News Archive

October 1998

10/31/98
Site News: Delays

15:03: The slew of updates is going to happen sometime today, hopefully, but not until the last of these server problems is fixed. Stay tuned.

Site News: ZD down for unknown reasons
14:07: Again, I apologize for ZD being down for the last 2 days. I don't understand why this keeps happening, and the only reason I can come up with is that we're being attacked by the Downtime fairy. Anyways, get ready for mega updates.

10/28/98
Misc. News: Amiga site shut down...
11:23: In something rather surprising (to me at least), an extremely popluar Amiga site, Lazarus, was shut down today. I truly thought I'd never see the day that Amiga would do some crap like this; I always thought that they were different than the fucking dictatorships that companies like Nintendo run.

Everyone here should (supposedly) know about Amiga's upcoming comeback attempt, which Gateway 2000 is helping to make a reality. Gateway supposedly shut down the site, acting for Amiga themselves.

Go check out the message (which is rather short): Lazarus.

Emulator Release: ColEmDos 1.0a
10:52: Firebug has released a minor update to his port of Marat Fayzullin's ColecoVision emulator. One change exists in 1.0a:

Stupid joystick initialization bug fixed (should fix slowdown on some systems)

You can download ColEmDos 1.0a from the ColecoVision emulators page.

Emulator News: About the Combat School emulator
09:56: Yesterday, Nitro posted that the Combat School emulator documentation was written in french. However, I've received several e-mails saying that this is not so. Upon looking at it, I guess it's either Spanish or Portugese. This isn't really important though, since either way, it's not in English.

10/27/98
Emulator Release: Z26 1.17
23:01: A new version of Z26 is here and here's what's new:

Video mode 8 -- intense scanline mode

Modified the frame synchronizer to accomodate mode 8

Modes 4,5 and 8 now do page-flipping to smooth out the animation

Changed the way the -s command line option works

Made a minor palette adjustment

Get it at the Atari 2600 page.

Translation News: A Few Translation Page Updates
20:20: I added a Hello Kitty World translation and updated the Final Fantasy 2 patch to 1.03. Go there and get 'em.

Site News: ZSNES Shrine Updated
20:09: Thought you might like to know... You can go look at it or something.

Site News: SPC Archive to go RAR
19:04: Due to overwhelming demand (35 for it, 2 skeptical), the SPC Archive will be migrating to the RAR format. Also, I stand corrected regarding UnRAR's ability to handle LFNs-- the Win32 console version handles them perfectly (The DOS16 version does not, of course). Expect to see a major update in the future...

Emulator Release: Combat School Emulator
18:23: A Combat School emulator has been released. This emulator is in french, so I probably won't be able to tell you what is new in future versions. But, this emulator is a Combat School emulator for Windows 95\98\NT.

You can download it at the Single Arcade emulator page.

Emulator News: About ZSNES modemplay
17:50: Well, I decided to give the head to head modemplay in ZSNES a try. Equipped with Spiderman: Seperation Anxiety, my friend Ed (aka hypr) and I played. I was Venom, he was Spiderman. Basically, it was great! There was just about no lag at all, and except for the fact that there is a bug in Spiderman: SA that causes the enemies to flash on and off as big blue blotches, it was enjoyable.

I haven't tried out IPX support yet, maybe if I ever get Kahn, I'll give it a whirl.

Emulator Release: X128 0.91
10:50: James McKay has issued a minor update to his Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator today. Just one bugfix in X128 0.91:

Fixed bug where loading TAP/TZX/VOC files with 'Edge Loading = OFF' would result in a DOS/4GW crash.

Thanks to Hendrik Bezuidenhout for this news as well. You can download X128 0.91 from the Sinclair emulators page.

Emulator Release: R80 0.04
09:23: A new version of R80, a Sinclair Spectrum 48/128/+3/Pentagon emulator, has been released. Here's what's new in R80 0.04:

TRD support with partial Betadisk emulation

Z80 bugfixes

Adlib sound code fixes

Tape rewinds to Start of Tape when it arrives to the End of Tape.

Fast reset (CONTROL+F2) now works for Pentagon 128.

Tape Browser (some modifications):

Added quit dialog (only when in graphic mode).

Added a new video mode: VESA2 640x480x256.

Command line is 100% working again.

Thanks to Hendrik Bezuidenhout for the news. You can download R80 0.04 from the Sinclair emulators page.

Site News: ZSNES mirror updated
08:44: Well, since ZSNES 0.700c was released last night, I've updated the ZD ZSNES mirror page, so if you haven't already downloaded .700, you can get it frm there.

10/26/98
Emulator Release: ZSNES .700c
23:31: Whoop dee doo! Brandy new ZSNES hot off the presses. The best things about this release are that there's modem to modem 'netplay', DSP1 support (Super Mario Kart), and 48 mbit ROM support (Tales of Phantasia). Here's the full list of what's new:

Fixed another offset per tile mode bug

Fixed up joystick button update rate

Fixed a bug that caused sound buffer dump option to crash

Fixed a minor sound initialization bug

ZSNES now compiles with C code!

Fully rewritten commandline parser routines

Partially rewritten SET BLASTER/SET CMDLINE detection

Implemented partial DSP1 support. Seems to have some precision problems. Thanks to the snes9x team for the info!

Fixed a mode 7 nonrepeat mode off by 1 tile bug

Implemented snapshot/increment by 2 frame feature in the F1 menu for those interested in producing animations

Added variable sound buffer size to reduce static in higher sampling rates

Changed method of reading the mouse cursor position in the GUI. Hopefully, this fixes those mouse crash problems when zsnes is run in pure dos and sometimes win95.

Added a commandline to disable palette 0 (back color) modification in 256 color modes

Implemented Turbo Buttons for buttons A,B,X, and Y. Use the GUI to define those keys

Added the ability to toggle Turbo Change speed to 30hz instead of 60hz in the Options menu

Started C4 chip emulation. Nothing is playable yet.

Fixed up SET CMDLINE detection. Hopefully, zsnes.cfg and zguicfg.dat will now end up in the correct directory.

Started Modem Support (direct modem to modem). DOS-Compatible modem required! Thanks to Dark Force for helping out on getting a bug that kept USR's and other modems from working! Also thanks to The Minder for a lot of help testing! Note : Modem mode isn't free of bugs

Added in-game chat key to the GUI keys for modem/net support. Currently defaulted to 't'

Forgot to add EMMS after any MMX routines that seems to cause any FPU instructions to crash

Fixed an interrupt re-enable bug in the Gamepad Pro code which seems to have eliminated the locking bugs when it's not set on GrIP mode

Implemented keys to adjust Frame Rate up or down during gameplay. You can define them through the GUI under Gamekeys

Implemented keys to slide the volume level up or down during gameplay

Fixed a small HDMA screw up bug when using Save/Load states which caused the screen to flicker once in many games

Finally fix up 48mbit mapper support! Many thanks to Dark Force, Mike Gilroy, and Frank Hughes for a lot of help on this!

Several fixes to register 4211h

Rewrote IRQ timing handler (not perfect, but better)

Implemented Fossil Driver support to the modem support.

Fixed an IRQ reenable bug

Increased default cycles a bit

Fixed some major mode 7 rotation bugs

Added support for uninterleaved 48mbit roms

Added a FIX option to the cheat code to correct incorrectly converted codes

Implemented Mode 7 horizontal flip

Implemented primitive IPX support. It is very primitive at the moment and may not work since it isn't really tested much.

Optimised some 65816 direct page addressing modes NOTE : .ZMV (Movie) files recorded under v0.635 has good potential on becoming obsolete in this version because of the timing changes NOTE : IPX support and Modem support may be buggy since it hasn't been tested on multiple types of connections yet.

PHEW, now that you've gotten threw that slew of new things, be sure to pick it up at the SNES emulators page.

Utility News: PSEmu Plugin Update
22:13: Kazzuya's Software mode plugin (KazSoft) for PSEmu Pro has been updated again, to version 1.1.1. Here is what has been changed:

Fixed many problems the driver has with 2D games.

Go pick it up at the PSEmu Pro plugins page.

Emulator Release: X128 0.9
14:16: James McKay, author of Massage, has released a new version of his Spectrum 48/128/+2/+2A/+3/Pentagon/Scorpion emulator, X128. It's been over a year in the making. Here's what's new in X128 0.9:

ACB/ABC stereo via OPL3 or SB Pro.

TRD writing.

Edge loading.

320x240 X-mode.

INI file.

DISCiPLE/+D emulation via MGT files.

The source has also been uploaded to ZD, along with the X128 ROMS. You can download X128, the source, and the ROMs from the Sinclair emulators page.

10/25/98
Misc. News: DarkMazda's Domain Returning?
23:00: As you may know, DarkMazda's Domain (home of AAGT) has been down for a few weeks. I was talking to DarkMazda, and he said that his site will be back soon and will have a new look. He also said that a new Rockman & Forte patch will be out soon. I'll keep you informed -=o]

Emulator Release: SNEmul V. 0.85b
20:31: In its' second update in less than a day, a new version of SNEmul has been released. It's now at version 0.85b. It's even more of a minor release than the one we updated earlier today. The readme wasn't even updated for this one. Here's what has been updated:

Added more compatibility to the emulator, so more games should work.

Pick it up on the SNES Emulators page. Thanks go to Scarlet-Slider for telling me.

Emulator Release: Raine 0.16a
20:31: A new version of Raine is finally here, and here's what's new:

Added 16 playable games.

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

Get it from the Multi Arcade emulators page.

Translation News: RPGe is back
16:08: RPGe is back now. It looks like some new patches were released too, but they're not online yet. Go check out the site.

Misc. News: New GYM Archive
12:05: No, I don't mean the kind you work out at :) Christian Schiller of Eidolon's Inn has e-mailed ZD to let us know that he has started a genecyst .GYM archive. For those who don't know, a GYM file is similar to ZSNES SPCs in that it contains all the instructions that are passed on to the sound processor so that music and sound is produced. From the e-mail:

I decided to open a GYM archive because of one reason: In the future there might be a utility comparable to SPCplay (for SNES sound) which emulates only the YM2612+PSG instead of the whole Genesis machine. This is the only way to achieve (almost) real Genesis sound (as opposed to converting the GYM files to MIDI), and that�s the reason why I opened the new GYM archive section.

So let's see those .GYM players to all you coders out there :)

Eidolon Inn's GYM Archive

Emulator Release: Handy 0.51
11:57: Keith Wilkins has released a minor update to his Lynx emulator for Windows, Handy. Just one bugfix in Handy 0.51:

Fixed joystick initialization problem.

You can download Handy 0.51 from the Lynx emulators page.

Misc. News: Emulator page moves
11:49: Official emulator pages have been moving around like mad lately. Following are the new homepages for Handy (a Lynx emulator for Windows 9X) and TheSE (an SNES emulator for DOS):

Official TheSE site

Official Handy site

Be sure to update your bookmarks.

Emulator Release: WinUAE 0.8.6 Release 4
07:27: The quintessential Amiga emulator available, WinUAE was updated yesterday to version 0.8.6 Release 4. It's a huge update, so here's the list of what's been updated:

The GUI is now functional! Please report all bugs with it! A single-click will load a configuration, with a double-click launching the configuration.

Changed to be a true Windows Application again, meaning NO UGLY CONSOLE WINDOW when running WinUAE.exe from the Explorer, a Desktop shortcut, etc. All former console-output now goes to the winuaelogs.txt file in the same directory as the WinUAE executable.

Changed configuration-file format and command-line parameters (ugh!). These should NOT change again. Ever. Never, ever! Aaaaargh!

Added mini-Installation program, which helps set up WinUAE, and maps the .uae extension of the new config-file format to directly run WinUAE.

Removed the screen-swapping, monitor-popping, display-cycling at startup. This will only happen once after you've installed, and it will remember the setting for the future.

The floppy-disk requester and kickstart ROM/Key-file requesters remember your favorite directory for .adf files and for .rom/.key files.

Added waveout-looping sound support, from Mathias' "experimental" version.

Added bsdsocket.library support (from Mathias as well).

Added file-system code to allow ACTION_FH_FROM_LOCK, for ShowDVI/TeX.

Added file-system code to allow ACTION_PARENT_FH, for Fiasco.

Added drive-lights, power-LED, and FPS indicators when running in a window on the Windows Desktop.

Fixed mounting of root-volumes. If you cannot mount your root drive letter using X: then try using X:\ instead, or even X:\.. or X:\....

Fixed the -w -1 and -w 0 options to work better.

Fixed vertical-blanking interval to always be 50Hz, or as close as possible.

Fixed serial-port support. Same as in 0.7.5 releases. Still no support for RTS/CTS on the Amiga-side. With the bsdsocket.library implementation, you probably don't need the serial-port much.

Fixed the '\' and '|' key.

Fixed the numeric-keypad 'Enter' key to be different than the main 'Enter'.

Fixed the left vs. right Ctrl and Alt keys.

Fixed the ability to rename files/dirs to same name with different case: > rename tools Tools now works properly. Please report any bugs with this.

Included version 0.9 of uaegfx.card driver for P96. This should go in your devs:Monitors/ drawer on the Amiga. Newer P96 distributions should include this one, as well. Fixes a couple of small bugs.

