Emulators

Updated: 28-03-2002

Released arcade emulators

Home page: http://www.rainemu.com/

Description: This is a fast assembly-based emulator, Raine is focused on games manufactured by Taito and Jaleco, it was the first emulator to support "Chase HQ", back in the time when most of the emulator authors only seemed interested in beat'em ups, shoot'em ups and other games with weak hardware.

This is one of the biggest arcade emulators out there, only surpassed by MAME, but considering the hundreds of programmers that contribute to MAME, it's clear that Antiriad (and the Raine team) had a great dedication and was one of the programmers to have made the biggest contribution for arcade emulation.

Latest Version: v0.35 - 26th February 2002

Download for:

DOS

Windows

Game count: 215 (Unique)

Home page: http://www.system16.com/emu-s16.htm

Description: System 16 supports Sega 8-bit and 16-bit games like "Out Run" and "Super Hang-On" it is a very fast emulator, highly recommended to play "Out Run" (with an analog PC steering wheel ;) ).

Final version: 0.82 - 23rd January 1999

Game count: around 30

Home page: http://www.mame.net/

Description: The largest arcade emulator, with support for over 1000 unique arcade games, it's main flaw is poor perfomance for games based on stronger hardware. This is because it accurately emulates hardware, which is very important to correctly emulate some Neo-Geo games that don't run properly on other Neo-Geo emulators.

MAME has set a standard for arcade emulation, regarding hardware documentation. As the webmaster of Emulation Status (a documentation site) I realize how important this is.

Note: There are currently 3 main versions of MAME. The DOS and Windows versions are compiled by the MAME team, while MAME32 is compiled by the MAME32 team. The DOS and Windows versions have no GUI and need frontends to be run without the use of the DOS prompt, while MAME32 has what is in my opinion, the best GUI from all the emulators. The MAME32 homepage is http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa. It supports and displays screenshots, icons, marquee, flyer & cabinet images, and information from the history.dat & mameinfo.dat files. Plus the gamelist font color and background can be changed.

Latest version: 0.58 - 6th February 2002

Game count: 1853 (unique)

Home page: http://home5.swipnet.se/~w-50884/emulator/rage.htm

Description: Runs Neo-Geo games only, except for the recent encrypted Neo-Geo games. Some of the encrypted ones that have unencrypted patched versions, such as The King of Fighters '99 and Garou, do run, but not as well as in more recent emulators that emulate the encryption. In addition to these 2, other games that run but are not on the offical game list (have to be imported) are Captain Tomaday and Zupapa!. The ones that don't run are The King Of Fighters 2000, Metal Slug 3, Nightmare in the Dark, Strikers 1945 Plus, Prehistoric Isle 2, Ganryu, and Digger Man. This may be the only emulator that currently runs Zupapa!. This emulator also has an interpolation feature that gives a nice smooth effect to the graphics of the games being run.

Latest version: 0.6b - 17 June 1999

Game count: 123 (127 with games that are not on the gamelist & can be imported)

Download: M72 v0.33

Game count: 10

Home page: http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/cls95p/

Description: Runs Capcom CPS1 system games, like Final Fight, this is the fastest 16-bit emulator available, it was the only one playable on my old 486-100MHz :) it has been discontinued.

Final version: v0.42, patch 2.4 - June 25th, 1998

Note: This patch was done by Bloodlust Software. They were able to add lines of code to the official v0.42 that Sardu released on June 25th, 1998, thereby fixing some problems that existed in the final version, and adding more games, dipswitches, and other features. So the credit for the actual emulator goes to Sardu, but we're all grateful to Bloodlust Software for their work on fixing up the final Callus release.

Download: Callus v0.42 Patch 2.4

Game count: 27 (unique)

Home page: http://home5.swipnet.se/~w-50884/emulator/rage.htm

Description: Runs some IREM, SNK & Capcom games. Emulator has been discontinued.

Final version: 0.9 - 15 March 1998

Game count: 17

Home page: http://www.sparcade.freeserve.co.uk

Description: This is a very fast arcade emulator, unfortunately it is focused on very old games, except for a small number of titles like "Gradius III", all the efforts of the author are being wasted, because MAME already handles these old 8-bit games pretty well.

This emulator had a lot of potential, it only needed to support a few titles like "Cisco Heat" and "Grand Prix Star" to become one of the most popular emus out there, but I seriously doubt the author is interested in emulating these games.

