The History of Neo Geo Emulators - Part 2

Gekko (1998)

Gekko

Gekko, or NeoGekko by some, was created and released by the Swedish Johan Köhler, known as Drac in April 1998 for Windows, as part of the group The Dead Serious Clan, who also created the arcade emulator, Shark!. The emulator only ran the game NAM-1975, one of the first titles released on both the Neo Geo MVS and the Neo Geo AES. Despite being the only game that did not have the system boot screen at the beginning, the emulator required the presence of the bios to run it. This version was very primitive.

Gekko

It had no sound or joypad support, but it ran at normal Neo Geo speed on a Pentium 166. The emulator was released as a pre-release version, announcing the official version that would be released days ahead, but due to receiving threats from SNK Corporation, owner of the Neo Geo brand, this release never happened, the emulator was discontinued, and the page was taken offline.

NeoGem (1998)

NeoGem

Neogem was released in September 1998 for DOS mode, created by KR'Y and H'N, known as Arkaikos. The emulator only ran Neo Geo cartridges (MVS and AES), but was intended to later run media from the CD version of the console.

NeoGem (Nam-1975)

In its latest version in March 1999, the emulator could run games such as The King of Fighters 95, 97 and 98, Sengoku I and II, Samurai Shadown I, II and IV, Fatal Fury I, II and III, Real Bout I and II, Art of Fighting I and II, World Heroes I, II and Jet, Kizuna Encounter, and many others, totaling 72 games run, and 65 without any errors. Neogem had the support of many people, such as Neill Corlett for the M68k emulator, Starscream, Neil Bardley for the Multi-Z80, and Shawn Hargreaves' library, Allegro. Despite its good performance, it never supported sound.

NeoGemCD

In September, he also created the NeoGemCD, running the Neo Geo CD bios, but the project did not go beyond the first version.

NeoDanji (1998)

NeoDanji

NeoDanji (something like Neo Geo Only), or just Danji was an MS-DOS emulator created in 1998, with the first versions in October of the same year. We do not know the name of its creator, but it is known that it is of South Korean origin. The emulator had sound in PCM format, ran some games and executed ROMs quickly, even comparing itself to NeoRage, famous at the time. The same creator of the emulator also created a utility that converted ROMs to run on it. They were converted from .rom format to .bin format. The last update of the emulator was in February 1999. In January 1999, there were reports that a Windows version of the emulator called Danji-X would be released, but this never happened.

MAME (1998)

MAME32

In addition to traditional emulators, there was a multisystem emulator that was also one of the pioneers of Neo Geo emulation, MAME. As of December 21, 1998, it already supported the console in its emulator. It was common for alternative versions of MAME to be released. Among them, the most common ones that users used to play Neo Geo and all released for Windows, were MAME32, created in 1997. Unofficial MAME in February 1999, created on top of version 0.35 Beta 3 of MAME.

BRMAME

BRMAME in July 1999, created on top of MAME version 0.35 (by Brazilian Rafael Prado Rocchi). And EmuPlus (EMU+) in December 1999, created on top of MAME version 0.36 Beta 13. In addition, there were versions of MAME created only for Neo Geo games, as a de facto official emulator of the console.

NeoMAME

They were NeoMAME in January 1999, built on top of MAME version 0.35 Beta 1, by Dave Haywood. The version was for Windows, with a DOS version under the name dNeoMAME. VR32MAME in February 1999, built on top of MAME version 0.35 Beta 3, by Daren (known as Cloud), in a Windows version.

KBMAME

KBMAME from February 1999, built on top of MAME version 0.35 Beta 3, by Deimos Zero, with DOS version. And NeoCPS from March 2001, built on top of MAME version 0.37 Beta 13, by Toufou, with Windows and DOS versions.

dNeoMAME

All of them finished their updates in the same year of 1999, except NeoCPS (which also ran CPS-1 and 2) which was released until September 2001 and NeoMAME which was released until November 2001. The new features in each Neo Geo MAME are the possibility of running heavy games like KOF97 and 98 and Real Bout on a Pentium 1 200mhz with 32 of memory (average computer of the time), as was the case with VR32MAME.

