latest news

6/2/2001

New beta-release of BeebIt and brand new release of SNES9X - full details soon

 

29/12/2000

Multiple Commodore machine emulator VICE has been upgraded, and is now onto version 1.6. Andreas Dehmel's port of the latest version also adds in much more efficient sound code as well as correct syncing when running in NTSC mode. As ever it's available Andreas's website and the official VICE website, or you can download it from Acorn Gaming. David McEwen has been ridiculously busy again! Not only has his website moved and been redesigned (and now features a discussion messageboard), but he's also released several new emulators plus improved some of his existing ones. All of these emulators are available both from David's website and from Acorn Gaming New emulators DarcNES (19/11/00) - this isn't just a NES emulator, but also features 8-bit Sega and Coleco systems, as well as PC Engine, Apple 2 and partial Megadrive support! It's a port of the latest version and even features sound. Generator (0.16 - 19/11/00) - Megadrive emulator which runs most games but is unfortunately a bit on the slow side. Handy (beta - 5/2/00) - a beta release of this Lynx emulator is now publically available. HuGo (1.01 - 19/11/00) - this is a PC Engine emulator which has excellent compatibility and sound support. It's some way behind the latest PC version, however. Minus 4 (0.2 - 19/11/00) - a Commodore Plus 4 emulator which will run most .prg files. SMSPlus (0.93 - 20/11/00) - a Sega Master System/Game Gear emulator featuring both excellent compatibily and superb sound support. David reckons this one is especially good! Updated emulators Atari 800 (1.00 - 22/10/00) - this emulates the Atari 800/800XL, 130XE and 5200. This is a port of the latest version which includes lots of bug fixes. ColEm (1.15 - 19/11/00) - a Coleco emulator, this version adds various bug fixes as well as better sound support, a bit more speed and key redefinition options. DGen (1.19 - 19/11/00) - another Megadrive emulator, now brought fully up to date. NeoPocott (0.38b - 23/12/00) - this is a Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color emulator, and this new version has sparkly new icons plus internal changes which make it notably faster, plus it now supports more games! VGB (2.03 - 6/12/00) - excellent Gameboy (Color) emulator. This is now a port of version 2 of the emulator with better sound, better save support, better compatibility and some excellent display modes for better quality visuals than you get on a real machine! (It's actually very impressive)

 

9/11/2000

has upgraded his port of NeoPocott, the Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Colour emulator, to the latest 0.37 version. It now requires far less memory (6MB versus 18MB before!) and there are lots of fixes to the emulation so everything works much better! Take a look at the official website or fetch it from Acorn Gaming. Michael Foot has updated his free BBC emulator, BeebIt, to version 0.25. It now has a couple of emulation improvements and it runs even faster!

 

7/10/2000

David McEwen has added to his impressive stack of Acorn emulators by releasing a port of NeoPocott, a Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Colour emulator. It needs a Risc PC as a minimum to run although a StrongARM is required for it to run at a useful speed! You also need at least 18MB of free RAM. The emulator itself isn't perfect yet but it's certainly usable. Take a look at the official website and download the Acorn version if you want (which is also available from Acorn Gaming).

 

5/9/2000

Michael Foot continues to develop his free but definitely worth-having BBC emulator, BeebIt, with it reaching version 0.20. Various parts of the code have been optimised by rewriting in assembly language for yet more extra speed, and some further improvements to the emulation allow even more games to work. Double-sided disc images (DSD) are now supported too. Andreas Dehmel's port of the multiple Commodore machine emulator VICE is now on version 1.5. Check out Andreas's website or take a look at the official VICE website, or download it from Acorn Gaming.

 

6/5/2000

David McEwen has updated his port of pre-1989 Sierra adventure game interpreter Sarien. This new release (version 0.03) adds sound emulation and the ability to run it in a higher resolution mode. You can download Sarien from David's website or from Acorn Gaming.

 

1/5/2000

BeebIt continues to be developed by Michael Foot - the newly released version 0.15 adds several enhancements and bug fixes plus also runs notably faster due to more of the core code being rewritten in assembler. Games which failed before but work now include Uridium and Video's Revenge. You can also now use the mouse to simulate a joystick. Joe Kelleher's Spec128, a free ZX Spectrum 128 emulator, is now onto version 0.15. You can download it from his website - note that on an Acorn browser you may need to hit refresh to get the file to actually download! Or download it from Acorn Gaming.

 

29/3/2000

The unstoppable David McEwen has released an Acorn port of Sarien, an AGI interpreter. AGI is what software company Sierra used for their old (pre-1989) adventure games. Using Sarien you can now play games such as Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, King's Quest and Black Cauldron - assuming you have the original game files to use with it, that is! The only current disadvantage of the Acorn version is that it doesn't yet feature sound, but it does run at well over full speed on a StrongARM and is usable on slower Risc PCs. With these old games the graphics are only EGA - that is, 16-colours at low resolution - but as adventure games many of them are very playable. Once David has added sound to Sarien he says he will port an SCI intepreter, which will provide VGA graphics (256 colours)! You can download Sarien from David's website or from Acorn Gaming. Michael Foot has yet again improved his free BBC emulator, BeebIt. Version 0.12 adds features such as cursor emulation, flashing colours and improved front-end control, as well as various bug fixes.

 

16/1/2000

David McEwen has released a private beta test version of HuGo, a PC Engine emulator. It can cope with both ROM and CD games and is a port of a recent version of the engine. One difference from the PC version, however, is that the Acorn release doesn't use MP3s for music because it would slow the emulation down far too much. Hopefully David will have the code ready for public release sometime fairly soon - currently it runs at about 4/5th full speed on a StrongARM (but only a few frames per second on earlier machines) Joe Kelleher has released version 0.14 of Spec128, a free ZX Spectrum 128 emulator. This is apparently available from his website, but I've been unable to download either of the archives that are linked to. Richard Talbot-Watkins has recently expressed an interested in continuing work on his Miracle Sega Master System emulator. He's considering adding Game Gear support, snapshots and fixing a few bugs - or he's happy to release the source to anyone keen enough to work out how it works! (It's written in assembler)

 

4/1/2000

If you're looking for Commodore 64 games then Brendan Reid has contacted me to let me know that you can download completely legal games from his website, including various formerly commercial games which have now been rereleased as freeware.

 

news from 1999

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