Emulation Names - Part 23

The Dead Serious Clan

Shark (Arcade Emulator)

The Dead Serious Clan was created in 1998 by Swedes Carl-Henrik Skårstedt, Magnus Danielsson and Johan Köhler. The three met in 1989, when they were writing game demos and applications for the Amiga. Years later, Carl and Johan began working together in the gaming industry, starting with SMD's Daze Before Christmas in 1994, at Funcom, then working on Fatal Fury Special in 1994 and Samurai Shodown in 1995 for Sega CD, and Disney's Pocahontas and Nightmare Circus in 1996 for Mega Drive, having created games for famous brands, such as SNK, Disney and Sega. After that, they split up, with Carl making some games for SMD, such as NBA Hangtime in 1996 while still at Funcom, and Johan having worked on games for Electonic Arts in 1999 and Namco in 2002, at several other companies. They meet again at Luxoflux, in the game True Crime: Streets of LA (PS2) in 2003.

Fire Shark (Shark Emulator)

During this time, they worked together on games such as Shrek 2 in 2004, True Crime: New York City in 2005 and Kung-Fu Panda in 2008, all also for PS2. In 2010, Carl left Luxoflux and worked for companies that worked with games for Sony, Sega, Electronic Arts and Yacht Club Games. He created the retro game Space Moguls in 2018 for Commodore 64 based on the MULE strategy games. Johan moved to Treyarch Corporation in 2006, working mainly on the Call of Duty franchise, between 2006 and 2020. Magnus Danielsson was also part of the gaming industry, having participated in Acclaim's DragonHeart in 1996 for Sega Saturn, also at Funcom, and later having been at other companies, in games such as Destruction Derby 64 in 1999 for N64 and Sony's Kinetica in 2001 for PS2. At Sony, he had a long career starting in 2001, and some time later, he began working for the company on the God of War franchise between 2005 and 2013.

Shark Website

During a period of boredom for Carl and Magnus, having changed jobs and having nothing to do until they could complete their new activities, they began working on the Shark! project, emulating arcade games. Johan had been trying to get Carl into emulation for some time. At that time, the three of them got together. Shark! emulated Toaplan and Taito boards for games released between 1985 and 1989. This project was created by Carl alongside Magnus, and was quite famous at the time, even competing with MAME. Initially, it was going to be released commercially through Blue House, a production company created by the duo, but later it ended up being released for free.

Gekko (Neo Geo Emulator)

The second project, Johan created alone, called Gekko, which emulated the NeoGeo arcade game. However, he only emulated a single game, NAM-1975, as he received threats from SNK to discontinue the project. Both were released in the same month in early 1998 and in Windows versions. The Shark! project ended in late 1998, and both disbanded. It was a short period of the group, but a remarkable one. Johan had already had an emulation project before Shark! called GX400, which would emulate Salamander, Nemesis (known as Gradius) and Red Fighter, both from the Konami Nemesis arcade game, however, he only released the emulation of the first two games, each with a separate emulator in 1997, known as Salamander Emulator and Nemesis Emulator respectively.

Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em Ups 1 and 2

In 2023, Toaplan decided to release four of its classic games for Windows, and asked Magnus Danielsson and Carl-Henrik Skårstedt (who were working at Blue House) to adapt their Shark! emulator to run these games. This was a huge recognition from the company for Shark!, whose history marked arcade emulation in the 1990s. Among the games released were Twin Cobra, Truxton, Out Zone and Zero Wing. Six months later, still in 2023, it was the turn of HellFire, Flying Shark, Fire Shark and Slap Fight to be re-released by Toaplan for Windows, also with Magnus and Carl's emulator as an emulation base. These releases were named Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em Ups 1 and Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em Ups 2.

Emulators:

Shark! (1998)

Collections:

Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em Ups 1 (2023), Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em Ups (2024)

Carl-Henrik Skårstedt

About the complete history of its members, we start with Carl-Henrik Skårstedt, Sakrac. Carl spent his childhood in the city of Kalmar, Sweden, where he attended Falkenberg School in 1987. In 1989, he moved to Kungsbacka, Sweden, where he met his friends Danielsson and Johan, with whom he created applications for the Amiga. In 1992, he studied Computer Science at Umeå University, in Umeå, Sweden, practically on the other side of the country. He graduated in 1994, and in the same year, he joined the Norwegian company Funcom, as a programmer, alongside Johan, and later Danielsson.

