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March 26, 2006 - JEmu2 version 3.1 released New in this version: * Added state saving in the Sega Master System driver (F6=save, F7=load). * Much improved compatibility, accuracy and performance of the Sega Master System driver. * Added 28 Sega Master System games. * Implemented online high scores for 10 more Sega Master System games. * Fixed a small problem in the MSX driver (fixing the border of Firebird). March 17, 2006 - JEmu2 version 3.0 released New in this version: * Brand new Sega Master System Emulation! * Added 23 Sega Master System games. * Implemented online high scores for Sonic The Hedgehog, Hang-On, Out Run, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Super Wonder Boy, Shinobi and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. The current SMS emulator still has some room for improvement, although it will play the current games just fine. Read more about it on the JEmu2 Development Blog. The SMS emulator is currently only available using the Java Web Start link, applet support will follow soon. March 4, 2006 - JEmu2 version 2.3 released New in this version: * Improved MSX-2 support (more emulated VDP instructions, correct sprite colours) * Added Gryzor (Contra), Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Super Runner and Ashguine 2 Feb. 18, 2006 - JEmu2 version 2.2.1 released The M62 driver (missing controls in Kung-Fu Master) is fixed. This release is just a minor bugfix release as far as the main emulation engine goes, but from now on, you can also play the arcade games in your browser as an applet! So if you're having problems getting the Java Web Start version to work, you can try it out in your browser. This applet version doesn't support saving of highscores though (but that might change in the future). Feb. 18, 2006 - JEmu2 version 2.2 released New in this version: * Added preliminary MSX-2 support. (sprite colours not correct yet, some missing VDP opcodes). * Added the following MSX-2 games: Vampire Killer (a.k.a. Castlevania), Metal Gear, Hinotori (a.k.a. Firebird), Eggerland Mystery 2 * Added the following MSX-1 games: Thexder, Antarctic Adventure, Yie-Ar Kung-Fu 2, Hyper Rally, Pippols * Added enhanced drivers for the MSX-1 games Knightmare and Nemesis 2 (experimental). * Released the source code (see the 'about' page). Feb. 06, 2006 - MSX-2 Progress I've posted some MSX-2 progress on the new development blog, including screenshots. Jan. 25, 2006 - JEmu2 version 2.1 released! The following was added/fixed: I fixed the AY-3-8910 emulation (missing noise channel and I/O ports), fixing the sound in all MSX games and many Arcade games using this chip. For example, the sound in 1942 is now perfect. Fixed the gunsmoke arcade driver. I also solved a problem in the MSX VDP emulation, which fixed the colors during boot-up sequences of the Konami games. I added support for online high scores in 6 MSX games (The Nemesis series, Salamander, Parodius and Penguin Adventure). Last but not least, I started adding support for MSX2, but I've got a long way to go until I can show something complete. I'm starting with rudimentary support for just SCREEN 5 because that is what most games use. Jan. 20, 2006 - Version 2.0 released! New in this version: * Added MSX emulation with support for 9 classic Konami MegaROMs (Nemesis, Penguin Adventure, Maze Of Galious, Nemesis 2, Nemesis 3, Salamander, Parodious, F1 Spirit and King's Valley 2). * Added support for Konami SCC sound. * Increased sound volume of the AY-3-8910 and YM2203 sound chips. JEmu2 is now not arcade only anymore. With this release people who are not familiar with MSX can check out what fun games were made for this system. Especially Konami's games are all pure classics. Dec. 22, 2005 - Version 1.9 released! New in this version: * Added Jr. Pacman with support for online high scores. * Added Diamond Run to the Ghosts 'n Goblins driver. * Added Zig Zag (a Dig-Dug clone) to the Galaxians driver. * Added Pacman Plus to the Pacman driver, with support for online high scores. * Replaced many CottAGE drivers with new and improved ones (though not all CottAGE drivers have been replaced yet). * Ghosts 'n Goblins now supports Y-Scrolling, and other graphics bugs were fixed. * Fixed video glitches in Black Tiger and Kung-Fu Master. * Fixed sprite colors in the the Galaxians Driver. * Added