The last year was very exiting, here is a small retrospection and I hope I didn't miss too much:

• The NeoGeo, the arcade system no.1 of the nineties was emulated (Danji, Gekko, MAME, NeoGem, NeoRage),
• the long awaited Retrocade was unveiled in September,
• the System16 emulator got full sound support (music in Out Run!),
• MAME now supports more than 1000 romsets - incredible,
• great new multigame emulators surfaced (eg. JAS, JFF, M72, Shark, Vector Dream, xDragon),
• amoung the new singlegame emulators (eg. Annoid, Combat School, TMNT) was my alltime favorite arcade game: Rolling Thunder
• and a "humble attempt of learning C and ASM" rose to become IMHO the emulator of 1998: RAINE!

On the bad side of things we got the recent witchhunt on romsites on the net by the IDSA and various other companies. Emulation got quite a lot of publicity last year - maybe too much. Well...let's wait and see how this develops in 1999.

But now enough of this rant, Ich wuensche Euch allen einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr und alles Gute! Good Bye 1998 and welcome to 1999!

• Space Invaders now has kickass sound
• several bugs fixed so far
• added Mario Brothers
• Brian Stern is working on an 8039 emulator which will bring sound to Donkey Kong, DK Jr., and Mario Brothers
• Brian Peek is working on his WIN32 port :)
• I've added 2151 emulation so now Blasteroids will have voice (and make way for newer Atari games such as Gauntlet, Toobin' and Marble Madness)
• I'm also working on the C based 6502 core as well so that the Mac side of things can be happy

• First we have Zema, an emulator for Namcos System 1 hardware (eg.: Galaga 88, Pacmania, Splatter House). You can take a look at some early screenshots and a progress report (in spanish) here!
• A second page covering the same hardware (Namco System 1) can be found here. You can find an early version of their emulator in their files section, I will test it later today!
• Last but not least, a new NeoGeo emulator is in the works called DEPAM, take a look at some screenshots brought to us from Emulatronia here!

• Fixed sound problems
• Added pause key in fullscreen mode
• Added re-definable keys
• Added scanlines
• Fixed coin counter

• More games run now ,included KOF '97, Fatal Fury RealBout 2, ...
• Puzzle de Pon fixed (thanks Allard and MAME NEOGEO team).
• Nam 1975,Neo bomberman and Magical Drop 3 graphics fixed.
• Console and Arcade mode added to neogem.ini
• Freeplay in Arcade mode added to neogem.ini
• Country selection updated, now you can choice from JAPAN,USA or EUROPE.
• Background animations speed fixed.
• Z80 emulation and comunication with the Motorola added, lacks the YM2610 emulator to add the sound.

• renames (most) neo*geo zipfiles to their correct name.
• uses TRIMIT (By Tim Eckel of Arcade@Home) to fix the sizes of all known incorrectly sized roms (I updated his .dat file to include a few more roms
• fixes the "bug" with roms zipped with recursed subdirs).
• includes the Fatal Fury 3 (fury3_p1.rom) fix.
• includes the Magical Drop 2 (drop2_c1.rom & drop2_c2.rom) fix.
• includes the recently updated Mahjong Kyo Retsuden fixed roms (new Nov 11).
• includes the correct Metal Slug 2 ms2_s1.rom.
• includes the correct World Heroes 2 Jet wh2j_s1.rom.
• includes the correct World Heroes Perfect whp_m1.rom (finally found it :)

"The Build Your Own Arcade Controls FAQ page is now up to version 2.5, last update 11/15/98. The page started as and still continues as a repository for information, plans, links, discussion, etc. on building genuine arcade controls and interfacing them with personal computers. Genuine arcade controls greatly enhance the emulation experience, as one might imagine. "
"The page also grew to include information, links, discussion etc. on ready-made alternatives, including ways to connect console controllers to your computer, as well as ready-to-plug-in arcade control systems."

