Articles tagged with: macfceu

News Roundup: December 28 - March 8

mossy_11 on Sunday, 09 March 2014. Posted in News

My apologies on another late roundup. I’ve been busy. It was worth the wait, though, as we’ve got a huge one this time round, including a few new emulators.


There’s a new Macintosh emulator under development! Shoebill currently emulates a Mac II running A/UX (versions 1.x.x through 2.0.0), which was Apple’s implementation of Unix some 20+ years ago, although it will eventually support booting Mac OS. It’s early days yet, with the 0.0.1 release dropping just last week, but this is the first emulator that supports A/UX and it also emulates the MMU (which other Mac emulators don’t, so we could finally have some leaps forward if somebody manages to decouple the MMU code from Shoebill). See this E-Maculation thread for discussion, or head to GitHub for a download link and screenshots. (Thanks WatchSmart!)


Shoebill isn’t the only new emulator for us to play with; 8086tiny holds claim to the title of “the world’s smallest portable, highly-functional PC emulator.” True or not, at 28K (with comments) the source code is at least tiny. It emulates an 8086 CPU plus all standard PC peripherals, and its disk images should mount out of the box in OS X. I haven’t had a chance to test it myself yet, but this looks like a great choice for running DOS or early versions of Windows. You can learn more about 8086tiny and download the source code from its official website.


Multi-system emulator BizHawk has been updated to version 1.6.0. This release adds Sega Genesis and CD support and OpenGL video output, and it also fixes some issues with stability, audio throttling, and opening NES games. Check out Sappharad’s forum thread for more details and a download link.


WatchSmart pointed out this very cool browser-based Mac Plus emulator, RetroWeb, which comes with a number of built-in games and apps and seems to run at a decent frame rate in most current browsers. You can load your own disk images, too, but that’s not really the point here — this is an easy way to reminisce or to show other people what Macs were like 25 years ago without going to the hassle of setting up Mini vMac. (It uses PCE for its core, in case you were wondering.)


Continue reading for more updates, including a full complement of Mac-on-Mac news, a new way to play a classic, progress on a NeXT emulator, and more.

News Roundup: May 8 - June 13

mossy_11 on Friday, 14 June 2013. Posted in News

There’s a new Nintendo 64 emulator on the block. I don’t know how Daedalus compares to Mupen64Plus or SixtyForce, as I couldn’t get it to run after compiling, but it looks to be under active development. You can grab the source from the Daedalus GitHub page. Let us know how it performs if you get it working.


ScummVM, an interpreter for dozens of classic point-and-click adventure games, has been updated to version 1.6.0. This release adds four new engines, which adds support for such titles as Eye of the Beholder and The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime. Other changes include improved support for Macintosh versions of a few games, an update to the Roland MT-32 emulation code, a grid chooser for save games, three new translations, and more. See the release notes for more details, and grab ScummVM from its downloads page.


Arcade emulator MAME reached version 0.149 a few days ago. As usual, this update includes a raft of fixes, additions, and tweaks. There’s a detailed change log if you want to see precisely what’s new. You can grab the source code from the MAMEdev site, or grab 32-bit or 64-bit Intel binaries from the SDLMAME site.


Almost-everything emulator MESS was also updated to version 0.149, with a similarly-exhaustive change log. You can grab its source code via either the MESS Wiki or MAMEdev site, and download binaries via the SDLMAME/SDLMESS site.

Continue reading for more emulator updates, including test builds for CocoaMSX and Sheepshaver, a return from the dead for Fuse, and more.

News Roundup: March 22 - May 7

mossy_11 on Tuesday, 07 May 2013. Posted in News

Mac gaming classic Pathways into Darkness, a precursor to Bungie's more famous first-person series Marathon and Halo, has been ported to OS X. This is a faithful, loving, free port with full blessings from Bungie. Go get it to revisit a slice of Mac gaming history. (If you're so inclined, I wrote up my thoughts on this OS X release here.)


There’s a new MSX emulator on the scene. CocoaMSX is based on blueMSX, and offers what looks to be a pretty robust feature set. You can follow its development on Google+ or track (and download) it on the CocoaMSX Google Code page. Be sure to let us know how it stacks up to openMSX (which has now moved from svn to Git repository, I might add).


Just over a year since the last release, Nintendo DS emulator DeSmuME has hit version 0.9.9. This build introduces a new JIT CPU core, which the devs say “yields some impressive speedups,” and specifically improves the OS X port with a ton of new options and enhancements. There’s also a bunch of bug fixes across the entire emulator. Get it from the official DeSmuME website.


Gaming-focused Amiga emulator FS-UAE has moved to fs-uae.net, and it’s been updated to version 2.2.2. Changes since March are mostly bugfixes and improvements to existing features. You can see lists here (2.2.1) and here (2.2.2). As always, head over to the FS-UAE website for more information and a download link.

