Emulation Names - Part 21

Matt Conte

Matthew P. Conte, or Matt Conte (known as Shady) was born in Italy in 1977. He attended the naval academy, where he learned engineering, and subsequently programming in C. It was at this time that he began to take an interest in programming. In the world of emulation, he began around 1994. He was involved in several projects at the time.

NEStoFAM

Around the beginning of 1997, he created a utility called NEStoFAM, made exclusively for the NES emulator, Famicom (known as Famicom.exe), which transformed the standard format of NES games into the format read by the emulator.

boxes

In mid-1997, he released CajoNES, the continuation of NEStoFAM, now covering the PRG/CHR formats played on the Pasofami emulator. Its latest version was released in early 1998, the same month he released Nofrendo, a NES emulator for MS-DOS. In late 1997, Matt was helping with the XGS Apple II and PCAE Atari 2600 projects, when he decided to create his own emulator. The emulator was created in partnership with DripWare Software, and its distinguishing feature was the APU (sound processor) emulator it contained.

Nofrendo (NES)

In addition, the emulator had good palettes (with the option to choose between two), good speed and compatibility, and ran on slow PCs of the time, such as Pentium 1. Its design was always aimed at precision, so that it would be as faithful as possible to the original console. Nofrendo ended at the end of 2000. In early 2001, a pre-version for Linux was released and ported by Neil Stevens, known as Nofrendo SDL, but it did not continue. Its APU emulator was used by the MAME projects in 1999 and MESS in 2000, Nester and UONester for NES in 2001, Little John GP32 in 2003, among others.

Nosefart (NSF/NES Player)

After Nofrendo, he created the Nosefart player for original NES music files, the NSF (Nintendo Entertainment System Sound Format) in early/mid-1999 for MS-DOS, also created at the same date as a plugin for the Winamp player (famous at the time). It used the sound emulator contained in Nofrendo. It was discontinued in mid-2000 and continued by Matthew Strait in 2004, who also released the versions in question and created a version for Linux in 2004, following the permitted portability described in the software's source code. By the way, all of Matt's software was open source.

MAME/MESS NES APU Core, libsnss, Standardized NES Save State and thinlibe

Around 1999, the idea of ​​the Standardized NES Save State (stenderdaizd), known as SNSS, was created. As the name suggests, it sought to standardize the save state in NES emulators, which were very diverse. This was within the nesdev wiki and headed by David de Regt, Akilla (creator of the NES emulator, NESEM). Around the beginning of 2000, Matt, together with Neal Tew and Darren Ranalli (the latter creator of Nester, for NES), developed the format. Months later, Mike Melanson (melansan) (creator of TuxNES for Linux) joined the group. It promised reliable recording of CPU and PPU information, among others. In addition, it had its own library for recording and reading called LibSNSS, with a test program included, to help emulator developers include this format. The .SNSS format was in the LoopyNES emulators in 1999, Nester, NesterJ and NESten in 2000, Liss NES in 2002, among others. Despite the adoption and an intense campaign, the format did not take off as the standard for the scene's save state files.

Websites Nofrendo, Nosefart, SourceForge, Matt Conte (Nosefart and SNSS Repository) and Baisoku

In early 2001, the Nes6502 emulator (known as the fast 6502 core) of the NES CPU was released. Some emulators used it, such as Squeem, RockNES and Nester from 2001 onwards. Around the same time, the ThinLib library for the DJGPP software development platform, compatible with Intel PCs and the MS-DOS system, was released, with the aim of improving the framebuffer, sound, keyboard, joystick and mouse. The library was developed until mid-2002.

Shatbox (NES)

In mid-2002, he also created another NES emulator, Shatbox, for MS-DOS and Windows. It was made in SDL, that is, in a library designed to be ported to other systems. It was also open source. The project was born and died in the same month.

 Image Utility and XGS (Apple II) and PCAE (Atari 2600)

Regarding the help he provided to projects, we have XGS for Apple II with suggestions, construction of the FAQ file (questions and answers) of the emulator, and the image application Image Utility for the DOS and XfreeOS/2 versions of the emulator, and PCAE with hosting of its page, help in beta testing and sharing of information and tools, both in 1997, z26 for Atari 2600 and LoopyNES, FCE Ultra and Jnes for NES in 1999, having helped for FCE Ultra with sound information, and for Jnes he helped with the NesDev documentation, among others. In 1998, he mentioned that he planned to create emulators for Atari 2600, ColecoVision and the Atari 800XL and Apple II computers, but none of them came to fruition. After 2002, Matt Conte no longer gets involved with the world of emulation.

