The History of PC Engine Emulators - Part 2

FPCE (1998)

FPCE

Free PC-Engine Emulator, or simply FPCE, was created in 1998 by Japanese emulator developer Bero. Its first version was released in April 1998 for MS-DOS. The emulator had only one version released. He released the source code for this version and a later version that he never released, both also in April 1998. His interest was to develop a port for PSX, and perhaps run PC Engine CD games on the console, which he never managed to do, with only the PSX port being released with game loading on HuCards, released in July 1998.

FPCE ( Bikkuriman World )

This version for PSX was considered the second version of the project. The emulator ran games in the VPCE format, from Virtual PC-Engine, and used Marat Fayzullin's 6502 processor, as well as Jens Restemeier's documentation, from Virtual PC Engine. Its version was very early, running few games, but it is worth mentioning as one of the first PC Engine emulators. Bero released the source code early on, in April, helping other creators. The project had only two versions released. Its emulator was ported by the Japanese company HMMX also in April 1998 under the name XPCE (X PC Engine Emulator) for Windows, bringing several improvements, such as better graphics, speed and better sound quality. 

XPCE

Its differential was also its compatibility with DirectX, which was an innovation for games at the time, which also brought a lot of advantage to its port. The first version we found of the emulator is dated July 1998, and the third release, 0.03, received a port for UNIX in the same month. The emulator had fifteen versions in total and ended its activities in May 2000. In its last version, it managed to accelerate the emulation of the CPU core, making the execution of games faster.

XPCE (Menus)

In March 1999, Youch announced that he was working on a port of the emulator for the Sharp X68000, a well-known and powerful computer at the time, but it was never released. In 2003, the latest version of XPCE was ported to the XBox console by Hikaru as XPCE X and came with a number of new features. It supported English and Japanese languages, a gamepad, pause, full screen, graphic filters, frame skipping, and sound quality and volume controls. The port has five versions in total, all released in 2003.

Hu6280 (1998)

Hu6280 (Intro/Ninja Spirit)

The name Hu6280 was based on the Hudson Soft HuC6280 processor used in the console. The emulator only ran HuCards, the cartridge version of the console. The project was started in 1998 by the Englishman JamSponge, having released its first version in May 1998. It was for MS-DOS and had its own GUI, but came without sound. In the same month, it also added command line support, allowing more flexibility for choosing ROMs, save state and screenshot in .LBM format, which was the image format of a program called DPaint for the Commodore Amiga 1000 PC, in addition to making emulation 50% faster. Also in May, Mr. Kipling, an ASM system specialist, joined the project. In June, it managed to add support for sound, resolution options, vsync, PC-specific gamepads, frameskip, a new command line option and low resolution mode for users with primary PCs. Sound support already came with 11, 22 and 44,000 Hz qualities. In July, stereo sound support was added for sound cards that were compatible with this feature. In August, support for a 6-button joypad was added, making it possible to play Street Fighter, as well as support for two controllers and the PC Engine GT portable. In December, support for CD-ROMs began to be developed. To run it, you only needed a computer with a Pentium 166 MHz speed and 233 MHz if you were going to use sound (the standard at the time for playing without sound, since many emulators in their early days did not support it).

Hu6280 (MS-DOS)

It was initially released only for DOS, with later versions for MacOS in September 1998 by Richard Bannister and for Windows in February 1999 by Jam, known as Huwin. In that month, several betas were released, including Beta 5, which added support for the .INI file for user-defined settings for games and others, and Beta 6, which began supporting SuperGrafx games, a revamped version of the PC Engine HuCards released only in Japan and which ran all the console's games, in addition to five more games released exclusively for it. Although a Windows version had been released days earlier, the StarLaunch front-end, created by Dave Hng, also began supporting the latest DOS version of the Hu6280 released in January in February. In April, a specific front-end for the Hu6280 was created, called HUfe, written by burnworw. Both front-ends ended their support and continuity. In March, the Beta 7 version of the emulator ports it to ASM, making it much faster. Kipling had been promising this port since June 1998. In April, Jam releases a version of the emulator to run on the Nintendo 64, which comes with the homebrew game Galaga '99. In January 2000, after not releasing any other version since May 1999, the project returns and Jam releases the Windows DirectX version. This version also adds support for the joypad via DirectInput and three screen resolution modes. Also in January, Jam releases the Win32 PCERip tool, which serves to rip PCE CD games to the PC and run them on the Hu6280.

Hu6280 (Windows)

The last version of the emulator was released in February 2000, and it began to support PC Engine CD games via .ISO and .TOC files. By the year 2000, the Hu6280 was already running 98% of the ROMs. The MacOS version was released until April 2001, when Bannister began to port the TGemu emulator. The emulator was also influenced by people in the field, such as Emanuel Schleussinger and Paul Clifford, the latter responsible for the port of VPCE to RiscOS, for the console documentation, Jans Restemeier, David Michel and Bero for the influence on their VPCE, Magic Engine and FCPE emulators, and the emulation website Zophar, for the promotion. The PCE microprocessor, the HuC6280, which gives the emulator its name, is a version of the M6502 microprocessor made by another company. It is said that Marat Fayzullin and Alex Krasivsky's M6502 emulator was used in the Jam emulator, but we have no confirmation of this. Hu6280 was ported to GamePark GP2X in 2006 and to Game Cube and Nintendo Wii in 2008. Some interesting facts. Jam and the group that worked with him on the project, known as the Hu6280 Team, released a game for the PC Engine in December 1998 called Jamanoid, a clone of the classic 1986 game Akanoid, which had only been released for NES on home consoles. Jamanoid is a mix of the name JamSponge and Arkanoid. The game had several versions released until January 1999. The only shortcoming of the clone is that it had no sound. Another interesting fact is that around 1999/2000, Jam had planned to release a Hu6280 CD along with games for the console. At the time, they asked for donations of games for the project. They had a list of 117 that they were going to release, 59 American and 68 Japanese, but the release never happened.