Lives Aleatórias Channel Playlists

Since 2020, I've created a lot of content for my gaming channel, and many of them have led to great specials on the channel, generating some playlists that I'd like to share with you.

Lives

All the lives made on the channel, since 2020, playing great games from different consoles and systems, many of them from classic franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Bug!, Street Fighter, Daytona USA, Sega Rally, Puyo Puyo, Dragon Ball, Streets of Rage, Top Gear, Super Bomberman, Ninja Turtles, Castlevania, Tokkae Dama, Pang!, Zuma, Mario Bros, among many others.

All Games '90

An attempt to create long videos, talking about and playing all the games released for the same franchise in the 90s. I only did two franchises: Sonic and Street Fighter; but they didn't get many views, however, I got to know and learn a lot from them, so I recommend them anyway.

Special Lives

As the name suggests, these are themed live streams for special or celebratory moments, honoring consoles or important people in the gaming world. These include Sega Saturn, Channel Anniversaries, My Birthdays, Halloween, Christmas, and more.

Getting to Know Arcade Games

For me, this is the most important playlist on the channel, as it was the most extensive, interactive and informative one I've ever made. It's made up of 54 videos, divided in alphabetical order, recorded over the course of a year, playing over 700 arcade games through MAME. I got to know so many games, franchises, references and influences from games that came later, as well as a lot of entertainment, fun, interaction, and of course, a passion for the many titles I discovered there. So, if you have the patience, check out this playlist, it's essential for retro game fans!

The History of The Emulators

Another important playlist for me, because it consists of 20 videos created and narrated by me based on my article about the history of emulation that I later posted here on the blog. In it, I mainly cover NES and Mega Drive emulators, as well as the history of their consoles. It's worth checking out. These articles are also available on our Spotify (link at the top of the blog).

All Games

Playlist that brings the videos with the highest number of views on the channel. This playlist is a collection of arcade hardware games, such as Sega Titan Video, Capcom Play System, Atari System, Sega Model, Nintendo VS., among others.

Covers

Here I would like to show you a little bit of my other passion: singing. In this playlist, I sang songs from several games, such as Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter, Dragon Ball Z, Megaman, Super Mario Bros, Alex Kidd, among others. I hope you like it. :)

AI-Made Images

Here I show AI-generated images of retro game scenarios, such as Street Fighter Alpha, Super Mario World, Mortal Kombat, QuackShot and Streets of Rage. Thanks to Microsoft Bing.

Classic Emulators

This is another one of my passions. I recorded videos with several classic emulators from the 90s, which were part of my history and that of many others around the world. Among them we have KGen, Genecyst, NeoRageX, NESticle, Meka, no$gmb, WinKawaks, FinalBurn, ZSNES, Snes9x, Gens, Fusion, Stella, Callus, among others, totaling 42 videos.

Songs Remixed By AI

Another playlist focused on artificial intelligence, this time creating alternative versions of retro game songs. We have songs from franchises such as Megaman, Puyo Puyo, Dragon Ball Z, Top Gear, Street Fighter, Castlevania, Sonic, Bomberman, QuackShot, Silver Surfer, Pokemon, Streets of Rage, among many others. All made with care and love, and with the help of Suno. ;)

The History of Stella Emulator

Our last video talking about the history of emulators, and in it, we will tell a little about the history of the classic Stella emulator, the oldest and most famous Atari 2600 emulator.

Stella (1996)

The Stella project was created by Bradford W. Mott in late 1995, alongside Aaron Giles, Seunghee Lee, Jeff Miller and Darrell Spice Jr.. Its name is inspired by the codename that the project that created the Atari VCS (later known as Atari 2600) adopted at its beginning. The emulator was also known as An Atari 2600 VCS Emulator. Its first release was on May 4, 1996, with the name Stella 96, only for Linux and without running any games. Its second version, released in June 1996, was only for MS-DOS ported by Keith Wilkins and already running games. The third version, released in July 1996, in addition to coming with the Linux and MS-DOS versions, also came with the UNIX/X11 versions by Bradford, the Windows version by Jeff Miller and the MacOS version by Aaron Giles. This was a release pattern that continued until February 1997. In the third version, it also supported some games using the mouse. From September 1996, in its fourth version, the emulator began to be called simply Stella. In the fifth version of the emulator in November 1996, it began to support sound, adding the TIASound sound emulator by Ron Fries. In this version, it also began to support the OS/2 system by Darrell Spice Jr., also released simultaneously until February 1997, when the sixth version of the emulator was released. In January 1997, Jim Pragit, from outside the project, released the first front-end for Stella, called Game Menu for MS-DOS. This was a well-known front-end that supported several DOS-mode emulators of the time. It was available for download on the Stella website. Game Menu was updated until January 1998. The following month, the sixth version of Stella was released, adding VSync mode, which synchronizes video frames. In March 1997, the second front-end created for Stella, called FEFA (Front End For ATARI), was released for Windows, created by Israel Geron, also outside the project. It also worked with the PC Atari Emulator. It was discontinued in July 2004. The DOS version of Stella was taken care of by Brandford from June 1997, due to Keith's lack of time for it. In the same month, its seventh version was released, which added two 6507 emulators (alternative version of the 6502) for different functions, the Supercharger expansion cartridge and pause support for the DOS and UNIX versions. At this stage, it also supported reset, and the Color TV options, adding the colors seen on a TV to the PC screen, and Black And White, so that the game would also be black and white with the aspects that were seen on a television. In March 1998, Jeff's Windows version became StellaX, running on several Windows versions and with its own front-end. After a year-long hiatus without a release, Brandford released the first beta version of Stella in July 1998, 1.0b1. In this version, it began to support joypads and other types of controls,the new M6502 CPU emulation and palettes in NTSC and PAL formats. From October 1998 onwards, releases were made simultaneously for DOS, Linux and UNIX. In that month, version 1.0 was released, with support for 320x200 and 320x240 resolutions for the MS-DOS version. In February 1999, version 1.1 of the emulator was released. In September 1999, John Stiles created another port for MacOS, especially for PowerMacs, replacing Aaron's. In November 1999, its last front-end, KStella, developed by Stephen Anthony for Linux, was released and was updated until August 2004. In July 2001, John also began supporting MacOS X in his Mac port. The Windows version, StellaX, ended its releases in May 2000, launching the options menu, with the option of ROM path, use of mouse paddle and high resolution video selection mode.

In April 2002, after three years without updates to the original project, Stephen Anthony from the Linux front-end KStella replaced Bradford as project leader and released version 1.2 of the emulator. In this version, he created a port of the emulator to SDL. I believe that this is when the Linux versions began to have KStella as the default front-end. In that month, he also migrated the page and the project to the development site, Source Forge. In May 2002, Stephen also began to take care of the Windows version, releasing Cyberstella. The emulator came with a completely new front-end. In February 2003, the releases for MS-DOS and UNIX ended. In July 2004, Stephen created another version for Windows, using Jeff's StellaX front-end. From that date on, the emulator releases began to be made simultaneously for Linux, Windows and MacOS X, the latter being created by Mark Grebe. The UNIX version is merged into the Linux version from this version onwards. The additions of this version are OpenGL driver selection (later becoming part of the renderer mode), volume increase, snapshot, save state, color/black and white mode, game difficulty mode, among others. In October 2005, Stella stops using the StellaX and KStella front-ends and creates a standardized front-end for the Linux, MacOS X and Windows versions.

As for its updates, from 2006 onwards, it supports video options, such as rendering through Direct3D, OpenGL and OpenGLES, screen zoom, fullscreen, option to change color palettes to the Z26 emulator, TV Effects, with texture and noise changes, resembling the TV screen and palette customization, with changes in contrast, gamma, brightness and saturation. Sound, such as changes in output frequency and the original console sound, changes in hz, quality and fragments and changes in audio devices. Emulation, such as emulation speed, turbo mode, fast SuperCharger load, VSync and debugger. Game, such as cartridge information, changes in cartridge type, between stereo and mono sound, TV color type, game difficulty, game controller type and screen format (ex NTSC). In addition to cheat mode, it has its own menu for snapshots, with several options for the function, changing paths for save state, cheats, palettes, ROMs and snapshots, save state, configuring various controls, changing the TIA, with the option of specific chips for certain games and customizing your own chip. Among many other functions. Regarding its front-end, it has undergone several changes over the years. I highlight the main ones, such as window size and the expansion of menus from then on in January 2007. Change from black and green to beige, light beige and dark orange in August 2007, becoming the standard colors to this day. Window reduction and smaller font without bold in March 2008. Increased font of letters and ROM search on the main screen in January 2009. Changes to the appearance of the options menu in December 2018. Bold returning to letters in March 2020. Screen enlargement with side option for snapshots and ROM information in January 2021. And lower buttons starting to be grouped into a single button at the top of the front in June 2022. Basically the front-end remains the same for 12 years, between 03/08 to 11/20. The front-end also started to receive interface changes, with GP2X mode on 01/07, Classic, Standard and Light modes on 12/18 and Dark mode on 10/20. There are also some project dates that are important to highlight, such as May 2008, with the addition of the AtariVox voice and music synthesizer. January 2009, with support for 64-bit versions of the emulator. July 2017, when the project website migrates from SourceForge to Github. And February 2018, when it begins emulating the Atari 7800 console.