Web page updated.

Whew! I understated that when I said it was a big update.

Pick it up at the Commodore Amiga Emulators page.

Emulator Release: SNEmul 0.85
05:26: Archeide and v0x have released version 0.85 of their SNES emulator for DOS. This is a minor release, but it should put to rest any questions about SNEmul's future. Here's what's new:

The SRAM was not always saved, that's fixed.

Speed hacks can be disabled in the options menu.

Window clippings can be disabled in the emulation menu.

The ROM Editor dialog was also implemeted (but useless for the moment)

You can download SNEmul 0.85 from the SNES emulators page.

Site News: Regarding the SPC archive and WinRAR
02:38: Well, it has come to my attention that using WinRAR with large dictionaries (a compression option) can reduce a large ZIP full of SPCs to a mere fraction of its size (a 3000k ZIP reduces to a 300k RAR). Question is however, if you, the visitor, is willing to use RAR instead of ZIP. Distributions of RAR exist for DOS, Windows, and various flavors of Unix, however, the DOS version cannot handle preserving LFNs (long filenames). If you do not mind switching the SPC archive to RAR format for the massive size reduction, or if you have objections to switching, please e-mail Zophar your opinion.

Misc. News: SNES Chart v 1.50
01:38: The biggest and best SNES emulator game compatibility list has been updated to version 1.50. SNES Chart has been around for a while, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to see what games work for which emulator, especially emulator authors. Sam Pettus has announced that this will be the last release for a while, so enjoy! You can download SNES Chart v 1.50 from the SNES emulators page.

10/24/98
Misc. News: E-mail problems
23:22: My shell account has backed up, because of some 5mb quota imposed on me... so anyone sending me SPC zips, please send them to alamone@iname.com instead of alamone@table.jps.net. To those who already sent to alamone@table.jps.net, I manually retrieved the data so you do not have to resend.

Emulator Release: Snes9x v1.12 for dos
18:30: New version of snes9x, snes emulator, my personal favorite snes emulator. This is an official release, what's new:

Cyber Warrior X is now the maintainer of the Dos Port

A new SPC Dumper has been implemented (use F1 to activate)

Pretty much Complete Config file support(special thanks to Kreed for the inspiration), joystick mappings and a few other things need to be added later

NetPlay has been disabled for this release since it crashes under all systems using Scitech Display Doctor

Diagonal Keys on number pad can now be used(makes games like Street Fighter easier to use)

Changed Grip Mapping, should be as close to a real Snes pad as possible

Added a Fast-forward key (it's like what the tilde key does in Zsnes) Use F2 to activate, and F3 to put the speed back to normal

Disabled Quick-freeze due to a planned rewrite of it, as well as a remap

Snes emulators page.

Emulator Release: v1.11d ports for Snes9x (for Unix)
14:58: New snes9x v1.11d ports for Solaris and SunOS. Same and v1.11d for Linux.

Unix SNES emulators page.

Emulator Release: v0.7 ports for iNES (for Unix)
14:32: 1 new port for Marat's iNES, Nintendo emulator for Unix, and 2 older ports added. The new port is for SunOS and there were ports added for Solaris and OSF/1.

Unix NES emulators page.

Emulator Release: v1.2 ports for MasterGear (for Unix)
14:00: 3 new ports and 1 updated port for Marat Fayzullin's Sega Master System/Sega Gamegear emulator, MasterGear. New ports to Linux, OSF/1, and SunOS and a new v1.2 port to Solaris. Same as v1.2 for FreeBSD.

Unix Master System/Game Gear emulators page.

Emulator Release: ColEmDos 1.0
01:57: Firebug has just released version 1.0 of his DOS port to Marat Fayzullin's Coleco emulator for UNIX and other platforms, ColEm. Here's the features exclusive to Firebug's DOS port of ColEm:

Full screen 256x192 video mode option.

Joystick support.

Soundtrack saved directly into MIDI files. No conversion needed.

Machine state can be instantly saved and restored.

Added autofire keyboard controls.

You can download ColEmDos 1.0 from the ColecoVision emulators page.

Emulator News: fwNES 0.30 notes
01:41: The Chinese fwNES page has been updated today with news about the upcoming version of fwNES for DOS. Here's what was posted (translated):

New with fwNES 0.30 DOS:

A whole new GUI which you can define the color it looks

A set of powerful tools to help you go through the game without pain....that is code related.

Totally 8 memory files in .RT? format to save the game to continue

Save snapshop in .PCX

Now, there is an .INI which saves automatically

To support more than dozens soundcard....PCI soundcard supported

Support gamepad with 2,4,6,8 buttoms and allow you to connect MS Sidewinder up to 4.Also is SNESPAD up to 4.

Supply with 8 modes graphic display: 320x200, 256x240, 256x224, 256x256, 256x256(scanline), 640X480(VESA 2.0), 640X480 (VESA 2.0 with scanline), 640X480(VESA 2.0 with Emulation of TV)

Thanks to DogHuang for the e-mail.

fwNES Chinese page

Screenshots

10/23/98
Emulator News: Snes9x: clearing the air
13:04: There have been some rumours about the bug that's in the current DOS version of Snes9x, preventing it from running Mario Kart. It was rumoured to be intentionally inserted. Here's an e-mail from Cyber Warrior X clearing things up:

I'm just emailing you to clear this up. The bug in Snes9x Dos Port was never "intentional"(as was said on www.zophar.net). It was some bug in allegro where it didn't like how the DSP1 emulation and the Sound emulation were both using float pointing values simultaneously. Gary's finally got rid of all the floating point code in the Sound Emulation and now it works without crashing.

Hope that clears things up.

Emulator News: MAME to support Mortal Kombat and others
05:37: A future version of MAME will be adding support for several new games, including Mortal Kombat, Smash TV, and T2: Arcade. You can see the new screenshots at the MAME WIP screenshots page. Thanks to Dave's Classics for the news.

Site News: Cleaning up dead links & Juno First
05:08: I'm in the process of checking every single emulators page on ZD and fixing up any dead links, or links to pages that have moved. This is something that should have been done a long time ago, and is now finally being done :)

On a side note, as I was cleaning up some links, I noticed that Juno First, an arcade emulator for Win9X, may not be dead after all. From the homepage:

19/10/98 - Nothing major, just a move from my old ISP to new ISP. I'm still snowed under at work and will be for at least another month or two. I am working on Juno when I get a chance and I will release it when it's ready to ship. There is a bug in the TnF emulation which causes a crash in the hammer throwing.. It will be fixed in the next version along with the RType I bug. My new email address is junofirst@junofirst.freeserve.co.uk but I probably won't be able to check it very regularly. My chrish@kcbbs.gen.nz email account hopefully will stay alive for a while. Try this email address in preference to the freeserve one.

Emulator Release: Z26 1.16
03:47: John Saeger has released version 1.16 of Z26, his Atari 2600 emulator for DOS. Just a minor bugfix release:

Improved compatibility of VGA code for tall modes. Fixed problems with ATI Rage and Riva 128 chipsets. Maybe others as well.

You can download Z26 1.16 from the Atari 2600 emulators page.

Site News: Save archives updated
02:24: Updated: GS0, SPC, SRM, ZMV archives.

Many new (complete) soundtracks added to the SPC page, including Lufia 2 and some contributions by myself.

The layout of the SPC page has changed; "complete" soundtracks (as designated by keyword search) are highlighted by light blue.

In addition a size cell has been added (kilobytes). The size cell is also added to the ZST archive... (since these two archives are the most space consuming)

Finally, I have cleaned up the organization of the titles; roman numerals have been converted to regular numbers, and first games of series are designated with a "1".

That's all for this update, thanks to all who contributed.

10/22/98
Emulator Release: NO$GMB 1.9
21:16: Version 1.9 of NO$GMB is out. Here's what's new:

Link: works in SGB mode

Link: battery RAM is separately saved for each machine

Supports new 2MB ROM size (Dragonquest Monsters)

Gameshark cheats input box

Predefined SGB border for border-less SGB games (colors untested)

Some sound fixes, PC speaker and covox lpt sound output

SNES pad support (parallel port adapter)

Get it at the Gameboy page.

Emulator Release: TrueReality v1998102101 for Unix
18:02: New version of True Reality N64 emulator for Unix. There are numerous bugfixes and since there is no what's new documentation...

Unix N64 emulators page.

Utility News: UniROM 0.60!
05:20: Yeah, woo boys and girls :) UniROM has now been updated and made better than ever! Unfortunately I had to scrap the plans for the .DTX files for now since it was so BEEEPing slow. Anyway, it's got a little setup proggie now tha t starts if it can't find the file unirom.ini. For those of you that don't know, UniROM is a ROM text hacker. It supports DTE and Dual Hex Tiles, which is kinda useful.
If you haven't tried it I hope you will :)

Here's the long list of news:

Wow, new release! One that doesn't crash all the time! Guess why? The answer's simple: Error handling has been implemented. Have fun.

I had to scrap my plans for the .DTX files until I get a more optimizable way to use them. In other words: They we're too slow!

A little setup proggie has been incorporated so that you can setup UNIROM if unirom.ini doesn't exist or the program can't find it.

The screen now doesn't mess up as badly as before. It may look a bit bad, but just press HOME and it'll be alright again.

Loads of bugfixes.

Removed the "default loaded blah" shit. Noone uses it.

.bnu loading is now Lightning-fast!

Loads of new stuff in FF2.UBF! What's that, you ask? It's the bookmark file for Final Fantasy 2. Just load it and press F6 when you've entered editing mode.

I added some new .USD files(UniROM Script Dump files) so tha you can dump ALL of the text in FF2.

I will soon change the script dump format to a much more easy one to use later, when I add script inserting.

You can get it off the Translation utilities page or the UniROM homepage, which is located here at ZD.

btw, Don't forget to check out the new PSEmu.

Emulator Release: PSEmu Pro 1.10!!!
04:48: PSEmu Pro has now been UPDATED! And this time it's no leaked private alpha or anything else! This is the real thing, the real official release!
If you want gfx drivers, etc you should go to www.psemu.com.

Anyways, here's the most important news:

MDEC support (although not all MDEC movies work yet, due to other problems)

Memory card support

More GPU drivers (including a first Direct3D version !)

XA audio support (no CD audio track support yet, though)

More user friendly installation method

More compatibility

More speed

Go get it on the Playstation emulators page!!!

Frontend News: Run-It games file updated.
04:24: A new games file was released for Run-It, so it now support Mame beta 5. The archive has been updated and can be grabbed off Universal frontends page.

10/21/98
Translation News: Riki & Kunio English patch released
23:52: Riki & Kunio, the game we have a Hebrew patch for, is also being translated into English. Go the the translation patch page to get the English patch.

Translation News: Villgust Translation 100% Complete
22:56: Transcore has completed their translation of Villgust, an RPG for the SNES. Get the patch at the translation patch page.

Emulator Release: X-Mame v0.34b5.2
22:54: New beta version of the multiple arcade machine emulator, beta 5.2, for Unix. What's new from 5.1:

Fixed the __extension__ compile bug, I hope

Fixed the segfault when compile without joystick-support & joy=1 in xmamerc

Merged in gl-mame code, many thanks to Mike Oliphant for the excellent and easy to merge patch. see doc/README.xgl

Merged in net-mame code, many thanks to Eric Totel, for the also excellent and easy to merge patch. see doc/multiplayer-readme.txt

Added a volume xmamerc and commandline option

Unix arcade emulators page.

Site News: Zophars Domain ScreenSaver Released Part 2.
17:43: Yeah... I added some icons and stuff, and seems how Grimmett is gone, it looks like I will be deleteing an icon. But, I don't think he is gone yet. I also fixed some bugs that were irritaing some people.

Have fun.

You can get the Screen Saver here.

Site News: I quit.
16:54: Leave me alone.

Utility News: Duper 0.71
12:33: Ash's awesome ROM utility, Duper, has been updated to Version 0.71. Here's what has been changed:

Fixed launching of ROMs with long filenames, made launching much more reliable

Modified GB header handling to 'handle' MBC3 and MBC5, since I don't actually have any info about those

Made slight adjustment to MAME zip code to allow for files with more than 32 character filenames to be extracted properly

Took GB ROMs with 512-byte headers into account

Added descriptions of licensees in the main list for SNES

Greatly sped GB checksum calculation

Added maximize/minimize/crude resize handling

Pick it up at the General Utilities page.

Frontend News: Run-It 1.61!
07:45: The universal fronted Run-it has been updated! This new release was just a minor update that fixed a bug when you were running it from a cd(for whoever that would do that, heh), so I'll post the news for the 1.6 release instead since we missed that one.

Neorage beta/0.2d support

Dual snapshot preview (title and in-game)

Pic directories renamed in 'TitlePic' and 'GamePic'

Del Key or middle click swaps between snapshots

napshot options saved

Contextual menus

Intellimouse support

Relatives paths

Additional neorage parameters

Type of games added in the list

Dos name is now displayed in the status bar

Easy installation (Just one file!)

