JoseQ did another interview, this time with Kevin Brisley (the mastermind behind Replay+)! Read it here.

As you can see, it's back to the old logo :-) More changes soon (this site really needs some more colours ;-) but this will be after the move of SYS2064 which will be on July, 4th, by the way...more on this tomorrow!

Matthew Smith released Retrovaders v1.02! The new features are a menu system and one added game - Space Fever!

JoseQ did an interview with Larry Bank (Cage)! Read it here.

Thanks to RomList we now have 'King of Fighters'95' !

Can anyone of you reading help me with my Matrox Mystique video card ? I need to get a videomode: VESA 320*240 LFB, but this mode isn't supported by the card and SDD 6.52 doesn't seem to work :((

Everything seems to be back to normal and thank you all for coming back :-)))

The MAME WIP page has been ressurrected recently by Dave and gives you now a big update on the rom-renaming issues that you need to do with the color proms and the clone/variant/bootleg romsets in your rom directory. Additionally, Mirko added support for Solomon's Key. I never new that this was an arcade game, but I loved the C64 version! See some screenshots on Lord13's page!

I'm sorry, but my provider had some serious server problems so you were not able to reach SYS2064 for at least 48 hours :(( The following updates cover all arcade emulation related news from the last two or three days...

Jimmy Hamm put up a page for Thunder, his upcoming emulator for Namcos classic 'Rolling Thunder' - one of my all-time favorite games :-)!

I added the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles samples (for use with DTMNT) to my samples page!

Bloodlust released Callus v0.42, which adds support for a pirate version of Street Fighter II (the 'Rainbow Edition') and fixes some bugs:

• QSound games run with z80 disabled
• Saved callus95 video settings
• Street Fighter 2 Rainbow Edition support (sf2rb)
• Slammasters crashes a bit less often
• Fixed Dynasty Wars layer priority
• Fixed Muscle Bomber Duo copy protection

Kevin Brisley finally released Replay+ v1.00!!! Supported in this first version are Amidar, Bump'n'Jump, Burgertime, Lock'n'Chase, Pac & Pal, Robocop, Super Pac-Man and Turtles. Other great features are Netplay and a great GUI :) Here the full list of features:

• Written in C++ with a variety of C & ASM CPU cores.
• Support for 6502, Z80, 6809 and 68000 CPUs.
• Support for many classic arcade games from the 70's, 80's.
• Hi Score saving for all games.
• Game Saving/Loading for all games.
• Movie Record/Playback for all games.
• Network play for all games.
• Global/Local key configuration.
• Auto-saving of key configuration.
• Auto-saving of dip switch settings.
• A new fancy front-end.
• Screen Rotation/Flipping at any time at the touch of a key.
• Built-in support for cocktail modes.
• A developer's version with full source code.
• An integrated debugger for stepping through emulated CPUs (developer's).
• Game driver shared library support in Unix.
• Much more

The Windows95 port of MAME beta 6 has been released. In addition to this, one of the two programmers, Michael, put up a page with work in progress screenshots from four new Williams games: Inferno, Joust 2, Mystic Marathon and Turkey Shoot!

Even if you don't like comicbooks, I urge you to take a look at the official homepage of Erik Larsen's 'Savage Dragon'! Savage Dragon is a damn funny superhero book with awesome artwork! Go and take a look!

The System 16 homepage has been updated with news on the upcoming Windows95 port of the emulator. For those who forgot: the DOS port is more or less discontinued but the WIn95 port has already added 4 new games (Alex Kidd, Aurail, Flash Point and Fantasy Zone) and should be released at the end of the month!

Anders and Janne of (Neo-)Rage fame released a fix for 4 neogeo rom-dumps by Romlist. I did not test this yet, so please get it from the Rage homepage!

Move your attention over to RomList! 'Neo DriftOut' has been released :))

John Manfreda released I, Robot emulator v0.98! Here's the list of new features:

• SOUND SUPPORT!!!!
• User configuration is saved in Windows registry. There's no longer any reason to hit F1 every time you run the emulator.
• High scores are now saved in Windows registry.
• Now that the user configuration is saved, the default screen size is once again 'Normal'.
• Now that the user configuration is saved, the default dip switch settings are the same as the manufacturer recommended default settings (from Atari manual)
• Fixed more flickering bugs. At this point I think I've fixed all of them (knock on wood).

Anders and Janne release NeoRage v0.0015! This release adds support for more games and here's the full list of new features:

• Screen capture (F8).
• Support for more of the big and newer games. Ex. Goal Goal Goal, Galaxy Fight & Samurai Showdown. But Pulstar still has a problem in Stage 2-4.
• Metal Slug fix (no reset on level 2)
• -Vga bug fix.
• No crash if not VBE2.0 detected.
• Keyboard bugfix(some had problem with strange response from keyboard).

Dave released DTMNT v0.41! This release applies a lot of sound improvements and sample support!

Roberto Ventura released JFF - Just For Fun v0.14! New in this release is support for an often requested game: 'Psychic 5' and the reset bug in Ninja Kid 2 is fixed!

Larry Bank released CAGE v1.07! This release has mostly internal changes like zipped rom and joystick support as well as speed increases and fixes to the games. A new game has been added, too: 'Galaxians'!

SYS2064 has been awarded again. I am proud to present you the 'Muschelaward' :-)! Feel free to click here to see all awards of SYS2064!

Romlist did it again...'Kabuki Klash' is available for download and there are teaser screenshots from 'King of Fighters 95' and 'NeoDrift' to be released in the next days!

