The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Part 5

DGen (1999)

 

 

DGen was created in 1998 by Dave, known in the emu scene as the creator of Final Burn, Dega and PicoDrive, among other emulators. Its first version was created in 1998 for MS-DOS, but we do not know if it was released to the public. Its first version is dated May 1999 for Windows. Right from the start, it came with support for stereo sound, emulation of the YM2612 chip with its six sound channels and the 68k processors, by StarScream and Z80 by Multi-Z80. Also in May, there were some versions with important updates, such as 1.03, which released its source code, which also ended up doing in the versions of May, July and August 1999. Version 1.04, bringing support for MS-DOS. Version 1.05, when it began to support DirectInput. And version 1.06, which added another 68k processor, the Musashi, which was slower than the StarScream, but more accurate. Both were available for use. In June 1999, support for the PSG chip and games in Zip format began. For good performance of the emulator, it was recommended to use at least a Pentium III processor. In January 2000, Dave released his last version and abandoned the project to dedicate himself to Final Burn. In this version, he changed the Z80 emulator to Richard Mitton's, instead of Neil Bradley's, correcting the out-of-time music in some games. Dave released 21 versions in total, not including the beta version. In addition to the functions already mentioned, the emulator also supported save state, region change, image speed from 50 to 70hz, pause, reset, joypad, Game Genie, full screen, triple image buffer, layer options, sound of up to 16 bits, power of up to 44,100hz of sound, option to change latency (bringing greater sound precision) and support for recording sound in .GYM format, which is the original sound format of the Mega Drive, similar to the NSF of the NES (this format starts in the Genecyst emulator, and in future emulators it is replaced by the .VGM format).

 

DGen

 

Despite all these options, the emulator had some screen bugs with some games, with problems with parallax, background and sprites. Regarding the collaborations with the project, we had Neill Corlett with his 68k, Neil Bradley with his Z80, Tatsuyuki Satoh for his YM2612, Steve Snake from Kgen98 for the DirectInput code, Alex Townsend for the support for ROMs in ZIP format, Karl Stenerud for his Sharp 68K emulator, John Stiles, creator of the MasterGear, iNes and ColEm emulators for Macintosh for his command line renderer and Flavio Morsoletto for great information about the console. In addition, Richard Bannister and Joe Groff also helped in the project by developing SRAM support in the emulator. Joe was also one of the people responsible for coding the DGen sound. Regarding its ports, around May 1999, it was ported to MacOS by Richard Bannister. A curiosity about the port for MacOS. It was the first Macintosh emulator to emulate the Mega's sound chip, the YM2612, which allowed most games to run with their full sound. The port was released for MacOS 8.1 and later, as well as 9. John Stiles added Raster Effects and Gil Peterson added SRAM support to Bannister's version. In December 2000, Bannister discontinued the port, leaving Generator in its place. In February 2000, Caz from the BeEmulated website created a port for BeOS. In December 2000, tubooboo from the Ngine website even considered a port of the emulator for Dreamcast, but the project did not go ahead.

 

DGen/SDL (Linux)

In addition to all these ports, there was one in particular that ended up becoming the continuation of DGen after its termination. I'm talking about DGen/SDL, ported to Linux in June 1999 by Joe Groff, created on top of version 1.12 of the original emulator. The SDL version made it possible to create ports of the emulator for several operating systems, such as UNIX, BeOS and BSD. Phil K. Hornung helped him with the project, adding filters, joypad support, among others. The project also supported Game Genie, compressed ROMs and other additions. In the same month of its creation, in June 1999, it gained a port to BeOS by Andrew Bazar. It was easier for Andrew to create a port of this version than of Dave's Windows version. In June 2000, it gained another port to BeOS by David from the website smaug.co.uk, since there was no more up-to-date version for the system. Andrew updated his version again later. In addition, DGen/SDL had help from several other influencers in the field, such as Steve Snake, creator of KGen98. In July 2001, Joe and Phil abandoned the project, releasing their last version of the emulator, totaling 11 versions released. Andrew's last version for BeOS was also released that month. DGen/SDL was ported to the XBox by XPort in July 2002 as DGenX and to the PSP by Syn-Z in June 2005. In 2008, Bertrand Janin, Tamentis, tried to revive the project, putting the last version of the emulator made by Joe and Phil online on his website at SourceForge, a website for open source developers, in an attempt to have some kind of cooperation, but was unsuccessful, releasing only one version of the emulator in August 2008. Bertrand, together with Inkscape, were responsible for creating the first logo for the emulator in May 2008.

 

DGen/SDL (Windows)

 

In 2011, the emulator was once again revived, this time by Zamaz, releasing nine versions of the emulator from September 2011 to July 2014. Starting in October 2011, Zamaz also began releasing versions for Windows. This version had no interface, requiring the ROM to be dragged on top of the emulator executable to be run (I believe this existed since the first version by Joe in 1999). Compared to the previous version by Tamentis released in 2008, Zamaz added video filters, automatic region selection, a 68k debugger (Cyclone 68k, written by Dave, created after the original DGen was finished), OpenGL support, and several other updates and improvements. Since 2014, the emulator has not had any further versions released.

 

Come and discover the history of DGen in video on our YouTube channel.