Acorn Gaming: Emulation - Sega Master System and Game Gear

EMULATION

Sega Master System and Game Gear

Four emulators are available:
Miracle --- MasterGear --- SMSPlus --- Sega

Also see DarcNES, which includes 8-bit Sega support.

Name	Miracle
Author	Richard Talbot-Watkins and Matthew Godbolt
Port of	None: This is original, hand-optimised assembly language
Available	The authors' web site, or Acorn Gaming
Supports	95% of Master System cartridges - but not the Game Gear
Speed	StrongARM: full; 610/710: full, with frameskip; pre-Risc PC: reasonable, with frameskip
Version	0.10 (!Help file says 0.01)

This emulator has full sound support and runs nice and fast on slower machines, but doesn't support Game Gear games.

Name	MasterGear
Author	David McEwen (david@acornemus.freeserve.co.uk)
Port of	MasterGear, by Marat Fayzullin
Available	David's web site, or Acorn Gaming
Supports	98% of Master System/Game Gear cartridges
Speed	StrongARM: full; 610/710: 1/2
Version	1.33 - 9/1/99 (as of 20/6/99)

This emulator effectively replaces Sega (below), which is an earlier port of the same emulator, MasterGear. If you have a StrongARM this is definitely the best of the three emulators on this page.

Version 1.33 fixes some display bugs, and runs faster. Prior to this, version 1.32 added improved sound, SRAM support, more speed improvements and MIDI file output.

Recently David has released a couple of private beta-test versions with many new features, including vastly improved sound and a speed-up of the renderers, not to mention various bug fixes and extra configuration options. It even now features an interpolation feature to filter the display and make it clearer on high-resolution systems, and you can switch to greyscale mode if you want(!). A public release of these improvements should follow fairly soon (hopefully!).

Name	SMSPlus
Author	David McEwen (david@acornemus.freeserve.co.uk)
Port of	SMSPlus, by Charles MacDonald
Available	David's web site, or Acorn Gaming
Supports	Nearly all Master System/Game Gear cartridges
Speed	StrongARM: full
Version	0.93 (20/11/00)

David recommends this emulator as featuring both excellent compatibility and superb sound!

Name	Sega
Author	Gareth Moore (glm20@cam.ac.uk)
Port of	MasterGear, by Marat Fayzullin
Available	This web site
Supports	98% of Master System/Game Gear cartridges
Speed	StrongARM: full (not speed limited); 610/710: 1/3rd
Version	0.71 (3rd August 1997)

Sound support in this emulator is only partial, and not very accurate.

...this page last updated: 29/12/00...
...back to the top...

Amiga
Apple II
Arcade (MAME)
Atari 2600
Atari 800
BBC Micro
Coleco
Commodore
CPC
Gameboy
Lynx
Macintosh
Megadrive
MESS
MSX
NeoGeo Pocket
NES
Oric
PC Engine
Sega 8-bit
SNES
Spectrum
ST
TI8x

Links

Old News
1999 1998

Back to the Emulation News page

Stacks of new emulators from David McEwen, plus updates to some of his existing ones!

Multiple Commodore machine emulator VICE upgraded to version 1.6

New Darklands pictures and details

Fantasia's ToyParty - Mario Party-type fun

New Eat my Dust screenshots

The latest Iron Dignity news, screenshots and development info

Any comments on Acorn Gaming? Send me an email!

Latest updates

Email Acorn Gaming

Acorn Gaming is a completely independent publication and has no official connection with any company

Acorn Gaming is sponsored by