Dave released DTMNT v0.40! This release adds sound and music. Here is the full list of updates:

• SOUND! MUSIC! The Z80 and YM2151 are emulated at last...! This means music and sound effects throughout the game. Many many thanks to Jarek and the Mame guys!
• Compiled with a newer version of Allegro (30th May) which means a few more joystick types I think.
• Unfortunately still no speech effects
• MAJOR speed loss with the sound on - I'm really sorry about this: If you have a P133 or below you will REALLY see a drop.
• Sorry - all the sample rendering is in C. The speed *will* go back up again when I'll optimised bits of it.
• The white noise bug, which occurs in Mame when you hit metal objects haunts DTmnt as well, (because it uses the same YM2151 code).

Another award for SYS2064 :-)) The 'Fantasy Award 98'! Feel free to click here to see all awards of SYS2064!

To fuel the World Cup fever, here are some screenshots of a work-in-progress MAME driver for 1985's Thekan World Cup!

Kevin Brisley finally announced a release date for his Replay+, it is now scheduled for next Monday! Read about it on the official homepage! One of the new features is Netplay!

Regarding netplay, Michael Adcock announced on the emulator mailing list that he is working on netplay support for the Windows95 port of MAME, which seems to make great progress :-)!

Bloodlust just released Callus v0.41b, which fixes these bugs (please note that the names of the zipfiles have not changed since v0.41, but if you read the read-me files you'll see that it is a new version!):

• 400x300 tweaked mode (maybe not very compatible)
• 16-bit SB output via 8-bit dma
• Fixed minor start/coin input bug
• Fixed DOS 8-bit QSound output (typo)

SYS2064 has won another award: the 'Stiftung Webtest' Award! Feel free to click here to see all awards of SYS2064!

Bloodlust released Callus v0.41! Now with support for QSound!! The QSound player and the Win95 port are updated, too. Here's the full list of what's new:

• Jap Magic Sword support (mswordj)
• Jap Daimakaimura support (gngj)
• Jap Muscle Bomber Duo support (mbomberj)
• Z80 CPU skipping
• ABC and XYZ button mappings
• RLE compressed state files
• 'qvol' option
• Automatic MMX detection
• Better input device remapping
• ROM loading from ZIP files
• Stereo output for QSound games (-stereo on/off)
• QSound emulation
• Kabuki Z80 decryption

Some sad news on emulator development: James Sutherland told me that E++ is discontinued and Magnus Danielsson (Shark) said: "All of us are quite busy working at the moment, so we wont have any time to continue the development of the emulator"!

Puzzle Bobble is out at RomList! This is another one of m yall-time favorite games :-) tnx AraCorn and Org!

In addition to the new NeoGeo rom, RomList put up another sad newsbit: According to Org of Romlist, Drac quit the development of his NeoGeo emulator Gekko. Well there are numerous rumours ranking around Gekko and there is no official statement so let's wait and see...

Regarding Lance McKay's (Emu Xpress) latest newsbit about two arcade emulators with animal names (i guess 'Shark' and 'xDragon') still being under development, I contacted some other emu-authors to ask about the status of their emulators. Some of them already replied and the good news is that none of the emulators are discontinued and most of them are either just halted or the developent is going slow due to lack of time (Juno First, MageX) or a new release should be coming soon (Replay+, Rockulator)!!

Another day and another release of Dave's DTMNT v0.36! Large speed increase because of the use of Neil Corletts Starscream!

Richard Mitton released v1.01 of his 'New Zealand Story' emulator which fixes some graphics bugs.

Lots of Retrocade news on the official homepage. The official release should be out in the next few weeks :)

WHAT A DAY!!!!! MAME v0.33b6, NeoRage v0.0010 and DTMNT v0.35 have all been released in the last minutes !!!!! Read on!

NeoRage v0.0010 is out, too :-)) Here's what's new:

• Joystick support (-j)
• Vesa hi-color support 320x240 (default) 640x480 with scanlines (-s)
• If you have trouble with the vesa resolutions try to download scitech display doctor.
• If you still want to use modex resolutions use option -modex
• Support for many of the big and newer games. But unfortunally not all of them yet.
• Autoframeskip.
• There is NO sound in this release so if you dont like to play without sound dont bother to download NeoRAGE

MAME v0.33 beta 6 has just been released! 19 new romsets have been added as well as the usual fixes/updates to existing drivers:

• Nova 2001 [Howie Cohen, Frank Palazzolo, Alex Pasadyn]
• Super Bond [Chris Hardy]
• Avalanche [Mike Balfour]
• Gladiator [Victor Trucco, Steve Ellenoff, Phil Stroffolino]
• Lazer Command [Juergen Buchmueller]
• Dead Eye [Juergen Buchmueller]
• Gypsy Juggler (preliminary) [Juergen Buchmueller]
• Fax [Mike Balfour]
• Heli Fire [Al Kossow]
• Space Fever [Al Kossow]
• Birdie King 2 (preliminary) [Ed Mueller, Mike Balfour]
• Lizard Wizard [Mike Balfour]
• TMNT (Japanese, 2 Players USA, 2 Players Jaèpanese) [Alex Simmons]
• Fighting Fantasy [Marco Cassili]
• 1941 (Japanese) [Marco Cassili]
• Nemo (Japanese) [Sawat Pontree]
• Ghouls'n Ghosts (Japanese) [Marco Cassili]
• Magic Sword (Japanese) [Marco Cassili]
• 1942 (alternate) [Nicola Salmoria]

Dave released a new version of his DTMNT v0.35! Here's what's new:

• Sprite routines sped up considerably
• Also there was another problem with the timer code, which should now be fixed

JoseQ of EmuViews interviews Neil Bradley the author of EMU and of the upcoming Retrocade!

RomList just released the promised 'Windjammers' and to tease us all, they put up some screenshots from one of my all-time favorites: 'Puzzle Bobble'!