Daze Before Christmas and NBA Hang Time (SNES) and Fatal Fury Special (Sega CD)

He worked on games for Mega Drive, such as Daze Before Christmas, NBA Hangtime for SNES and Samurai Shodown for Sega CD. He also worked as a core programmer and lead programmer. In 1997, he left the company and founded Blue House with Johan Köhler. At this time, he lived in the city of Gothenburg, in Vastra Gotaland County, Sweden, near Kungsbacka. At the company, he worked on creating two-player action and adventure demos and on creating a commercial arcade emulator. This emulator was never released commercially, but instead was released for free. We're talking about Shark! In 1999, he moved to the US and went to work at Looking Glass Studios, in Huntington Beach, California, where he worked on the prototype WildWaters: Extreme Kayak for Nintendo 64, creating the game practically from scratch. Unfortunately, the game was never released. Two months after joining the company, his friend Johan also became an employee. In 2000, he worked for Namco Hometek in San Jose, California, on the game Pac-Man World 2 for PS2. At the company, he served as a lead programmer.

True Crime (Xbox), Kung Fu Panda (PS2), Transformers (PC), PS All-Stars (PS3) and Sonic Boom (Wii U)

Then, Luxoflux was founded in 2001 in Santa Monica, California, where he spent nine years of his life. There, we have titles such as True Crime: Streets of LA and New York City, Shrek 2, Kung Fu Panda and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. At the company, he worked as a programmer, gameplay programmer and lead gameplay engineer. Once again, he shared the space with his friend Johan, this being the last time they worked together. In 2010, he went to SuperBot Entertainment in Curver City, California, where he helped create the game PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, released in 2012, as a lead software engineer. Big Red Button Entertainment arrived next in 2012 in El Segundo, California, where he worked as a senior programmer. He helped program the games Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric in 2014 and Pokemon GO from 2015 to 2016.

Funcom, The Looking Glass Studios, Namco Hometek, Luxoflux, SuperBot Entertainment, Big Red Button, Yacht Club Games, Thunderful Games and Bitwave Games

Yacht Club Games followed in 2016, in Marina Del Rey, California, with the game Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment in 2017, as a programmer. In 2019, he left the company, but even outside, he still contributed to the games Cyber ​​Shadow in 2021 and Shovel Knight: Dig in 2022. Also outside the company, he contributed to the game Battle Axe in 2021, for Bitmap Bureau. In 2020, he joined Thunderful Games as a programmer, returning to his home country, Sweden, working in the city of Gothenburg, where he optimized the use of Unity (with which he had previously worked on Pokemon GO in 2015 and Battle Axe in 2021) in the game Lost in Random in 2021.

Carl-Henrik/ Bitwave Games and Masahiru Yuge (Original Creator of Twin Cobra)

And finally, in 2022, Bitwave Games, also in Gothenburg, with the re-release for Windows of Toaplan's retro games such as Truxton, Out Zone, Twin Cobra, HellFire and Flying Shark, released in 2023, using the Shark! emulation created by him and Danielsson. At the launch of the first collection, entitled Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em Ups 1, Carl received a visit at Bitwave from Masahiro Yuge, the original creator of the games he was releasing. What must have been going through Carl's head? (laughs) Probably when he was young, playing in the arcades, then emulating them on the PC, and now releasing this emulation with the presence of the creator of the emulated games. As we say around here, 'he's finished his life' (laughs). Carl still works as a senior game developer at the company.

Space Moguls (C64)

Space Orbs (C64)

Pixie Nono (C64)

Bullshit and Witch Day

Witch Rescue Service and Scape From The Metaverse

In addition to his professional work, he still develops games for the old Commodore 64, having released Space Moguls in 2018, Nono Pixie, Space Orbs and Witch Day in 2019, Witch Rescue Service in 2020, Bullshit in 2021, Escape from the Metaverse in 2024, in addition to developing Little Witch, Untitled Island Adventure and Docking Simulator. Around 2015, he created his website on GitHub, intended for applications related to the Commodore 64, a computer for which he dedicated himself to programming games at the time.