support for sample loops, fixing sound in Space Invaders. * Rendering and gfx decoding is now faster, resulting in a performance boost of up to about 50% in some drivers. * Updated the LWJGL library to the latest version, which should hopefully fix some compatibility problems ('pixel format errors'). * Fixed minor brightness/contrast issue in some games (affecting Snow Brother, Black Tiger and others). Dec. 12, 2005 - And yet another W.I.P. update: I have now 13 CottAGE hardware drivers replaced, and I added a new driver for Jr. Pacman, complete with sound. The only thing missing in the driver now is online high scores and tile priorities (noticable in the cut scenes), but other than that it works perfectly. Also, many of the rewritten drivers work considerably better than the old, CottAGE versions. For example, the new Ghosts 'n Goblins driver now works perfectly (no video glitches anymore, support for Y-Scroll), Diamond Run (previously unsupported Boulder Dash clone running on gng hardware) now also works just fine, a small glitch in Black Tiger is now gone, the video glitches in Kung-Fu master are history, etc. etc. The new drivers don't support all clones and different versions of the same games anymore though. Gagaplay doesn't have them online anyway, so I just didn't bother to support all clones/revisions as well. Dec. 5, 2005 - Another work in progress update. There are now 10 CottAGE drivers replaced with new, rewritten drivers. On the JEF front (which is the underlying emulation engine), I did many clean-ups and improvements in order to make the code better maintainable and understandable. I'm thinking about adding a 'compatibility mode' for people who experience problems related to the hardware accellerated open-GL rendering. This compatibility mode will be a software rendering mode (windowed or full-screen) using the standard java rendering API's. When open-GL rendering fails, it will fall back to compatibility mode. It won't look as nice but at least it should make JEmu2 more compatible. Dec. 2, 2005 - Just a little WIP news update. I replaced 5 CottAGE hardware (MAME based) drivers with new, rewritten drivers. The new structure for drivers is a lot cleaner, easier to understand and smaller in size. I also fixed a bug related to color emulation of some drivers which led to slightly incorrect brightness and contrast. The JEF library also receives an overhaul to clean things up. (Technobabble alert ;-) : From a design point of view it has never been a really good idea to try to mimic MAME drivers. MAME is written in C which is very different from java (apart from some syntax similarities). Trying to write C in java usually leads to ugly and underperforming code. I have seen many cases where C programmers start writing java, but in effect are still writing C code but use the java programming environment. You can usually recognize this by a large number of 'static' methods and variables, which can even lead to problems. Furthermore, MAME heavily uses C macro's, which are not available in java. Trying to simulate them leads to code uglyness. Okay back to work, I've got a lot of drivers to rewrite... Nov. 27, 2005 - Currently I'm working on removing all CottAGE code from JEmu2. JEmu2 was based on JEF/CottAGE and thus reused code which was based on MAME(tm). After current affairs surrounding another java based arcade emulator regarding multiple MAME license violations, the MAME team seem to have gotten stricter in their policy towards use of MAME code. Regarding JEmu2, this means its capability for online play which the MAME team does not like. Although the MAME team never contacted me about this, I'm removing all CottAGE code from JEmu2, out of respect to MAME. Looking back at CottAGE, The MAME mimic'ing code from CottAGE was IMHO a bit of a hack around the emulation core (JEF) anyway, and although it makes the driver code look similar to MAME in many cases, it also makes the code unnecessarily difficult to understand and maintain. Besides, JEmu2's goal is not to port MAME to Java because there is really not much of a point in that, but to provide a more user friendly and gameplay focused alternative with different and unique options. Anyway, this will mean that right now the main priority is to remove CottAGE from JEmu2, and replace all CottAGE drivers with new drivers, and completely remove the CottAGE's