Important sitenews!!! SYS2064 is going to move soon! In a few weeks I will move SYS2064 to a different (but I think well known) location. I am going to tell you more about this soon, but for now, please stay tuned and believe me that SYS2064 will get better and bigger in the future!!

Jose Tejada Gomez released Grytra v0.2, his emulator for Gryzor/Contra! The emulator looks great now!

Again NeoRage news from PC Arcade:

• Implemented a new driver structure for some of the newer games. This is because almost all the newer games have been dumped in a different way, making the banking completely different.
• Implemented vesa both 320x240x16 and 640x480X16 with scanlines and it runs at the same speed as non vesa.
• New mirror site of the homepage coming soon.

Dave released a new version of his DTMNT v0.35! Here's what's new:

• All kinds of Joystick and mouse support! (Use allegro.cfg file)
• Redefinable keys and joystick buttons. (press 'R')
• (As a result) Four-player simultaneous now possible! (e.g. two on keyboard, mouse, joystick / four on keyboard - whatever you want)
• F12 toggles emulator keys on/off (useful if your keys cover the whole keyboard)
• Slowed down the theme music a bit (thanks for pointing it out!)
• Frames per second counter (for the emulator) (press 'I') (NB - f.p.s. takes a few moments to settle down)

RomList is going to release another NeoGeo rom called 'Windjammers'!

Finally I had the time to do a MAJOR update to the List of all currently emulated Videogames! I added all games from the MAME beta versions and added the entries for a lot of existing emulators and for the upcoming Retrocade!

Thanks to RomList we now have 'Goal Goal Goal' - if this NeoGeo rom would work, it would be the perfect thing (apart from EA's France98) to span the football free time during the world-cup matches :)!

Take a look at this page to see pictures from the work in progress MAME driver for Taito's game: 'Great Swordsman' (1984)

There were three new versions released of DTMNT and the latest now is v0.33!

A new emulator called DTMNT v0.3 has been released for the game 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'. It should be much faster than the previous single game emulator and the MAME version.

RomList releases NeoGeo rom after rom :-)! The latest is 'Galaxy Fight'!

Bad news coming from the System 16 emu. Thierry Lescot decided to leave the emulation project. This could be the end of the DOS version but read all about it here...Nao and Bartman will continue on the Windows95 version which will add all of the previously announced games and a new one: 'Alex Kidd: the Lost Stars'!

Matthew Smith released Retrovaders v1.01! This new version adds sample support for the emulated games!

CAPxtra a hoax ??? Yesterday the author of Capxtra released a screenshot which was supposed to be Street Fighter Alpha running on his emulator. Several sources now told me that the screenshot is a fake :(( Let's wait and see what happens...

WOW...whoever decided that the MAME beta versions should be released to the public, he has my eternal gratitude :-))) MAME v0.33 beta 5 has just been released!! In addition to the usual batch of fixes we get 18 new roms amoung them Nemesis, a few more CPS1 games and Last Duel!

Have you heard about CAPxtra yet ? CAPxtra is an emulation project to emulate the cps2 board from Capcom. The author set up a homepage and seems to make great progress on decrypting the roms!

Roberto Ventura released JFF - Just For Fun v0.12! New in this release is support for 'Ninja Kid 2' (UPL, 1987)!

RomList released another NeoGeo rom: 'Agressors of the Dark Kombat'!

More great news on the upcoming NeoRage from PC Arcade:

• Nearly all games run now, although there are a few protection bugs to iron out
• Vesa true colour may be supported in this release!

Richard Mitton released v1.0 of his 'New Zealand Story' emulator which should now be perfect! :-) New in this release are:

• Finally got music working.
• Added '-nomusic' option.
• Added '-scanlines' option (for that genuine, 80's arcade look).
• Removed '-accurate' and added '-fast'.
• Released source code.

No releases to report, so please focus your attention at two interviews: EmuViews interviews Bartman (the coder of the Windows95 port of the System16 emu) and Emulators Unlimited chattet with Richard Mitton (author of the singlegame emu for 'New Zealand Story')!

Thanks to the great AraCorn and Org we now have two new NeoGeo roms at RomList: Aero Fighters II and Sonic Wings III!

I found out why Boo wasn't working on my system...I got the archive from Dave's and it's missing some files!!! So...Boo is a Windows95 based emulator which runs very slow on my P100 but it looks very promising!

Andy Clark released a brand-new singlegame emulator called Boo v1.0! Currently it emulates Capcoms 'Ghouls and Ghosts' and is in beta stages. It has no joystick and dip-switches support yet! I can't seem to get it to work, but I will go on trying ;-)

I finally added an entry for Retrovaders (Matthew Smith's emulator for early Midway games) to the multigame emulator list!

Richard Bush added screenshots from 'Ninja Warriors' and 'Space Gun' on his Raine homepage!

A new NeoRage should be coming soon! PC Arcade announced that the next beta version will be out this week with a new release following shortly. The new features are: Joystick support, Zoom problem nearly fixed and cracked protection on some of the newer roms (still with problems though)!!

John Manfreda released I, Robot emulator v0.97! There are numerous bug-fixes in this version!

Do you remember the singlegame emulator for 'Wonderboy in Monsterland' a few weeks ago by two anonymous programmers? Then you'll like Bernat Arlandis Mañó and Juan Arnal Arlandis new emulator ZEM v0.001! The singlegame emulator is now a multigame emulator for Sega System 8 games and adds 'Pitfall II' and 'Wonderboy Deluxe'!