Step6502, BDoing, x65, IceBro and IceBro Lite

Among them, we have the Step6502 debugger in 2015, used in PCs such as Apple II, C64, and even in the SNES, however this debugger is not intended for any specific system, emulating only the CPU6502, and not its peripherals, the x65 disassembler and x65 assembler, both in 2015, intended for the 6502, 65C02 and 65816 processors, used in computers, BDoing, created in 2018 to be a tool for manipulating and creating sound effects on the Commodore64, using the computer's sound chip, the SID, and can also be run on PC emulators, IceBro in 2019, a graphical debugger that uses a 6502 simulator to create programs for C64, and can be used in the C64 VICE emulator, C64 Sample Code in 2019, small snippets of executable code on the computer's 6510 processor, bringing drawing and other effects to game projects, C64Gfx in 2020, an image converter for binary formats, to be used on the Commodore 64, with graphic mode options, sprite conversions and others, Bullshit Player in 2020, a music player for the Commodore 64, with various effects and filters, in addition to enabling the creation of music and feats, IceBro Lite in 2023, a version of IceBro without the 6502 simulator included, being just a graphical user interface in the form of a command line like the C64 itself, for graphical debugging, among others.

Personal Websites: GameDev, Space Moguls and GitHub

In 2020, he created the website SpaceMoguls.com, where he put all the information about his C64 games. As for downloads, he redirected them to the Itch.io platform, intended for the creation, hosting and sale of independent games. In 2022, he created an account on the social network for game developers, Mastodon, where he posts the main updates of his C64 games, as well as his games for PCs and video games, in addition to images as creators, developers, at game events, and others.

SNES: Daze Before Christmas (1994), NBA Hangtime (1996)

Mega Drive: A Dinosaur's Tale (1994), Daze Before Christmas (1994), Disney's Pocahontas (1996), Nightmare Circus (1996), NBA Hangtime (1996)

Sega CD: Fatal Fury Special (1994), Samurai Shodown (1995)

N64: WildWaters: Extreme Kayak (Proto) (1999)

Windows: Pac-Man World 2 (2002), True Crime: Streets of LA (2004), True Crime: New York City (2006), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Lost in Random (2021), Truxton (2023), Zero Wing (2023), Out Zone (2023), Twin Cobra (2023), HellFire (2023), Flying Shark (2023), Fire Shark (2023), Slap Fight (2023)

Xbox: True Crime: Streets of LA (2003), Shrek 2 (2004), True Crime: New York City (2005)

PS2: True Crime: Streets of LA (2003), Shrek 2 (2004), True Crime: New York City (2005), Kung Fu Panda (2008)

GameCube: True Crime: New York City (2005)

Xbox 360: Kung Fu Panda (2008), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) 

Wii: Kung Fu Panda (2008)

PS3: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (2012)

Wii U: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (2014)

Android: Pokemon GO (2015-16)

Commodore 64: Space Moguls (2018), Nono Pixie (2019), Space Orbs (2019), Witch Day (2019), Witch Rescue Service (2020), Bullshit (2021), Escape from the Metaverse (2024)

Nintendo Switch: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment (2017), Cyber ​​Shadow (2021), Shovel Knight: Dig (2022)

Emulators:

Shark! (1998)

Programs:

Step6502 (2015), x65dsasm (2015), x65 (2015) BDoing (2018), IceBro (2019), C64Gfx (2020), Bullshit Player (2020), IceBro Lite (2023)

Johan Kohler

Johan Köhler, known as Drac and WayKohler, also of Swedish origin, began creating demos for the Amiga in 1988, and a year later met Carl and Danielsson, with whom he also developed them. At the time, he lived in Kungsbacka, Sweden. His professional career began in 1994, when he joined Funcom as a programmer, also alongside Carl. He worked on games for SNES, such as Disney's Pocahontas, Nightmare Circus for Mega Drive, and Fatal Fury Special for Sega CD. At the company, he also worked with real-time animation.

Nightmare Circus, Pocahontas and Daze Before Christmas (SMD), Samurai Shodown (Sega CD) and Zombieville (MS-DOS)

In 1996, he had a brief stint at Psygnosis Limited in London, United Kingdom, as a programmer for the game Zombieville, released in 1997 for MS-DOS. In 1997, he founded Blue House, alongside Carl. Johan mentions on his Linkedin that he worked on an unnamed and unannounced project. Carl, on the other hand, said that he worked at the company on a commercial arcade emulator. They were talking about Shark!, released for free, after they gave up on the idea of ​​its commercial release. Johan and Carl closed the company at the end of 1998.