TLSF and GitHub

Outside the world of emulation, in 2006 he created a fork of TLSF, a memory allocation system for embedded systems (cell phones, automotive systems, smart systems), for their better performance. He developed this project to help him create games at the company he worked for, Vicarious Visions. The project was placed on his official website, baisoku.org, and this was the last update to the website. In 2016, the project was also placed on his GitHub, created in 2015. In 2016, he changed the address of his website to confusionattack.com, but without any updates to it. In 2018, he created a fork of Zpng, a program for compressing PNG images without loss of quality, but never released anything about it.

Xaverian Brothers High School and United States Naval Academy

In his professional life, he entered high school in 1990, at Xaverian Brothers High School, in Westwood, Massachusetts, staying there until 1994. In the same year, he moved to Annapolis, Maryland, and entered the United States Naval Academy, where he studied systems engineering until 1996. In 1997, he studied computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, completing his degree in 1999. In the same year, he joined Vicarious Visions, also in Troy, New York, as a principal software engineer. The company later moved to the neighboring city of Albany. Matt worked on the Alchemy project in 2003, among other things, an engine for creating games that provided 3D applications. The project was created by Intrinsic Graphics in 2002, and purchased by Vicarious in 2003. This engine was present in games from the Tony Hawks, Crash Bandicoot, Spider-Man, X-Men Legends, Transformers, Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchises, among others, as well as in the first versions of Google Earth.

Vicarious Visions and Meta

In addition to working on the Alchemy project, he was also responsible for several games released by the company, acting as a programmer, lead programmer, software architect (using Alchemy), engineer, platform engineer, build and support engineer, engineering excellence leader, among others. He helped produce games for GBC, such as Vilitante 8, Spider-Man, GBA, such as Tony Hawk's 2, Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, Crash Nitro Kart, Windows, such as Terminus, NDS, such as Spider-Man 2, PSP, such as X-Men: Legends II, Wii and PS2, such as Spider-Man 3, PS3, such as Madagascar 2, Xbox 360, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Wii U, such as Skylanders Giants, PS4, such as Skylanders: Imaginators, among others. Matt has made other important contributions to the company.

Brother Bear, Finding Nemo and Tony Hawks 2 (GBA) and Crash Bandicoot N-Same Trilogy (PS4)

He was responsible for creating low-level assembly code, pioneering 3D rendering for GBA games, maintaining a technology library used as the basis for many handheld projects, being a major contributor to core technology used in famous titles for Activision, maintaining the 2 million lines of code (2M LOC) game engine for creating large games that use a large codebase, which included most of Vicarious' titles, and used as the basis for custom tools for a decade by the company, and finally developing TLSF for better memory management and low fragmentation in games, being used in graphics engines such as Unreal Engine and middleware (communicating between parts within the game) such as Audiokinetic Wwise. His company was acquired by Activision in 2005 and merged with Blizzard Entertainment (Activision's sister company) in 2021, becoming Blizzard Albany. In 2006, he moved to the company's San Francisco, California branch. Matt was with the company until 2016, when he joined Meta in Menlo Park, San Francisco, California, as head of developer relations engineering.

Madagascar 2 and Spuder-Man (PS2), Mario Kart Live (Swith) and Ultimate Alliance 2 (Xbox 360)

At the company, he works on Meta Quest, immersive 3D virtual reality glasses used for education, gaming, exercise and corporate training. He also participated in the porting of some games to the platform, such as Wilson's Heart and Landfall in 2017, Red Matter in 2019 and Rez Infinity in 2020. In 2021, the company moved to Burlingame, California. In 2023, he becomes head of developer relations engineering. In parallel to his work at Meta, he also helped in the development of some games at other companies, such as Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy for PS4 at Naughty Dog in 2017 and Metro: Exodus in 2019 for Xbox One at 4A Games Limited with its TLSF, a memory allocation system for better hardware performance. In 2020, he participated in some games from Velan Studios, a company founded by the creators of Vicarious Visions who had left the company in 2016, such as Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit for Nintendo Switch in 2020 (participating in the technical area of ​​the company's game creation engine, the Viper Engine), and Knockout City for Windows in 2021 and Hot Wheels: Rift Rally for PS5 in 2023, both using his TLSF. Finally, he also participated in Penny's Big Breakaway for Nintendo Switch in 2024, working on open source software for the company Evening Star. Matt is still with Meta to this day. In his personal life, he has been married to Jenni Braughton since 2012.