Keep track of selected game when refreshing game list

Root directory bug corrected

Brand new interface with tabs

Sort arrow in column header

New kiwi bios support (>= 0.45)

Now using Delphi 4.0 !

Corrected a bug preventing 2020sb and 3 countb from appearing in thee list

Games filenames match mame 0.34 beta 3 neogeo filenames.

Read the online documentation

You can get it from the Universal frontends page.

Frontend News: fwNES Express 2.21!
07:04: fwNES Express, the currently best fwNES frontend has been updated! It's been a long time since the last release, and this is only a minor update, but let's check out what's new:

Added a EXE check before starting a game

Corrected a small spelling problem somewhere

Some other small changes

You can get it off the NES Emulator frontends page.

Frontend News: StarLaunch 2.7X!
06:58: I'm fast, aren't I? :) Oh well, now for the update. A new version of the universal frontend StarLaunch has been released and there's quite a bit of new things:

Static mode! - This is an alpha version, there will be bugs!

Optional screenshot blurring prior to stretchbltting.

You can draw your own dialogs with Static mode (doesn't apply to dynamic mode yet)

Controls you can use: Images, Labels, Shapes, Checkboxes, Listboxes

6 Rom 'sets' of indefinite size (meaning that there is a size restriction but i don't know what it is)

You can use your own icons (well, 40x40 / 20x20 bitmaps)

Example profiles available, for Snes9X (all params), ZSnes (params and one cfg write), and Genecyst (all cfg writes)

No anime Catgirl images in it, yet.

No binary file or registry config writing, yet.

If there's anything you're wondering about, then check out the readme file.

You can get it from the Universal frontends page.

Misc. News: Oh, how I hate this....
06:03: Our computer teacher has turned of ALL ftp access from the school, so until I've talked him out of this madness or I get another way of uploading things, I can't do anything!
Please keep sending me mails, though, since I WILL be updating when I can!

Site News: SPC requests Part III
02:06: Well, many of the SPC soundtracks that I've requested for the ZSNES SPC page have been submitted, thanks to many of you, and added to the page. There's only a few complete soundtracks left that I'm loo king for:

Final Fantasy V

Breath of Fire

Breath of Fire 2

Secret of Mana

Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals

Remember to e-mail alamone first before sending him anything, and also remember to fill out the form.

Emulator News: MAME to support NEO GEO sound
01:11: In an announcement on DavesClassics MAME WIP page, it's been announced that the next release of MAME will have support for NEO GEO sound! Right from the MAME WIP page:

People have waited ages for this, but its finally here. NEO GEO SOUND! Thats right! I've only tried two games so far: Puzzle Bobble and Super Side Kicks, and both sound AWESOME! However, there is a significant performance hit. On my p233 i need framesk ip 2 and a low sample rate. Hopefully there is still some optimizing to do.

Stay tuned!

Emulator Release: Handy 0.50
01:02: Keith Wilkins, after about half a year of inactivity, has resumed Handy and released version 0.50. There's not too much new, but much is planned for the future. Here's what's new:

DirectDraw full screen support

Fixed memory leaks

Here's what's planned for the next release:

DirectSound Support (Should fix the nosound problem on some machines)

Sprite engine fixes

You can download Handy 0.50 from the Lynx emulators page.

Emulator Release: Snes9x unofficial Mario Kart release
00:26: Matt Christensen has taken it upon himself to compile a version of Snes9x for DOS that fixed the Mario Kart bug (intentional bug?) that caused it to crash. Note that this is totally unsupported, and is not an official release f rom the Snes9x camp. You can download it from the SNES emulators page.

Site News: New Poll
00:20: I have updated the poll. Here are the results from the last poll:

"Which of these would you like to see the most at Zophar's Domain?"

Choice 1 was: "A total redesign of the site!"
It received 39 votes (12.8 percent).

Choice 2 was: "File Size Listings"
It received 25 votes (8.2 percent).

Choice 3 was: "Typed up game manuals"
It received 66 votes (21.6 percent).

Choice 4 was: "More Articles/Scans"
It received 25 votes (8.2 percent).

Choice 5 was: "Fire those lazy staff members!"
It received 22 votes (7.2 percent).

Choice 6 was: "Homebrewn ROMs"
It received 31 votes (10.2 percent).

Choice 7 was: "Emulation History"
It received 55 votes (18 percent).

Choice 8 was: "Macintosh Section"
It received 7 votes (2.3 percent).

Choice 9 was: "Other (email us)"
It received 5 votes (1.6 percent).

Choice 10 was: "Don't change Zophar's Domain!"
It received 30 votes (9.8 percent).

Well, it seems like the people have asked for a typed-up game manuals section, a topic brought up a few months ago, or something like that. Choice 3 lead the polls with 21.6% of the votes. Choice 7 was not too far behind, asking Zophar's Domain to tell so me stories of emulation history, perhaps like "What happened a year ago today", and such. The third most popular choice asked for a redesign of Zophar's Domain... The staff of Zophar's Domain will take these results into consideration.

Anyways, the new poll is one of those moral questions, loaded with choices as always :

"Pokemon, PSX, and Neo*Geo emulation : right or wrong?"

Make your voice heard in the Polling Grounds!

10/20/98
Emulator News: 7800 support for MESS
23:49: MESS, a multi console/computer emulator for various platforms including DOS, MacOS and UNIX, will be adding Atari 7800 support in the next version! This will be the world's first Atari 7800 emulator when it's released. Check out this screenshot:

Emulator Release: Z26 1.15
23:45: While ZD was down (have we heard this phrase before?), John Saegar released version 1.15 of his Atari 2600 emulator for DOS, Z26. Here's what's new:

Added automatic paddle support for a few more games and better support for tall games.

The following new video modes were also implemented:

Video mode 4. 320x240 Mode-X.

Video mode 5. This is the new default mode for tall games. It's 320x240 with an adjusted aspect ratio to match mode 3, the default mode for short games. Around 50 or 60 games now start up in this mode by default.

Video mode 6. A much requested 320x240 scanline mode. It's really a 320x480 video mode using alternate scanlines to make it look like a TV screen.

Video mode 7. This is a 320x480 mode that displays every single line of a game so you can see everything.

A word on the new video modes:

Video modes are now switchable during game play using the keyboard. Press the number key on the keyboard (not the keypad) corresponding to the desired video mode to switch to.

All of these new modes run at 60 Hz to give correct play speed and they should run on just about any VGA card or monitor.

You can download Z26 1.15 from the Atari 2600 emulators page.

Emulator News: Nofrendo progress
23:38: Yesterday, while ZD was down, Matt Conte (author of Nofrendo) posted some news on the official Nofrendo website about the current progress of Nofrendo II. Here's what's listed as of October 19:

Speed orgy - Nofrendo is now faster than NESticle!

Autoframeskip code implemented

Lots of work on the GUI

Zapper code started

Forgot to add .sav support - fixed

Nofrendo homepage

Utility News: PCEID 0.99a
23:34: PCEID is a TG16 ROM identifier, and a new version of it was released yesterday along with Hu6280 1.82. This new version now supports 437 ROMs, so you can rest assured that almost every TG16 ROM in the known universe will be supported by it :) (Note: I'm doing Stick Figure's update tonight because I'm on a roll.) You can download PCEID 0.99a from the Turbo Grafx 16 utilities page.

Emulator Release: Hu6280 1.82
23:28: While Zophar's Domain was down, Jamsponge released version 1.82 of his TG16 emulator for DOS, Hu6280. Here's what's new:

imporoved crc detection

added .BAK files when using save option (very handy), use 'K' to reload.BAK file

fixed some graphic glitches on various games (this sped emulation up)

improved cycle timing accuracy - (this sped emulation up)

optimized cpu emulation core, now runs better on pentium machines.

Fixed some minor bugs, and optimized memory usage

You can download Hu6280 1.82 from the Turbo Grafx 16 emulators page.

Emulator Release: PCSloMo 0.24br2
23:21: While ZD was down, PCSloMo 0.24br1 was released. Well, 0.24br2 was released today, so here's the new games supported in both br1 and br2:

Pac-Man support

Ms. Pac-Man support

Various Pac-Man bootlegs

Crush Roller support

You can download PCSloMo 0.24br2 from the Multi-Arcade emulators page.

Emulator News: TheSE to be continued?
23:14: TheSE was an SNES emulator for DOS coded by the authors of USNES, an old SNES emulator that never really made it. It was discontinued a number of months ago, but it seems that we haven't heard the last of TheSE! From the official website:

We are currently working on a new version of TheSE. When it will be released we don't know. But we are back!!!

TheSE official site

Site News: Update Marathon
23:12: Hello people, Zophar here. Get ready for a huge marathon of updating for the 2 days we missed!

Site News: Zophar's Domain Screen Saver Released.
22:46: I just felt like making a screen saver for Zophars Domain cause I was bored... :D It's only 11k zipped, and about 45k unzipped. This screen saver is for Windows 9x\NT. All it really is, is just all the staff members names floating around on the screen. :D ok, ok... so what! heh.

You can download the screen saver here.

Misc. News: Mail problem (with me)
20:40: About the time ZD went down, my mail did too (damn crosswinds). If you sent me any info recently, that doesn't look like it made it to the page, send it again.

Misc. News: RPGe will return!
18:23: Yep, that's right. They're comming back. Here's what harmony7 says about it:

"I'm publically going to announce now that RPGe WILL RETURN SHORTLY. The new site will be up in a few weeks, just give me some time. I appreciate the support you have given RPGe regarding our web site and our projects."

Go to their site and see for yourself.

Emulator Release: Snes9x v1.11d for Unix
17:29: A pretty small update for the Linux version of snes9x, but since it's snes9x and snes9x is so darned swell... What's new:

Corrected the sound echo delay, it was varying with the sound playback rate choosen by the user, it shouldn't have been

Removed all floating point calculations from the sound generation code

Fiddled with the pitch modulation code - my guess is the output of a channel that is used to modulate the frequency of another channel is automatically muted by the SPC700 chip. Just a guess, but the wind from FF3 sounds 'better' but far from perfect

Optimized the tile palette index calculation

Optimized the planar to chuncky tile conversion code

Fixed X11 port to always scale SNES image if hi-res. only (no interpolation) support is enabled

Added zipped ROM image support using Gilles Vollant unzip code and some code that Ivar (Lestat) sent me a long time ago

65c816 asm RTI instruction was destroying the program bank in emulation mode, the C code was already correct. Caused C64E to break

Snes Unix section.

Site News: Site downtime...
16:28: I know it seems like a weekly thing, but we were down again there for a couple of days. It's annoying as hell that it happens so often, but make sure you guys tell people that we're back up again.

10/18/98
Utility News: SPC Players Section; New WinSPC!
01:04: Well, further dividing the site, I have added an SPC Players/Utilities Section, under the Utilities bar down the table to your right. Go take a gander.

Of course, the reason for this event is WinSPC 0.4 Beta 4! Here is what's new:

Added support for zsnes's change to the spc dump format, with the changed format there is more compatibility, like Terranigma.

Adjusted the settings so that only good sounding frequencies can be used, and corrected a bug in setting the frequencies.

It should play the first note now, testing it shows that it does.

Added a new format and a recorder for it. The new format is to help those with slower computers or for spc files that are very choppy because of being heavy on emulation, like Seiken Detsu 3.

I would strongly recommend that you mosey on over to the SPC Players Section, pick up WinSPC, and then go browse the SPC Archive to get some of your favorite SNES music.

10/17/98
Site News: Nintendo 64 emulator page maintenance
23:27: After seeing many things that were incorrect on the N64 emulators page, I took the time to make the following corrections:

Project UnReality: I removed the link to the homepage, since it was broke, and also put *Discontinued* in the description.

Reality 64: Name was changed to NSFE (Nintendo Sixty Four Emulator), and the homepage link has been changed.

NINCEST 64: Homepage link was fixed.

Visit the Nintendo 64 emulators page, and if you see anything else that is incorrect, please let me know.

Site News: Save archive updated
17:53: Updated: SPC, SRM, STA archives.
A notice about ZMV contributions: movies are not simply save states with no controller movement. Please demonstrate player input in your movies.

Misc. News: Happy birthday to me!
17:07: Nuff said.

Misc. News: Note about Zophar's requests
16:45: Please ASK before sending (larger than 500K zips). While a ZIP may not appear on the SPC page, it may be cataloged for the next update. So, please check with me first that you are not sending a dup. Thanks.

Interview News: Email Wars Interview #26: Duddie & Tratax
15:38: Emulators Unlimited has posted a new interview with Duddie & Tratax, concerning the next version of PSEmu Pro. It's a pretty long chat, so you should take the time to read it when you have a lot of free time.

Note: My site, and a few others, are mentioned in this interview, concerning the leaked alpha. You should note that ZD, and the other 2 sites, are not responsible for the alpha tester who leaked the alpha.

Email Wars #26

Emulator Release: XPCE 0.08
14:55: Bero has released version 0.08 of his Turbo Grafx 16 emulator for Win9X. Thanks to Dave's Classics and Seiichi Goto, here's the translation of what's new in 0.08:

Show FPS and so on

Save frame skip information to .ini file

Fix noise making algorithm

Uses MMX to layer sounds

Uses MMX to speed up drawing when full screen(640x480)

Again, thanks to Dave's Classics for this news. You can download XPCE 0.08 from the Turbo Grafx 16 emulators page.