MAME-mimic'ing code. The MAME source code will still be used as a reference, but that's what it's there for. All this may cause next version to have less drivers than the current one, but I'll make sure to replace them in order of popularity. After that, I'm considering an open source applet version of JEmu2 as a replacement for CottAGE as well, and I'll have a really nice and unique surprise addition for JEmu2 when these issues are solved, so stay tuned! Oct. 30, 2005 - New version 1.8 released! The MC68000 cpu core has been replaced, and a new game (Snow Bros.) has been added (available in using the 'Click here to start JEmu2 (16bit games)' link). Other news worth noting is that I just released CottAGE version 1.6, complete with sources. The release is not yet available on the official site, but you can already download it here: Click here to download the binary, and Click here to download the sources. Please note that this release hasn't been tested extensively, so if you have a site which hosts CottAGE I suggest to first test your games with this version before you replace your online binaries. This release is an extraction from JEmu2 v1.6 without the closed source components and without online high scores. Oct. 21, 2005 - New version 1.7 released! This version adds 12 new games, making the supported games list a total of 50 unique games. The new games are Mr.Jong, Crazy Blocks, Eyes, Bank Panic, Dream Shopper, Amazing Maze, Lizard Wizard, Ponpoko, Van-Van Car, Radar Scope, Check Mate and Mr. Goemon. Furthermore, the new CottAGE release is almost ready to go. Expect a new release this weekend. Oct. 14, 2005 - A small but cool enhancement in today's release (v1.6.2): I added a 3D representation of the emulated arcade's monitor. People who know the emulator 'FBA' will recognize the effect as the 'fishbowl effect', and yes, it was inspired by that. Oct. 2, 2005 - A minor update has been done, but an enhancement which had much demand: Controls are now configurable! Sept. 29, 2005 - I decided I will be resurrecting CottAGE from the dead again. Since JEmu2 is built on top of a slightly modified CottAGE, I feel it is appropriate to create a new, open-sourced CottAGE from JEmu2. The difference between CottAGE and JEmu2 will be roughly that CottAGE will be applet-only, and some closed source components present in JEmu2 will not be included. Maybe the High Score support will be gone too, but I haven't decided yet. But still, the next CottAGE release will be a major update, compared to the last release. Expect a new CottAGE release soon, complete with sources! Sept. 26, 2005 - The new version of JEmu2 version 1.6 is released with new support for Street Fighter 2. The current CPS emulator is not at all optimized so if you find that it runs too slowly on your machine, the next version will have several optimizations. The current 68k emulation is borrowed temporarily from the excellent PotatoMulti project with the kind permission of Romain Tisserand. This 68k core will be replaced by my own 68k emulation core, which is a generated emulation core in order to minimize branching in the code and thus optimizing performance. The download will be bigger, but I think worth it. Sept. 14, 2005 - A lot of work has been done to prepare JEmu2 for the next step: 16 bit arcades. Motorola M68000 emulation is added (thanks to Romain Tisserand) and memory mapping has been made much more memory efficient. The game Snow Bros. is now playable (and even takes less memory than the average 8bit emulator in the current version 1.5 of JEmu), and I'm working on a Capcom CPS1 driver, mainly to get Street Fighter 2 running. Street Fighter 2 now runs allright, but video emulation needs work. I'll keep you updated, and soon screenshots will be posted. Sept. 4, 2005 - New version v1.5 released! New in this release is support for online high-scores in a plethora of game (1943, 1943 Kai, Gun Smoke, Arkanoid, Green Beret, Bomb Jack, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Solomon's Key, Bobble Bobble, Yie Ar Kung-fu and Mario Bros. Also new is (preliminary) sound support in 1942. It doesn't sound quite right yet but hey, it's a start. Sept. 1, 2005 - A new month: Time to reset the high scores! I'll soon post a new page with the #1 scores for each month, so if you were #1 in august you won't be forgotten! I'll also make an all-time greatest list. Now