Continue reading for more emulator updates, including new versions of two PSP emulators, long-overdue updates to ARAnyM and Bochs, and more.

News Roundup: September 16 - November 7

mossy_11 on Wednesday, 07 November 2012. Posted in News

Sorry it’s up so late. I’ve been busy meeting deadlines.


We’ve been mighty spoiled by Sixtyforce developer Gerrit recently. The 0.9.6 update reported on last time was quickly followed by 0.9.7, with automatic update notifications added alongside a slew of bug fixes. Get it from the Sixtyforce (or 64ce, as I hear the cool kids call it) website. And don’t forget to register to support further development.


SpeedofMac’s website went down a while back, and hosting troubles led to him moving to ConsoleEmu.com. Head there for the same downloads and information about (NES and later) console emulators that you came to expect from the previous incarnation, now with a more platform-agnostic outlook.


BSNES is no more; byuu has renamed his super-accurate Super Nintendo emulator Higan after adding multi-system support. You can now also use it to play NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS games. The source code is Linux only at this stage. No word yet on whether Richard Bannister is in any way equipped to port it to the Mac. This is the official Higan page.

Continue reading for more emulator news, including major updates to FS-UAE and zxsp and new versions of OpenMSX, ARAnyM, Stella, Bizhawk, and more.

News Roundup: April 4 - May 5

mossy_11 on Friday, 06 May 2011. Posted in News

Apple released updates to its iMac line earlier in the week, bumping performance with the latest Sandy Bridge processors and AMD Radeon HD graphics cards. The new iMacs also sport ports -- one in the 21.5-inch models, two in the 27-inch -- for the new Thunderbolt high-speed peripheral connection interface that was introduced with the new MacBook Pros earlier in the year. Tested did a breakdown of the gaming capabilities of the new iMacs, determining that the best choice for many gamers will be to get the 21.5-inch model with a 6770M graphics card.

Apple also released the long-delayed, much-anticipated white iPhone 4 last month. If I may editorialise for a moment, the excitement over what is only a colour change is utterly ridiculous -- it almost makes me ashamed to be an Apple fan.

Arcade emulator MAME has a new project manager. After six years at the helm, Aaron Giles, a legend in the emulation scene, has stepped down to make way for Angelo Salese. Giles will still be involved as a developer on the project, however. The latest version of MAME and its OS X port, SDL MAME, is 0.142u2, which as usual offers a wealth of source changes. See here for the list. Head over to the SDL MAME website for a precompiled version, or grab the source straight from the MAME site.

Super Nintendo emulator Snes9x has received a long-awaited update. Version 1.53 offers a wealth of fixes and improvements, which you can see in the changelog listed here. Downloads are also available at the preceding link.

Nintendo Gamecube and Wii emulator Dolphin now has official Mac OS X builds. The emulator is updated on a more-or-less daily basis, so keep a close eye on its download page for the latest binaries.

Keep reading for more emulator updates.

News Round-up: April 8 - May 3

mossy_11 on Monday, 03 May 2010. Posted in News

gamebase64-browserA Mac-native version of GameBase64 Browser has been released. GameBase64 is a database of over 20000 Commodore 64 games, with detailed information and screenshots for each game. Setting up is not exactly intuitive if you do not already have the database file -- you’ll need to drag a folder (any folder) to the application, then it will tell you that the folder contains no valid database file. It will then allow you to download the database file from within the application. You can get screenshots and sounds packs here. It offers the ability to launch games in your C64 emulator of choice, but I couldn’t seem to get that feature working. Despite this strange configuration problem, it’s very impressive, so be sure to check it out (provided you have Snow Leopard installed).

A new version of the open-source IA-32 (x86) emulator Bochs was released on April 25. Release 2.4.5 implements X2APIC and Intel VMx2 extensions, fixes some CPU emulation bugs, reworks the configuration options, and more. Check the changelog for full details.

Those of you desperate for Steam on the Mac will have to wait just a little longer, with Valve announcing that it will be released on May 12. No word yet on what games will be available at launch, although you can be sure a few of Valve’s titles will be there.

More updates after the break.

State of NES Emulation

Niemann on Wednesday, 23 December 2009. Posted in Opinion

In 1983 the world of console gaming changed with the introduction of the Family Computer from Nintendo.  The Famicom (Family Computer) didn't find its way to North America, Europe, and Australia until 1985 as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); and singlehandedly ended the video game dark ages.  Today the Nintendo Entertainment System still ranks in the top ten of best-selling video game systems, and is by far the most emulated video game system.

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Nintendo standardized the practice of producing the hardware and a small collection of software for their system, while licensing third-party developers to also produce games.  This gave the NES a huge software collection, launching the franchises of Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest.  Individual classics include Duck Hunt, Golf, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Baseball, Tetris, and Excitebike.