Owners of slow PC's (Pentium classic) are advised to try this emulator. Pentium II owners should use MAME, except for games like "Gradius III".

Latest version: 2.33 Beta - 22nd December 1999

Game count: 45

Home page: http://www.retrocade.com

Description: This emulator has a totally different feel from the others, a lot of effort was put into it's top quality graphical user interface. Although it has been rendered redundant by the almighty MAME for the majority of the supported games, I can think of a few important reasons that justify trying this emulator:

- Supports artwork in games like "Boot Hill", for which MAME does not.

- Features lower system requirements than MAME.

- A fun graphical user interface with lots of visual and sound effects, including screenshots and game history.

- Support for the audio cassette in "Journey" (Midway, 1983).

Latest version: 1.2 Beta 2 - 23rd May 1999

Game count: 114

Home page: http://www.finalburn.com/

Description: The first emulator to support Afterburner II, Afterburner, Power Drift, Galaxy Force II and Rail Chase; also supported a few test drivers with very preliminary emulation like Out Run and Thunder Blade. Final Burn marked the return of very fast and dedicated arcade emulators that possess realistic hardware requirements, as opposed to MAME that is unable to run the Afterburner and Power Drift class arcade systems at full speed on a Celeron 433 MHz. Unfortunately, this emulator removed all the Sega games after Dave stopped working on it and released the source. It now only supports Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 games, most of which have a lot of graphics glitches. It's a shame to see an emulator with such potential go in the direction it has (I have nothing against the Capcom games or the developers; it's just that there are so many Capcom emulators that already run perfectly and this was the only one that ran those Sega games).

Latest version: 0.134

Game count: 48 (unique)

U64Emu

Home page: http://kiame.emuhq.com

Description: The first emulator to support the Nintendo Ultra 64 arcade hardware. This only runs Killer Instinct.

Latest version: 1.18

Game count: 1

Home page: http://daphne-emu.com/

Description: First arcade laser disk game emulator. "DAPHNE emulates the hardware used in Dragon's Lair and Space Ace arcade games, including the Z80 CPU, the Dragon's Lair motherboard, the dip switches, the joystick, the buttons, the LED's, the sound chip, and the LD-V1000 laserdisc player."
Currently the emulator requires the original game disc to be present in a Laserdisc player (connected to the PC serial port) that is compatible with the Sony LDP-1450 instruction set, the Pioneer LD-V4200/4400/8000 instruction set, or the Pioneer LD-V6000 instruction set.
The graphics will then be displayed on a television which receives the video output directly from the LD player.

Note: There has been discussion about emulating the disk and player themselfs, it would require the PC to handle the graphic data through a simple MPEG or quicktime cd dump. An MPEG dump of Dragon's Lair is around 200 Mb (this value will of course be greater if better video quality is wanted). But there are no plans in DAPHNE to take this important step in LD games emulation/simulation. Digital Leisure recently released Dragons Lair, Space Ace, and a few other titles on DVD, but I'm not sure if these are the exact images of the laser disc data. If not, then I can't personally see or understand how anyone can call it arcade emulation, since it would be a completely different platform and totally inaccurate. If the DVD's have exact images of the laser disc data, then this would be the ideal solution, as this emulator can then use DVD ROM drives to run the games, since it seems very impractical to have huge MPEG files on the internet for download. Plus MPEG files have compression which makes the video emulation inaccurate. I would like to find out some more about this. There is a utility, DVD2daph (v2.01), that converts the DVD's into MPEG files so that the games could be played on DAPHNE.

Latest version: 0.99.4

Game count: 10

SNAME

Home page: http://www.arcadeathome.com/cybertron/index.html

Description: This is the Simulation and Non Arcade Machine Emulator. It was actually compiled from drivers that were removed from MAME by Nicola, either because they were not true arcade games (such as the gambling redemption games in which actual money is won), or because simulation instead of emulation was used (in the case of Pong). It supports Lotto Fun, which was later stated to be a true arcade game & added back to MAME since there is no redemption of money. This emulator has not been worked on for nearly 2 years. I think some work should be done and it should support games such as Monaco GP, Death Race and other games that didn't use cpu's since MAME will not support them. This also could support non-gambling redemption games (the ones that dispense tickets) such as Fred Flintstone's Memory Match, since MAME most likely won't support those games either. I see this as the equivalent MAME for the discrete circuitry games of the 70's, and since so many people would love to see these games (whether true simulation is accomplished or not), it is a project that should have a big future.