Several other influencers helped the project over time, such as Ron Fries, with his TIASound library, Dan Boris, creator of the Atari 5200 Virtual Super System, with technical information about the Supercharger expansion cartridge, among others. The emulator ended up becoming the most famous to emulate the Atari 2600, which led to it gaining many other ports, such as for the Atari Falcon, Atari ST, Atari TT and Amiga computers, Linux, Android and Windows Phone systems, as well as consoles such as Xbox, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3 and Nintendo Wii and portable devices such as PSP, Nintendo DS and GP2X. Stephen currently takes care of the project together with Christian Speckner and Thomas Jentzsch, who make up the current Stella Team. The latest version of the emulator was released in October 2024. In 2014, it became part of the OpenEmu multi-emulator, which ran several consoles from Sega, Nintendo, Atari and NEC for MacOS. Stella has been released simultaneously for 26 years, with a total of approximately 108 versions released, being one of the emulators that has been in development for the longest time and with one of the largest number of versions released for a console emulator.

- Over the years, the emulator has undergone several changes, starting in December 2006, when it added the multiple snapshots option.

- In January 2007, it had its first major update to its front-end and the emulator itself, increasing the size of the front and expanding its menus, with video mode, with screen zoom options, fullscreen, VSync and color palettes like the Z26 emulator, for example, in addition to bringing back the drive option (here called renderer) with OpenGL option, sound mode, with output frequency HZ and TIA frequency control (original console sound, in addition to fragment size (later called sample), input mode, with save state and configuration of various controls, UI mode, with the option to change the size of the front-end window and change the interface to that of GP2X, groups the ROM path and snapshots functions in a single mode, the files and snapshots mode, the help mode with shortcut keys, in addition to the cheat mode and game property modes, among others.

- In August 2007, the front-end was changed from black and green to beige, light beige and dark orange, and the file configuration mode was added, the old files and snapshots, with paths to save state, cheats, palettes, roms, snapshots and others.

- In March 2008, the front-end size was reduced, the font was removed from bold and the game property mode, which had been inactive until then, was enabled, showing cartridge information, with changes to the cartridge type, between stereo or mono sound, TV color type, game difficulty, game controller type, screen format (e.g. NTSC) among others.

- In May 2008, adds support for the AtariVox speech and music synthesizer.

- In January 2009, it increased the font of its letters and added the ROM filter option, to find ROMs on the main screen more easily, in addition to starting to support 64-bit versions of the emulator.

- In June 2009, TV Effects mode was added, with texture, noise and other options to resemble a classic TV screen. In December 2011, file configuration mode was renamed to path configuration mode.

- In February 2013, it leaves only the standard sound HZ control, the output one.

- In June 2013, a specific menu was created for snapshots, with several options for the function.

- In July 2014, added Direct3D and OpenGLES 1 and 2 renderers.

- In July 2017, the project website migrates from SourceForge to Github.

- From 2018 onwards, the emulator has several additions in its updates, starting in February 2018, emulating the Atari 7800, the creation of developer mode, with the option of loading ROM and CPU, changing console (between 26k/78k), changing video effects and color, time machine option with changes in frames and others and debug mode.

- In June 2018, MacOS X releases are replaced by MacOS releases.

- In December 2018, the change was mainly in the field of aesthetics, changing the UI mode to user interface mode, and adding theme change between classic (the old black and green from 2005), standard (used since 2007) and black and white (called light), in addition to modifications in the appearance of the options menu, changing the rom selection on the home page from green to red and adding resampling quality in the sound menu.

- In March 2020, changes the font of the ROM list to bold, adds the option to change the TIA (console video) in developer mode, with the option of specific chips for certain games and customization of your own chip.

- In April 2020, the path configuration mode ceases to exist and the rom path change moves to the user interface mode.

- In June 2020, they combined video and audio mode, and added palette customization, with changes in contrast, gamma, brightness, saturation and others, in addition to creating emulation mode, with the options emulation speed, VSync, turbo mode, fast SuperCharger load, among others.

- In October 2020, creates dark theme (gray and black) for front-end in user interface mode and adds audio device change option.

- In January 2021, they expanded the size of the front-end, leaving an option on the right side to display snapshots and technical information about the ROM.

- And finally in June 2022, it groups all the old bottom buttons on the front into a single options button in the top left corner, as well as adding the Direct3D11 renderer, among others.

The History of Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack

Today we'll talk about Action Pack, the first Atari 2600 emulator, and the first home video game console emulator in history. The video tells the story of its beginnings, the three releases of the collection, and its sequels for Playstation 1 and 2.

 

Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack (1995)

It was a compilation that began to be developed in June 1994 by Michael Livesay for Activision, to emulate Atari 2600 games. Mike had worked at LTI Gray Matter since its inception in 1992, a division of his gaming company called Livesay Technologies Incorporated, which in turn was created in 1986. Mike had been in the gaming world since 1980, being behind several titles for computers. Later, he also worked with games for consoles. The Action Pack is considered the first functional emulation of a home console. The compilation was released around March 1995 for Windows 3.1. There were two versions of this compilation released for Windows 3.1, then re-released on CD-ROM with improvements for Windows 95, and finally re-released for Windows 3.1, 95 and Macintosh. The third collection was released only for Windows 3.1 and 95. All were released in 1995. The collections were divided into fifteen games in the first edition, containing titles such as Boxing, Crackpots, Freeway, Hero, Pitfall and River Raid, fifteen in the second edition, with titles such as Enduro, Keystone, Ice Hockey and River Raid II, and eleven in the third edition, with titles such as Breakout, Combat and Night Driver. The emulator had pause, reset, difficulty change, keyboard and joypad control, PCM and FM sound and volume, and others. Only Packs 1 and 3 provided sound adjustment, with options for disabled, faster and more precise. The emulator also had Mom mode, which simulated the voice of a mother calling her child. Something to prevent the child from playing for so long. You could adjust between rarely (calling every 10 minutes) and constantly (calling every 30 seconds). In addition, it provided a summary of the game, how to play, tips, scores and the history of how each game was created. The emulator was developed with two internal emulators, the 6507 emulator, which is a cheaper version of the 6502 central processor, and a sound emulator based on the TIA sound library. To use the emulator, a computer with a 486 processor was recommended. A Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound card with the latest sound drivers was also recommended. The Action Pack emulator did not allow the loading of external ROMs, only those that came with the CD. However, third parties created the Action Pack Plugin Hack, which allowed the execution of other ROMs in the emulator. This program was only compatible with the Mac version of the emulator.

In 1995, Activision also developed a collection of Commodore 64 games for Windows. In 1996, they re-released all the Atari and Commodore 64 collections on a single CD for Windows. Mike returned to participate in an Atari collection, now not only as an emulator programmer, but also as project manager, in A Collection of Activision Classic Games for the Atari 2600 (i.e., a collection of classic Activision games for A26), this time released for the PSX in 1998, with thirty games in total. The collection came with an intro showing the games it offered. On the selection screen, there was a very interactive interface, with the games on the right side like a tabletop cartridge holder, the TV on the left side showing demos of the games, and on top of the TV, the console that had the tape changed each time you changed games. Mike's last participation in the company was in the release of A Collection of Classic Games From The Intellivision for PSX in September 1999, where he also worked on the development of its emulator. At the time, the Intellivision Packs released in 1997 by Intellivision Productions had already been successful, so Mike's emulator did not appear in other releases. Activision released another Atari 2600 collection, Activision Anthology, in November 2002 for PS2, but without Mike's presence. This version is similar to the PSX version, but with more things on the table next to the TV and game holders, such as a radio, joystick, Activision magazine with the names of the collection's programmers, canned drinks, dial-up telephone and the video game in front of the TV. Another difference is the 80s pop/rock soundtrack that accompanies the games. All of this tries to immerse you in the console's lifespan.