Drac's Home Page

In the same year, he joined Romelix Interactive AB in Sweden for a short period of 4 months while he waited for a visa to move to the USA. There, he worked on the manufacture of educational and entertainment software for early childhood. In 1999, he moved to Huntington Beach, California, USA, and started working at Looking Glass Studios. Two months earlier, Carl had already moved to the USA and was working at the same company. Johan helped program the games System Shock 2 in 1999, and Thief II: The Metal Age in 2000. Before the release of the latter game, he left the company, remaining there for 6 months.

Call of Duty - Modern Warface II and Dead to Rights (Xbox), True Crime and Top Gear - Dare Devil (PS2) and Pac-Man World 2 (NGC)

In the same year, he moved to Papaya Studio in Irvine, California, where he worked on the game Top Gear: Dare Devil, released in 2000. This was his first time as a senior programmer. In 2000, he went to work at Namco Hometek in San Jose, California, again alongside Carl, where he worked on the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube consoles, on the games Dead To Rights and Pac-Man World 2 in 2002. In 2003, he moved to Luxoflux in Santa Monica, California, where he worked with Carl again. At the company, he worked on True Crime: Streets of LA in 2003, Shrek 2 in 2004 and True Crime: New York City in 2005.

Funcom, Psygnosis Limited, Romelix Interactive AB, Looking Glass Studios, Papaya Studio, Namco Hometek, Luxoflux and Treyarch Corporation

At Luxo, he works as a programmer, core and technology programmer, and engineer. An interesting fact. In 2004, in the game True Crime: Streets of LA, in which he worked with programming and technology, the company LTI Gray Matter worked on the programming for Windows, with none other than Michael Livesay as the programmer. Michael became known for creating the first Atari 2600 emulator, and the first functional console emulator, Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack. Indirectly, the two worked on the same production.

Spider-Man 3 (PC), Call of Duty - World At War (PC), Call of Duty - Black Ops (PS3), Ultimate Alliance 2 and Tony Hawk Ride (Xbox 360)

In 2006, he joined Treyarch Corporation (an Activision subsidiary since 2001) in Los Angeles, California, the company where he worked the longest. There, he worked on several games in the Call of Duty franchise, from 2006 to 2022, such as 3, Black Ops and Modern Warfare II. He also worked on Marvel games, such as Spider-Man: Web of Shadows in 2008 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 in 2009. At the company, he worked with tools and libraries, in addition to being an engineer, programmer, technical engineering director and senior engineer. In 2008, he had a brief stint at Luxoflux, only working on the game Kung Fu Panda, with additional engineering, returning to Treyarch that same year.

GitHub and Pyramid

In 2012, he joined GitHub. Among his projects, we have Saz Tool in 2012, a C?C++ manipulation tool for files in the .saz format, used by Fiddler, an HTML traffic debugger for diagnosing network problems, AntTweakBar D3D12 in 2013, an uncompiled code that contains an implementation of the AntTweakBar library for Direct3D 12, for lightweight graphical interfaces in projects based on OpenGL and DirectX, in addition to having also helped in third-party projects, such as Pyramid in 2015, a graphical tool that works with shaders, which deal with shading, texture, reflection and colors of 3D graphics, supporting multiple languages ​​and integrating different GPU compilers and disassemblers.

Salamander Emulator

Nemesis Emulator

In the world of emulation, in addition to the creation of Shark! in 1998 alongside Carl and Danielsson, emulating games from Toaplan and Taito, he also designed an emulator called GX400, which would emulate the arcade games Salamander, Nemesis (known as Gradius) and Red Fighter, both from the Konami Nemesis arcade, however, he only released the emulation of the first two games, each with a separate emulator in 1997, known as Salamander Emulator and Nemesis Emulator respectively.

Majik 3D (MMORPG), Screen Resolution (Win95) and RSH For Win95 (Remote Connection)

Around 1998, he also created two applications, RSH For Win95, which made a remote connection between Windows systems, and Screen Resolution, to change Windows 95 resolutions. Outside the emulation world, he helped the MMORPG project Majik 3D with client code to facilitate the game's porting, mainly to Windows. The project was developed from 1995 to 2002, but was never completed.