Emulator Release: DOSUAE 0.75b2
14:36: An upgrade to DOSUAE 0.75b2 has been released. It's a minor update, consisting of some extra utils for use with UAE. Here's what's new:

DVU Utility by Patrik Elsaesser

ADFI 2 Utility by Ross V (based on work by Henry Mantere)

Spanish Translations by Olivier Iranzo Anguix

Italian Translations by Fulvio Leonardi

You can download DOSUAE 0.75b2 upgrade from the Amiga emulators page.

Emulator News: fwNES 0.30 to be released soon
01:48: FanWen, author of fwNES, the NES emulator which supports the most mappers out of any other NES emulator, has posted a message on the official Vertigo/fwNES board concerning when the next release would be and what would be new. Here's the changes you can expect when it's released:

What's New in fwNES 0.30 (1998/10/2?)

a New GUI is added

a powerful Cheat Finder is added, now you can beat any game easily

2Player and more joysticks is supported (2 x 2buttons ,2x Sidewinders ,2x Snespads)

Zapper/FC Trainer is supported (some game still buggy)

VS Arcade is supported . CastleVaina / SMB / IceClimber.

Famicom Disk System(FDS) is supported, but lack addtional sound channels.

Namco/VRC6/VRC7/Mmc5 addtional sound channels is added .

FFE File are supported (partial)

S6502 Core related code fixed(more stable)

Mapper 1 a bugs is fixed ,now Zombie Hunter work again

Mapper 3 support changed

Mapper 4 a VRAM bugs is fixed.

Mapper 8 fixed.

Mapper 5 All KOEI game fixed , Sram backup corrected and Spilt Screen Mode added.

Mapper 16 EEPROM backup is added (only SDG2 still buggy),and FamiJump 2 fixed;

Mapper 18 IRQ Handling changed ,more game work.

Mapper 19 IRQ Handling changed ,game work better.

Mapper 73 Salamader fixed

Mapper 83 Cony Mapper fixed (Garbo Dentsu 2,World Hero 2J work).

Mapper 84 Pasofami Mapper removed and change to Pirate SMB2J mapper.

Mapper 88 Namcot 118 mapper fixed

Mapper 90 JY??? Mapper fixed (Tekken2 ,Samurai Spirit 2 , SMB2J work) but still some bugs on other games (MK4).

Mapper 91 Mapper fixed ,SF3/SF2Pro work perfectly.

Mapper 93 - Mapper 97 Biones Mappers added (detail in fwnes98e.txt)

Mapper 112-117 added (detail in fwnes98e.txt).

He also posted this:

releasing date is depend on my GUI progress .. but it must be released before Nov ,bcos i have no reason to deley it again. Thanks for all users who enjoy and support fwnes.

Thanks to Rombo for the news.

FanWen's message

Emulator Release: TI-8x emulator added to TI page
01:22: I've just added a cool TI calc emu to the TI page. It supports ALL the TI-8x calcs (except for the new 89) and it has some other nice features too. Go get check it out!

Misc. News: RPG-Net Closes...
00:27: Last Friday, the popular site RPG-Net closed its doors because of the huge amount of patrons it had. Apparently, they had bills in excess of $400 for the amount of bandwidth it chewed. Visit their site at http://www.rpg-net.com for the full story!

10/16/98
Site News: Save archives updated
04:48: Updated: SPC, STA, CHT, ZMV archives.

Emulator Release: MasterGear v1.2 for Unix
01:59: New release of Marat Fayzullin's Sega Master System/Game Gear emulator for unix, FreeBSD 80x86 binary. Fixed problems in some games and what else's new:

Documentation expanded. READ IT!

Added emulation for Japanese SG1000/SC3000 systems which were predecessors to the MasterSystem

Fixed Japanese/English switch

Even more accurate VRAM read/write emulation

Fixed VBlank control bits in VDP

VBlank interrupts are persistent now

Added multi-phase VBlank processing

Memory is initialized to 00h not FFh now (done by bootup ROM?)

Windows version has got a "Sync to Timer" option to control emulation speed

Sega Master System/Game Gear page.

Emulator Release: MAME v0.34b5 (for DOS)
01:35: New beta version of MAME, the multiple arcade machine emulator, beta 5 for dos. Along with many game bugfixes, improved cheat system, and many other things what's new in b5:

Improved the user interface. Use "the key on the left of 1" (tilde on some keyboards) to turn on the On Screen Display which lets you change Volume, Gamma Correction, Brightess, and independently set the volume levels of the sound chips. Tab still brings up the setup menu, which is now asynchronous. [Nicola Salmoria]

[DOS] Improved the profiler. It now REQUIRES the Pentium-class RDTSC instruction. It will not work on 486s, older Pentiums, and maybe other non-Intel CPUs. [Nicola Salmoria]

Multiple arcade emulators page.

Emulator Release: MAME32 v0.34b4 (for Windows)
00:35: New beta, supports more than 800 games. What's new in beta 4:

Added bkground.bmp image to the screen shot area

Added experimental profiler. To enable it, check the 'Enable profile' checkbox; then, hit Left Shift + F11 to show the results on screen

Added artwork and state file support

Multiple Arcade emulators page.

10/15/98
Emulator News: MasterGear 1.2 screenshots
23:37: Here are some screenshots Marat sent along with his e-mail, of MasterGear 1.2 in action:

Emulator Release: MasterGear 1.2
23:29: Marat Fayzullin has just informed me that he has released a new version of his Sega Master System & GameGear emulator. (The DOS version is no longer developed, and there is no demo of the Windows commercial version, for your information). The 1.2 Unix binaries will be placed online later tonight or tommorow. Here's an excerpt from the e-mail:

A new version of the MasterGear emulator has just been released. Among other things is the emulation for Japanese SG1000/SC3000 consoles which were predecessors to the MasterSystem and multiple bug fixes to the VDP code. I am including several screen shots for those interested. See full information at http://www.komkon.org/fms/MG/

Here's what's new:

Documentation expanded. READ IT!

Added emulation for Japanese SG1000/SC3000 systems which were predecessors to the MasterSystem.

Fixed Japanese/English switch.

Even more accurate VRAM read/write emulation. (multiple minor glitches)

Fixed VBlank control bits in VDP. (multiple minor glitches)

VBlank interrupts are persistent now. (Samurai Spirits and Robocop 3)

Added multi-phase VBlank processing. (Smash TV, Spiderman)

Memory is initialized to 00h not FFh now (done by bootup ROM?). (Shanghai 2)

Windows version has got a "Sync to Timer" option to control emulation speed.

MasterGear official site

Emulator Release: NES496 0.11
23:01: Jason Millard has released a new version of his NES emulator for Windows 9X: NES496 0.11. It's a minor release:

Fixed problems while loading ROM images.

Fixed color problems found on some video cards. (Thanks cdoty@pcisys.net)

Thanks to 'JonnyButt' for the news. You can download NES496 from the NES emulators page.

Emulator Release: Z26 1.14
18:53: John Saegar does it again, with version 1.14 of his fast, small, and very accurate Atari 2600 emulator for DOS, Z26. It's my personal favorite Atari 2600 emulator, I know I've said this a hundred times but I must reiterate :) Here's what's new:

More intense NTSC (normal) colors.

Added support for PAL colors.

Added support for paddle games with keyboard or joystick. Please see readme.txt for more information.

You can download Z26 1.14 and its source from the Atari 2600 emulators page.

Emulator Release: Les V 1
18:42: _DrMario_ does it again, and this time he's released the first version of Les, his Pleiads emulator for DOS. Right from the readme:

Les is a new emulator that uses the same z80 core as penix. It runs the game Pleiads.

As simple as it gets! :) You can download Les V 1 from the Single-Arcade emulators page.

Emulator News: Jaguar Tech Info request
18:23: _DrMario_ would like to make a request to anyone who is able to help him. He is interested in writing an Atari Jaguar emulator, so any technical information you can give him on the Jaguar's inner working would be extremely helpfu. You can e-mail _DrMario_ at jason@spis.net.

Emulator Release: Come Back 64 0.97
18:15: Johan Fitie And Brad Martin have released version 0.97 of their Commodore 64 emulator for DOS, Come Back 64. Here's what's new:

Sped up 360x240 mode (almost as fast as 320x200 now)

Fixed directory listing filesizes (LOAD"$",8)

Border scanlines added (no open border/DYSP effects yet)

Added cartridge memory configuration (set readonly)

You can download Come Back 64 0.97 from the Commodore 64 emulators page.

Site News: Calculator Emulator Section Added
16:06: There's now a section for calculator emus on ZD! Its deals with HP and TI calculators. I had no problem with the TI calcs, but I've never used any HP calcs, so check out the page and mail me if you have. Also keep in mind that most of these emulators require the bios from the calculator to run. You can get those at the bios page.

Emulator News: Apologies to Duddie and Tratax
06:23: I'd like to take the opportunity to apologize to Duddie and Tratax about PSEmu Pro 1.09. I hadn't realized that it was an alpha/beta whatever you want to call it. The news was given to me by a source on irc, I asked why it wasn't on the page, and he said it was an unsupported public beta.

Again, i'm sorry for any damage I have done and in the future i'll be more careful on what I update so not to cause any further problems. This isn't something that normally happens and hopefully it won't again.

FYI: The update has been removed from ZD, along with the file and the information for it on the playstation emulator page.

Misc. News: FF7 rules.
04:25: Okay, this is my update for today. Somehow the one who's responsible for all the computers in this school screwed up so that I can't use any ftp programs. It will be fixed tomorrow, so I'll be back with an update to both StarLaunch, Run-It and maybe some other stuff.

Btw, ff7 rules. I've got a p100, so it jerks, but it's still playable, so I've already finished it twice :)
I'm just sorry all my friends suck, cuz it takes them 45 hours to get to Gold Saucer the first time.

Site News: More SPC Requests
00:26: A few days ago, I posted some SPC requests for the ZSNES SPC archive. To refresh your memory, they were:

Final Fantasy III (VI in japan)

Final Fantasy V

Chrono Trigger

Secret of Mana

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest

Thanks to the people who mailed in the soundtracks, we now have the Chrono Trigger and FF: Mystic Quest soundtracks (they'll be put online during the next archive update). We're still looking for the other three, as well as entire soundtracks for:

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom

Breath of Fire

Breath of Fire 2

Remember to fill out the form, and to e-mail alamone, not me. Please check with him first before sending any attachments.

10/14/98
Emulator Release: RuMSX 0.14
23:57: It appears we missed yet another update! This one was released about a month ago: RuMSX 0.14 (MSX emulator for DOS). Here's what's new in this version:

LEXMSX.ZIP has been changed, MSXIMAGE.ZIP has FMPAC.ROM updated

PSG/SCC sound-quality improved!! (DirectSound no longer required)

ROM-Type was not correctly detected if ROM-image was launched by double-clicking it! I.e. it was not possible to start

MetalGear2 by double-clicking the icon (hang during startup).

Bug in memory-manager fixed (in some cases an incorrect memory-type was assumed, this may also have caused memory-manager to fail)

Hardboot deactivated floppy disk-access (resetted to disk-image usage)

Copy Disk-to-Image crashes, if drive is already locked (i.e. disk is being formatted)

Data-changes on floppy disk were not automatically applied in the explorer (must be refreshed manually)

Win95: changed data on floppy disk may be corrupted if simultaneous changes are made from other programs (Windows NT implementation worked fine)

Window-size description was reverse of the technical correct (i.e. 1:3 instead of 3:1)

Portability-fixup for Alpha-Workstations running Windows NT

MSX.EXE did not terminate fully if running on Windows NT, wave-device still occupied! KillProcess/Logoff/ShutDown hangs system

PSG/SCC now clean resetted if MSX is restarted (sometimes sounds are played too long or infinite, even if MSX was restarted)

Marcel's E-Mail address has been changed

Big thanks to Archaic Ruins, or else I would have missed for this even longer than I did! You can download RuMSX 0.14 from the MSX emulators page.

Emulator Release: Ultra 64 0.2a
23:41: It appears we missed an update! A few days ago, a new N64 emulator for Windows95/98 was released. It's called Ultra 64 (which happens to be the name that everyone called the N64 prior to its release in America). Basically, what this emulator can and can't do can be summed up in 2 sentences from the official page:

Please note that Ultra 64 currently only emulates the CPU, memory and registers therefore there is no graphics or audio. So don't e-mail me and ask why Golden Eye doesn't run :)

You can download Ultra 64 0.2a from the Nintendo 64 emulators page. Thanks to Xaviar for informing me about this missed update.

Emulator Release: DTMNT 0.53
19:48: Yes, a new version of DTMNT has been released. Not much new in this release:

Parallel port support for 4 SNES joypads (like ZSNES) Cheers to Adrian for this idea. By default this feature is off - see readme.txt.

A few other bits and pieces to do with sound

You should note that this version has a bug that causes the speed to cut in half when sound is enabled. For this reason, 0.52 is still online for download. You can get DTMNT 0.53 from the Single-Arcade emulators page.

