The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Part 4

Gens (1999)

Gens

Gens was started in July 1999 by Frenchman Stephane Dallongeville, known as Stef, as a prototype. In October 1999, it released its first version for MS-DOS. Despite this, it later became popular as a simple Windows emulator. The only emulators that ran well at the time were Genecyst and KGen98, but they only ran on MS-DOS, and Gens wanted to be the first Windows-mode emulator with good performance, and at the time, the only ones available for this system were DGen and Megasis, which did not perform so well. The Gens project had a lot of support from the Genesis scene, such as Steve Snake from KGen98, Atani from Windows ports of Generator and Genital, Charles MacDonald from SMS Plus from Master System, Red5 from The Genesis Project for testing the emulator and creating its documentation and Christian Schiller from Eidolon's Inn, among others.

Gens (Interface/Menus)

The first version of the emulator was semi-functional, running only the 68k debugger created by Stef, called C68K, and running games in BIN and SMD formats. In November, it began supporting the reset option. In January 2000, it integrated Neil Bradley's Z80 emulator, added 4 buttons to the second Mega controller, supported frameskip and was able to run 50% of the console's ROMs. In February, it launched the Windows version in partnership with DirectX, known as Wgens, and at the same time launched the latest version for MS-DOS. In this version, it added save state in the format of the famous Genecyst emulator. In March, it began supporting sound, both through the Yamaha chip and the PSG. In mid-March, it began using Neill Corlett's 68k processor and began emulating the DAC.

Gens (Mega Drive/ Syd Valis)

In the penultimate version of March, it was already running 75% of the games, and in the last one of the month it decided to continue using Neil Bradley's Z80 after changing the emulation for Mitton's Z80 several times between February and March. Also in March, it added support for a sound rate of up to 44,100hz. In April, it added support for the joypad. In May, it started supporting specific directories for saving screenshots, save states and others and loading ROMs in .ZIP format. In June, it added the 2xSAI game texture, the same used in the SNES, ZSNES and Snes9x emulators, as well as the pause option. It also added Scanline mode, the famous TV Mode (or TV mode). In June, it added stereo sound. In September, it added Game Genie, VSync and language support, starting with Spanish and French, reaching in June 2001 to support 23 languages ​​in total, including Portuguese, when it stopped supporting them and returned to only English.

Gens (Sega CD/Batman Return )

In October, it supports screenshots. In April 2001, it starts supporting netplay via Kaillera. In August, it adds stretch mode, which stretches the game screen. One of its distinguishing features was the addition of support for the Sega CD in September, making it the first Mega Drive emulator to have this option. With this update, the bios menu comes, which later also supports bios from other consoles supported by the emulator. In October, it brings the option to choose up to 64kb of SRAM for Sega CD emulation. In July 2002, it starts supporting color adjustment, with options to change contrast and brightness. And finally, in August, it starts running 32X games. In addition to all the functions mentioned, the emulator also has the ability to save emulator settings, several Scanline derivations, change the game region, among others. The last version of the emulator was released in October 2002. Its end was largely due to competition with Kega, which started in January 2002 and was reborn as Kega Lazarus in September 2002, and which would later become the famous Kega Fusion.

Gens (32X/Time )

At the time of its release, Kega was praised by Stephane as an emulator with good game compatibility and better speed than Gens. It also had support for Master System and Game Gear, which Gens did not have. One of the few advantages of Gens was that it began supporting the Sega CD before Kega. Regarding its executable icon, it was added in April 2000 and modified in December 2000, and its icon/logo at the top of the emulator, it was added in June 2000 and modified in July 2002. In May 2003, Gens was ported by Caz to BeOS and in July 2003 to Linux/SDL by Stéphane Akhoun, using the core of Caz's port as a base. Gens ran on a simple Pentium 200Mhz with 32Mb of RAM and a 2Mb video card, an affordable configuration in 2002. For the Sega CD, a Pentium II 233Mhz was required. For the 32X, an 800Mhz processor was required, with a recommendation of up to 1Ghz, which at the time was considered a top-of-the-line computer configuration.

Gens 2.12b and Gens 2.14 Souvenir

In January 2005, a team from SourceForge released an update to the emulator, with some bug fixes and increased compatibility, reaching 92% of games played. It was known as Gens 2.12b. This version also changed the icon at the top of the emulator, and was widely used as a basis for several clones/hacks of the project. After that, DarkDancer, creator of the Gens fork, Gens32, released a version in May 2006 known as 2.14, with some elements from Gens32. It became known under the codename Souvenir, which means memory in French, and is the best-known version of Gens to this day. Both versions had the participation of Stef. At this stage, Stef also had the help of influencers Rodrigo Cardoso from the Gens fork, Gens Plus! from 2004 and Fox68k's NeoGeo CD emulator for Dreamcast, NEO4ALL from 2005.

DualGens, sGens, Gens KMod, Gens (Nick o'DIMM), Gens Re-Recording and Gens + REWiND!

Gens32, Gens32 Ray, Gens Surreal, Gens/GS, Gens+ and RAGens

Due to its huge success, Gens was one of the most cloned emulators of all time. We had clone versions for Windows like sGens in 2003, IDC Log Gens, Gens Re-Recording (also for Linux, with Nitsuja as one of the authors, who also helped in the creation of FCEUX for NES), Gens (authored by Nick o'DIMM – nick ou-dem), DebuGens, Gens KMod and Gens Plus! (the latter becoming a Sega 8 and 16-bit multi-emulator) both in 2004, Gens32 in 2005, Gens Surreal (evolution of Gens32), Gens32 Ray (version for weak PCs of Gens Surreal) and Gens Tracer both in 2006, DualGens in 2008, Gens+ REWiND! and Gens/GS (also for Linux) both in 2009 and RAGens in 2018. Debu, Tracer and IDC are the only clones that have no apparent modifications to the interface and credits.

NeoGenesis (Xbox)

For other devices, it was ported to Xbox by XPort, as GensX and NeoGenesis in 2003 and Gens_xport in 2004 and by Hikaru as Gens X in 2003, to Android as Gnome Gens in 2003 and TigerGens in 2012 and to Dreamcast, as Gens4All in 2008 (by the Spanish Daniel Lancha, Chui, creator of PSX4ALL for PSX and collaborator of the PicoDrive emulator of SMD). The interesting ports that we can highlight are the Gens/SG from 2009 that comes with the proposal of cleaning the source code and combining features of several other Gens ports. There was a second version of the emulator called Gens/GS II that began to be written between 2014 and 2016, but was never finished. The IDC Log Gens from 2004, also known as GensHack, which has a process of understanding assembly instructions of a ROM. Gens Re-Recording from 2004, previously known as Gens Movie Test, which specializes in recording videos and all the tools around it, being an emulator widely used by the TASVideos community, a YouTube of games recorded on emulators. And DualGens from 2008, which was developed to compare differences between ROMs. The remaining ports add image effects, video, information on technical parts of the emulator and the ROMs being run, among others.

 

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