Outside of the Atari 2600 emulation project, Mike has been in the gaming world since 1980, producing games for PCs and Apple IIs, such as Miner 2049er (1982), Ming' Challenge (1982), The Heist (1983), Miner 2049er II (1984), Bruce Lee (1984), and others. Miner 1 and 2 and The Heist were created by Mike's company, Livesay Computer Games, created in 1982. Around 1986, he created Livesay Technologies Incorporated, bringing games such as Security Alert (1990) for Commodore 64, Sid Meier's Civilization II (1999) and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (guécs / guécou) (1999) for PSX, among others. In January 1992, a division of the company was created, called LTI Gray Matter, and it was through it that Mike created the Atari 2600 emulator. It was the company that also took care of the collections A Collection of Classic Games for Atari and Intellivision mentioned above, in 98 and 99, and the production of its own games, such as Gex: Enter The Gecko (1999) for PSX, as well as games with Mike's presence, such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) for PSX, where he worked on production/programming/engineering, and the games Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) and Spider-Man (2000) for PSX, Spider-Man (2002) for PS2, X2: Wolverine's Revenge (2003) for PS2, where Mike participated in programming/engineering, among others. The last game released by the company was Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (2008) for PS3. 

The History of the Atari 2600 - Its Games, Videogame Crash and Hardware

A little bit of the history of the Atari 2600, telling a little bit of the company's history, its legacy in arcades, its launch, its hardware, the success of arcades on the console, the crash of video games with the game ET and its games.

Atari 2600

The Atari company was founded in 1972, entering the arcades that same year. Its first game was the famous Pong, inspired by the ping-pong game on the Odyssey 100 console, becoming an expression to refer to first-generation games made for arcades and home consoles. The Atari 2600 began to be developed three years later, in 1975, under the name Stella. It was released in 1977 as the Atari VCS (Video Computer System), to compete with its competitor, the VES (Video Entertainment System), the first second-generation console, later known as the Fairchild Channel F. Its sales boom was at Christmas in 1979, when it was the most purchased gift in the USA. In 1976, before the VCS was released, Atari was sold to Warner Communications, heir to the film and TV productions of Warner Bros. Its hardware had a 1.19 MHz MOS 6507 CPU, a cheap version of the 6502 used in Commodore, Apple and even Atari computers, and later used in the Famicom. The sound chip (released exclusively by the company for the console) was the Television Interface Adapter, known as TIA (it was based on the TIASound audio emulation library, created by Ron Fries, which helped several Atari console emulators). The TIA was also used for video, converting it to a television signal, with support for 128 colors, and 16 simultaneously. And finally, it had 128 bytes of RAM.

In 1982, it reigned supreme in the American market, having surpassed its competitors Intellivision and ColecoVision. Also in 1982, with the launch of the Atari 5200, also a second-generation Atari VCS, the Atari VCS was renamed the Atari 2600, to standardize the nomenclature. The excess of games, combined with clones and poorly made games, especially those produced in large quantities, as was the case with the game ET, led to the famous video game crash of 1983, known in Japan as the Atari crash, as the main culprit was the company's console. The market only returned to normal in 1985, with a new version of the Famicom released in Japan and the following year in the USA. In 1984, Warner sold Atari, creating the Atari Corporation, continuing its work in the world of consoles, portables, arcades and computers.

The console had, perhaps, the most popular games in the world, or at least in the West, which are still remembered, continued or cloned, which came from arcade versions and other consoles, such as ColecoVision and Intellivision. Among them are the shmups, such as Space Invaders, Asteroids, Megamania, River Raid, Atlantis, Crackpots, Defender, Demon Attack, Moon Patrol, Battlezone, Galaxian, Chopper Command, Sequest, Missile Command, Spider Fighter, Air-Sea Battle, Phoenix and Combat. Classic platform games, such as Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Popeye and Joust. Platform games, such as Pitfall!, HERO, Jungle Hunt, Keystone Kapers, Spider-Man, Smurfs, Halloween, Snoopy, Superman and Sneak'N Peek (the famous Hide and Seek). Adventure/mission games in the same environment, such as Frostbite, Frogger, Freeway, Pressure Cooker and Custer's Revenge. Sports games, such as California Games, Ice Hockey, Boxing, Tennis and Fishing Derby. Racing games, such as Enduro, Motocross, Grand Prix and Pole Position. Maze games, such as Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Dig Dug. And puzzle games, such as Breakout and Q*bert. The main games were shmups, the famous spaceship games, followed by adventure, racing and sports games. The console had more than 500 games released, second only to the Famicom at the time. The Atari 2600 was discontinued in 1992, totaling 27.64 million units sold worldwide.

The History of the MAME Emulator

Today we will talk about the history of the MAME emulator, its beginnings, its front-ends, added systems, among others.

MAME (1997)

Created by Nicola Salmoria, the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator, or MAME, began as an emulator for the arcade Pac-Man called MultiPac in December 1996 for MS-DOS. The emulator later ran other Pac-Man games, such as Ms Pac-Man. It is considered such a classic that it even received a port in January 2005 by Franxis for the GP32 handheld. Also in December 1996, the company also created emulators for individual games. Among them were Mr. Do and Lady Bug from Universal, Pengo from Sega and Rally X from Namco, all also for DOS. All four had the name Arcade Machine Emulator in the title. The following month, in January 1997, the company began to merge the emulation cores of its emulators and form MAME. Its individual emulators were updated by the end of January, and MAME was released in February, also for MS-DOS.

At the time, it only ran Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Crush Roller, Pengo and Lady Bug. In each new version, several new arcade games were added, as was the case in the second version with Mr. Do!, Crazy Climber, Crazy Kong, and so on. The same year also brought Galaga, Super Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, Star Wars, Bubble Bobble, Gunsmoke, 1943, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., Mario Bros., Galaxy Wars, Frogger, Centipede, Space Invaders, Super Cobra, Stargate, Defender and many other classic arcade games. Most of them were from companies such as Namco, Sega, Nintendo, Taito, Konami, Atari and Williams. Irem and Data East only arrived in 98. Speaking of 98, very well-known boards that were still successful in arcades at the time started to appear, such as CPS-1, with games like Captain Commando, Final Fight, Strider Hiryu, Ghouls'n Ghosts, and the Street Fighter II franchise from 99 onwards, Neo Geo MVS, with the Metal Slug, KOF, Art of Fighting, Bust a Move franchises, and Sega's System boards, such as System 2, 16, 18 and C-2, with classics like Wonder Boy, Shinobi, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Alien Storm, and Williams/Midway and Midway T boards, bringing Mortal Kombat 1, NBA Jam, Terminator 2 and others. In 1999, Capcom, Data East, Namco and Konami boards appeared, bringing classics such as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, X-Men, The Simpsons, Vendetta, Sunset Riders, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robocop and others. In 2000, the remarkable Cave 68k arrived with its DoDonPachi's and Power Instinct, followed by Midway Wolf with MK3 and UMK3, and Sega X Board with the two games in the After Burner series. The much-desired CPS-2, which was still in full swing, arrived in January 2001 with Street Fighter Alpha, in a version for MS-DOS, followed by Street Fighter Alpha 2, Vampire Savior, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, and many others. 2002 was the turn of PolyGame Master, the famous Taiwanese arcade game, with Knights of Valour, the Neo Geo 64 with Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition, and the Midway V with the sequel Cruis'n USA and Cruis'n World. Capcom's ZN-1 board appeared in 2003 with Battle Arena Toshinden 2, and the following year with the sequel Street Fighter EX, followed by Namco System 11 with Tekken 1 and 2, and Midway Killer Instinct with the two games that give the board its name. In 2004, the Sega Y Board with Power Drift and Rail Chase and Konami Bemani DJ-Main with Beatmania 6 appeared, later bringing the famous Pop n' Music franchise. In 2005, Sega Model 3 games began to play, such as Scude Race and Lost World. We also highlight another version of Konami Bemani, inspired by the PSX, with the music games Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Freaks in 2006. CPS-3 from the SFIII sequel appears with its three titles in 2007. Sega Naomi with Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and Crazy Taxi appears in 2009 and Capcom's ZN-2 board with the Street Fighter EX2 sequel appears in 2012. Some boards never ran very well in MAME, as is the case for example with the Sega Model and Sega Naomi series, and the Sega Titan, Sega System 32 and Atomiswave boards.