Damn...just as I decided to take a day off, Bloodlust Software released Callus v0.40 with TCP/IP support!!!! In addition to this they released a Windows95 port and a stand-alone QSound player for sound in CPS2 boards. Here is the full list of new features in Callus v0.40:

• Senjyo no Ookami II support (mercsj)
• Ghouls 'n Ghosts support (gng)
• Fixed GrIP support
• TCP/IP netplay
• DirectX port ("callus95.exe")
• Game settings stored in game.ini
• 16 bit hicolor renderer (-hicolor)
• Jap Capcom World 2 support (cworld2j)
• YM logging
• 'map2to3' option

I just tested the Network play from Callus v0.40 and I am impressed: Fighting games like Street Fighter II are lagged, but Shooters like Varth and Beat'em Ups like Punisher work like a charm!

RomList released three new NeoGeo roms: Art of Fighting II, King of Fighters '94 and Samurai Showdown!

Matthew Smith released RetroInvaders v1.0! I am going to add the entry to the multi-game emulators later today. For now, click here to get the file and here is the homepage!

Dave Ewing of EmuZing did a short interview with Nicola Salmoria!!

Out of the blue comes MAME v0.33 beta 4! Again we get another amazing update with the addition of 26 new romsets, amoung them: Paperboy, Blasteroids, Championship Sprint and Xybots!

Thierry and Noa added a new game to their System16 emulator: Flashpoint, a Tetris clone!

Richard Mitton released v0.60 of his 'New Zealand Story' emulator which is getting better and better :-) New in this release are:

• 100% correct colours!
• SETUP program. You can change the keys at last.
• Pause key. Press P to pause it.
• Faster emulation. If it causes problems, then use -accurate option

Are you getting excited about Retrocade ? Then you might want to take a look at the official Retrocade Homepage to see a list of all games which will be supported by the first release early June. Amoung the games are ome that are improved with added backdrops and some that are not emulated in any other emulator yet: eg. Blasteroids and Xenophobe!!

Jan AxHell released a new version of his NeoGeo database Naogao v1.2! You can get it as always from the 'emulated Videogames' subsection as well as his two other databases. Check them out!

A few weeks ago, Thierry Lescot searched for some programmers to port the System16 emulator to Windows95. Apparantly he found somebody called Bartman and here is the homepage of the Windows port!

Jimmy Hamm makes huge progress with ThundEm, his emulator for Namcos 'Rolling Thunder'! The colors are now 100% and now he is working on new videomodes and sound issues. Read the whole announcement on the ThundEm page!

I finally added a Guestbook (courtesy of the fine people of GuestWorld! Feel free to leave messages, but don't spam or ask for roms there :-) If you don't see my full page with the navigation frame on the left and the logo on top, please click here!

EmuViews did an interview with Magnus Danielsson ('Shark emulator'). Read it here!

Roberto Ventura released JFF - Just For Fun v0.11! New in this release is sound in 'Ambush'!

A few weeks ago, Dave Ewing of EmuZine got 10 arcade emulator authors together in one chatroom on IRC and the result was a very unique and interesting interview. Last weekend 'The Gathering Part Two' occured and now you can read it here!

In addition to AraCorns message (see the other newsbits), Org released THREE of the dumped NeoGeo romsets: 'Puzzle De Pon!', 'Super Side Kicks 1' (yeah, my favorite :-) and 'Metal Slug'! As usual, get them from the great Romlist!!

Larry Bank released CAGE v1.06! The new additions are:

• Rewrote all sprite and character draw routines in assembler. This does not add much to overall gameplay speed, but it certainly doesn't hurt. See my download page for the source code.
• Added support for Jr. PacMan (credit goes to the MAME team for the ROM decryption info).
• Improved sound on Super PacMan, Mappy and DigDug 2.
• Fixed bonus point levels on Mappy dipswitch options.
• Rewrote the Z80 emulator in assembler. Fast is not a strong enough word to describe its incredible speed.
• Optimized character and sprite routines in Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. These games now run at incredible speed and should work on a slow 486 machine. Try turning off throttling to see how zippy it runs. On my P233 it goes at hundreds of frames per second.

Retrocade is going beta on June, 1st. Unfortunately, the GUI will be removed from the first release because of some problems with it. The good news is that Peter Hirschberg has added overlay/backdrop/translucent vector/anti-aliasing to many of the vector games. Read more on the official homepage!

NeoGeo rom news to wet your appetite: AraCorn of Romlist posted the list of all NeoGeo roms dumped by him so far: Magician Lord, Cyber Lip, Nam 1975, Top Players Golf, Samurai Showdown, Puzzle De Pon!, Super Side Kicks 1, View Point, Blue's Journey, Metal Slug, King Of Fighters'94, Goal! Goal! Goal!, Aggressors Of Dark Kombat, Galaxy Fight and Neo Drift Out.
Coming up this week: Street Hoop, Spin Master, Fatal Fury 2, World Heroes 2, Art Of Fighting 2 and Zed Blade! Read the whole article here!

Thierry Lescot released a bugfix for yesterdays release of the System16 emulator today and to keep your mouths wet, here are screenshots from two new games in development: 'Aurail' and 'Quartet'!

Some lamers messed with my counter today and YES, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE - BEWARE! Good ole logfiles ;-)

As promised yesterday, here are quite a few screenshots from ThundEm together with the latest news regarding the status of ThundEm! If you come from 'Dave's Classics' please click here to see my full page with the navigation frame and the logo!

RomList put up two screenshots of upcoming NeoGeo games that will be released from them in the next days: 'Puzzle De Pon' and the long awaited 'Super Sidekicks'!

Jimmy Hamm sent me more and updated screenshots from the upcoming ThundEm, an emulator for Namco's 'Rolling Thunder'! As you can see, the colors are nearly done (one or two sprites are not 100%) but you can see that ThundEm is looking better every day! More screenshots will be here tomorrow!