In his personal life, Johan married Mia Köhler in the early 2000s, with whom he had his first two daughters in mid-2000. He later had three more children, two girls and a boy, for a total of five children. His wife is a doll collector, and Johan even created a website under her nickname (waykohler.com) around 2004, for her to post images. In 2007, she created a flickr account for this purpose. Nowadays, Mia lives in Portland, Maine, USA. I don't know if she and Johan are separated or not.

SNES: Daze Before Christmas (1994), Disney's Pocahontas (1996)

Mega Drive: Daze Before Christmas (1994), Disney's Pocahontas (1996), Nightmare Circus (1996)

Sega CD: Fatal Fury Special (1994), Samurai Shodown (1995)

MS-DOS: Zombieville (1997)

Windows: System Shock 2 (1999), Thief II: The Metal Age (2000), True Crime: Streets of LA (2004), True Crime: New York City (2006), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (2008), Call of Duty: World at War (2008), Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012), Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015), Call of Duty: MWII - Modern Warfare II (2022)

PS2: Top Gear: Dare Devil (2000), Pac-Man World 2 (2002), True Crime: Streets of LA (2003), Shrek 2 (2004), True Crime: New York City (2005), Call of Duty 3 (2006), Kung Fu Panda (2008)

GameCube: Pac-Man World 2 (2002), True Crime: New York City (2005), 

Xbox: Dead To Rights (2002), True Crime: Streets of LA (2003), True Crime: New York City (2005), 

Xbox 360: Call of Duty 3 (2006), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (2008), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009, Tony Hawk: Ride (2009), Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012)

PS3: Call of Duty 3 (2006), Spider-Man 3 (2007, Call of Duty: World at War (2008) Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) 

Wii: Call of Duty 3 (2006, Kung Fu Panda (2008), Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (2008) Call of Duty: World at War (2008), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009) 

PS4: Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII (2018), Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War (2020)

Xbox Series: Call of Duty: MWII - Modern Warfare II (2022)

Emulators:

Shark! (1998), Salamander Emulator (1997), Nemesis Emulator (1997)

Programs:

RSH For Win95 (1998), Screen Resolution (1998)

Magnus Danielsson

Destruction Derbyb 64 (N64) and Dragon Heart (PSX)

Magnus Danielsson, also from Sweden, lived in Kungsbacka around 1989. In 1996, he joined Funcom, where his friends Carl and Johan worked. He worked at the company as a platform and game programmer. One of the games he worked on was DragonHeart: Fire & Steel for PSX in 1996. In 1997, he formed Blue House, a demo creation company, with Carl and Johan. It was there that the idea of ​​creating Shark! as a commercial product came up, but it was only released for free.

Magnus Home of Luxury Website

At the end of 1998, the company closed its doors. In 1999, he moved to Huntington Beach, California, USA, and joined Looking Glass Studios, also alongside Carl and Johan, working as a 3D programmer on the game Destruction Derby 64. In 2001, he joined Santa Monica Studio in Santa Monica, California, a company that creates games for Sony Computer Entertainment America (now Sony Interactive Entertainment).

Kinetica and God of War (PS2) and God of War - Ascension (PS3)

There, he worked on Kinectica in 2001, and on the games God of War I, II, III and Ascension from 2005 to 2013. At the studio, he worked as a programmer, game programmer and senior programmer. In 2014, he joined the game developer Wholesale Algorithms in South Pasadena, California, as a contractor. The company had already helped with the further development of games that Danielsson had participated in at Santa Monica, such as God of War I and II. He stayed at the company for just over 2 months.

Websites Funcom, Looking Glass Studios, Santa Monica Studio, Wholesale Algorithms, Riot Games and Apple

In 2015, he joined Riot Games, creator of League of Legends, as a Senior Software Engineer in Greater Los Angeles, California. In 2019, he went to Apple in Cupertino, California, as a software engineer, where he remains to this day. In 2023, Toaplan decided to release 8 of its classic games, and chose Danielsson and Carl's emulator to run them. The collections are called Toaplan Arcade Shoot'em, each with 4 games, one released in February, and the other in August.

PSX: DragonHeart: Fire & Steel (1996)

N64: Destruction Derby 64 (1999)

PS2: Kinetica (2001), God of War (2005), God of War II (2007)

PS3: God of War III (2010), God of War: Ascension (2013)

Windows: Twin Cobra (2023), Zero Wing (2023), Out Zone (2023), Truxton (2023), HellFire (2023), Flying Shark (2023), Fire Shark (2023), Slap Fight (2023)

Emulators:

Shark! (1998)