Regarding the number of games, in December 2000, the project was already emulating 1900 ROMs. Five months later, it was already emulating 2883 ROMs. The frequency of games added increased more and more. An interesting fact: MAME was the first emulator to run the game Street Fighter 1, in February 1999. In the same month that the emulator was released, in February 1997, a Windows interface called MAME32 was released, version 0.3, created by Christopher Kirmse, who was not involved in the MAME project. It helped users who had difficulty accessing games via the command line, as the emulator actually worked. Over time, this GUI was improved. Michael Soderstorm began to help Christopher with the development, in addition to other members of the project. In December 2007, it became MAMEUI, which was more improved. At that time, MAME already had its own interface. Despite the innovation of MAME32, one of the most widely used interfaces initially, and which brought greater fame to MAME, was MAME Classic, created in 1999 by Richard A. Insalaco. Both GUIs are still being developed today. When MAME was first released, it provided some screen size options, support for sound and joypad, as well as reset, pause and snapshot. By the end of 1997, it already supported several other screen sizes, FM sound, frameskip, cheats, VSync, among others. The emulator had versions for MS-DOS released until April 2001, when in May it began to support the Windows system, beginning a new cycle of the project from then on. This version is known as MAMEW. It also provided a command line interface. From April 2006, it began to release its emulator compressed no longer in a .ZIP file, but rather in an installable .EXE format. In August 2007, it finally began to bring its own interface, no longer via the command line, but with a front-end/menus, showing a list of games, control configuration and configuration of shortcut keys for functions such as frameskip, pause, snapshot, save state, reset and others. In October 2007, it began to support 64-bit versions. Starting with the February 2016 version, its original front-end was expanded, with directory configuration, such as ROMs, snapshots, cheats and languages, interface configuration, with color and language, video configuration, such as resolution, filters and others, sound configuration, such as sample rates, among others.

Since its inception, MAME has always been an open-source emulator, which has enabled its many hacks, ports, and forks. Its creation relied on Marcel de Kogel's Zilog Z80Em emulator, Shawn Hargreaves' Allegro library, SEAL, Carlos Hasan's sound API library, Robert Schmidt's Tweak tool for changing MS-DOS graphics modes, and Ville Hallik and Michael Cuddy's AY-3-8910 sound circuit emulator. MAME's importance was not only in running many classic arcade games, but also in bringing back to life old boards that were no longer used and would one day disappear completely. Throughout the year of its launch, several programmers joined the project and added new arcades to the platform. In the first year, we highlight Paul Leaman, Mirko Buffoni, Dan Boris (creator and supporter of several emulators for the second generation of home consoles), Mike Coates, Aaron Giles (creator of VGS for PSX), Toninho, Zsolt Vasvari, among others. Several other renowned figures also helped in the project, such as Neil Bradley (creator of the Retrocade for Arcade), Ernesto Corvi (creator of the Virtual Super Wild Card for SNES), David Haywood (creator of the Sega System C2 Emulator), Richter Belmont (creator of Modeler), ElSemi (creator of Nebula), as well as Brad Oliver, who started with the project, among many others. At one point, there were over 100 people contributing to the project. All of this helped in the expansion of the MAME project.

Although the emulator does not focus on console emulation, it begins to add some of them around 2003, as was the case with Atari Jaguar and PS1 (through the Atari CoJag and Capcom Sony ZN-1 arcades), Mega Drive, Game Gear and Master System (both through the MegaTech Arcade coming from MESS), Sega Saturn (through the Sega Titan arcade) and Super Nintendo (through the Nintendo Super System arcade also coming from MESS). From 2004 onwards, they begin to emulate the NES. In 2005, the N64 (through the Seta Aleck64 board). In 2006, PC Engine/TurboGrafx16. In 2007, Atari 2600 (with a better emulator than Stella in some cases) and Dreamcast. In 2009, 32X. In 2010, ColecoVision. In 2011, Intellivision. In 2013, PC Engine CD and Odyssey 2. In 2014, Gameboy and Gameboy Color. In 2015, Sega CD and Xbox. In 2016, Game Boy Advance, SG-1000 and Virtual Boy. And in 2017, PC-FX. Among others. Some systems never worked well on MAME, such as the Sega CD, 32X, Playstation, N64, Dreamcast and Atari Jaguar. Among others. Many of them came because of arcades similar to console hardware, as was the case with the PS1, Mega, SNES, N64, Master, Game Gear, Sega Saturn and others. In 2015, MAME formally merged with MESS, with whom it had been a partner for some years, acquiring its entire programming library. Currently, it runs more than 8,000 games, out of a total of 10,000 listed games (some of which still don't run). The emulator was the one that had the most forks, over 70! Many of them for specific emulations, such as Neo Geo or CPS2, for example. It also works on several operating systems, such as MacOS and MacOS X, Symbian, QNX, BeOS, Linux, Android and iOS, as well as computers such as Amiga and IBM PC, consoles such as Xbox, Dreamcast, PS2 and Nintendo Wii, portable devices such as GP2X and PSP, among many, many others. Today, MAME is the most complete emulator of arcade games, covering the largest number of generations of the genre. Its base served for several other arcade emulator projects. I would venture to say that all of them came after it. As of the end of this article, its last release was in October 2024.

1997: Namco Pac Man with Pac-Man/Puck Man, Rally-X, and New Rally X, Sega Vic Dual with Frogs, Head-On 1 and 2, and Carnival, Sega Z80 with Commando, Pengo, and Bank Panic, SEGA G80 Vector with Space Fury, Zektor, and Star Trek, Nintendo Playchoise 10 with Mario Bros, and Double Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1998, Ninja Gaiden in 1999, and Duck Hunt in 2000, Taito System SJ with Jungle Hunt and Elevator Action, Taito 8080 with Space Invaders, and Lupin III and Polaris in 1998, Konami Scramble with Crazy Kong and Super Cobra, and Frog in 2003, Williams 6809 Rev.1 with Joust, Stargate, and Defender, Capcom Commando as Gunksmoke and 1943, Capcom Unique with Son Son and Ghosts'n Goblins

1998: Capcom Mitchell, from games like Pang/Super Pang, CPS-1, from the Street Fighter II franchise (which only arrived in 1999), and games like Pnickies, Pang! 3, 1941, Captain Commando, Carrier Air Wing, Final Fight, Strider Hiryu, and Ghouls'n Ghosts, Neo Geo MVS with Metal Slug, The King of Fighters '94, Neo Bomberman, Art of Fighting, and Puzzle Bobble/Bust a Move, Sega Space Harrier with Hang-On, and the following year with Space Harrier and Enduro Racer, Sega System 2 with Wonder Boy, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, and Heavy Metal, Sega System 16B with Shinobi and Tetris, and 16A with Altered Beast and Golden Axe, Sega System 1 with Flicky, and Wonder Boy, and Robocop 2 in 2001, Sega System C-2 with Columns, and Blooxed and Puyo Puyo in 2000, Sega System 18 with Alien Storm, and Shadow Dancer in 1999, and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker in 2009 alone, Williams/Midway with Mortal Kombat, Smash TV, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Midway T with NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat 2 in 2000, and Judge Dredd in 2002

1999: CPS Q Sound, from the games Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Muscle Bomber Duo, and Warriors of Fate, Data East Caveman Ninja with Caveman Ninja and Crude Buster, and Robocop 2 in 2001, Namco System 1 with Quester and Galaga '88, Konami X-Men with The Simpsons, Vendetta, and X-Men, Konami TMNT2 with Sunset Riders, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time in 2006 alone

2000: Taito F3 System, responsible for games such as Arabian Magic, and the Puzzle Bobble/Bubble Bobble franchise, Sega X Board with After Burner I and II, and in 2004 Super Monaco GP, Cave 68k with Uo Poko, Do Donpachi, and Power Instinct, and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon in 2001, Power Instinct 2 in 2003, Thunder Heroes in 2007, and Gaia Crusaders in 2008, Incredible Technologies 32-Bit with Street Fighter: The Movie and Golden Tee, and World Class Bowling in 2002, Nintendo VS. with VS. Tetris, VS. Super Mario Bros, and Vs Castlevania, Data East Unique with Battle Rangers, and Desert Assault in 2002, and Boogie Wings and Backfire in 2004, Midway Wolf with Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and WWF Wrestlemania

2001: CPS-2, with the game Street Fighter Alpha, along with Vampire Savior, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, Aliens vs. Predator, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Marvel Super Heroes, Konami Xexex with GI Joe, and Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Z 2 Super Battle in 2012 only

2002: PGM with Knights Of Valour, SNK Hyper Neo Geo 64 with Beast Busters, and Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition in 2004, and Samurai Shodown 64 only in 2009, Midway V with Cruis'n USA and Cruis'n World, Data East ARM6 with Captain America and The Avengers, and Night Slashers in 2005

2003: Capcom Sony ZN-1 (based on the PSX), with the games Battle Arena Toshinden 2, and the following year Street Fighter EX and Street Fighter EX Plus, Namco System 22 with Cyber ​​Commando and Ace Driver, and Ridge Racer and Rave Racer 1 and 2 in 2005, Namco System 11 with Tekken 1 and 2 and Soul Edge 1 and 2, Midway Killer Instinct with Killer Instinct 1 and 2

2004: Sega Out Run with Super Hang-On, Turbo Out Run, and in 2006 Out Run, Sega Mega Play (based on the Mega Drive) with Sonic the Hedgehog, Tecmo World Cup, and Golden Axe 2, Sega Y Board with Galaxy Force 2, Power Drift, and Rail Chase, Konami Bemani DJ-Main with beatmania 6th MIX, and Beatmania 3rd MIX and Pop n' Music 7 in 2007

2005: Sega Model 3 with Scude Race and Lost World

2006: Konami Bemani System 573 Analog (based on the PSX) with Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Freaks

2007: CPS-3, with the sequel Street Fighter III, Konami ZR107 with Winding Heat and Midnight Run, and Road Rage only in 2018

2009: Sega Naomi, with the games Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and Crazy Taxi,

2012: Capcom Sony ZN-2 (based on the PSX), featuring the games Street Fighter EX2 and Street Fighter EX Plus 2

The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - PicoDrive

Today we will talk about PicoDrive, the best Mega Drive emulator for portable devices. In addition, we will also talk about other lesser-known emulators for the console.

