The History of Neo Geo Emulators - Part 1

Rage (1998)

Rage

The Real Arcade Game Emulator, Rage, was the first Neo Geo emulator created. Created by Swedes Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela, it was first released in February 1998 for MS-DOS. Janne Korpela was already known in 1997 for having created emulators for specific games, such as Ikari Warriors (by SNK Ikari Warriors), Konami's Tutankham (by Konami Framebuffer) and Konami's Yie Ar Kung-Fu (by Konami 6809). He was a pioneer in these games, which were quickly integrated into MAME. Anders Nilsson had also created an emulator in 1997, of Capcom's SonSon (by Capcom Unique), and later taken care of by Korpela. In this case, the game had been added to MAME five days before the release of Nilsson's emulator. In addition, they brought programming experience from their personal lives, in which they have a company together. At its beginning, Rage ran only six games. Over time, it began supporting more games, and in its latest version it ran a total of 21. They basically emulated games from SNK, Capcom and Irem boards, with SNK's Ikari Warriors, Triple Z80 and Psycho Soldier, Capcom's Commando and Unique, and Irem's M72, M82 and M92. The games covered the years 1985 to 1994. According to Janne in an interview, the preference for these companies was because they had already emulated SNK and Capcom games prior to Rage, and Irem came when they were able to emulate R-Type. The emulator was a pioneer for SNK and Irem boards, with Capcom's pioneering MAME in 1997. Because it was in DOS and command line mode, several front-ends were released for it. Among them were DvRAGE and FrontRAGE (launched in March) and RMenu in 1998, StarRAGE in 1999 and Rage Runner in 2000. It was also involved in multisystem front-ends, such as Emu(X)CC in 1998 (which also emulated MAME, Snes9x and KGen) and ArcadeOS in 1999 (which emulated several arcade and console emulators). The last release of Rage was in March 1998. 

NeoRage

In May 1998, the project changed its name to NeoRage, and released its debut version for MS-DOS. Now the emulator no longer runs Capcom and Irem cards, only SNK cards, and only Neo Geo MVS, becoming a pioneer in the emulation of this card. It also began to emulate the Neo Geo AES console, also becoming a pioneer in the emulation of the SNK console. In June 1998, NeoRage began to support joypad, 320x240 and 640x480 resolutions with scanlines, frameskip support and screen capture.

NeoRage (Samurai Shodown)

In July, the alpha version was released and the beta version was released, with language functions, choice of system (arcade or console), lower RAM requirements, other scanlines, among others. In June, NeoFix was also released, a program that allows some games to run with less RAM requirements, such as KOF 94, Art of Fighting 2, Aero Fighters 2 and Galaxy Fight. In August, it began supporting .ZIP games, save states and hotkey configuration. Despite all this, the emulator never supported sound. Between May and September 1998, it had ten updates in total, six of which were beta versions.

NeoRage (Menus)

In the September version, it already ran 74 games in total. In the same vein as Rage, NeoRage also had several front-ends to make it easier to run. At least fourteen front-ends were released, nine of which were released in 1998 alone. Among the first were SPCPlay Frontpad, NEORAGE Loader, Neo Geo Universal Loader, TechNeo and NeoFront, all in June 1998, 1 month after the new project was released. Front-ends for the project were released by January 1999. It was undoubtedly one of the emulators with the most front-ends of all time.

NeoRageX

From September 1998 to April 1999 the emulator was no longer updated, returning now with the name NeoRageX for being released for Windows and with support for DirectX. Sound support only begins on this occasion, and already with the option of 44,000 kHz sound output. Also in April it brings a very interactive front-end, with several directory settings, sound, image and image of each game being displayed in the left corner of the screen.

NeoRageX (Fatal Fury)

The main sources for the emulator came mainly from Niell Corlett for the 68k processor emulator, Richard Bush and Hiromitsu Shioya for information on the Yamaha 2610 sound chip, and Shin Seiki for specifications on the Neo Geo hardware. The last official version of NeoRageX was released in June 1999, with five releases in total and support for over 130 games encompassing the main franchises released for the device, such as Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, Art of Fighting, Magical Drops, Samurai Shodown, Super Sidekicks, Real Bout, Last Blade, World Heroes, Aero Fighters, Sengoku, Metal Slug, among others.