Misc. News: RPGe to return?
19:20: A few days ago, we posted the sad news that RPGe, one of the most famous japanese to english translation groups, had been disbanded. However, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. If you view the HTML source to the page, you will come across this:





So, let's hope for the return of RPGe!

Ruins of RPGe

Interview News: Li Jih Hwa (NAO)
19:16: This interview with Li Jih Hwa (aka NAO), of System 16 and M72 Emulator fame, was conducted by Steve Jones. Check it out, it's really interesting to see what NAO has to say.

NAO Interview

Site News: We're back...again
17:28: Yeah we're back, we don't exactly know what happened yet, hopefully we'll determine that soon to prevent future problems.

Nothing really special happened during our down time but we'll see what we can do to get the news we missed added.

10/13/98
Emulator Release: BoyCott gameboy emulator version 0.42b.
12:46: A new version of BoyCott, a GameBoy emulator for DOS has been released! Here is what's new:

GUI improvements

Debugger improvements

Fixes first BG line (eg : looks better in Zelda)

Fixes mouse coordinates (stupid bug)

Scanline mode (320x288 with one line skipped) added

Double resolution mode (320x288) added

Disables background skins with Double or Scanline modes

Prevents lores modes from Double or Scanline (320x350 minimum)

Stupid "divide by zero" error fixes (while exiting program quickly)

VESA modes now sorted

Not always video selection (bug fixes with no parameters or errors)

Autofire for A and B buttons added

Partial mouse support (only two buttons until I found a solution for movements)

Stupid 0.41b window bug fixes (compatibility rate back to 90%)

Font created and added for GUI and graphical messages

I have also taken the liberty to upload the Skins for the GUI.

If you would like to download BoyCott and\or the skins, go to the GameBoy emulator page.

Frontend News: M72Front 1.00!
04:11: Yes! Fast as lightning has this frontend been updated again. Now it has been all boosted up from beta release to full release and it now supports version 0.33 of the M72 arcade game emulator.

You can get it from the Arcade emulator frontends page.

Interview News: Emulators Unlimited adds new interviews.
00:47: Emulators Unlimited has posted an interview with Omega Core author Tom Scott in E-Mail Wars #25. EmuStation at EmuUnlim has recorded an interview with P/AMAME author Rodimus Prime. The Dot Eaters, Videogame History, site has moved to Emulators Unlimited here as well as NeoLight recently moving here.

Emulator Release: Penix V 3
00:21: Sorry about not reporting on this sooner, but there have been so many new versions of emulators and news, that this got lost in the mix somehow. _DrMario_, who happens to be a good friend of mine, has released v 3 of his Phoenix Arcade emulator for DOS. Here's what's new in Penix v 3:

Tweaks to the graphic engine.

Speed ups

Groundwork for SOUND

You can download Penix v 3 from the Single-Arcade emulators page.

10/12/98
Site News: SPC Requests
23:50: As you all know, we have a ZSNES SPC archive here at ZD. However, I have noticed that there haven't been too many submissions featuring entire soundtracks. So, this is a request to anyone who has entire SPC soundtracks of the following games:

Final Fantasy III (VI in japan)

Final Fantasy V

Chrono Trigger

Secret of Mana

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest

If you have entire SPC soundtracks of these (and yes, I realize the zip would be well over a meg in size for some of these), please fill out the Example form and include it in the zip. E-mail alamone, not me, and make sure you check with him first before sending ANY attachments. And thanks!

Misc. News: Say Bye-Bye to Freedom of Speech
20:54: It would be best to just paste the headline:

H.R. 3694, the Intelligence Authorization Act Conference Report, authorizes YOUR phone to be wiretapped, in secret and without court review, simply if a suspect happens to be nearby!

This isn't really emulation related; however, I thought this should be brought to as many peoples' attentions as possible. I was made aware of this news by slashdot.org, and the actual story is at http://www.eff.org/hot/19981008_wiretap_alert.html. Read up on it and decide for yourself. This could be the end of a lot of what we now consider freedom if this is passed.

Misc. News: RPGe is gone...
20:16: Well, looks like this is it... RPGe is dead. Go check out the RPGe site and see harmony7's message. 'Tis a sad day.

"I was in a very destructive mood, so I've decided to shut down RPGe. If you're going to complain, complain to those people who didn't read our feedback page before sending e-mail. Complain to those people who continuously sent me e-mail saying, "please translate ____" or asking "how do I apply a patch"... Complain to those people who STILL send me e-mail telling me that I don't update my site often enough. This is a HOBBY, for god's sake!

Some guy sent an e-mail asking what he was doing wrong when he was dragging the .ips file onto IPS.EXE. That's when I felt like I'd had it.

I know I sound like a jerk but I've had enough.

If you'd care to leave a message, drop us a note. Our e-mail is rpge@fx.ml.org. "

We wish all you RPGe guys the best of luck.

Utility News: Dragon Warrior Town Editor V. 1.9
16:21: The Dragon Warrior Town Editor seems to have disappeared from our systems for a while. It is currently at version 1.9. Well, we found it again. Here's a list of what we missed.

1.9

Now can edit roofs!

Preserves last bit of tiles in shrines and dungeons.

Made page numbering more convient.

1.8b

Now features ALL MAPS execpt the overworld.

Now supports maps that aren't square.

Changed MAP file format a bit. (maps should still work with older versions)

1.5b

Now automaticly shows specials everywhere!

Shows destinations of stairs.

Added a warp feature to "go down stairs."

Added full support for DragonQuest (even though Dragon Warrior is infinately better!)

Now can create new files from existing ones! (uses COPY)

1.2

Now can Import/Export MAP files!

Keep Feature removed, who used it anyway?

Map Finder removed, as it could not find any maps.

A few cosmetic changes too.

0.99b

Correct tiles in dungeon maps

More features in Map Finder

Go find it at the Facelift Utilities page.

Utility News: SMC File Checker 0.n
15:49: SMC File Checker has been updated yet again, this time at 0.n. It's another minor update, with just one change:

Added some more Maker IDs

Pick it up at the SNES Utilities Page.

Thanks to LuckyMan for the info.

Emulator News: Raine to support 3 new games
13:42: Three more games will be supported in the next version of Raine, a DOS based multi-arcade emulator. From the official Raine page:

As we come near a new release more and more games are added in Raine, so here are pics of the two missing Rastan Saga games: Rastan Saga 2 and Warrior Blade a two screens game very similar to Golden Axe are now both playable!
You also have Syvalion the first Taito System H game emulated.

Raine Homepage

Utility News: More NES level editors.
06:06: To the people who haven't been watching the various NES level editors coming in, I can pretty much sum up the editors that have been coming in recently (say, within the last month) with five short words: Kent Hansen and Tecmo Football. It really shouldn't surprise anyone when, lo and behold, I update the facelift utilities page with two utilities:

WCEdit (A Wrecking Crew Editor by Kent Hansen)

The Flash Tecmo Editor (A Tecmo Football game editor)

While the Flash Tecmo Editor is a year old, we'll let that slide. :)

Find them both (along with a ton of others, mostly made by Kent Hansen) on the Facelift Utilities page.

Frontend News: M72Front 0.20b!
04:51: Maxim Viale of mrgsoft has made yet another frontend! This one's for the M72 Arcade Game emulator and support all of its features.
The frontends from mrgsoft are usually of high quality, so I recommend you to try this one.

Arcade emulator frontends page.

Frontend News: NeoRAGEFront 1.70!
04:48: The probably best NeoRAGE frontend has been updated again! This new version fixes a lot of bugs and other stuff. I really recommend you to try rhis one out.

You can get it from the Arcade emulator frontends page.

Emulator Release: WinGroove 0.A1
02:47: Well, not really an emulator (it's actually a synthesizer), but WinGroove 0.A1, after about a year of inactivity, is finally out. For those who don't know, this shareware synthesizer allows those people with non wavetable soundcards, or crappy wavetable, to experience MIDI in a way they never thought possible (how's that for a blatant plug?). Here's what's new (according to Luckyman):

the sound volume is output at a very high level at the same time

the other WinGroove sound channels driver option performance bug is fixed

now evaluation for unregistered users is limited to 30 days

wave sound channel uses the same method?

the best sound volume output is now recommended

other bug fixes

Thanks to Luckyman for the news. Grab Wingroove 0.A1 from the WinGroove japanese homepage.

Emulator Release: The M72 Arcade emulator 0.33b
02:40: Yes, it's the 0.33b release of M72 Arcade emulator! Here's what's new in this DOS multi-arcade emulator release:

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.

You can download M72 Arcade Emulator 0.33b from the Multi-Arcade emulator page.

Site News: Quotes Page Split
01:07: Finally, i got around to splitting the quotes page in two. Although this makes the loading time shorter, it still is going to need to be split differently from now on, i'm figuring that i'm going to start dating and timestamping the quote additions, and then archiving them monthly. I also plan to get a new image the old one is terrably outdated (eww) and i might style it up differently sooner or later.

Anyhow, take yourselves a gander over at The Quotes Page.

On a side note, i'd like to remind you all that ZD is at www.zophar.net, NOT milhouse.web-ex.com/~zophar.

Emulator News: Next ZSNES will run Tales of Phantasia
00:00: It's official! The next version of ZSNES will run that 48mbit ROM that everyone's been asking about over the past year, Tales of Phantasia! This japanese RPG can be seen running great on the next release of ZSNES in the pics shown below, courtesy of zsKnight & _Demo_.

Be sure to check out the ZSNES schedule page for more screenshots!

10/11/98
Site News: 100% unemulator related: the enygma that is Zophar
22:44: I have been getting many e-mails over the past 2 years asking me, where did your nick come from? Where did the name of your page come from? In case you hadn't guessed, 'Zophar' is the name of the archfiend, the final boss, the 'destroyer' in the Sega CD RPG Lunar: Eternal Blue, by GameArts. So I've decided to place a few MP3s online from the game, in an effort for those of you who have never heard of the game to hear some samples, and for those who have to enjoy portions of voice and music from the game!

Note that you'll need an MP3 player, such as WinAmp, to play these sound files. So without any furthur adeu, the MP3s! (Zipped to avoid corruption when downloading.)

Next Stop, Zophar's Domain! [Voice]

Death of Zophar [Voice]

Zophar's Domain [Music]

Site News: Poll Updated
18:27: Well, we finally fixed the poll. Sadly, we lost the results from the last poll when we fixed it.

The new question is: Which of these would you like to see the most at Zophar's Domain? (10 choices)

Cast your vote at the Poll now!

Misc. News: SNES9x source in ZIP format.
14:57: Thanx goes to Shimaknight, Dark-Shadow, Buaku, and _demo_ for sending me the source in ZIP format... I really appreciate it! I also want to thank Philipp Maitrot for sending me the bz2 uncompressor.

You can get the ZIP of the SNES9x's source from the SNES emulator page.

Site News: Save archives updated
14:13: Updated: SPC, SRM, STA, ZST, CHT archives.
Added: ZMV archive.
Related: SGP. It is basically a patching system, which already has functionality to patch many ZST files (for cheating purposes). It's currently German only. Visit their homepage: Second Unit. Thanks to Gadler for the information.

Site News: Quotes page updated (no...really!)
13:28: Yeap, that's right i updated that sucker today with a whole new slew of quotes.

Hopefully soon i'll revamp that page since it's getting rather large at this point, it'll probably be split into two pages.

For now, take yourselves over to the Quotes Page.

Site News: Thanx.
02:50: OK, thanx alot! Three people sent me the source.. (: and I really appriciate that they had the time to do so, I will give a better thanx when I upload them tomorrow for ZD. Thanx again.

PS. Don't send anymore :D

Translation News: AAGT is back!
01:58: Although DarkMazda's Domain is still down, AAGT is back up. It is now hosted by emulationzone.org. Go there and check it out. Also remember that DarkMazda still needs a host for DarkMazda's Domain, so mail him if you can help.

10/10/98
Misc. News: SNES9x source code help.
22:21: If anyone out there could download the SNES9x source code, and uncompress it, and send it to me, I would be very greatful.

My e-mail address is gypsies@onlink.net

Misc. News: SNES9x version 1.10a source code.
22:09: The new version of snes9x's source code has been released. This includes all the fixes\bugs and support for Mario kart.

If you would like to download this, go to the SNES emulator page.

Emulator Release: New NES emulator: NES496 0.10
21:34: A new NES emulator has been released. Dubbed NES496 (the name came from CSE496, the author's computer programming course that he coded NES496 for), it runs nes ROMs that use mapper 0, 1, 2 or 3. It has no sound yet, and the palette is incorrect (at least on my computer), but it has a neat debugger. It's for Windows 95/98.

You can download NES496 0.10 from the NES page.

Utility News: GM2MID File Update..
20:43: Considering that the page for GM2MID is currently down, we posted the full program (including DLL files and a full install program) instead of the partial one (which didn't include DLLs).

Look for it on the Sega Genesis Utilties page.

Emulator Release: Stella v1.0 for Unix
16:46: New version of Stella for Unix, with a Linux binary and compilable source. What's new:

Several portability issues have been resolved

Preliminary support for Chris Wilkson's Megacart bank-switching scheme

BSDI target included in makefile

Improved Users Manual in several "popular" formats

Unix Atari 2600 page.