PicoDrive (2004)

The PicoDrive project can be called a leap into the future of emulation. The project was created by Dave in 2004 based on his 68k emulator, the Cyclone 68k, which in turn was created in the same year with the aim of helping to emulate hardware within ARM devices, a new technology contained in processors, and which would later become common in smartphones, tablets and laptops. At the time, ARMs ran on Pocket's PCs, which were large-screen cell phones of the time. A little earlier, in 2003, Dave had received a GP32 from his friend Craig, who knew that he liked to write emulators. And it was for this system that Cyclone was created, and later PicoDrive, to test his 68k emulator. One of the first third-party emulators to use his Cyclone 68k was fGen32, a port of the Genesis Plus emulator also for the GP32 handheld, in July 2004. Dave was passionate about Mega Drive, having created the DGen emulator for Windows in 1999, and in 2004 the GenaDrive projects for XBOX and GigaDrive for the GP32 handheld, a handheld that was a phenomenon at the time in terms of capacity, portability and storage in a handheld. PicoDrive was released in April 2004, and had fifteen versions, the last one being released in September 2005.

 

Before its completion, a fork of the emulator for SymbianOS by Neil Davis appeared in April 2005. This fork was updated until June 2006, and had several updates taken from another fork called PicodriveN. Also in 2005, a port of Dave's emulator for UIQ, a Symbian-derived system for smartphones of the time, such as Sony Ericsson and Motorola, appeared, but due to its many flaws it was soon discontinued. And finally, at the end of 2005, a port for UIQ2 by Notaz appeared called PicodriveN (since Neil's port was already called PicoDrive), with release at the end of the year. Its first released version was in January 2006. Notaz had been taking care of Dave's Cyclone 68k since around August 2005, which he did until 2007. Notaz's fork became the most important of PicoDrive, being in practice the direct continuation of Dave's emulator. The February 2006 version of PicodriveN added the SN76489 emulator, a programmable sound generator and the YM2612 sound chip, both from the MAME project, as well as the DrZ80 emulator from Reesy's Zilog Z80 (who also contributed to Notaz's early version of Cyclone68k), which was also linked to sound emulation, and the emulator began to provide full sound support from then on. Notaz then acquired the GP2X handheld and created a port for that system, with the first version released in September 2006. This version began to adopt the emulator's original name, PicoDrive, since Neil's port (which used that name) was discontinued. In November 2006, he created a port for UIQ3. In August 2007, he released his source code and in September 2007 he created a port for the Gizmondo handheld. In November 2007, he began developing the emulator for the PSP handheld as well. From this version onwards, he began to support the Sega CD and 32X, thanks to the Gens source code released by its creator in May of the previous year. This version has its own 68K emulator, called FAME/C created by Chui, which in turn is based on the C68K of Stephane Dallongeville, creator of the Gens emulator. In this version, PicoDrive also had a new Z80 emulator, called CZ80, created by NJ and based on codes also from the creator of Gens. In other words, the Gens emulator was very important for Notaz in its port for PSP. In March 2008, the GP2X version added support for SVP (Sega Virtua Processor), to run the game Virtual Racing. It is considered the first Mega Drive emulator to run this device 100%. Credit goes to Exophase and Rokas.

 

In May 2008, a single-release version for Windows was created, with all the programming from the PSP version, with Dave's GenaDrive front-end and support for the Sega Pico. It was very simple, with reset, load and four screen resolutions (with the possibility of freely enlarging the screen size, being one of the few SMD emulators for Windows that allows this type of change). In August 2009, it also began supporting the GP2X Wiz handheld. In June 2010, it released its last port, for the Pandora system. We don't know for sure, but it seems that around 2010, the emulator also began supporting SMS. In August 2013, it changed the user interface of the Pandora version to that of the PS1 emulator for ARM, PCSX ReARMed, also written by Notaz, and considered one of the best PS1 emulators of all time. Its last updates were for PSP, Gizmondo and UIQ3 in August 2008, GP2X/Wix in October 2013 and Pandora in October 2017. In January 2019, it released its latest version, being executable on several laptops and smartphones. Notaz's PicoDrive also gained third-party ports, such as for RiscOS by Jeffrey Lee in September 2006, for Nintendo DS by ryanfb in July 2008 and for PS2 by SP193 in September 2013 from version 1.51b of PSP's PicoDrive in August 2008. It also had a fork for iOS created by ZodTTD, called genesis4iphone, also in 2008. Around 2013/2014, it began to be part of the RetroArch emulator, emulating Mega, 32X and Sega CD. Later in the emulator, it only emulates 32X, leaving the other emulations for the Genesis Plus GX. In 2013 it is also part of the OpenEmu multi-emulator for MacOS running 32X. In addition to those already mentioned, there were other people who helped in the Notaz project, such as Charles MacDonald from Genesis Plus for MD information, Mark and Jean-Loup for the Zlib multimedia library, Peter van Sebille from ECompXL and his various Symbian open source projects, and the development team of the Symbian GCC Improvement Project, with various tools for the Symbian system and its derivatives. Some of the people who helped Notaz at the beginning of the project were later with him in the PS1 scene, as was the case of Exophase, who helped Notaz create the PCSX ReARMed emulator. ZodTTD and Chui, on the other hand, were in the PSX4ALL project in 2006.

In addition to the emulators mentioned, we also had other projects, such as St0rm Sega Genesis Emulator (known as SGE) for MS-DOS and Genux for Linux, both in 1998. 

Most of them emulated several Sega systems together, such as AGES (from MD and 32X) in 1997, RetroDrive (from MD and 32X) in 1998, SEGAEmu (from Sega 8 and 16 bits) in 1999, Mimic (from Sega 8 and 16 bits) in 2002, Regen (from Sega 8 and 16 Bits) in 2007 (with a port to Linux in 2009), HazeMD (from MD, 32X and Sega CD, by Haze, from the MAME project) in 2009 and MD.Emu (from Sega 8 and 16 Bits) for Android in 2012.

There were also several projects that did not come to fruition, such as EmulatorX, Moge, Triton (also for Sega CD and 32X) and W95 GenEMU. There was also the Kyoto project, created by Haruki Ikeda, which was not released due to his death in a car accident.

In versions for other devices, we have DrMD for GP32 (by DrZ80 creator Reesy, and with Dave's Gigadrive core and interface) in 2004, jEnesisDS for Nintendo DS in 2008, Gensoid for Android in 2009 and NeoGensPlusGX for Xbox in 2015.

Within multisystem emulators, it worked on MESS in 1998, MAME in 2003, Xe (for Linux) and GuineaPig (for PalmOS) both in 2004, Final Burn Alpha in 2008 and Higan in 2017.

The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Genital and Genesis Plus

Today we will talk about Genital and Genesis Plus, the latter having had a port for consoles, which was considered the best Mega Drive emulator port for this segment.

