Emulator and Rom Sites - Part 2

The Emulator Zone

The Emulator Zone was created in 1997 by Dutchman Gerard Krijgsman and is considered, after Zophar, the site that has been updating information about emulation projects for the longest time. It talked about the main console and portable emulators, from Sega, Nintendo and Sony, as well as arcades through MAME and Raine and the PC MSX. It also has pages with information about each gaming hardware and their emulators for download. In 2002, it added Playstation 2, Dreamcast, Saturn, and other arcade emulators, such as Kawaks and Nebula, as well as XBox, WonderSwan and others. Also in 2002, it released several utilities for download, such as Good Tools, which verified the integrity of ROMs from various consoles. Finally, still in 2002, it created its own forum, the Emulator Zone Forum. In 2003, it changed its layout (which remains to this day) and its logo and began to be called simply Emulator Zone. 

Emulator Zone

In that year, they also started releasing ROMs for download, but very few, as they were only public domain ROMs. Finally, in 2003, they started talking about other emulators, such as GameCube, Atari Jaguar, PC Engine, as well as emulators for Macintosh and Mobile. In 2004, they made save states available for some Nintendo, Arcade, PSX and Neo Geo games. Over time, they started talking about emulators for other systems, such as Amiga in 2004, Nintendo DS and PSP in 2005, Neo Geo Pocket Color and Virtual Boy in 2006, XBOX 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii in 2009, 3DO in 2012 and Wii U in 2016. In 2006, they changed their logo, which remains to this day. The last update made to the website was in 2019.

Patent Pending

In 1997, another important portal in the world of emulation emerged: Patent Pending, known as PatPend, by the Konfiskated Teknologies group, created in 1996. The site, like Archaic Ruins, offered several emulators for download, including classics, with information about their releases, systems on which they ran, the names of their creators, their official websites, etc. In another part of the site, it offered emulators for download via FTP, making it easier to choose a console. It also offered downloads of ROMs, romhacks, translations and homebrews for several systems. In addition, it also offered game manuals for Nintendo consoles and portables, Sega, SNK and Sony consoles, as well as covers of console covers from the aforementioned brands, as well as Atari, PC and Macintosh. We also highlight pages about reviews, guides, codes and ROM music. They also provided various utilities for emulators from NEC, Atari, Sony, SNK, Sega and Nintendo, as well as Commodore Amiga 500 and Chip-8 PCs. Finally, they had articles and interviews, releasing several of them from other sites, such as Zophar, Emu News, nEMU, Damaged Cybernetics, NES World and others. PatPend left the kontek.net domain and created its own .net domain in 2002. The site had emulator updates until 2010.

Emulation Camp

Another well-known website in the 1990s was Emulation Camp, known simply as EmuCamp. Created in 1997 by Frenchman Omar Cornut, Zoop, its purpose was to simply talk about the SMS scene. Its name at the time was Master System Camp. In the same year, it changed its name to Emulation Camp, as it was covering games from several consoles. The website posted updates on all possible emulation projects, as well as interviews, reviews, games, articles and more. It won three awards, for best gaming website and best library website in 1997 and for excellence in classic games in 1998. The website's team was almost evenly divided between Americans and Brazilians. The site also hosted several sites, such as Demoroms (where it directed some of its consoles in the roms tab), Central Brasileira de Traduções, the Meka emulator site (which changed to SMS Power! in 2000), the MGX emulators, SMSPlus from SMS and Pretendo, xNES, Squeem and RockNES from NES, Raze from Richard Mitton's Zilog Z80, among others.

Emulation Camp

In 1999, the site split, and part of the team headed by Zoop returned to its original focus of SMS, creating SMS Power! MetaFox, who worked on the renowned website Retrogames, began to take care of EmuCamp in 2002. In 2008, Meta closed the site. Unexpectedly in 2013, Astrofra bought the domain and decided to go after all the content he could find on the site and re-establish it with a new layout and logo. To do this, the website Archive.org and former members and regulars of the site helped him. Today, the site offers downloads of emulators for the main titles for PCs, consoles, arcades and portables. Its last update was in 2017.

Romlist

The Romlist website was created in 1997 by Org and CaBBe, with the help of AraCORN, Booth Me and team, and was considered one of the first major ROM download websites. It all started with the Callus and System 16 Emulator arcade emulators, which specified in their readme's the games they were looking for to emulate. That's when Org and CaBBe started their dumping work. Among the games they brought to the aforementioned emulators is Out Run for the System 16 Emulator. The website began to be created in mid-1997 and only went live at the end of the year. The website worked only with arcade ROMs, with an emphasis on NeoGeo games. And it was thanks to them that the NeoGeo NeoRage project was able to prosper, with ROMs for emulators. Interestingly, Org and the creators of NeoRage were both Swedish. The site also had an Excel database, which later became online, for consulting information on over 2,000 arcade games. Several other important projects were indirectly helped by the site, such as in 1998, with the dump of the game Rainbow Islands, which stimulated the creation of the Raine emulator, and games from the Irem M72 arcade, which were only emulated on the M72 Arcade Emulator in 1998 thanks to the site, both dumped by AraCORN, which also became an important name in the project. The site was updated until early 2003 and remained online until around 2010.