Latest version: v0.1

Download: SNAME v0.1

Game count: 7

EmuDX

Home page: http://emudx.emuviews.com

Description: This emulator uses the original program code of the games it emulates and enhances them with today's graphics capabilities. EmuDX seemed very promising, but no work has been done on it for a long time, making me believe that future development has been ceased.

Latest version: EmuDX32 beta 3 (EmuDX32 beta 1 is needed since it has core files)

Game count: 5

Home page: http://www.retroplay.com/Mecenate/jff

Description: This emulator was the first to emulate Raiders5 and XX Mission, and possibly other games emulated today by MAME. The majority of the games it emulates are by UPL, but it also emulates some Jaleco games, a Capcom game, and more. I really liked this emulator; too bad no more releases have been made. A lot of games don't have sound, and the sound for the games that do have it is possible by emulating the YM2203 chip through the OPL3 chip (I heard that this causes problems). There is no joystick support, but all the games are playable.

Final version: v0.24

Download: Just For Fun v0.24

Game count: 18

Home page: http://www.impactemu.com/

Description: Impact is the first arcade emulator for the PC to make use of 3D accelerator cards. It supports Glide, OpenGL and Direct3D; there is also an unofficial software renderer. Due to the dynamic recompilation the emulator uses, a large amount of RAM is recommended (>128 Mb), however it is not required.

Final version: v432756 - 12th January 2001

Download: Impact v432756

Game count: 9

Visit http://www.emuita.it Impact support page for all the files required (plugins, renderers, cfg files, etc).

Modeler

Home Page: http://www.impactemu.com/

Description: This is the only Sega System 32 and Model 1 emulator currently existing. It runs quite a few games, some with graphics bugs. There have been great speed increases between the last 2 releases. This emulator shows a lot of promise and will hopefully be updated regularly again. Sega made some really good games that can be ran on this emulator, like Spider-Man, Golden Axe - The Revenge of Death Adder, Outrunners, Hard Dunk, and many more. Too bad they never released a Shinobi title on the System 32 hardware. Anyway, this is personally one of my favorite emulators.

Latest version: v0.9.3a - 8th December 2001

Download: Modeler v0.9.3a

Game count: 18

Under development

Home page: http://smog.emuhq.com/

Description: The SMOG Emulator (Sega Model One Game Emulator) project is aimed at emulating the Sega Model 1 arcade system; this was the first hardware system developed by Sega to possess 3D capabilities, and it played a very important role in the transition from 2D to 3D back in the early 1990's. Unlike the first polygon based games like I, Robot and Hard Drivin' that have to be emulated in software mode, a Sega Model 1 emulator can, and will make use of the modern PC 3D graphics accelerators (The Impact emulator has already used PC 3D cards to emulate the Taito FX-1 and Capcom ZN-1 arcade 3D systems).

Four games were released for the Sega Model 1 system:

Star Wars Arcade (watchable in Modeler)
Virtua Fighter (watchable in Modeler)
Virtua Racing (watchable in Modeler)
Wing War

This emulator is at an early stage of development.

U64Emu2

Home page: http://kiame.emuhq.com

Description: This is the based on the U64 emulator but was compiled specially for Killer Instinct 2.

Latest version: 1.95 - 10th October 2001

Download: U64emu2 v1.95

Game count: 1

Home page: http://kawaks.retrogames.com

Description: This is an emulator that emulates Neo-Geo and Capcom CPS1 & CPS2 games. It has a nice GUI, and runs the games at a higher speed than MAME, which makes it more favorable for those with lower end PII processors. Unfortunately, the Neo-Geo hardware is not correctly emulated (as with NeoRageX), and some games (such as The Ultimate 11) miss rasters. It also seems that this is one of the few emulators that correctly runs Digger Man. Another nice feature is that network games are supported.

Latest version: v1.41

Download: Kawaks v1.41

Game count: 190 (considering that Breakers Revenge and Puzzle De Pon R are not clones of their earlier released counterparts)

Note: Some dll files may have to be replaced by downloaded ones that support Kawaks. See the Kawaks home page for this.