Programs:

NEStoFAM (1997), CajoNES (1997), Nosefart (1999), TLSF (2006)

Emulators:

Nofrendo (1998), NES APU (1998), Nes6502 (2001), Shatbox (2002)

Extensions:

Standardized NES Save State (SNSS) (2000)

Libraries:

LibSNSS (2000), ThinLib (2001)

Games:

Game Boy Color: Vigilante 8 (1999), Polaris SnoCross (2000), Spider-Man (2000)

Game Boy Advance: Barbie: Magic Genie Adventure (2000), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2001), Disney•Pixar Finding Nemo (2003), Disney's Brother Bear (2003), Crash Nitro Kart (2003)

Windows: Terminus (2000), Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Knockout City (2021)

NDS: Spider-Man 2 (2004)

PSP: Spider-Man 2 (2005), X-Men: Legends II - Rise of Apocalypse (2005)

Wii: Spider-Man 3 (2007)

PS2: Spider-Man 3 (2007), Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

PS3: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

Xbox 360: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009), Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (2011), Skylanders: Swap Force (2013), 

Wii U: Skylanders Giants (2012), Skylanders: SuperChargers (2015)

PS4: Skylanders: Imaginators (2016), Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (2017), Metro: Exodus (2019)

Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit (2020), Penny's Big Breakaway (2024)

Meta Quest: Wilson's Heart (2017), Landfall (2017), Red Matter (2019), Rez Infinite (2020)

PS5: Hot Wheels: Rift Rally (2023)

Graphics Engines:

Alchemy (2003), 2M LOC Engine (2006), Viper Engine (2020)

Jeff Mitchell

Jeff Mitchell, aka Skeezix, was born in Canada and was a well-known contributor to arcade emulator projects and a developer of PalmOS emulators. He got his start in the emulation world in 1996, when he created the Xcade arcade emulator for the UNIX system, running on Linux and NetBSD. 

Xcade (UNIX)

It is considered one of the first arcade emulators for UNIX systems. The emulator ran 28 games, including Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Crush Roller, Pac-Man and Spacade Invaders, running games from 1978 to 1983. The emulator had versions for MS-DOS and X11 in 1997.

Retrocade

In mid-1997, Neil Bradley invited him to participate in the Retrocade project, also an arcade game for MS-DOS. Jeff created the UNIX and SVGAlib ports, allowing it to run on Linux and FreeBSD. He also rewrote some of the emulator's cores, ported Cinematronics games, and provided other help. During this period, he created the "Development and history of emulation" page on his personal website, where, among other things, he made several classic arcade emulators available for download. Also in 1997, he created the port of the Magnetic emulator for UNIX/X11, which included games released by Magnetic Scrolls for old PCs, such as the Atari ST and Amiga. They were text-based adventure games, like an RPG or a fanfic.

xNES (UNIX) and Handy (UNIX)

MESS (UNIX)

At the end of 1997, he was called once again to work with the UNIX system, now porting the NES emulator, xNes. He also started a port for X11. Neither version was released. In the project, he worked alongside Richard Bannister (who already worked at Retrocade) and Brad Oliver, who in 1998, called him to be part of the founding team of the MESS emulator. The explanation for the failure to release the xNes versions for UNIX/X11 was that the MESS project, which emulated NES, already had ports for several systems, including UNIX, which was also ported by Mitchell. In 1998, he also created a port of the Atari Lynx Handy to UNIX, but it was never released. 

Docs: Magnetic Scrolls (X11), Cinematronics (MAME), LibPND (Pandora), Compo4All, Zikzak and ZixBurner

In 1999, he joined the MAME project, helping to integrate Zonn Moore's Cinematronics CPU, with whom he had worked on Retrocade, as well as Neil Bradley. This CPU was also integrated into the MESS project in 2003. Alongside them, he was also responsible for adding the games Armor Attack, Boxing Bugs, Demon, Rip Off, Solar Quest, Space Wars, Speed ​​Freak, Star Castle, Star Hawk, Sundance, Tailgunner, Vectorbeam, War of the Worlds and Warrior to MAME.

Shadow Plan! 3.0 and 4.0 and Shadow Desktop

Websites Shadow Plan!, Codejedi, Codejunkie, SourceForge and GitHub

In late 2000, he created Shadow Plan, a task manager for the PalmOS system of portable devices. In early 2001, he opened the CodeJedi website, especially for the project. He later launched the version for computer operating systems called Shadow Deskop, launching it for Windows in late 2001 and MacOS X and Linux in mid-2003. The CodeJedi website became a site for ports of emulators for PalmOS and other portable devices.