Li Jih Hwa and Thierry Lescot release their long awaited System16 emulator v0.78! A surprise has been added, too: support for 'Moonwalker'!!!

Here's what's new in this release:

• no more sound card selection if no sound support in the selected game
• zipped roms support
• game selection screen appears when selected gcs is 'select' (default)
• leds support added (all dual 68000 games and Heavyweight Champ)
• mouse support added (for S.D.I)
• scanlines for 320x480 and 640x480 linear modes
• eagle support
• new and faster rendering routines (+30%)
• faster YM2151 emulator (Satoh)
• faster Z80 emulator (from Neil Corlett)
• added partial sound support for Out Run (no samples yet)
• more accurate zooming routines (Space Harrier)
• emulator configuration is now saved in system16.ini
• 8 new games: Dynamite Dux, E-Swat, Heavyweight Champ (not playable yet -> no controls), Moonwalker, Passing Shot, S.D.I., Tough Turf and Wonderboy III

Ian Pleasance released MameAud v1.38, his excellent auditor for MAME roms and samples! Highly recommended!!

Richard Bush just posted some screenshots from 'Double Dragon 3' and updated screens from 'Terra Cresta' on his Raine homepage!

Hot of the presses comes the new version of Anders' and Janne's NeoRage v0.00005! The most important update is that the bug is fixed which prevented that several games were not loaded, Sengoku2 and Blue's Journey now run on NeoRage! Unfortunately I get 'out of memory' when trying to run 'Pulstar' :((

RomList release 'Viewpoint' for the NeoGeo and added a new Message Board for all questions regarding the NeoGeo!

Roberto Ventura released JFF - Just For Fun v0.1! He added the game 'Ambush' to his former single-game emulator for 'Vastar'!

Richard Mitton is ver ybusy updating his single-game emulator for 'New Zealand Story'! We are up to version v0.53b now!

I removed Chopsuey and the System8 emulator today! Both emulators were in early stages and were discontinued.

Two new NeoGeo roms on Romlist! 'Blue's Journey' is a 50mbit platform/shooter from Alpha Denshi 1990 and then there is 'Pulstar'! Blue's Journey is currently unplayable on NeoRage but the Dump has made it work with Gekko with a batchfile to split the roms. Pulstar is not supposed to run on any of the emus because of some kind of encryption and is very huge (the zip-file is 14.16mb)!!

I added NeoFront today, a very simple but very useful front-end for NeoRage. Take a look for yourself!

Richard Mitton updated his single-game emulator for 'New Zealand Story' again today. The latest version now is v0.53!

After the last busy days we finally get a day to relax because it seems to be quiet on the arcade emulation front. Todays highlight is the release of ZSnes v0.4 which now supports SuperFx emulation! Here is the link to the homepage!

Richard Mitton updated his single-game emulator for 'New Zealand Story' twice today. The latest version is v0.52! This release fixes some bugs and speeds things up a bit.

Thiery Lescot announced the relese date for the next version of the System16 emulator! It will be out on Saturday, 23rd! Read the whole text here with the list of all upcoming features.

Jan AxHell released a new version of his NeoGeo database Naogao v1.1!

Richard Mitton released a single-game emulator for 'New Zealand Story' v0.5! The emulation is a work in progress with a lot of bugs still present, but it's a step ahead of the MAME emulation of the same game.

Do you search for NeoGeo roms ? Here are two great sites which will make you happy for a few days at least ;-) The first is the NeoGeo rom archive and the second is the classic site 'The Dump' which now has a NeoGeo section, too!

How's that for a surprise ? I just spent the day with a lot of my friends in the sun and came back to discover

NeoRage!

Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela release a full working, yet very early release of their NeoGeo emulator to the public! I have yet to test it, I just tried to run 3 Count Bout to see if it works and it runs fine! Now all that I need is Super Sidekicks 1-3 :-))

I bet the release of NeoRage will make a release of Gekko (John Kohlers NeoGeo emulator) appear soon. I don't think that there will be much 'legal problems' now for them when a second NeoGeo emulator is around. The more the better I say....

To top this day, MAME v0.33 beta 3 has just been released with support for 41! new romsets! The new games include: Double Dragon 1 & 2, Klax, the first Sega System16 games, more Capcom System One games. From this release on, the beta versions are added to SYS2064.

Sorry for the lack of updates the last two days, but there wasn't really much to tell you and then there was the great weather here in Germany. Anyway, back to business :-) !

JoseQ published an interview with Nao, the second half of the great team from the System16 emulator. Read it here!

Jimmy Hamm is busy working on an emulator for Namcos *Rolling Thunder*! He made a lot of progress, the game is playable but still has some bugs, the colors are off and a lot of optimization has to be done. Jimmy just sent me two screenshots from ThundEm, so you can take a look at the progress of the emulator!

Drac has posted a lot of screenshots from his NeoGeo emulator on the homepage! To answer some questions about the emulator, he set up a news-server, click here!

The Retrocade homepage has been updated yesterday. Read the latest news here!

Another update for Sideway, the Midway 8080 emulator to version 0.2! Again some bugfixes, sample support for GunFight and more games were added (although a lot of the available romsets are corrupt, so they are not fully playable)!

Jan AxHell's excellent Coin-Ops Database has been updated to v0.19 and The Emu database to v1.2! There is a new database now with informaiton for NeoGeo roms: Naogao v1.0!

On Saturday I told you about an article from the german news-magazine 'Der Spiegel' regarding emulation in general. Today they corrected some minor mistakes and even put a link to this page! Thank you very much :-)) Once again, you can read it here (it's in german, though)...

Sideway, the Midway 8080 emulator has seen some updates and is now at version 0.199! There are some new games suppoted and a lot of bugfixes.