NeoRageX (Interface/Menus)

At this time, emulators such as MAME and Calice already supported Neo Geo, which was later followed by WinKawaks, Final Burn and others, causing the project to be shut down. The project's website was last updated in June 2000.

NeoRageX MannyAnd

NeoRageX FIR3N3T

After its closure, a series of hacked versions of the emulator were released. We emphasize the main ones, such as those by FIR3N3T from AniGames.it, which made the emulator run on Windows XP, with NeoRageX XP (changing version 0.6b) in 2001, and NeoRage X XP 0.8 and NeoRageX XP 0.8b in 2002. Next comes MannyAnd, with versions 0.6b XP, 0.6b and 0.7 in 2001, and 0.7 SP (Special) in 2002.

NeoRageX EGCG

NeoRageX Black Jack

NeoRageX Megaman_09

Emu Game Cool Group (EGCG), emerged in 2003, headed by HappyASR and Flycboy, with several versions, entitled 0.6h, 1.0h Test Version, 2k3 and Text X Version, between 2003 and 2005. Jack Black (who changes versions of Happy and FIR3NET), with versions 0.9, 0.9a, 0.9b and 0.9c, both in 2003. Javier Tecla, with versions 1.0, 1.0a and 1.0b (also known as NeoRageX Final) in 2003. And Megaman_09 with versions 5.3 and 5.4 in 2006.

NeoRageX 5.2

In 2005, the emulator was taken over by a group of Brazilians called NeoFighters Team, made up of Fabio Filho, Jimmy Page and Shoometsu. It all started with the help of a friend of Fabio's called Magolouco, who managed to break the protection of version 4.a that the former hacker had left so that he could no longer use the emulator, creating version 4.ac. With this, they released NeoRageX 4.x. Romhack, Blaze, neo04 and Ferchogtx joined the group in 2006 and the group changed its name to SNK-NeoFighters Team, and released NeoRageX 5.0. And finally, in 2009, they released NeoRageX 5.2, with only Romhack, Fabio Filho and Shoometsu being part of the group at that time. Among the updates to the hacks mentioned are the addition of games such as KOF 2000 by HappyASR and KOF 2001 by Jack Black, several games from the KOF series, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug, and games such as SNK Vs. Capcom, The Last Blade, and other games from 1999 onwards by the SNK-NeoFighters Team, as well as several improvements in emulation, and even correction of the execution of old games that already ran on the emulator made by other hackers.

FiR3N3T (AniGames.it): NeoRageX XP (2001), NeoRageX XP 0.8 (2002), NeoRageX XP 0.8b (2002)

MannyAnd: NeoRageX 0.6b XP (2001), NeoRageX 0.6b (2001), NeoRageX 0.7 (2001), NeoRageX 0.7 SP (2002)

??? (N/A): NeoRageX XP 0.8c (2003)

HappyASR / Flycboy (EGCG - Emu Game Cool Group): NeoRageX 0.6h (2003), NeoRageX 1.0h Test Version 1 (2003), NeoRageX 1.0h Test Version 2 (2003), NeoRageX 1.0h Test Version 3 (2003), NeoRageX 1.0h Test version 4.3 (2003), NeoRageX Test Version 4.4 (2003), NeoRageX 2k3 (2004), NeoRageX 2k3 Plus (2004), NeoRageX Test Version 4.8 (2004), NeoRageX 4.a (2005)

 Jack Black / Eddy Kine: NeoRageX 0.9 (2003), NeoRageX 0.9a (2003), NeoRageX 0.9b (2003), NeoRageX 0.9c (2003)

Javier Tecla (Tecl@ 2@@3): NeoRageX 1.0 (2003), NeoRageX 1.0a (2003), NeoRageX 1.0b (2003)

BinLing: NeoRageX 1.0c (2003)

??? (N/A): NeoRageX Special Version (2004)

Crazy Wizard: NeoRageX Final v4.ac (2005)

??? (N/A): NeoRageX Final Test 4.8 WinXP (2005)

NeoFighters Team/SNK-NeoFighters Team: NeoRageX 4.x (2005), NeoRageX 5.0 (2006), NeoRageX 5.2 (2009), NeoRageX 5.2a (2009)

Megaman_09: NeoRAGEx 5.3 (2006), NeoRAGEx 5.4 (2006)

??? (N/A): RR-NeoRageX - Final Test 4.8 (2007)