XCade (PalmOS)

CaSTaway (PalmOS) and Columbo (PalmOS)

Among the projects he ported are XCade for PalmOS in 2002 (being the first arcade emulator for the system) and Zodiac and GP32 in 2003. CaSTaway for Atari ST for GP32 as CaSTaway GP and PalmOS in 2003 and Zodiac and PSP in 2005. Columbo, a port of ColEm from ColecoVision for PalmOS and Zodiac in 2004. GuineaPig, an MD, SMS, GG and PCE emulator ported to PalmOS in 2004. And Frodo for Commodore 64, as FrodoZ for Zodiac, with help from Paul Colclough's (Squid/Squidge). In 2004, he released PalmOS/Zodiac Dev with information for ports to these systems.

GuineaPig (PalmOS)

Kronos (Magnetic Scrolls)

In addition to ports for emulators, he also created ports for games. The first was actually his own creation, Ompac in 1998, a clone of Asteroids for X11 and a port for MS-DOS was being planned. Next came Kronos in 2003, which was an application to run games from the company Magnetic Scrolls on PalmOS.

Beats of Rage and Castlevania - Symphony of Destruction (BOR) (PalmOS)

ZQuake (PalmOS) and Battle Jewels (PSP)

Jeff had already made a port of this game in 1997 for UNIX. Also released was Beats of Rage, a game for MS-DOS inspired by classic beat'em ups, ported to PalmOS and Zodiac in 2004. Quake, a first-person PC game for Zodiac and PalmOS called ZQuake in 2004. And finally Battle Jewels, a puzzle game created by Jeff in the style of Bejeweled for PSP in 2007.

ZGrab (Printscreen: Tapwave Zodiac and Dreamway) and Grove Online (BBS Server)

Zot! (Game Engine) (Windows and Linux)

Several tools were also developed by Jeff, such as ZGrab, a screen capture tool for PalmOS in 2003. And Zot!, an efficient and modern game software development tool for Windows, MacOS X, GP32, PalmOS, Zodiac, BSD UNIX and Linux in 2004. And finally, in 2004, he resurrected Grove Online, an old BBS server (local servers famous in the 1980s, before the internet arrived) for Atari ST fans. After the release of CaSTaway for the PSP in late 2007, he no longer updates his website (which goes offline around April 2022). In 2008, he created LibPND, a library for creating software for the Pandora platform, alongside Vimacs.

FrodoZ (PalmOS)

In 2013, he planned two game ports, The King of Fighters for PalmOS and Descent for PocketPC, but they were never developed. Jeff created other projects, already on the GitHub platform, which he joined in 2010, such as Manticore in 2013, a puzzle game based on pushing blocks, designed for GP32, GP2X and PalmOS, but never released. Zikzak in 2013, a program to build a retro PC from scratch without using modern chips. ZixBurner in 2013, an EEPROM programmer, for read-only memories. Compo4All in 2014, creating a scoring system through a server to compete in arcade and indie games through PCs and Smartphones.

Emacs Attacks (2021)

The war game Emacs Attacks in 2021 (I believe for Linux), in the style of Windows' Bang! Bang! from 1990. And iSearch Out of Order in 2024, which adds the function of searching for multiple words to the Emacs text editor. Outside the world of emulation, he is a graphic artist for some newspapers in Toronto, Canada, creates software for the company America Online, and is a support technician for musical bands on tour. 

Ikasan

In 2009, he created a group project called Ikasan Enterprise Integration Platform (IkasanEIP), with the function of providing integration between various areas of a company, such as financial systems, sales, inventory, etc., all in real time. To this end, he launched the Ikasan software in Java format that same year. The project was posted on his SourceForge account, created in 2008. Jeff still develops software as a hobby and is considered one of the few emulators who was active in both phases of emulation, that of PCs and computer systems and that of portable devices.

Emulators (Windows/UNIX):

Xcade (UNIX) (1996), Retrocade (1997), Magnetic (UNIX) (1997), MESS (1998)

Emulators (PalmOS):

XCade (2002), CaSTaway GP (2003), Columbo (2004), GuineaPig (2004), FrodoZ (Zodiac) (2004)

Games:

Kronos (UNIX) (1997), Ompac (X11) (1998), Kronos (PalmOS) (2003), Beats of Rage (PalmOS) (2004), Quake (PalmOS) (2004), Battle Jewels (PSP) (2007), Emacs Attacks (2021)

Programs:

Shadow Plan (PalmOS) (2000), Shadow Deskop (2001), ZGrab (2003), Zot! (2004), Zikzak (2013), ZixBurner (2013), Compo4All (2014)

Libraries:

LibPND (2008)