Jeff Slutter has announced that he won't continue his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles emulator. He states lack of interest as his main reason. The game is supported in the latest MAME v0.33 beta release, too.

Interviews seem to be quite popular these days....not that I complain, I like to read them as well. FixoFiles at Emu Unlimited did four new interviews: with Thierry Lescot (System16) and Richard Bush (Raine), and two console related interviews: Breakpoint (Project Unreality-N64) and ZSKnight (ZSnes)

The german news-magazine 'Der Spiegel' did an article regarding emulators and they even quote me about the subject :-) There are two mistakes in an otherwise nice article: the link to MAME goes to a SimpleNet page and not to the official homepage and more serious: they forgot? to add a link to my homepage even though they kinda promised to do it. Lame, but anyway...read it here (it's in german, though)...

WOW...this is like..."back to the old days" :-) A few days after the first beta release of MAME 0.33, the second is out right NOW!

The biggest surprise IMHO is the fact that there is a new game supported which has never been released to the arcades: 'Faster Harder More Challenging Q*Bert'. Read the whole story about the sequel to 'Q*Bert' here! Oh...the beta adds the usual bugfixes and improvements and even more new games, too, which now sums up to *500* supported romsets :-))
As usual, please get the beta from Dave's Classics but I think i will start adding the beta versions, too!

EmuViews did an interview with Thierry Lescot (System16)! Read it here.

Nicolas Hamel released xDragon v0.30! This version adds support for 'Midnight Resistance' and 'Sly Spy'. The following features were added, too:

• VSync
• Autoframeskip
• Choose the correct video mode
• Double Buffer added
• Parallax scrolling
• xDragon save the joystick's calibration part
• Rotary Controller supported

D'Oh! I forgot to add the updates on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles emulator. Jeff Slutter has released v0.70 of his emulator which adds the following features:

• Joystick support for DOS
• Sprite vs Background Priority fixed
• More video resolutions added
• Made it faster
• Sticky keys fixed
• Sprite glitches all fixed
• New config program

Although the NeoGeo Teaser has been removed from the major webpages, you still might consider getting some NeoGeo roms! The best place to start looking is the IRC, EFNET, channel #neogeo. Or you might want to take a look at the Nexus which has lots of reviews of games running with the teaser and teasemore (a collection of batch-files to rename the console roms to work with the teaser). Another interesting page is the official SNK-NeoGeo homepage, where you can take a look at a lot of NeoGeo stuff to drool at :-)

The Vector Dream homepage moved here. In addition, Peter announced that he joined the Retrocade team and is resting Vector Dream for the near future.

A new version of Shark is coming soon. Read the official announcement on the homepage!

Richard Bush just released Raine v0.10! The new features are:

Added Following games:

Bonze Adventure (c-chip, so not playable), Cadash (playable), Final Blow (playable), Master of Weapons (messy sprites), Mega Blast (playable), Ninja Kids (playable but messy sprites), Ninja Gaiden (playable), Operation Thunderbolt (playable), Super Space Invaders'91 (playable) and Zero Zone (playable)

• Added a little gui for Game Select/Key Select/Screen Select etc...
• Zipped roms support.
• Added detection and skipping for idle 68000 cycles in: WrestleFest, Rainbow Islands
• and Rastan (all have speed increase).
• Armed Formation: Added second BG layer, fixed sprites, colours, Player2 controls mapped.
• Snow Bros: New Starscream fixes monster movement problem, full asm for screen redraw by Cedrick Collomb.
• Terra Force: Fixed sprites, scrolling, colours.
• Toki: Fixed Screen Size.
• WrestleFest: Fixed Timing problem, which in turn fixes stuff like Match Select screen.

The List of all emulated arcade games is once again updated. It took a while to add all of the new games from the two latest MAME releases (0.31 & 0.33b1) but anyway, here it is!

MAME news: the MAME developers decided to release the beta versions of MAME! So now there is MAME v0.33beta1 available and support for 15 games was added (including clones/variants). Please note that version v0.32 was skipped to avoid confusion with the windows95 port of MAME.

I won't add these beta versions to my page, but will keep you informed about any new releases. I might reconsider in the future but for now, please get the beta from Dave's Classics!

The Double Dragon emulator is making very big steps to completition: Take a look at new screenshots on Bester's page!

As noted a few days earlier, the next release of Raine is just around the corner. To see some of the new games in action, take a look at the official homepage to see a lot of new screenshots!

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles emulator made a lot of progress the last days. Read about it here and a release should be soon!

I removed the NeoGeo emu teaser by the authors request! The emulator is not stopped though, read all about it on the homepage!

It has just been a few days since the last release but the first announcements for MAME v0.32 are already coming: The WIP-page lists these new games: Pac-Land (No Sound yet), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Punkshot, Side Pocket and Lock N Chase!

Interviews galore :-) Read three interviews with the following arcade emulator authors: Neill Corlett (MGE), Larry Bank (CAGE) and Johan Köhler (NeoGeo)!

Blood released a new version of his excellent MAME frontend FeMAME v1.8, now with full support for MAME v0.31!

After all these news about emulators for 'modern' arcade games, it's a nice surprise to find a new emulator which emulates some real classics for a change :-)

An anonymous programmer has released Sideway v0.185, an early emulator for some Midway games from the late 70s. 'Boot Hill', 'Gunfight' and 'Seawolf' should be working and more classics are in development.

Get ready for a weekend which promises tons of new releases, but I guess today must be called "Dead Serious Clan"-Day :-))

I messed around with the 'teaser' release of the NeoGeo emulator and got 'Magician Lord' and 'Top Players Golf' to work. Magician Lord is playable, Top Players Golf has some graphical problems though ;-) Just rename the roms according to the Nam1975 roms and you can take a look for yourself.

