulates the machine, and applies the graphical interface and Hiromitsu Shioya, who works on the Master's sound, emulating the YM2413 chip. Marat Fayzullin contributed to the project, with his Z80 processor, and Omar made some improvements, and other contributors, such as Mitsutaka Okazi, Maxim Gready and Ulrich Cordes.

Meka (Interface)

The emulator had 42 private test versions, the first 31 of which were called ZSms. Changing its name to Meka from the 32nd version onwards, the emulator's documentation also began to be developed. The first publicly released version of the emulator was beta version 0.10 in March 1999, followed by the first official version in April 1999, 0.11, the first to include sound in the emulator. At the time, it competed with Massage, which had recently become free, and Marat's MasterGear, which charged for the use of its emulator. In May 1999, it began to emulate ColecoVision, and in September 1999, Othello Multi Vision, a clone of the SG-1000. In December 1999, it began to support the FM sound of the Japanese Master System.

Meka 0.13

In May 2000, it began supporting the Sega Mark III, and in December 2000, the SF-7000, an extension for the SC-3000. In September 2001, it began supporting several languages, starting with German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch. In September 2002, it finally launched the Windows version, known as Mekaw. Over time, compatibility, more tools and improvements in emulation and sound, made Meka the pioneer in Master System games. Another of its differentials was the ease of using tools to program and better understand the supported systems. In my opinion, in practice this is already the release of the emulator's source code, which was officially released in version 0.70 in April 2005. This certainly helped its competitors to work better on Master System emulation, and the other Sega consoles supported by the emulator.

Meka 0.13 (Interface/High School Kimengumi)

In June 2003, the Unix port was released, supporting GNU/Linux and NetBSD systems under the name Mekanix, a fusion of Meka and Unix. In March 2006, it gained a port via XPort for the Xbox console, called MekaX. In May 2007, it released its last version for MS-DOS and its first version for MacOS X, with improvements in July 2012 and stabilization in January 2014. In May 2010, they released version 0.73, from then on releasing only updates with improvements without the need to release a new version. In July 2011, version 0.74 of the emulator and its updates began.

Meka 0.63b (Interface/Dead Angle)

The following month, they announced version 0.80 (the last one to date), which had rewritten the entire sound part of the emulator, fixing several reported sound problems, and giving better sound performance to the Linux versions of the emulator. In October 2011, the releases of version 0.80 began, which was updated until August 2023. From 2019 onwards, the emulator updates were only posted on GitHub. Regarding its front-end, it has undergone some modifications over time. The front-end was released in March 1999 with its aqua-green theme, known as Ocean, and was modified in May 1999, to the classic theme, blue and white checkers, known as Classic. In January 2000, it brought the possibility of changing the front-end theme, with 16 options in total.

Meka (Interfaces/Fantasy Star/Aerial Assault/Pit Fighter)

In March 2000, it came with the OverClocker theme, and in May 2000, it returned with the Classic theme, which it maintained until the end of the MS-DOS releases. The Windows versions have always had the Classic theme as default, as well as starting the front in full key. Starting with the June 2011 version, titled Meka 0.80, the emulator returns with the Ocean theme, as well as starting it in windowed mode. All themes are always available to be modified by the user. In September 2018, a fork of the emulator called RAMeka was created for Windows, which is part of the RetroAchievements project. The emulator provides trophy/achievement unlocking, similar to modern console games. In May 1999, Zoop, outside the Meka project, even worked on the GUI for Charles MacDonald's MekaDrive project to emulate the Sega CD. The project was never released.

MGX (1999)

MGX

MGX began to exist in 1998, being released in May 1999 for MS-DOS by the Japanese BouKiChi. The emulator actually started with the proposal of emulating the GameGear, although it was also released with support for the Master System. Its releases began in earnest in August 1999, with nine releases in total. Also in August, the CPU emulator was changed to Richard Mitton's Raze. In September, it also began to support the SG-1000.

MGX (Lemmings)

In October, it began to run zipped ROMs, which was not common at the time. The emulator had several additions, such as FM sound, joypad, save state and BMP screenshot. MGX worked via the command line, but in October 2000, the ArcadeOS front-end, also for MS-DOS, also began supporting the emulator. The last version of MGX was released in October 1999. BouKiChi was also part of the team that created the DBoy Gameboy Color emulator, a hack of Marat Fayzullin's VGB emulator.

Calypso (1999)

Calypso

Calypso was the shortest-lived Master System emulator. Its first version was released around July 1999 for MS-DOS, under the name Build 005. In addition to being a Game Gear emulator, it was also called a Master System II emulator. Calypso was created by the Spaniard José Manuel Delgado Mendinueta, who had a lot of support from the emulation scene, such as Marat from MasterGear, Sardu from Nesticle, Nyef from DarcNES and James from Massage, who were helpful with the source codes for their emulators, as well as Ricardo from BRSMS, Neil from Retrocade, the Snes9x team from Super Nintendo, among others. Marat Fayzullin, Marcel de Koegel and Neil Bradley also helped with information on their Z80 emulators.

Calypso (Interface)

Initially it used Marat's Z80 emulator, but from the last version onwards it started using Richard Mitton's Z80 emulator. It also used Neill Corlett's M68k emulator. The emulator was always in DOS mode, but had its own GUI. The emulator supported 204 Master System games and 106 Game Gear games. Its last release was in January 2000, totaling seven releases in total. At the time of its last release, it was working on a Windows version, as well as Mega Drive and 32X emulation, among others. Prints of Sonic 3 were released running on Calypso in February 2001, but the project did not go ahead.