EMU+ and NeoCPS

Support for 16-bit color and keyboard mapping for challenging games in the KBMAME version. Improved features, better speed and support for many games, like in NeoMAME. And Improved graphics and sound, and support for more games, like in NeoCPS.

DePAM (1999)

DePAM

The first Neo Geo CD emulator to be developed was called Depam, created by Der Pepe. The emulator did not support AES cartridges. It had only one version, titled Alpha Teaser, released in March 1999, and never ran any games.

NeoCD (1999)

NeoCD

The NeoCD (The KickAss NeoGeo CD Emulator) project was started in August 1999 by Frenchman Fabrice Martinez, and released in October of the same year for MS-DOS, with a second version in November. NeoCD was the first playable Neo Geo CD emulator. It ran several games, such as the Fatal Fury, King of Fighters (up to 98), Metal Slug, Real Bout, Samurai Showdown, Super Sidekicks, Art of Fighting, and other franchises. To run The King of Fighters 99, which had been released almost six months earlier, Fabrice released a package to add to the emulator to accomplish this feat in December 1999. The emulator supported screensaves (also known as screenshots or snapshots), joypads, and cheats (and was compatible with the NeoRage emulator's GameGenie). It used emulators of Mike Coates and Darren Olafson's M68K processors and Neil Bradley's Z80 processor, and ran on a 200Mhz processor with 16 MB of RAM.

NeoCD (The King of Fighters '97)

The last version of the emulator was released in December 1999, with three versions released in total. In its final version, it supported 56 games out of a total of 95 released for the console. In November 2000, it received a port for BeOS, which had three versions until March 2001. In 2001, a fork of NeoCD called NeoCD/SDL was released in early 2001 for Windows, with its fifth version, 0.1.7, in August, being its first known version. Created by Fosters, it was focused on the SDL library, which allowed porting to several different systems. NeoCD/SDL supported two joypads, the Super2X Sal and SuperEagle filters, 320x240 and 640x480 resolutions, frameskip, snapshot (here called screenshot) in .bmp format, among others. In August 2001 it was released for BeOS by Caz Jones and in August 2003 it was released for Linux by Fosters themselves.

NeoCD (Interface/Menus)

The emulator had the Musashi68K emulators by Karl Stenerud, Multi-Z80 by Neil Bradley and Yamaha2610 by Tatsuyuki Satoh. Its latest version was released in May 2004. This fork also gained ports and forks. In March 2004, it gained a version for Dreamcast by Ian Micheal and Quzar. Ian was also responsible for emulating the Atari 7800 on the Dreamcast. In May 2004, it was ported to Xbox by XPort as NeoCD/SDLx. In August 2004, it gained a port for PS2 by evilo. In February 2005, another port for Dreamcast appeared, Neo4All, by Chui and Fox68k. Chui was involved in several emulation projects for Mega Drive and PSX. From Neo4All for Dreamcast came the port for PSP in July 2005 and the AES4All fork released in April 2007 which emulated Neo Geo AES and MVS games on the Dreamcast. In 2020, it became part of RetroArch.

The History of Neo Geo Emulators - Part 1

Rage (1998)

Rage

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

NeoRage

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

NeoRage (Samurai Shodown)

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

NeoRage (Menus)

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

NeoRageX

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

NeoRageX (Fatal Fury)

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

NeoRageX (Interface/Menus)

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

NeoRageX MannyAnd

NeoRageX FIR3N3T

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

NeoRageX EGCG

NeoRageX Black Jack

NeoRageX Megaman_09

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

NeoRageX 5.2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BinLing: NeoRageX 1.0c (2003)

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

Crazy Wizard: NeoRageX Final v4.ac (2005)

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

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

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

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