Magnus Danielsson released Shark v2.0! The new features are listed below and in addition two new games were added: 'Twin Cobra' and 'Kyukyoku Tiger'!

• Fixed a bug with the enemy behaviour.
• Fixed the generic problem with the DirectX code
• Fixed a sound crash on certain computers.
• Switched to Neil Bradley's Z80 emulator, which is about twice as fast as the old one.
• You can now run Shark without arguments for displaying your available DirectX resolutions.
• Optimized sprite rendering.
• Added 2 player simultaneous support.
• Fixed the enemy movement to be arcade perfect
• Added rotation 180 degrees for playing on special monitors.
• Added 5 virtual display modes, see options for usage.
• Added missing sprites in Flying Shark/Hishou Zame.

Johan Köhler released a 'teaser' of his upcoming NeoGeo emulator! This teaser runs one game: 'NAM 1975' and looks very promising. You need Windows 95 and sound is still missing.

Emulators Unlimited reports news on the next version of Raine with 12! new games (which should be out this weekend):

• 50% speed increase
• new GUI
• FINAL BLOW
• OPERATION THUNDERBOLT
• NINJA WARRIORS/NINJA GAIDEN
• MASTER OF WEAPONS
• BONZE's ADVENTURE
• ZERO ZONE
• NINJA KIDS
• SILENT DRAGON
• SUPER SPACE INVADERS
• MEGA BLAST
• HIT THE ICE
• SPACE GUN

Last, but definately not least, the Retrocade team is getting closer to a release, too! Check their new (and very nice) pages on www.retrocade.com

I finally revamped the links-section and added a few more links of pages I really like. If you want your page to be listed here, please let me know!

MAJOR NEWS UPDATE!

Dead Serious Clan (authors of the Shark emulator) announced today that Johan Köhler (author of the single-game emulators 'Nemesis' and 'Salamander') will release an emulator for the

NEOGEO

within a week!!! Read more on the Shark homepage and take a look at a pictureshow (which is supposed to be from images from the emulator) on this page!

Thierry Lescot is searching for a programmer who likes to port the System16 emulator to Windows95. More on this on the official homepage!

Thanks to all of you, SYS2064 broke the 25.000 visitor barrier today :-)) !

I revamped the samples area and fixed some sample sets (eg. Donkey Kong Jr.)! In addition, I changed all of the names of the zip-files to match the names of the game roms.

Shark v2.0 should be released Wednesday with support for 'Twin Cobra' and 'Kyukyoku Tiger'!

The Win95 port of MAME v0.31 has been released!

The new MAME is simply awesome! The only thing that puts a shadow on it is my slow computer..I guess I need more power soon ;-) Anyway, I put all of the new samples up for download.

In the next days I'll remove the System 8 emulator because MAME v0.31 'took over' and emulates the games better than this unfinished and discontinued emulator ('Wonderboy Deluxe' and 'Pitfall2'). I might remove MGE too, since Neill Corlett stopped his work on it, too and MAME supports the games, too. So, if you want to own copies from these emulators, download them now.

Larry Bank released Cage v1.05! Here's what's new:

• Fixed PAUSE logic to keep display painted properly.
• Enhanced windows mode to run at full speed even on a 65536 color display when stretched! (eliminates the need for fullscreen mode).
• Added user-settable option to pause with loss of focus.
• Added drop-down list to allow choosing of the fullscreen resolution (previously it forced display to 640x480).
• Fixed timing screw-up after pausing the game. Previously, the frames would run too quickly until it 'caught up' to the current time.
• Added support for Mappy & DigDug2 (100% operational). Sorry, but these require at least a Pentium 100 to run well. I need to optimize my character graphics/sprite code
• Cleaned up sound support a bit and added more error checking and the option to disable sound.
• Fixed screen capture to work when directx enabled.

Surprise, surprise...I could have sworn it would have been released on Monday, but who is going to complain ? :-))) MAME v0.31 has just been released to the masses and what are you waiting for ? The biggest surprise is......support for the Atari System One games!!!!

Peter Hirschberg released a bug-fixed Vector Dream emulator v2.3! Here's what's new:

• Now using Zonn Moore's/Neil Bradley's 100% assembly Atari Mathbox code.
• Red Baron lock-up problem.
• Adjusted interrupt frequency; Red Baron and Battlezone run MUCH faster now (too fast?).
• Adjusted the dimensions of the Sound Settings dialog to get it to fit into 640x480 resolution

Grab some japanese Callus roms from this page!

Non-arcade related news: It's play-off time in the NBA!!! Today the 1998 play-offs start and I hope the Seattle Supersonics will make it to the finals. Go Sonics go! :-)

Another interview: This time with Jeff Slutter, author of the TMNT emulator. read it here!

Peter Hirschberg released Vector Dream emulator v2.2! There are a lot of new features and bug-fixes, eg. Red Baron is now playable!

Read an interview with JRok, the mastermind behind JAS, on this page!

I recommend that you all start to download the new rom-images for the upcoming MAME v0.31 NOW! All sites will be crowded after the release, so get going :-)

I am back from my vacation and was very pleased to find 3 new single-game emulators, 2 updated multi-game emulators and a lot of news of upcoming releases (MAME v0.31 is coming!!) :-)) I did not test any of these emulators yet, so detailed descriptions are still missing. Anyway, here we go:

Magnus Danielsson released Shark v1.03, a single-game emulator for the game 'Flying Shark' (Taito, 1987).

Two anonymous programmers have released a beta version of a 'Wonderboy in Monsterland' (Sega) emulator!

As announced before, somebody released an emulator for Konami's: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', now at v0.5!