Home page: http://nebula.emulatronia.com/indexe.html

Description: Like Kawaks, this is another emulator that emulates Neo-Geo and Capcom CPS1 & CPS2 games. It also has a nice GUI, and runs the games at a higher speed than MAME, which makes it more favorable for those with lower end PII processors. It also seems that this emulator also correctly runs Digger Man. Some nice things about the GUI are that the player can toggle sprite masking for CPS2 games, raster effects for Neo-Geo, and sprite transparency. Because raster effects can be toggled, I'm thinking that the Neo-Geo hardware is correctly emulated for games that use them (such as The Ultimate 11). I tried to test this out, but it seems that Nebula has problems with the Neo-Geo bios files, so I can't get any Neo-Geo game to run. This may be a bug since the games work fine in MAME. A Neo-Geo game listed as V-Liner can be seen on the gamelist. I never heard about this game before, so I'm not sure if this is a mistake or not. Network play is also supported. The newest release supports Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa and Neo Pong (a Neo-Geo prototype?).

Latest version: v2.1

Download: Nebula v2.1

Game count: 189

Calice

Home page: http://calice.emuunlim.com

Description: I was unable to try this emulator out because of missing dll files and not being able to download them due to not having the internet at home. I believe this emulator emulates Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 games.

Latest version: v0.5.4

Download: Calice32 v0.5.4

Game count: ?

S11emu

Home page: http://www.impactemu.com

Description: This is an emulator that is supposed to run games that use the Namco System 11 hardware. Since it is a demo and still in progress (according to the readme.txt file), it may not run too well. So far, sound is not working, and a strong PC is most likely needed since optimizations haven't been performed yet. If this is anything like Modeler, then it will be very interesting to see how well this emulator will turn out. I was unable to find any games to test it out. The version I have is a DOS version (with new plug-ins), but according to some sites, there is a windows version that I am unable to confirm so far. The team that is developing this emulator also wants to emulate Namco System 10 & 12, but as of the last release, no games on that hardware were dumped.

Final version: v0.2 Alpha

Download: S11 v0.2 (new plug-ins)

Game count: 8

Dancing Eyes
Kosodate Quiz My Angel 3
Soul Edge Ver. 1
Soul Edge Ver. 2
Star Sweep
Tekken
Tekken 2
Xevious 3D/G

Sledgehammer

Home page: http://sledgehammer.emuunlim.com

Description: This is an emulator that is supposed to run games that use the Namco System 21 hardware. Not too much has been worked on yet, but the Sledgehammer team expects more progress soon. As for now, there is graphics visualization, and the emulator has a GUI (basically the same GUI as Modeler).

Latest version: Release 2 - 13th March 2002

Download: Sledgehammer Release 2

Game count: 10 (none properly working yet)

Air Combat (has graphics visualization)
Cyber Sled (has graphics visualization)
Driver's Eyes
Rhinoceros berth lead-lead
ShimDrive
Solvalou (has graphics visualization)
Starblade (has graphics visualization)
Winning Run
Winning Run 91
Winning Run Suzuka Grand Prix

Zinc

Home page: http://www.impactemu.com

Description: This is emulator replaces the obsolete S11emu & Impact emulators. There are Windows & Linux versions. It seems to run quite a few games now, and development currently seems to be on a regular basis. There are optimized versions that I saw on the Retrogames page. The Windows version is currently run through the DOS Prompt as S11emu was run. The user has to enter a number after the zinc.exe, where each number represents a different game. I'm thinking that eventually a GUI similar to the ones Impact and Modeler use will be added. The Glide renderers are needed as with Impact. It seems that there are fixes for the Capcom ZN-1 & ZN-2 games since the last Impact release, such as music in Psychic Force, new ZN-1 & ZN-2 games supported such as Magical Date, Sonic Wings Limited, and Beastorizer, improved sound in the Street Fighter games, and the ZN-1 bios is now supported (and needed).

Latest version: v0.5 - 23th March 2002

Download (Windows version): Zinc v0.5

Game count: 23

Street Fighter EX
Street Fighter EX +
Street Fighter EX 2
Street Fighter EX 2 +
Star Gladiator 2
Rival Schools
Justice Gakuen
Strider 2
Kikaioh
Tetris The Grand Master
Psychic Force
Magical Date EX
Battle Arena Toshinden 2
Beastorizer (has sound but missing music)
Soul Edge Ver. A (missing all sound)
Soul Edge Ver. C (missing all sound)
Dancing Eyes Ver. A (missing all sound)
Xevious 3D/G Ver. A (missing all sound)
Star Sweep Ver. A (missing all sound)
Kosodate Quiz My Angel 3 Ver. A (missing all sound)
Tekken Ver. A (has serious problems)
Tekken 2 Ver. B (has serious problems)
Sonic Wings Limited (has serious problems)

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