Translation News: First ever Hebrew translation released!
15:26: A Hebrew translation of a game called Riki & Kunio is being done by BL00dY NoSE. Here are some screen shots:

You can download patch 0.002 at the translation patches page.

Emulator Release: RockNES 0.56r2
13:59: An update to RockNES 0.56 has been issued. Release 2 of 0.56 has the following fixes and changes:

Some changes in the gfx engine (+speed);

Fixed a bug in the save screenshot function;

Screen is correctly centered again.

You can download RockNES 0.56r2 from the NES page.

Misc. News: New BIOS ROMs added
13:49: I added some new ROMs to the BIOS pages:

TI-82 and TI-83 calculator ROMs thanks to ^Andy.

A Tandy 1000TX computer ROM thanks to Martin Albert.

These ROMs can be found on the Calculator BIOS ROM page and the Computer BIOS ROM page.

Misc. News: More Site moves
13:32: Sites are moving like mad! Here we go:

EMU 24x moved to: http://come.to/emu24x/

PC Arcade moved to: http://www.emulnews.com/pcarcade/index.html

Be sure to bookmark the new sites.

Utility News: PSEmu Pro Plugins page; big update
11:08: A number of PSEmu Pro Plugins have been updated in the past couple of days. Here's the list of which ones:

A brand new Glide driver (may be somewhat slower than the old one; keep them both)

An updated software driver

An updated version of Duddie's Aspi CD-ROM Driver

An updated version of the DAO/CDRWIN Image Driver

An updated version of the Seal Sound Driver

Hit the PSEmu Pro Plugins Utilities page for more info.

Utility News: EMUTools release
07:43: A new version of Marat's EMUTools has been released. Considering that no version number is to be found, I'm guessing he's using the date as his place mark (making this version 10/09/98). Here's a list of all of the utilities that are part of the package:

BDIFF -- Binary file comparison

NESLIST -- List/check/fix NES ROM images (.NES)

GBLIST -- List/check/fix GameBoy ROM images (.GB)

DASM6502 -- Little 6502 disassembler

DASMZ80 -- Little Z80 disassembler

GBDASM -- Little GameBoy disassembler

PSGPLAY -- Play back .SND files saved by MG, iNES, etc.

SND2MID -- Convert .SND files into MIDI format (.MID)

EMUTools can be found on the General Utilities page.

Utility News: Burnout...
07:31: I'd like to say sorry to everyone about the lack of utilities page updates in the past few days, but I've been suffering a bit of burnout recently (yeah, good timing, just when I start out at ZD). I'll most likely be back to normal form in a few days, just give me a bit of a break. I'm just starting to do a big update right now. :)

Emulator News: IntelliV news
01:25: A while ago, I posted news here about an IntelliVision emulator called IntelliV that was being worked on by Red Ant Productions. Will of Red Ant Productions is asking that anyone with any tech info on the IntelliVision to please e-mail him: raproductions@hotmail.com.

Also, anyone who has any way to copy IntelliVision games, let him know, as he has a bunch of IV carts that he can send for dumping.

Red Ant Productions' IntelliVision Emulator Project

Utility News: New version of EMUTools
01:17: Marat Fayzullin has e-mailed ZD to let us know that a new version of his EMUTools package, an assortment of many emulation utilities such as GBLIST, GBDASM and more. Straight from Marat:

A new version of EMUTools has just been released and can be obtained from

http://www.komkon.org/fms/EMUL8/

GBLIST has been changed. It is now based on a more recent version of GBCarts library which recognizes new MBCs, ROM sizes, and attributes. GBDASM and several other programs have also been minorly changed. There is also a documentation available now. It is in HTML form and can be viewed from the WWW page given above.

Also coming: new EMULib with TMS9918 and AY8910 emulation modules and updates to the CPU emulation modules. Also, there will be a guide on how to use EMULib and CPU emulators.

Marat Fayzullin

Stick Figure 98 will add the new EMUTools pack to ZD sometime tonight or tommorow. For now, get it at Marat's page.

10/9/98
Emulator Release: X-Mame v0.34b3.1 (for Unix)
22:40: After a long time of the X-Mame page being down, here's the new version. X-Mame supports most recent Unix systems. Over 854 games now supported, that's alot of games, and new features:

Everything from dos-0.34b3

Fixed the compilation problem on some platforms in config.c (missing includes for sys/stat.h and unistd.h)

Speeded up palette cycling under xf86_dga with 8bpp

Rewrote X mouse handling now mouse works under xf86_dga

Added support for 15bpp truecolor visuals

Fixed irix_nosound and aix_nosound targets

Fixed a bug in osd_fseek which caused sample loading to fail, now samples work as advertised.

Fixed a bug in svgalib & ggi palette handling which caused some strange effects with translucent vectors.

Updated README.unix to contain who maintains which arch/os combination and which are currently unmaintained, maintainers wanted!

Added a section to README.unix on howto work around yet another bug in the irix c-compiler. See the platform specific hints.

Added doc/TODO]

Unix arcade page

Emulator News: Callus 1 year Anniversary & more
13:45: 1 year ago, Bloodlust Software released the first version of Callus, a Capcom system 1 emulator capable of running well even on lower end Pentiums. The update on ZD read as follows:

10/09/97
Callus 0.10 has been released. This new emulator by BloodLust Software runs Capcom System-1 games. It currently only runs Final fight, but will run others in the future such as Street Fighter 2. Get it at the Arcade page.

It's also interesting to note that Snes9x 0.20 was also released on October 9, 1997, and featured a GUI and speed increases.

Finally, we are exactly 1 month away from Zophar's Domain's 2 year anniversary! Yes, it's hard to believe, but on November 9, 1996, we opened the doors of Zophar's Domain to the public! Stay tuned for lots of surprises to come.

Emulator News: PSEmu Pro: new version release date
13:35: A new version of PSEmu Pro will be released this October 18th (which is in 9 days) to celebrate 1 year since PSEmu first began. We wish the entire PSEmu team the best of luck in the future. Also, there are some screenshots posted at the official PSEmu page, you should check them out right away.

www.psemu.com

Emulator News: More on Nofrendo II
13:31: A few days ago, I posted the news about how the rebuilding of Nofrendo was coming along (for those of you who didn't know, Matt Conte's computer was stolen by some fool, and he had to start over from scratch). The Nofrendo page has been updated with the following progress report:

VS. System support

Sprite priorities working 100%

Graphics engine speed boost

Good luck to Matt Conte on his rebuilding of Nofrendo.

10/8/98
Emulator Release: Come Back 64 0.96
19:32: A new release of Come Back 64, a Commodore 64 emulator for DOS with freely distributable source included, is now available. Here's what's new in 0.96:

Select between 360x240 and 320x200 resolution (360x240 is slooowwww, needs a P166)

Improved emulation detection method at 0xDFA0

Improved 6510 CPU compatibility

Sprites work better (still not 100%, though)

Made more games work with the emulator

More bugfixes

Thanks to Buaku for the what's new (there was none included in the zip). You can download Come Back 64 0.96 from the Commodore 64 emulators page.

Emulator News: BLEEM a phony?
19:14: Many of you may have been reading on various emulation news sites that a secret PSX emulator known as BLEEM, supposedly in the works, will be able to run almost all PSX games at a great speed on a P166, and other 'too good to be true' sounding details. JoseQ of JoseQ's Emuviews has done a news article about BLEEM, exposing it for the phony that it may very well be! I urge you to check out his article, he actually spoke to the BLEEM 'author' and he had some very interesting things to say. Remember though, this is just JoseQ's opinion, not necessarily ZD's.

BLEEM: Truth or Fake?

Emulator Release: Stella 1.0 DOS
18:44: 2 months after a pre-release beta of Stella 1.0 was released, 1.0 final followed. Here's what's new in one of the best, and most ported, Atari 2600 emulator for 1.0 (DOS version):

DOS version supports 320x200 and 320x240 graphics modes

Several portability issues have been resolved

Preliminary support for Chris Wilkson's Megacart bank-switching scheme

BSDI target included in makefile

Improved Users Manual in several "popular" formats

You can download Stella 1.0 from the Atari 2600 emulators page.

Emulator News: Hu6280 site move
18:20: Another site move, this time it's the Hu6280 homepage. Be sure to bookmark the new location.

hu6280.com

Emulator Release: GalEMU 0.13
17:47: A new version of GalEMU is out. Here's what's new:

Pisces now works, but there may be the odd graphical glitch.

Fixed a problem where GalEMU wouldn't run under DOS mode. Serves me right for not testing it under DOS mode. There was no problem if it was run under Windows 95, which I use because GCC compiles much quicker under Windows. If anyone has run GalEMU under another O/S other than Windows 95 or DOS, such as NT, OS/2, Linux (through DOSEmu), or even an older version of DOS (pre-Win95), then please e-mail me.

You can get it at the single arcade emulators page.

Emulator Release: New Famicom 4.1 Translation
16:23: MEGAߥTE of Patent Pending has released a more complete translation of that lovable (but weird) Windows emulator, Famicom. I have replaced the old one with the more complete one.

You can get Famicom and it's english counterpart in the NES Section.

10/7/98
Frontend News: The Frontend Central (FEC)
02:19: Do you like frontends? If you do, then there's a site that completely (or, heh, almost completely) dedicated to frontends. This site is called The Frontend Central. I've taken a look at the pages, and the design looks really good. Also, if you're making a frontend, you can join FEC as a member and get some publicity.

Then, finally. Here's the URL: http://www.emulationzone.org/fec/. Have fun :)

Site News: Of message boards
00:41: Here's something I need to clear up. I've been getting a LOT of e-mails lately, asking me to "please unban from ZSNES message board!!!" Unfortunately, I do not run the ZSNES message board. zsKnight and _Demo_ do, so please, do not e-mail me about that, I can't help you.

Speaking of message boards, you might want to try out ZD's 4 message boards:

General Emulation Board

Non-Emulation Related Board

Buy/Sell/Trade Board

ROM Hacking Board

Emulator News: Words on Thunder
00:34: A couple of you e-mailed me asking what I thought of Thunder (which is strange, because no one e-mails me questions like that). Unfortunately, I can't tell you because the emulator seems to have a problem with my video card. It gives me this error in a logfile:

Found 554 video modes.
Mode: 103 [800x600] Planes:1 bpp:8 Mem model:4 Attr: 9f
Exhausted list of video modes: Could not find 320x240 LFB mode.

Contrary to what the error says, my video card (an I3D Voodoo Rush), DOES support Vesa 2.0, as well as 320X240 in both 8 bit and 16 bit modes. (Don't e-mail me suggesting Sci Tech.) However, this is a beta, and I'm sure the problem will be corrected in a future version of Thunder.

Emulator Release: RockNES 0.56
00:29: The RockNES team has updated their NES emulator to version 0.56. This has been quite a day/night for NES emulation (Nofrendo news, Kent Hansen's NES tile sprite editor, madNES and RockNES updates...). Here's what's new:

New graphic engine (scanline based, buggy), now Super Mario Bros.1 works

The joystick is checked more easily

Many fixes in the Loop/Rd/Wr6502 functions;

Fixed a bug writting to PPU

Added a new bankswitch mode, slightly faster (thanks to Zoop)

Added/fixed One_Screen_Mirroring

Correct free memory when you quit to DOS

Fixed bugs in mappers #1 and #11

Fixed snapshot so that it works in any video mode

Fixed a bug in mapper #7 (One-Screen Mirroring), not working

Fixed a bug in sprite displaying

Fixed screen clearing (because of new graphic engine)

Added command line options to change video card type/resolution

Added the ability to save more than one snapshot at a time (up to 999)

Re-added autoframeskip (for scanline engine);

Re-added the old frame rate system;

Sprite visibility (top/bottom) works fine.

You can download RockNES 0.56 from the NES emulators page.

Emulator Release: madNES 0.95 Beta 5
00:02: Roberto Rosario has released version 0.95 Beta 5 of his NES emulator for DOS, madNES. Here's what's new:

Improved mapper 8, it is now playable & scrolling is Ok.

More speed, about 10fps.

Support for multiple state save files (up to 25) use keys F8 & F9 to select slot.

Changed the frameskip key to - or +.

Much better support for mapper 16, IRQ support is buggy.

Preliminary support for the following mappers: 17 (IRQ support is buggy), 19, 21 (gfx corrupted), 23 (most games should work ok), 33 (most games should run), 34 (no games work yet), 66, 71 (no games work yet), 78 (untested), 79 (most games should work), and 91 (no games work yet).

Fixed snapshot code when the game name was less than 5 letters long.

The snapshot code now clips correctly the leftmost 8 bits when the game lowers the screen resolution.

Fixed savegame code not saving the battery RAM on some games.

The new gfx engine is about 70% complete almost every game's screen is interpreted correctly, even the complex ones (Isolated warrio, skate or die, road blaster).

Bug fixes to Mapper 11.

You can download madNES 0.95 Beta 5 from the NES emulators page.