SMS Power!

The SMS Power! website was created in 1997 under the name Meka. The website was initially created solely for the Meka SMS emulation project, developed in 1998 and launched in 1999. Over time, the website became a major portal for information and ROMs for SMS and Game Gear. Created by Frenchman Omar Cornut, Zoop's goal from the beginning was to become the largest 8-bit Sega ROM dump and download site on the internet. Its first downloadable games appeared in 1997, reaching 327 in 2000 and 631 in 2010.

SMS Power!

They were placed in the launch section. In 2000, they created the Development Documentation section, which taught how to program and hack Sega 8-bit machines, in order to learn more about the hardware, in addition to learning how to program them. It also showed how to translate and modify graphics and music in games for these systems. In the same year, they also created a Forum for the site, where they also talked about hardware and related topics for these systems. In 2003, they created the SMS-Museum, which brought music files, scans, cheats, documents, game lists, world versions and others from the Master System/Sega Mark and Game Gear consoles.

SMS Power!

In 2005, he created a Sega 8-bit Wikipedia on the site, which lasted until 2010. Also in 2005, he changed his logo, editing it in 2010 and keeping it to this day. Its layout also changed in 2005 and 2010. Also in 2010, he created several sections on the site, with cheats, homebrews and games for all Sega 8-bit systems. The games section was the revamped launch section and came with cover art, images, music and games for download. In 2010, he also created the game translation page, with games in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan. The site is updated to this day.

Arcade At Home

Arcade At Home, created in 1998, has the same approach as other sites such as Zophar and Emulator Zone, with monthly and almost daily updates on emulation projects. Mainly in the world of arcades, as the site's name emphasizes. It also made several emulators available for download, in a variety of ways and with the greatest diversity of hardware. It also had its own forum, created in 2001, and made front-ends available for download. In 2001, it launched an interesting news mode, called NewsBoy, which allowed people to integrate the source code of its updates into their sites. From 2000 to 2002, it also hosted its site on the efront.com domain. The site was updated until 2014, with some hiatus periods during its course.

Retrogames

Retrogames was undoubtedly the most complete website with information about emulators of all time. With an active and well-informed team, it brought first-hand the latest news from this world, such as reports on emulators, rumors of new projects or releases and even links to interviews done by other sites with emulation influencers. It also had pages for each console, allowing downloads of the latest releases in order of date for each emulator, their personal websites and the names of their creators, starting initially with the best-known arcade emulators, such as MAME, System16, Retrocade, Raine and others, entering in 1999 with consoles, such as Nintendo 64, SMS, NES, Super Nintendo, MD and others.

Retrogames

The site also had a message board created at its beginning and expanded in 1999, covering arcade and console emulation, technical support and emulator programming, and others, later evolving to include games, PC and Pocket PC emulation, and others. Another very important thing to mention is the hosting of large sites. A version of the MAME site has been hosted since 1998. In 1999, the Impact Emu project and the GameBase page. In 2000, the CPS2Shock projects for CPS-2 and Bliss for Intellivision. Among others. The site created by Atila, and maintained by more than a dozen collaborators, was updated until 2016.

Emux

Emux, created by JediMaster in 1998, and maintained alongside SmyLee and TheSaint, was a website that focused primarily on sharing emulators, and later ROMs. Around 1999/2000, Jedi also owned the website Emutimes, which provided information and downloads for emulators, along the lines of Arcade At Home and Retrogames. Emux existed until around 2001.

JoseQ's EmuViews

Other sites emerged over time, such as JoseQ's EmuViews in 1998, created by JoseQ with the aim of talking about the main emulators released. The site also had a large number of ROMs for consoles and arcades, which at the time was not very common. It also had interviews with important emulators, such as Jamsponge from PC Engine's Hu6280, Neil Bradley from Retrocade, Nicola Salmoria and Ernesto Corvi from MAME, Thierry Lescot from System 16, Jerremy Coot from Snes9x, among many others, between 1998 and 2001. Since 1999, it has also been reviewing several classic games. In 2000, it focused only on arcade ROMs and some consoles from Atari, Sega and NEC. The site was very important, mentioned in websites and magazines all over the world. EmuViews expired in 2004.

ShinobiZ's Home

The System 16 - The Arcade Museum website was created in 1996 as System 16, being just the development page for the System 16 Emulator, created by ShinobiZ. After the project ended in 1999, the page was transformed into a collection of Sega arcades, called ShinobiZ Home, changing its layout and creating the logo for the page's name. In 2001, it changed its name to Sega Arcade Museum, as well as its layout and logo, and began to address its arcade hardware. It added information about Sega Model 1, 2 and 3, Naomi, System 1, 2, 16, 18, 24, C and E, ST-V Titan, among others.