Genital (2000)

Genital was developed by Bart Trzynadlowski in late January 2000 and released in April 2000 for MS-DOS. The emulator had no front-end, and was run via the command line. Despite this, it had several functions, all of which were accessed via keyboard shortcuts on the game screen. The first version only emulated the 68k central processor and ran games in .BIN and .SMD formats, as well as supporting game region changes, reset, VSync and frameskip. The second version, also in April, added Neill Corlett's 68k emulator and Richard Mitton's Z80, but without sound support, as well as sprite changes and Genecyst save state loading. The port for Windows appeared in the same month, on top of the second version, under the name Genital32, by Atani Software, the same company that made the Windows version of the Generator emulator for the Mega Drive. In the third version, in May 2000, it added two screen resolutions, activation of Z80 emulation and access to the debugger. In the fourth version, in December 2000, Genital began to provide preliminary support for the Sega CD and 32X, in addition to support for .GEN extension ROMs, black-and-white image function and save state in the GNS (Genital Save States) format, exclusive to the emulator. From this version onwards, Bart's 68k emulator, called Genital68k, also began to be used, which had its name changed in June 2001 to Turbo68k. In the fifth version, in February 2001, it added windowed mode. Several people helped with technical information on the project, such as Dave from DGen, Charles MacDonald from SMS Plus from Master System, Steve Snake from KGen, Joe Groff from DGen/SDL, Atani from Atani Software, who was responsible for the port to Windows, Nyef from Darcnes and Delta from Pretendo, both from NES, and Christian Schiller from the website Eidolon's Inn. The emulator performs best on Pentium 1 computers with 180MHz speed and 8MB of RAM. Despite all the good performance of the emulator, it never had sound support, being one of the few Mega emulators with this deficit. Its last version is dated April 2001, with a total of six versions released. In 2011, Bart became known for the Supermodel emulator of the Sega Model 3 arcade.

Genesis Plus (2002)

Genesis Plus was a project that Charles MacDonald started around 1999/2000. In 2002, he already had the emulator ready, but the person who ended up releasing it first was Richard Bannister for the MacOS system in October 2002. Something quite unexpected to happen. The official release of the emulator was in May 2003 for MS-DOS and Windows/SDL, that is, this last version was already open for ports to other systems. The project had only two versions released, ending in June 2003. The Mac version was updated until 2008, returning in 2018 and having its last update in November 2022. Genesis Plus basically emulates all sound channels, and supports .BIN and .SMD game extensions, including compressed ones. It also supports VSync, frameskip, reset, joypad, screen resolution, video and sound driver specifications, color depth, scanlines, sound rate up to 44,100Hz, among others. Despite all these functions and the emulator being 'sold' as highly accurate with games and with performance very similar to the console's original hardware, there are several problems in its execution. Starting with the Windows version that does not load sound or joypad, and runs basically on Windows XP and Vista, and cannot be loaded on other systems. The DOS version is easily executable, has good gameplay, color, no image bugs and runs joypad and sound (if you run it through DOS-BOX you will not be able to access its sound), however it has a certain acceleration (probably to run better on less powerful computers), does not run games in NTSC, running only games released in Europe, Australia and part of Asia, known as games in Pal/Secam format, and has bugs that change the controller's directional pad. All these flaws must have remained in some way because the emulator had a short development period. Regarding the support from influencers in the scene, the project was very optimistic and was supported by Omar Cornut from the Master System Message project, Christian Schiller, owner of the website Eidolon's Inn, considered at the time the best website about Sega, and Chris MacDonald, Charles' brother, and creator of FAQs known in gamer circles (Chris passed away in 2014). Richard Bannister, creator of the port for Mac, also helped with code corrections and suggestions for the project, as well as Bart Trzynadlowski from Genital, Steve Snake from Fusion, James Ponder from Generator, Sardu from Genecyst, among others. The MAME emulator team was also important in the project. It is from them the Z80 and 68K emulators used in the Genesis Plus, as well as the emulation code for the PSG and YM2612 sound chips of the Mega Drive. And finally the segadev team. The emulator also gains other ports. The first for Sega Dreamcast in 2003 by BlackAura called Genesis Plus DC, which has emulation at almost full speed of the console, surpassing even the original Sega emulator for Mega Drive released for the Dreamcast, the Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1 in 2001.To this day, no other SMD emulator has surpassed Genesis Plus DC on the Dreamcast. In December 2003, Genesis Plus received a port/modification for the GP32 handheld called fGen32, by rlyeh and Robster. In 2004, another Dreamcast port was released, Genesis Plus SDL for the SDL system, by Ian Micheal, who used parts of the BlackAura emulator. In the same year, a GameCube version was released, called GCN GenesisPlus! In 2005, the most important port of the emulator was released, Genesis Plus GX, created by eke-eke for the Nintendo GameCube. Although it was born from the Genesis Plus, it also emulates Master System, Game Gear, SG-1000, Sega CD and Sega Pico. Genesis Plus GX was also ported to Windows in 2007 and Nintendo Wii in 2008 by eke-eke, in 2010 to PS3 by Mr. Anonymous and in 2016 by Reesy for PS Vita. Genesis Plus GX also ran on the multi-emulators OpenEmu in 2009, RetroArch in 2013 and Bizhawk in 2015. The third and final port of Charles' Genesis Plus was for Pocket PC in 2006 by n0p.

The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - DGen

Today we will talk about DGen, another great emulator and I consider it the most notable on Linux systems.

 

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 up to 16-bit, sound power of up to 44,100hz, latency change option (bringing greater sound precision) and support for sound recording in .GYM format, which is the original Mega Drive sound format, similar to the NES's NSF (this format starts in the Genecyst emulator, and in future emulators it is replaced by the .VGM format). Despite all these options, the emulator had some screen bugs with some games, with problems in 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 of ZIP format ROMs, Karl Stenerud for his Sharp 68K emulator, John Stiles, owner 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 sound of DGen.

About 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 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 adds Raster Effects and Gil Peterson adds SRAM support to Bannister's version. In December 2000, Bannister discontinues the port, leaving Generator in its place. In February 2000, Caz from the BeEmulated website creates 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. 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 the help of 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 also came out 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 latest version of the emulator made by Joe and Phil online on his website at SourceForge, an open source developer website, 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. In 2011, the emulator was once again revived, this time by Zamaz, releasing nine versions of the emulator from September 2011 to July 2014. As of 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 was the case since Joe's first version in 1999). Compared to the previous Tamentis version released in 2008, Zamaz added video filters, automatic region selection, a 68k debugger (Dave's Cyclone 68k, created after the original DGen was finished), OpenGL support, and several other updates and improvements. The emulator has not had any further versions released since 2014.

The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Gens

Today we will talk about the story of Gens, one of the greatest voice actors for Mega Drive and also for Sega consoles.

Gens (1999)

Gens was started in July 1999 by Frenchman Stephane Dallongeville, known as Stef, as a prototype. In October 1999, it released its first version for MS-DOS. Despite this, it later became popular as a simple Windows emulator. The only emulators that ran well at the time were Genecyst and KGen98, but they only ran on MS-DOS, and Gens wanted to be the first Windows-mode emulator with good performance, and at the time, the only ones available for this system were DGen and Megasis, which did not perform so well. The Gens project had a lot of support from the Genesis scene, such as Steve Snake from KGen98, Atani from Windows ports of Generator and Genital, Charles MacDonald from SMS Plus from Master System, Red5 from The Genesis Project for testing the emulator and creating its documentation and Christian Schiller from Eidolon's Inn, among others. The first version of the emulator was semi-functional, running only the 68k debugger created by Stef, called C68K, and running games in BIN and SMD formats. In November, it began supporting the reset option. In January 2000, it integrated Neil Bradley's Z80 emulator, added 4 buttons to the second Mega controller, supported frameskip and was able to run 50% of the console's ROMs. In February, it launched the Windows version in partnership with DirectX, known as Wgens, and at the same time launched the latest version for MS-DOS. In this version, it added save state in the format of the famous Genecyst emulator. In March, it began supporting sound, both through the Yamaha chip and the PSG. In mid-March, it began using Neill Corlett's 68k processor and began emulating the DAC. In the penultimate version of March, it was already running 75% of the games, and in the last one of the month it decided to continue using Neil Bradley's Z80 after changing the emulation for Mitton's Z80 several times between February and March. Also in March, it added support for a sound rate of up to 44,100hz. In April, it added support for the joypad. In May, it started supporting specific directories for saving screenshots, save states and others and loading ROMs in .ZIP format. In June, it added the 2xSAI game texture, the same used in the SNES, ZSNES and Snes9x emulators, as well as the pause option. It also added Scanline mode, the famous TV Mode (or TV mode). In June, it added stereo sound. In September, it added Game Genie, VSync and language support, starting with Spanish and French, reaching in June 2001 to support 23 languages ​​in total, including Portuguese, when it stopped supporting them and returned to only English. In October, it supports screenshots. In April 2001, it starts supporting netplay via Kaillera. In August, it adds stretch mode, which stretches the game screen. One of its differences was the addition of support for the Sega CD in September, being the first Mega Drive emulator to have this option. With this update, the bios menu comes,which later also supports the BIOS of other consoles supported by the emulator. In October, it brings the option of choosing up to 64kb of SRAM for Sega CD emulation. In July 2002, it begins to support color adjustment, with options to change contrast and brightness. And finally, in August, it begins to run 32X games. In addition to all the functions mentioned, the emulator also has the ability to save emulator settings, several Scanline derivations, change the game region, among others. The last version of the emulator is from October 2002. Its end is largely due to the competition with Kega, started in January 2002, and reborn as Kega Lazarus in September 2002, and which in the future would become the famous Kega Fusion. At the time of its launch, Kega is praised by Stephane as an emulator with good game compatibility, and better speed than Gens. It also had support for Master System and Game Gear, which Gens did not have. One of the few advantages of Gens was that it began supporting the Sega CD before Kega. Regarding its executable icon, it was added in April 2000 and modified in December 2000, and its icon/logo at the top of the emulator, it was added in June 2000 and modified in July 2002. In May 2003, Gens was ported by Caz to BeOS and in July 2003 to Linux/SDL by Stéphane Akhoun, using the core of Caz's port as a base. Gens ran on a simple Pentium 200MHz with 32Mb of RAM and a 2Mb video card, an affordable configuration in 2002. For the Sega CD, a Pentium II 233MHz was required. For 32X, an 800MHz processor was required, with a recommendation of up to 1Ghz, which at the time was considered a top-of-the-line computer configuration.using the core of Caz's port as a base. Gens ran on a simple Pentium 200MHz with 32Mb of RAM and a 2Mb video card, an affordable configuration in 2002. For the Sega CD, a Pentium II 233MHz was required. For the 32X, an 800MHz processor was required, with a recommendation of up to 1Ghz, which at the time was considered a top-of-the-line computer configuration.using the core of Caz's port as a base. Gens ran on a simple Pentium 200MHz with 32Mb of RAM and a 2Mb video card, an affordable configuration in 2002. For the Sega CD, a Pentium II 233MHz was required. For 32X, an 800MHz processor was required, with a recommendation of up to 1Ghz, which at the time was considered a top-of-the-line computer configuration.