10/6/98
Emulator Release: Thunder beta 4
22:24: Thunder is a Rolling Thunder arcade emulator (and the only one as well) for DOS. It supports sound through samples. You can get it at the single arcade emulators page, but make sure you have a fast computer (P2-266+) 'cause it's slow.

Emulator Release: MAME 0.34 beta 4
21:32: A new beta of MAME is out, and it supports more than 20 new ROM sets. Want it? Then go to the multi arcade emulators page.

Utility News: Genecyst gm2 music format to MIDI converter
20:41: Paul Jensen has released genecyst utility that converts Genecyst GYM files to MIDI files to be played in any MIDI program... Too bad it didn't convert ZSNES .spc files too... :) His gm2mid program was written in Visual Basic, and is simple and to the point. It also has a source code inside the zip so you can see how he does it.. :)

Go ahead and get the util from the Genesis Utilities Page

Emulator Release: Semu v0.1.6 for Unix
18:34: Hopefully the last missed console emulator release. Semu 0.1.6 for Linux and and 0.1.11 source for other unix. What's new? I do not know, there is no What's New documentation...

Get in on the new Unix Saturn page.

Misc. News: Emulation In Magazines, Again
18:32: The November Issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus's editorial talks about MAME a bit. I've scanned the article and put it below. Click the image for a larger version.

On a side note, if you have twelve bucks, you should consider subscribing to this magazine, simply because you get two years' worth (24 issues) for twelve dollars. Very hard to beat that price. The actual content is nothing special, but it's good toilet reading.

Emulator Release: Boycott 0.41b
18:21: Gollum, author of Boycott, has e-mailed ZD to let us know that he has released version 0.41b of his GameBoy emulator for DOS. Here's what's new:

Beta release since GUI is not completed

Preliminary mouse support (only an inactive cursor in 320x200)

Debugger improved
* Clear screen first
* Show ten lines of code at the same time
* Display skin name
* Debug file "DEBUG.TXT" with stats about instructions

Gameboy screen now centered within the current resolution

Video mode selection (VESA 2.0 to get VESA modes)

All linear VESA modes added (VESA 2.0)

Boycott Icon in 256 colors (by Gollum) added for Win95/98/NT users

FPS (Frames Per Second) and IPS (Instructions Per Second) corrected

TIMER util removed (not anymore needed)

Add a vertical synchro (vsync) for highly powerful Pentium-class computers

Bug fixes for display (last vertical line was wrong)

The following things are planned for version 0.42 of Boycott:

SGB features (borders, colors, etc.)

PCX screenshots

Fix last bugs in my Z80 engine (may fixes some games)

Optimize some parts of the code

Add joystick support

Add mouse support

Fix X sprite priorities (is it necessary ?)

Add SOUND (with Adlib I think)

Add a GUI (Graphic User Interface)

You can download Boycott 0.41b from the GameBoy emulators page.

Utility News: Tile Layer V. 0.30b
18:16: Tile Layer, one of the best NES graphics editing utilities available, version 0.30b has been released. This program has had three updates in the last two days. As you can probably guess, a lot has been updated, most notably the Game Boy support. Here's the list of what's been updated in the last few versions:

Checksums are recalculated for .GB ROMs when they are saved, so that the ROMs will work on GameBoy emulators which require the checksum value to be correct.

Rotate tile 90 degrees function added.

Added a menu button to switch palettes ("Pal").

Ability to import a pre-defined NES palette (tlayer.pal). See section "Importing a NES palette" below for more info. Example palettes included, press Left Shift to browse through the available ones.

Autodetection of tile format based on extension of file (.NES / .GB). No longer necessary to press F1 to switch between the two formats, unless you have your GameBoy ROMs named as *.NES. :P

GameBoy support (press F1 to toggle between NES/GB format)

By having two ROMs open at the same time, you can copy GameBoy tiles to a NES ROM or vice versa!!!

Customizable colors (select R,G,B values yourself)

Offset finetuning. Allows you to increase/decrease the ROM offset by one, instead of 100h. Necessary when editing games where the tile data isn't 16-byte aligned (ex. Zelda).

Now shows current ROM offset (heh, about time)

Selected foreground color now highlighted

Minor bug fixes

You can pick it up at either the NES Utilities page or the Game Boy Utilities page.

Emulator Release: Sope v0.02 for Unix
18:14: Another missed emulator release. Sope, the first, only, and best Playstation emulator for Linux/x86, Linux/Alpha, and OSF1/Alpha. New features:

New GTE opcodes implemented

Pad Fixed, should now work much better in some demos

Bug with GPU fixed, now Peacemaker's Intro works better

Bug in Lines fixed, now Mad1st displays stars in the background

Started to implement tiles and gouraud Shaded textured polygons

All X-Windows depths >=8bpp supported

Changed sprite routines (Peacemaker's intro should look better)

Available on the new Playstation Unix page.

Misc. News: madNES site change
17:59: Just a quick note: madNES has moved to the URL below. Update your bookmarks.

madNES page

Emulator News: Nofrendo II progress report
17:44: As we reported on ZD a few weeks ago, Matt Conte, author of Nofrendo, had his computer stolen. He has been rebuilding the code from scratch, and we have good news to report! Here's how the progress with Nofrendo is going:

Got a new computer

Core emulation complete

Square Wave, Triangle, DPCM sound channels working

GUI finally hit puberty

Mappers 0,1,2,3,4,7 functional

Rewrote graphics engine from scratch

Save/Load state working

Sprite priorities still broken- need to think or something

Keep an eye on the official Nofrendo site for more info.

Utility News: NeoBase 0.1a
17:34: A brand new utility, NeoBase, has been released as version 0.1a. It is a database of various Neo*Geo game moves, including:

Aggressors Of Dark Kombat

Art of Fighting 1-3

Breaker's Revenge

The author says that he'll add more ganes and clean up the program (which is currently something I could make in QBasic) if he gets inspired to work on it.

Pick it up on the Neo*Geo Utilities page.

10/5/98
Emulator Release: PSEmu Pro 1.08 (unsupported)
12:49: Just hours ago, Duddie released an unsupported beta version of PSEmuPro, his PSX emulator for Windows 9X. In this unsupported version, which just includes the executable file and needed DLLs, there are a few changes, such as:

Support for GT and Soul Edge

Basic MDEC support

Mem cards supported

Remember, this is not officially supported, so please don't mail in any bug reports for this version. You can download PSEmuPro 1.08 from the PSX emulators page. Thanks to iVilDeD for the news.

Misc. News: Fixo Files adds more interviews
12:15: ManBeast sent the following e-mail regarding new interviews at The Fixo Files:

The Fixo Files (http://www.emuunlim.com/fixo.htm) at Emulators Unlimited (http://www.emuunlim.com/) has just released a Nintendo edition of interviews including conversations with : Loopy (LoopyNes), Roberto Rosario (MadNes), Fabiano Lopes (RockNes), Martin Korth (No$GMB) and Jesse Smith(World-Of-Nintendo Webmaster).

Check out the interviews, they're quite interesting. Thanks to ManBeast for the word.

Utility News: SMC File Checker Updated
06:06: The SMC file checker and format type converter has been updated to version 0.m. According to LuckyMan (the person who notified me), this is a minor update. I'll take his word for it, because the manual is in Japanese. Here's what's new:

Added some more Maker IDs

You can download it from the SNES Utilities page.

Thanks again to LuckyMan for the info.

Utility News: GG-Hex Released
05:57: Catching up on old news, GG-Hex, a utility that converts between Game Genie codes and various hex codes (Pro Action Replay/SNES9x/pure hex) has been released.

You can download it from the SNES Utilities page.

Thanks to Geechyguy for the info.

Translation News: Thingy 0.96!
04:46: Thingy, one of the best ROM hacking progs programmed in QBasic throughout the world. It has support for DTE and Dual HEX value stuff and all the other stuff you could ever want, like script dumping, script inserting, nice interface, etc. It does lack the occasionally funny cool gfx effects though :D.
I really want to show my support for this ROM editor since it roams around in the same jungle as UNIROM. The QBasic jungle! :D

You can get it from the Translation utilities page.

Frontend News: CoMeT 2.51!
04:26: A new SNES9x frontend has arrived to the 'scene'! :) This new frontend seems like a good one, even though I haven't been able to try it yet. All I'm saying is that it's worth a try :)

You can get it from the SNES emulator frontends page.

Frontend News: TeleKawaru's fMSX frontend!
04:05: TeleKawaru, the author of TeleKawaru's SNES9x frontend, has made a new frontend! This one's for fMSX-DOS and supports all of it's command line options and it's really worth a try. I don't know if it's made in QBasic yet, heh, but I'll probably find out :)

You can get it from the MSX emulator frontends page.

Emulator Release: R80 v0.03
02:51: The Sinclair Spectrum series emulator R80 has been updated to version 0.03, with the following additions:

Pentagon 128 emulation, useless as there is not TRD support yet.

ROMs are not modified any more when loading/saving a TAP file.

Save GRP snapshots (code by Ricardo Bittencourt).

Added breakpoints to the debugger.

Added traps to the debugger. Traps are like breakpoints but for internal use of the emulator.

Added (again) display screen to the debugger.

Changed configuration options for sound and joystick in r80.ini.

More options in Setup (F12).

A bit more accurate contended memory emulation, far from perfect yet.

Fixed a silly bug in Z80 v1.35 loader introduced in release 0.02.1.

Faster display screen routines, about 15%-20%.

You may find the newest version of R80 at the Sinclair emulation page.

Emulator Release: GalEMU 0.12
00:46: A new version of GalEMU, an arcade emulator that runs Galaxian (and clones) and a few other games, is out. Here's what's new:

Added Pac-Man (bootleg), Uniwars and Gingateikoku no Gyakushu.

Fixed missing sprite problem.

Also added Pisces and Zig Zag (set 2) which are not yet working.

You can download it at the single arcade emulators page, although it may end up at the multi arcade emulators page someday if it keeps supporting more and more games.

10/4/98
Emulator Release: MESS v0.2b4 for Unix
21:10: MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System) has been recently ported to Solaris, there is also an available source code. All drivers have had graphics and sound improvements, and these drivers have been added:

Vectrex [Mathis Rosenhauer, Chris Salomon]

Atari 800/5200 [Juergen Buchmueller]

Apple II Family [Mike Balfour]

PDP/1 [Chris Salomon]

Sega Master System [Mathis Rosenhauer, Brad Oliver]

Sega GameGear [Mathis Rosenhauer, Brad Oliver]

Kaypro CP/M [Juergen Buchmueller, Benjamin C. W. Sittler]

Bally Astrocade [Frank Palazzolo]

Find it on the new Unix MESS page.

Misc. News: Psyke mentioned in the November issue of "Next Generation"
20:08: Here is the e-mail received from Grant Hollis regarding Psyke (a playstation emulator) in a recent magazine:

Thought you should know that Psyke is also in the latest issue of Next Generation (November issue). The article also states more information on the "playstation:-sega Dreamcast emulator". Check it out if you get the chance.

Thanx goes to Grant Hollis for the e-mail.

Site News: New staff member
19:39: Hello people! I'm chrisss the maintainer of the new BIOS pages. If you don't know what a BIOS is, it's the internal ROM in systems and computers that controls the basic IO functions. If you have an emulator that requires a BIOS ROM to run, check the pages. There is also disk images of operating systems on these pages, some computer emulators require these as well. If you have anything that I don't, drop me a line, but be sure to ask before sending files. And above all, don't ask about ROMs I don't have, or you shall feel my wrath. Thanks

Translation News: Famicom 4.1 Translated!
19:29: Whew! That was quick! Jaduss Darkwind has translated about 95% of Famicom 4.1, that cool little Windows NES emulator that plays Famicom Disk ROMs.

You can get the Famicom translation in the NES Section.

Emulator Release: XNes v0.49 for Unix
17:19: An older nes emulator for Linux that was never added, it is now discontinued, but it does emulate the following:

The 6502, using the 6502 CPU core by Marat (Thanks!)

8x8 and 8x16 Sprites

Sprite flipping supported, perhaps some bugs are still present.

MMC 2, 3, 7, and 11

Horizontal and Vertical Scrolling

Save game ram (WRAM Saving)

Unix Nes page.

Misc. News: DarkMazda's Domain is gone! :(
14:53: As you might know, DarkMazda said a few days ago that his site may go down. DarkMazda.com was supposed to be up today, but due to a broken promise, it didn't happen, and DarkMazda's Domain is gone. DarkMazda is looking for someone with at least 20mb of space to host him. If you can help, please e-mail DarkMazda at drkmazda@earthlink.net.

Emulator Release: Famicom 4.1
14:06: Famicom, my personal japanese-windows-famicom-disk-system-running emulator of choice, has been updated to version 4.1.

What's new:

Fixed the IRQ

Support for NES and Pasofami files (only few mappers)

Fixed the sound problem with Enix games (DQ1,DQ2,Jesus,DoorDoor)

Fixed the char rom bank switching in MMC3 mapper

Thanks go to KingOfTheHill for the news.

Famicom 4.1 can be found in the NES Section.

Site News: Linkage Detected...Linkage Confirmed
11:03: That's right boys and girls, the Links page has been updated. Didn't need to do much to it this week...