let's secure the #1 position at your favourite game for this month! Aug. 28, 2005 - Released new version! (v1.4). New games supported: Ghosts 'n Goblins (with sound, but video output has some problems), Kung-Fu Master, Lode Runner and Lode Runner 2. Other new features: Scanlines and Scale2x renderers, Frameskipping (using F5 and F6). Aug. 23, 2005 - Improved performance related to OpenGL rendering, which makes JEmu2 about 40%-50% faster on my laptop. Fixed the video problems in Kung-Fu Master, which is now fully playable. Added Lode Runner 2 to the M62 driver. Implemented 2 new rendering modes: Scale2X and Scanlines, but these will take a performance hit (so for faster PC's only). Aug. 20, 2005 - Worked on the Mitchell driver and got Pang running, but the video output doesn't work yet. Worked on the M62 driver and fixed the bug with Lode Runner which is now playable. Kung-Fu master is now playable too but there are still some video problems to work out. When in windowed mode and pause is pressed, the mouse pointer is released (good for playing at work ;-). Tried to implement sound in Black Tiger and Bobble Bobble, but there seems to be a problem related to reading from the YM2203, so it doesn't work yet. Added an option in the GUI to disable sound, which will be handy for people running on slower computers (secondary sound CPU's are then disabled too). For those people, I'm also looking into implementing auto frame skipping. There's a site update too: When you click on a screenshot on the About page, more information about the game will show up. For example, check out the Pac-Man page. More info to follow. Aug. 15, 2005 - Great news, I got the YM2203 to work perfectly! Added sound to Commando, 1943, 1943 Kai and Gun Smoke. The games 1942, Black Tiger, and more will follow, once I have the YM2203's irq triggering implemented. I will also implement a sound disable option for people will slower PC's (not only the sound will be disabled, but also any secondary CPU's which control sound). NEW VERSION RELEASED Aug. 14, 2005 - Interfaced the YM2413 emulator to JEF and I'm looking at the preliminary Mitchell driver to make it work. This driver supports the game Pang (amongst others) and uses the YM2413 sound chip. Last but not least, I started porting MAME's YM2203 emulator to java. If I'll succeed, this will add sound to many games (Commando, 1942, Black Tiger to name but a few). Aug. 13, 2005 - Fixed the colors in Arkanoid, which now has perfect emulation! Added the Sonson driver and hooked up the AY8910 emulator, plus the second CPU, but sound is still not working for some reason. Check out the About JEmu2 page for screenshots. Aug. 12, 2005 - Fixed a bug in the Z80 core and hooked up the AY8910 soundchip to the Arkanoid driver, making it finally playable. Added mouse support (for Arkanoid). The colors in arkanoid are still wrong somehow. Added support for Mario Bros, Scramble and War of Bugs. For bandwidth reasons, I will reduce the number of updates to the online binaries until I have successfully implemented jardiff, so this new version is not online yet. Keep tracking this news page to see when the new update will take place! Aug. 8, 2005 - Changed the video initialization to use the same color depth as the current desktop setting. This will hopefully fix some ATI driver related issues. Also the emulator is made to behave more nicely with the OS when inactive (the emulator will pause). Added a pause option using the 'P' key. Aug. 7, 2005 - Added High Score saving in Pacman, Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3! Check out the High Scores page. Moved the high score saving in Ms.Pacman and Galaga to the new generic high score saver, fixing a bug which sometimes caused wrong scores to be uploaded to the server. This will probably result in me resetting the high scores in these games, since some of these high scores may be too high. Aug. 5, 2005 - Added High Score saving in Commando! Check out the High Scores page. More enhancements in this version: new features will show up in the GUI, fixed a few outstanding bugs in the high score system. Aug. 4, 2005 - Added High Score saving in 1942 and Donkey Kong! Check out the High Scores page. Aug. 3, 2005 - Fixed high score saving for Black Tiger and added generic high score handler in the code, which will lead to easier adding of high score saving in other games.