• M72: Nao added support for Hammerin Harry (jap) and the Irem M92 hardware (Gun Force, Blade Master, Undercover Cops, In The Hunt, R-Type Leo, Lethal Thunder, Hook and Maho-keibitai Gunho-ki (Mystic Riders) - no sound support yet). It has not been released yet but you can take a look at screenshots from these games on the homepage!
• System 16 : Thierry added Atomic Point which is playable with the already released v0.80 with the help of a small fixfile which you can get from the homepage! The new romset can be found on the great site Dumps from Spain!

Thanks to John (MAME32 Q&A department) for the news!

• More Pac-Man clones
• Newer GUI
• Invaders Revenge support

Thanks to the re-opened Emucamp for the news! Welcome back guys - you were missed!

Thanks to EmuSpain for the news!

• 16 new supported romsets: Arkanoid Returns, Blood Bros, Cabal, Crime City, Darius, Darius Extra, Pulirula, Rastan Saga, Rastan Saga 2, Rodland, Space Invaders DX, Syvalion, Taito Tetris, Thunder Fox, Warrior Blade and West Story
• YM2610 sound in: Bonze Adventure, Crime City, Dinorex, Drift Out, Final Blow, Growl, Jigoku, Liquid Kids, Mega Blast, Ninja Kids, Ninja Warriors, Operation Thunderbolt, Pulirula, Rastan Saga 2, Space Invaders DX, Super Space Invaders 91, Superman, Syvalion, Taito Tetris, Warrior Blade.
• YM2151 sound in: Cabal, Cadash, Operation Wolf, Operation Wolf Bootleg, Rastan, Rastan Saga, Rainbow Islands, Rainbow Islands Extra, Rodland (partial).
• YM2203 sound in: Master of Weapons, Darius, Darius Extra.
• YM3526/3812 sound and 8-bit samples in: Armed Formation, Terra Cresta, Terra Force.
• ADPCM samples in: Cabal, Darius, Darius Extra, Rastan, Rastan Saga, Operation Wolf, Operation Wolf Bootleg.
• DriftOut rotation layer optimized with fast code from Cedrick Collomb
• Toggle All/Available/Missing roms in game selector
• 6 rompaths now (3 for roms, 3 for ziproms), also configurable in gui
• Improved sprites in Master of Weapons (now playable)
• Fixed Terra Cresta sprite colours and added BG0 disable, thanks to Nicola Salmoria for information
• Fixed Armed Formation BG0/1 colours and gfx and added layer disable bits
• Added missing BG1 layer to Terra Force and layer disable bits
• Pause option (P). When paused, scroll bigscreen games with arrow keys
• Converted the UAE 68020 code to asm and optimized it a lot (it's not as fast as writing a 100% asm core from scratch, but it's much faster than before!)
• Fixed Elevator Action 2, no more green colour under the main sprite.
• Joystick and Sound Options in GUI

• Trace play supports. Show your friends your best play records! Use F9 to record, F11 to play. Try it now!
• Scanline display option. This option uses 800x600 display mode for doubling every dots. It will be a bit slower than the preferred 400x300 hardware double pixel mode But if your system happens to have no usable 400x300 display mode, this could work as a solution.
• Alternate keyboard control set.
• Sound states are put in save game data now.
• Fixed two bugs that caused Gallop to crash at certain places.

System16 emulator v0.80:

• YM2203 emulation for Space Harrier.
• YM3438 emulation for System18 games.
• Ricoh RF5C68 PCM sound chip emulation for System18 games.
• SEGA PCM sound chip emulation for OUTRUN,Space Harrier and Super Hang-On.

M72 emulator v0.30b:

• Seven more ROM sets are supported:
  
  • R-TYPE 2 (rtype2)
  • Dragon Breed (dbreed)
  • Hammerin'Harry (hharry)
  • Gallop - Armed Police Unit (gallop)
  • Mr.HELI(BChopper JP) (mrheli)
  • R-TYPE US (rtypeus)
  • X-MULTIPLY (xmultipl)
• The YM2151 timer bug is fixed. This is most obvious for Image Fight.
• Upgraded YM2151 core to v0.34a.