In January 2005, a team from SourceForge released an update to the emulator, with some bug fixes and increased compatibility, reaching 92% of games played. It was known as Gens 2.12b. This version also changed the icon at the top of the emulator, and was widely used as a basis for several clones/hacks of the project. After that, DarkDancer, creator of the Gens fork, Gens32, released a version in May 2006 known as 2.14, with some elements from Gens32. It became known under the codename Souvenir, which means memory in French, and is the best-known version of Gens to this day. Both versions had the participation of Stef. At this stage, Stef also had the help of influencers Rodrigo Cardoso from the Gens fork, Gens Plus! from 2004 and Fox68k's NeoGeo CD emulator for Dreamcast, NEO4ALL from 2005. Due to its huge success, Gens was one of the most cloned emulators of all time. We had clone versions for Windows like sGens in 2003, IDC Log Gens, Gens Re-Recording (also for Linux, with Nitsuja as one of the authors, who also helped in the creation of FCEUX for NES), Gens (authored by Nick o'DIMM – nick ou-dem), DebuGens, Gens KMod and Gens Plus! (the latter becoming a Sega 8 and 16-bit multi-emulator) both in 2004, Gens32 in 2005, Gens Surreal (evolution of Gens32), Gens32 Ray (version for weak PCs of Gens Surreal) and Gens Tracer both in 2006, DualGens in 2008, Gens+ REWiND! and Gens/GS (also for Linux) both in 2009 and RaGens in 2018. Debu, Tracer and IDC are the only clones that have no apparent modifications in the interface and credits. For other devices, it was ported to Xbox by XPort, as GensX and NeoGenesis in 2003 and Gens_xport in 2004 and by Hikaru as Gens X in 2003, to Android as Gnome Gens in 2003 and TigerGens in 2012 and to Dreamcast, as Gens4All in 2008 (by the Spanish Daniel Lancha, Chui, creator of PSX4ALL for PSX and collaborator of the PicoDrive emulator of SMD). The interesting ports that we can highlight are the Gens/SG from 2009 that comes with the proposal of cleaning the source code and combining features of several other Gens ports. There was a second version of the emulator called Gens/GS II that began to be written between 2014 and 2016, but was never finished. The IDC Log Gens from 2004, also known as GensHack, which has a process of understanding assembly instructions of a ROM. Gens Re-Recording from 2004, previously known as Gens Movie Test, which specializes in recording videos and all the tools around it, being an emulator widely used by the TASVideos community, a YouTube of games recorded on emulators. And DualGens from 2008, which was developed to compare differences between ROMs. The remaining ports add image effects, video, information on technical parts of the emulator and the ROMs being run, among others.

The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - Generator, Megasis and VGen

Today we will talk about the Generator, Megasis and VGen emulators.

Generator (1998)

Generator was an emulator that began in November 1997, created by James Ponder for a third-year college project. Its first version was released in March 1998 for UNIX (also running on Linux), and is among the first emulators for the Mega Drive. The project was born from open source and was built to be portable to other systems, such as Solaris, Net, Risc and Open BSD and RiscOS. Its first versions did not support sound, joypad, or save state, and had many bugs. In 1999, it gained ports for the Amiga by AmiDog and MacOS by Richard Bannister. In January 2000, it began to support sound by emulating the Zilog Z80 processor (by Neil Bradley's Multi-Z80) and the YM2612 chip (by Tatsuyuki Satoh). Also on the same date, it brought improvements for the M68k processor and palettes, among others. The first version for Windows was released in February 2000 under the name Generator32, and was created by Atani (it was closed in May). This version ran too fast for slow computers of the time, making it impossible to play anything that ran on it on modern computers. In April 2000, James released a second original port of the emulator, now for MS-DOS. This version had a fixed front-end that remained on the screen along with the game. It could be disabled by a keyboard shortcut. In addition, it also had NTSC/PAL video support, choice of region between US/EU and JP, full screen, reset, save state, screenshot and changes in video quality. Interestingly, James' emulator used its own 68k emulator, unlike other projects in the emulation world. It was even born with this proposal, to create processor emulation techniques (such as the 68k, for example) in an optimized way. In August 2001, Z80 emulation was added using Richard Mitton's Raze Z80. Its latest release was released in May 2003 for Linux and MS-DOS. The emulator also had several other ports, such as for Pocket PCs, iPAQ and Cassiopeia (the precursors of smartphones) in 2001 by Domenico Dato as PocketGenesis, two ports for Dreamcast in 2002 by Atani Software and MetaFox, for Playstation 2 in 2002 by Sjeep (and in 2010 also working on PS3s compatible with PS2, by aries2k), PSP in 2005 by sougen, and for UNIX by Christian Biere. Interestingly, in August 2003, Richard, who had ported the emulator to Mac, began to develop it himself (now for MacOS X). The emulator was last updated by Bannister in November 2022.

Megasis (1998)

Megasis (a mix of Mega and Genesis) was a Mega Drive emulator released on November 11, 1998, by Japanese developers JT and Bori. Interestingly, it was released for Windows, when at the time most emulators were released for MS-DOS. To run the emulator correctly, a Pentium 133MHz was required, and a Pentium 2 was recommended. A graphics card with DirectDraw support and, if possible, hardware acceleration was also required. For sound, DirectSound support was required. The emulator only really started working in the December 1998 update, when it started emulating the Z80 processor, and the PCM and FM sound chips, as well as fixing bugs in the 68k processor. The emulator had perfect emulation of the YM2612 chip (the console's FM chip), as well as stereo sound with up to 44,100hz quality. It also had save states (in .GSV and .KSB formats) and ran BIN and SMD game formats, as well as ZIP and LZH compressed formats. In addition, it also supported pause, reset, frameskip (with great acceleration for low-end computers), full-screen mode, multiple window modes, multiple game regions, sound recording in .WAV format, as well as FM and PCM sound recording, echo effect, changing the 68k processor clock, support for a six-button joypad, VDP emulation (which is the console's GPU), editing shortcut keys for various emulator functions, among others. Megasis had six versions in total, the last one being released in April 2001. From November 1998 onwards, fans were asking for a MacOS version. It seems that there was some indication from the creators for this at the time. In January 2000, it was posted on the project's home page that this version would be developed, but by June of the same year this information had already been taken down.