On another note, I'd just like to mention a site called JoseQ's EmuViews, which is quite the elite site. If you need in depth info on something, concerning emulation (duh), check it out. Neato graphics too...I liked the Zophar's Domain one:)

Emulator Release: XCopilot v0.6.6 for Unix
00:32: Another missed release, XCopilot, 3Com/USRobotics Pilot/PalmPilot/PalmIII emulator for X11 Unix. Changes:

We now do all option parsing using Xt, this is the first step in the process of doing more stuff in Xt. We no longer have the XCOPILOT* environment variables. We have only XCOPILOTARGS, which contains a string of command line options. This will unfortunately cause people pain on upgrade, but makes it easier to add options in the future.

Unix PalmPilot page.

10/3/98
Site News: Save archives updated
20:40: Updated: GS0, SPC, STA, ZST and CHT archives.

Emulator Release: Virtual PCE v0.3e for Unix
20:14: The missed release of VPCE TG16 emulator for Linux, SunOS, Solaris, and IRIX. New:

Added new video-modes: 256x256, 256x240

Fixed a stupid bug in vram-emulation (Thanks go to Paul Clifford for reporting it)

Fixed some bugs all over the place

Improved timing

Keyboard control

TG16 Unix page.

Utility News: PSXVideo FAQ Update
19:12: The PSXVideo FAQ has recently been updated (as of October 1st). Here's the list of what's been updated:

Some really useful information from Blue Bomber!

You can download/view the FAQ from PlayStation Utilities page

Thanks to ShadowRye for the info.

Site News: New Utilities Maintainer
18:49: Hola, Stick Figure 98 here doing my first duty as Utilities maintainer, introducing myself. If you don't know me, hit the board -- I post there a lot. Things are going to be different after I'm done, but that's only if Zophar will let me. :P

Next time you hit one of the Utilities page, remember that I'm updating it now, and I don't take any shit. :)

Misc. News: Psyke In the Media, Continued
16:39: Thanks to SYch0, we have a scan of the article about Psyke that appeared in the October issue of Playstation Magazine. Click the image for a larger version.

Emulator News: Upcoming VGB to have CGB support
16:02: Marat Fayzullin, author of emulators such as iNES, VGB and MasterGear, has e-mailed ZD with the news that the upcoming version of VGB, version 1.3, will have Color GameBoy(CGB) support! He's also sent us some screenshots of VGB 1.3 in action! Right from Marat:

Attached are some Color GameBoy screenshots from the upcoming version of Virtual GameBoy. The game shown is a Japanese DragonQuest Monsters.

Although the screenshots show both CGB colors and SGB screen border, the actual game obviously uses only one of those (there is no SuperCGB :)). Virtual GameBoy emulates both though, so the game shows up with both CGB and SGB features.

Check out these pics:

Emulator Release: Snes9x 1.10a DOS
14:47: The Snes9x camp has released a new version of Snes9x for DOS, version 1.10a (without GUI). Note that the DOS version is no longer officially supported, so please don't bother them with complaints and bug requests, or else it will be canceled totally. The what's new list is something like this (there is no README with the DOS version, so this is from the Linux version):

Bug fixes to C Super FX emulation - now Winter Gold works correctly again.

More DSP1 work. Mario Kart is now playable! The character projection code is still broken so the opponents and obstacles aren't always positioned correctly on screen and you keep bumping into them, but I can still keep coming first!

Decreased sound card DMA buffer size on DOS port to improve sound generation and sound CPU synchronisation in some games.

I'm not too sure what else is new, as this version doesn't have netplay support. *Huge* thanks to Deejay for letting me know about this. You can download Snes9x 1.10a for DOS from the SNES page.

Emulator Release: M72 Arcade Emulator Updated
14:22: Lookie lookie here, new version of the M72 Arcade Emulator released, chock full of new stuff, check it:

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.

Pickup the new release over on the Multi Arcade Emu Page.

Emulator Release: System 16 0.80b
12:32: A new version of System 16 is out. Here's what's new:

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.

Fixed Alien Syndrome sprite/BG priority problem shown at corners of R1 and R5.

Fixed problem where keyboard became jammed after heavy system activities.

Fixed background scrolling bug in Hang-On and Super Hang-On.

Fixed OUTRUN wheel handle auto-centering problem.

You can get it at the Multi Arcade emulators page.

Emulator Release: VICE v0.15.00 for Unix
06:10: Still another missed release of VICE for Unix. What's new? I'll tell you what's new, among other things:

Cartridge support added for C64

Tape support for PET has been added

Many bugfixes

Unix Commadore64 page.

Emulator Release: Come Back 64 0.95
05:07: A few days ago, Come Back 64 0.95 was released, but the official page seemed to be down. Now, it's back up, so it has been uploaded to ZD. Here's what's new in this Commodore 64 emulator for DOS:

Fixed sound (SB 8/16-driver)

Sprites work in all VICbanks

Auto-Interlace Mode

8K cartridge support (Thanx MAX!)

Fixed another PRG/CRT load bug ('UNCRASHABLE'?)

Autoloads external BASIC.ROM/CHAR.ROM/KERNAL.ROM

.PRG/.P00 and .CRT limited to 200 per dir... sorry

Added sprite viewer (CTRL+ALT+I)

Added 1541 File/Directory emulation (READ ONLY) DEV. 8

Added Parallel port monitor (for 1541)

Fixed RESTORE key (INSERT)

You can download Come Back 64 0.95 from the Commodore 64 emulators page.

Emulator Release: BoyCott v0.37b for Unix
03:31: Yet another missed release of another Gameboy emulator for unix, well Linux actually. Whats new is:

Savefiles (GB batteries with .SAV) added

RAM Bank switching added

*BUG FIXES* with 8x16 sprites (RTYPE2, etc...)

Add two special keys (Reset and Pause)

Speed increase

ROM Bank switching is faster

SIO Interrupt improved (ALLEYWAY works thanks to Hans De Goede)

DIVIDER register more accurate

Command line bug fixes (parameters order)

Optimization of BG/WIN/SPRITES displaying

Optimization of BG/WIN refreshing

Unix Gameboy section.

Emulator Release: UAE v0.7.6 for Unix
02:53: Here we have the latest version of UAE (Unusable Amiga Emulator), another missed update. This source is compilable on any "half-recent Unix-like operating system". UAE is definately usable except for:

The buggiest part right now is the sprite emulation, it's also incomplete: sprite to playfield collisions are unimplemented

The parallel port is not really implemented, although it's sufficient for printing

Available on the Unix Amiga page.

Site News: Poll fixed
02:44: It was brought to my attention by Court Jester that the poll was still linking to zophar.malicia.com, which doesn't work anymore. It's been fixed. The question, in case you haven't posted yet, is "Should newer systems/games be emulated, if possible?" Cast your votes!

The Polling Grounds

Emulator Release: Pasofami 2.8e
02:19: Here's what's new in the latest version of Pasofami:

Major fixes to MMC1 (Mapper 1) - now it's much more accurate! this fixes some MMC1 eg. Bigfoot, Days of Thunder

Some more fixes to UNROM (Mapper 2) - games like Super GloveBall no longer have gfx bugs

More Minor fixes to MMC3 (Mapper 4)- games like Cartoon Workshop and Mc Kids no longer have gfx bugs

Major fixes to MMC5 (Mapper 5) - games like Gemfire, JustBreed, Laser Invasion now work almost perfectly (some EXRAM games eg. Castlevania III still needs work)

Major timing Fixes to Mapper 7 - RC-Pro AM II almost free of gfx gliches! and status bars are visible in all Wizard and Warriors series!

Added support for more mappers of 67,70,72,76,77,78,80,82,86,87,88,89,101

Thanks to PACHUKA for the IM.

You can download it at the NES page.

Emulator Release: VGB v1.2 for Unix
01:46: Latest release of Marat Fayzullin's Gameboy emulator, actually not a new release but due to circumstances beyond my control it was not updated sooner. Available in four flavors: Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris Sparc, and SunOS Sparc. Updates include:

Documentation extended and corrected in many places. READ IT!

Complete Super Gameboy support

Untested partial Color GameBoy support

Separate Pocket GameBoy support, correct colors and ID code

Speedup due to somewhat improved memory access code

Automatic detection of SGB/CGB capabilities in cartridges

New GBCarts library properly recognizes new switch types and ROM sizes

Soundtrack saved directly into MIDI files

Fixed SGB multiplayer function, thanks to Pascal Felber

Improved VRAM->SGB data transfer code

Many bugfixes

DL it on the Unix Gameboy page.

10/2/98
Emulator News: Quick update, 2 sites moved
23:55: Two major emulators Raine, and Mame32 have moved their main pages.

The Raine page is now located at:
http://www.rainemu.com

The Mame32 page is now located at:
http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32/

That's all for now, look for some more from me soon.

Site News: Regarding www.zophar.net
13:59: Over the past few days, a lot of people have been e-mailing me, messaging me on IRC, and posting on other site's messageboards, trying to figure out why zophar.malicia.com no longer works, and where ZD went. I've responded to all the messages and e-mails, directing them to www.zophar.net, but I fear that many people still are looking for ZD's location.

So, a couple days ago, I sent out e-mails to all of the more popular emulation-related sites I could think of, letting them know where we moved to. Only one of the sites (and the maintainer knows who he is) didn't post news regarding the move.

However, even today I still get e-mails asking where we went. So, to all of you, if you come across anyone trying to find ZD's new location, please let them know we've moved here. Thanks to everyone for supporting ZD, even after our zillion moves :)

Now, onto www.zophar.net. Many of you are wondering, why did we lose it last month in the first place? Well, what happened was, the person who originally registered it for us never made the payment (although he promised he would). However, all has been forgiven, we now have the domain back once again, and all is good.

Any questions? Drop me a line.

Emulator News: PSyKe in the media
13:49: If any of you have stores near you that sell Playstation Magazine, or if you have a subscription, check out the October issue. There's an article in there that talks about PSyKe. Instead of degrading the emulator, they seem very positive about it. Anyone who has a scanner and the magazine and would like to scan the article and send it to ZD for posting, it would be appreciated.

Thanks to FatalDoom for the mail.

Misc. News: RockNES homepage temporary move
13:41: The RockNES homepage has temporarily moved to http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/2622/. The reason for this is due to EmuCamp's server changing, Fx3 can't get in to update his pages, so until this problem has been sorted out, you can find the page there.

As a side note, many emulaor authors seem to be having trouble keeping their pages online, and others seem to be on unstable servers, such as Xoom and Fortunecity. Remember, ZD is open to emulator authors in need of a home, all you have to do is send an e-mail and we'll see what we can do for you.

10/1/98
Misc. News: Info On Mario Kart in SNES9x 1.1
21:59: I thought some of you might be wondering how good Mario Kart plays on SNES9x 1.1 for Linux. The short version: You're not missing much.

When you start playing, it looks like it's going to run Mario Kart flawlessly, but apparently, the track points the wrong way, and you hit the wall again and again, no matter what you do. Also, objects seem to fly all over the place, but I think these objects are actually in the correct spot, and it is the road which is misplaced. The novelty of actually seeing the track in Mario Kart in an emulator is nice, but the game itself is actually unplayable.

I haven't tried the netplay of SNES9x Linux 1.1 yet, so I don't know how good that works. If I try it out I'll post my thoughts on it.

Emulator Release: TrueReality v1998090701 for Unix
17:08: Another missed release, new version of TrueReality Unix N64 emulator, new features include:

Firedemo and Rotate demo run without problems

A few other demos work with only a few problems

Get it on the Unix N64 page.

Emulator Release: MasterGear v1.1 for Unix
16:12: This is an older release, but we must've missed it, so here it is with some new features even:

VPeriod/HPeriod are counted in the CPU cycles instead of CPU opcodes

RainbowIslands, GalaxyForce, SurfingNijas, AstroWarrior, Mahjong, and others now run fine

Changed sound chip base frequency to make it sound better

Runs in 8bpp, 16bpp, 32bpp, and 24bpp X11 modes (24bpp not on all servers though)

Music is saved in the MIDI format, no conversion needed

You can get it on the Unix Master System/Game Gear page.

Frontend News: TeleKawaru's SNES9x frontend Windows port!
04:19: Yeah! The Qbasic frontend has now been ported to Visual Basic! :D This is a good SNES9x frontend to try, even if its author is always bitching at me cuz I spelled his nickname wrong :)

Anyways, go get it from the SNES emulator frontends page.

Emulator Release: XGenEM v0.11 for Linux
02:13: New version of XGenEM (formerly GenEM). v0.11 includes the following nifty updates:

A speed-up

Faster priority handling

Lower memory requirements

Higher compatibility

This emu can be found in the Unix Genesis section.

Site News: Unix Genesis section added
02:11: New Unix Genesis section, whoopie Genesis emus for Unix and stuff...

Misc. News: Crystalis & the end of the world
00:23: Looking back at the Zophar's Domain Old News Archives, I came across this:

10/01/97
"1997, October 1st, The END DAY" Crystalis predicted years ago on the NES that today is the end of the world!!! :)

Looks like today is the first anniversary of the end of the world, according to Crystalis :)

zophar@voicenet.com