Larry Bank updated Cage to v1.04! Here's what's new:

• Added preliminary support for Crush-Roller.
• Added Qix2 & Zoo Keeper.
• Fixed Galaxy Wars hang problem.
• Added Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man.
• Rewrote 6502 CPU core in assembler.
• Added preliminary support for Pac & Pal.
• Rewrote 6808 and 6809 CPU's in assembler for maximum speed.
• Added support for Windowed and Full-Screen DirectX.
• Added very preliminary support for Galaga.
• Cleaned up PAUSE functionality.
• Added very preliminary joystick support (only works in PacMan & Qix).

Jrok released v1.01 of JAS, now supporting two different rom-sets of PacLand!

Steven Frew announced that the latest version ('Bligh') of his Bionic Commando emulator Slutte will be the last release. He is working on a MAME driver instead!

Thierry and Noa added a new game to their System16 emulator: 'Heavyweight Champ' (unplayable due to lack of controls)! Expect the release in mid-May!

Here is a short interview with Richard Bush (J3d!), the author of Raine!

The masterminds behind the upcoming multi-game emulator Retrocade put up some screenshots on their homepage! The not-so-secret ;-) secret is that Atari's 'Blasteroids' will be supported by the first release!

Bester, Carlos and Phil's Double Dragon emulator is making some progress. Here is a screenshot of the intro with sprites! Looks great to me :-)

Last, but definitely not least MAME v0.31 is now in release candidate mode and should be released anyday now! The latest rom-count is, according to Dave's Classics, 476 roms which makes a total count of new romsets of 130 (and the two replaced Gauntlet roms)!!!

A working emulator for the game 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' has been released. Please get it from the homepage, since I don't have enough time right now to test it or even to put it up here on SYS2064.

This is my last update for the next days since I am going on a short holiday-trip and will return on Sunday. So expect a full update late on Sunday or more likely early Monday. I hope to see you all back here on Monday and don't forget to bring your friends :-))

I was in doubt whether any MAME release would be able to top the release of v0.30 with 88 new supported romsets...but Dave's Classics report *115* new roms (including variants as usual) to be supported by MAME v0.31!!!

Here is a list of new games straight from the MAME WIP-page: Mega Twins and UN Squadron (both preliminary - huge memory requirements) [Paul Leaman], Atari's Tetris [Zsolt Vasvari], D-Day [Zsolt Vasvari], Blockade/Comotion [Frank Palazzolo], Leprechaun [Zsolt Vasvari], Stratovox [Darren Olafson], Savage Bees [Jim Hernandez], Gorf (Program 1) [Alex Judd] and Extra Bases (not playable) [Alex Judd].
And MAME is now compiled with GCC 2.8.0, optimized for Pentium processors.

I really like this new 'open-information' policy by the MAME developers. :-))

Great MAME news: MAME V.31 is in final beta and will be released soon!!! Read the more at the new location of Insert Coin.

The System 16 emulator is delayed until May because Nao is rewriting the whole graphics engine for speedups!

I added screenshots of the japanese version of 'Dynasty Wars' to my Callus subpage.

Another day, another MAME WIP news-bit! I think a lot of people will start to cheer when I tell tell them that Aaron Giles added support for 'Toobin' (Atari, 1988). Take a look at the screenshots here!

According to various sources, Thierry Lescot annonced the release date for the next version of the System16 emulator. It will be out on the 18. April!

MAME WIP news continue to impress me: According to Dave's page Paul Leaman has added support for three Capcom System One games: Final Fight, Strider and Willow! Although I doubt that MAME runs them as good as Callus, it is quite impressive how far MAME has evolved!

Now they got me drooling ;-) News from the MAME WIP-page are that 'World Cup 1990' (and its European variant 'Euro League') were added to MAME...I can hardly wait, a big thank you to Ernesto Corvi...
Additonal, Nicola Salmoria has added sound support to Silkworm and Fire Trap and emulated music support to Bubble Bobble! Bryan McPhail has added sound support to Break Thru!

Read a short interview with Brian Peek ('Annoid', 'Retrocade' and maintainer of a rom-archive) here!

I just noticed that there was a bug in the html-code which caused the IE to display a table that he should not ;-) Anyway...it's now fixed! :-)

John Manfreda released a brand-new single game emulator for Atari's classic from 1983: I, Robot v0.951!

Bester has released version v1.0 of his Xain'D Sleena emulator! It is much faster now and supports Solar Warrior (a different version of Xain'D Sleena), too! Other new features are:

• Options Set in Configuration File!
• Full Color!
• Joystick Support!
• Sound Emulation!

Things are very slow right now...the new JAS isn't out yet, everybody is drooling for the next MAME and Retrocade and Replay are not out yet either! To ease the wait, here are some news from the MAME WIP-page:

One new game (and its bootleg) has been added: 'Pool' (with the bootleg 'Video Hustler') and improvements were made for Sinistar, Swimmer and Motos!

I am going to try some different graphics for SYS2064 in the next days. I hope to find *the* one look that I really like, so please feel free to give me your comments on the designs!

Read a great article about arcade emulation and MAME here!

The last remaining Callus roms are surfacing :) Dave's Classics just put up the japanese version of Pnickies (Capcom, 1994!) which turned out to be a clone of Nintendo's 'Dr. Mario'. See the screenshots on my Callus subpage!

What was your favorite april's fool ? Mine was the real-life farce that happened before yesterdays champions-league soccer match between Real Madrid and my team Borussia Dortmund. If you don't know what happened, one of the two goals collapsed minutes before the start of the match and it took Real Madrid's officials 75 minutes to get a substitute goal to replace the broken one. Very unprofessional I say...Read about it here or here (sorry, they are in german)!