System 16 - The Arcade Museum

In the same year the site changed to System 16 - The Arcade Museum, with a new layout (rendered in 2012) and logo (later changed in 2005 and 2012) and began adding arcade games from Namco, such as System 1, 2 10, 11, 12, 21, 22, 23, Super System 22 and 23, Namco NA, NB and ND among others, from Konami, such as Contra, TMNT 1 and 2, X-Men, Cobra, Bemani, Z80, 68k, 8080, 68020, Playchoice 10, among others, from Atari, such as 68k, 6502, System 1 and 2, Missile Command, Centepede, Gauntlet, Galeco, Hard Drivin', Cojag and others, from Midway, such as Williams 6809, Bally, Midway T, V and X and Killer Instincs and Taito, such as Taito F2, F3, FX, B, H, X, Z, Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, The New Zealand Story, Ninja Warrior, 68K, Z80 and 8080. In 2002, Toby Broyad took his place, who took care of the site from then on. In 2003, arcades from Cave, Psikyo, Seibu, Kaneko and Atomiswave appeared, in addition to Capcom, such as Z80, 68k, Sony ZN 1 and 2, CPS 1 and 2. PGM, Seta, Gaelco and Incredible Technologies 8 and 32 Bit in 2004.

System 16 - The Arcade Museum

In 2006, Cave 1 and 3 Generation, Seta 1 and 2, SNK Neo Geo MVS and Hyper 64, as well as the M72, 75, 81, 82, 90, 92 and other Irem boards. In 2011, Data East boards arrived, such as the M6502, M6809, MC68k, HuC6280 and their derivatives. In 2014, Toaplan arcades arrived, such as Version 1, 2, Twin Cobra, Unique and others. In 2016, Exidy arcades appeared, such as the 68k and V1 and V2. In total, 478 arcades were cataloged, with the first three being from Sega, with 88 hardware, Taito with 70 and Konami with 62. Fourth place went to Namco with 50 hardware. Currently, the site is one of the most complete with arcade information, cataloging board names, their technical specifications such as CPU, GPU, SPU, chips, etc., all the games played on it, with screenshots and various information, as well as information on boards with their influences on consoles or other arcades, and vice versa, cataloging more than a hundred boards from more than a dozen manufacturers. The last update made to the site was in 2017.

Universal Videogame List

The Universal Videogame List, known as UVList, was created in 1998 by the Italian Andrea Moimo. It was the first video game database created on the internet, and is also known as the largest of them all. The site has almost 150 thousand games, more than 210 thousand images covering almost 230 platforms, including arcades, consoles, portables, smartphones and PCs. The site lists the company that created it, the type, genre, series it is part of, whether it is single or two player, for which platforms it was released, website review, official description, any additional details about the game, scores given by periodicals around the world about the game, as well as clones and ports and games that were influenced by it.

Universal Videogame List

It also has a FAQ with frequently asked questions, its own forum, among many others. The site changed from the .com domain to the .net in 2006. Despite this, the .com domain continued to exist, having from 2007 to 2008 been just a site that informed the releases of each console with sales comparison charts between competing systems. Regarding layouts, we did not have access to their first updates, but the ones we had were in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 (twice), 2007 and 2018. From 2007 to 2018, the layout in question had only a few adjustments, as in 2009, 2013 and 2016. As for the logos, we had them in 2002 and 2005, both with some modifications over time. The site is updated to this day.

RomCenter

The RomCenter website was created in 1998 by Eric Bole-Feysot. Its main purpose was to fix damaged ROMs and to make emulators run them in the best possible way. From the beginning, he created the RomCenter program to check, detect and repair useless or faulty ROMs, correct file names, among others. It posted several emulator correction logs for the correct loading of third-party ROMs, including those from the Logiqx website. This work was directed not only at arcade emulators, but also at console emulators.

RomCenter and RomCenter Wiki

From 2002 onwards, it began to have its own forum and in 2003 it began to translate its RomCenter program into several languages. From 2003 onwards, it also began to post information about emulator plug-ins. In 2009, it created the Wiki, its own encyclopedia, where it leaves various information, such as documentation about ROMs and others. Regarding its layout, it changed in the years 2000, 2002, 2009, 2015 and 2020. As for its logo, it changed in 2000, 2001, 2015, 2019 and 2020. The website was updated until 2021.

Emulation World

The Emulation World website, created in 1998 by Zachary Williams, aimed to promote the emulation scene by hosting several websites on its portal. Among them were Emulation Camp, Emu Sphere, Retrogames, Zophar, The Whirlpool, Emu5Ever, as well as the websites of the emulators TMNT by Dave, Hu6280, PSEmu Pro, Raine, PSyKe, GalEMU by Galaxian, KGB by Gameboy, System 16 Emulator and M72 Emulator. The last update on the website was made in mid-1999.