VGen (1998)

VGen or Virtual Genesis began to be developed in 1997 by Jason Meehan, and was released in March 1998 for MS-DOS. From May 1998, it began to run games via the command line, and in the November 1998 version it began to emulate sound through the Zilog Z80. The emulator also emulates the console's two sound chips, the PSG and the YM2612. The processors it used were Neill Corlett's 68k and Neil Bradley's Z80. VGen later provides a GUI that you control with the mouse, in addition to support for two controllers, supporting various joypad styles, various screen size modes and formats, frame rate, reset, up to 44,100hz sound, changing the game region and access to various technical information about the emulator, among others. Despite this diversity of options and information, the emulator was very deficient in speed, sound and compatibility, never leaving the alpha state. VGen also supported the Sega CD bios without running the games. It is said that the emulator would have been the first to run the Sega CD bios in the first version released in 1998, when in fact the first to run it was the NextLEVEL emulator in October 1997. Some information about Sega CD was brought by Christian Schiller, owner of the website Eidolon's Inn. In addition to the Sega CD, Master System and Game Gear were also planned for the emulator. The emulator ran on a Pentium 1 with 8Mb of RAM. Its last version was released in June 2001. As far as we know, the emulator would have had four versions released in total, the launch, two in 1998, in the months of May and November and the closing.

The History of Sega Genesis Emulators - KGen, KGen98, Kega, Kega Lazarus and Kega Fusion

Today we will talk about all the emulators created by Steve Snake, from the classics KGen and KGen98, quite famous in the 1990s, to Kega, Kega Lazarus and the renowned Kega Fusion, one of the greatest emulators, not only for Mega Drive, but also for Sega consoles in history. Check it out.

KGen / KGen98 / Kega / Kega Lazarus / Kega Fusion (1997)

KGen, short for Kega Genesis, was released in August 1997 by Steve Snake, alongside Kode and Muzak Ltd for MS-DOS. The project was developed over a two-month period, from June to August. Describing the emulator, it works on the command line, without its own interface (gaining a GUI from September 1997), had a VSync function to run games on a Pentium 200 with twice the speed of a regular Mega Drive, and the regular speed of the console on a Pentium 133, as well as screenshots (in .PCX format), keyboard and joypad control configuration, frameskip, region switching, as well as good emulation of the YM2612 sound chip, and from October 1997 of PSG Sound. The emulator also had save states, however, unlike other emulators, here it was called snapshots, and saved them in KSS format. From September 1997 onwards, save states began to be loaded in GSV format, corresponding to the Genecyst emulator. In May 1998, a front-end (interface) for Windows mode of the emulator was released by Airds, called Kgen Loader, and was updated until August 1998. The same person also created versions for GenEm for Mega Drive and ESNES and Snes9x for SNES. Steve had help from some people on the project, such as Colin Rodgers and Stuart McKenna with information about the Z80A and 68K microprocessors, his friend Warren Mills for information about his own Z80 emulator, and the creator of the Magic Engine for PC Engine, David Michel, helping with some questions, among others. The emulator had eight versions between August and October 1997, when it ceased its activities.

In late 1997, Steve began to create an emulator for MMX processors, a new Intel technology released earlier that year. Due to several optimization tricks used in the emulation, the speed gained by MMX processing was barely noticeable, causing Steve to give up on the idea, which was called KGen-X. After that, he began to develop KGen98, completely rewritten and with better performance than KGen-X, releasing it in June 1998 for MS-DOS. In addition to better performance, it also rewrote and improved part of the GUI, added support for Game Genie, improved video quality, with the addition of scanlines, 8/16-bit mode, among others, and brought stereo sound quality to the emulator. Your save state can now be created and accessed within the game, no longer needing to go to the main menu. KGen98 had only four versions, all in June. Also in June, the Kgen Loader front-end also began to support Kgen98. Due to the success of his emulator, Sega called Steve to be the lead programmer for the Sega Smash Pack project for Windows. To do this, they used Steve's Kgen98, which received some changes and got a new look. The collection was released in 1999, with eight games: Golden Axe, Shinobi, Phantasy Star II, OutRun, Columns, Sonic Spinball, Altered Beast and Vectorman. Next came Sega Puzzle Pack, also released in 1999, with the games Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Columns III, as well as the puzzle Lose Your Marbles created by Sega in 1997. And finally, Sega Smash Pack II, which contained the games Comix Zone, Flicky, Kid Chameleon, Shining Force, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Super Hang-On and Vectorman 2, in 2000. At the time, he received a proposal from Sega to create a new emulator especially for the future Sega Smash Pack packages, which would be released for Dreamcast and GBA, but Steve refused and the project was developed by other creators. These releases without Steve were Sega Smash Pack Volume 1 in 2001 for Dreamcast and Sega Smash Pack in 2002 for GBA.

After almost four years away, Steve resurfaced alone with the launch of Kega in January 2002 for Windows, which came with the Sega CD feature, already used in the competitor Gens. Kega did not use any of the KGen98 source code, except for parts of the 68k and Z80 cores. The rest was completely rewritten from scratch, and now with Windows support. The difference was its speed and compatibility with games. It came completely revamped, with a completely different interface and several other options included, such as bios configuration for emulated consoles, various screen sizes, TV mode, selection of quality in hz for sound, giving the choice between 11025, 22050 and 44100Hz, the Perfect Sync option, which synchronized the two 68k SegaCD cores for perfect synchronization (being suggested only for powerful PCs and for specific games), among others. Kega also supported games compressed in .zip format (only for SMD games). The difference with the project was that the code had been created by Steve himself. In March 2002, Kega included the Game Gear and Master System consoles, having later depopularized the Meka emulator, which until then had been used for games on these consoles, mainly the Master System. The project has five versions released, the last one in March 2002.

In September 2002, Steve came up with an alternative version called Kega Lazarus. It was the beginning of the emulator, and yet another beginning of a Mega Drive emulator in Steve's history. Steve had suffered a hardware failure and lost all of Kega's source code, with the exception of the code for version 0.02 from January 2002, the third version of the emulator. Many of the changes from the emulator were maintained, and new ones appeared, such as a completely new Z80 core, faster Master and Game Gear emulation, and improvements in Mega and Sega CD emulation. It was basically identical to Kega in terms of interface and options. The second version of Kega Lazarus came out only seven months after the first, in April 2003. This version was special for Master and Game Gear, with all kinds of improvements for the consoles, from compatibility, graphics, to performance. In the May 2003 version, it also adds support for Sega's SG-1000 and SC-3000 consoles. In the latest version from June 2003, it makes improvements to Sega CD support, adding Bin/Cue support, improving ISO support, among others. Steve said that this version surpasses in every aspect the last version released by the old project, Kega. The emulator had six versions, from the second to the fourth version, that is, three of them, dedicated almost exclusively to optimizing the Master and Game Gear consoles. It is mentioned on some websites that the project would have added support for the 32X, but neither in the "readme" files nor in the emulators themselves was this support mentioned or implemented.

After a year without updating Kega Lazarus, Steve released his latest emulator, the acclaimed Kega Fusion, in July 2004. The project is the merging of part of the Kega and Kega Lazarus emulators with Kega Fusion. Much of the source code was rewritten from scratch, remaining as close as possible to Kega's previous projects, while maintaining the user interface and functions of the emulator. It was only in this new phase that Steve was able to support 32X in one of his emulators, releasing it in the first version of Fusion. As he described, it was the most accurate emulator of all at the time for emulating the add-on. In addition to all the console support, chip and processor emulation, tools and performance also present in Kega Lazarus, it added many other functions to the emulator. Also in 2004, it supported rendering plug-ins such as 2xSai, hq2x, and two created by Snake, such as Double and DoubleRaw. At this time, the Gens emulator, which had been the priority for 16-bit console games, began to be displaced. Over time, all other Sega console emulators below the Sega Saturn began to lose popularity due to Steve's emulator. In 2005, the emulator changed its numbering from 0.1 to 3.0. The reason was that this numbering was linked to emulators that were still in a very early stage, which caused people to lack interest in downloading it. Steve then had the idea of ​​changing this, and since Fusion was the third emulator in its Kega series, he put it as 3.0. In this version, from February 2005, support for MP3 format was added to Sega CD game audio, in addition to the Pro Action Replay cheat. In February 2006, support for Netplay was added, unlike many emulators that used to use the Kaillera server. In this version, users could choose whichever server they wanted to host their games. There were no updates in 2007. In 2008, there were also important updates, such as in December 2008 with support for SVP (Sega Virtua Processor), used to run the game Virtua Racing, which originally came in a special cartridge to generate 3D graphics. This support was initially brought to the PicoDrive emulator, Fusion's latest competitor. Also in the same month, Fusion began running on MacOS X. In September 2009, Linux was able to run the emulator. That month, Mac also gained another version. The emulator also supported Direct3D thanks to its joint work with DirectX. Its latest version, which is still used today, was released in March 2010. The emulator has had sixteen versions in total.