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.

FS-UAE, an Amiga emulator with a focus on games, has been updated to version 2.0.1. This is the first official stable release to include a user-friendly configuration front-end (FS-UAE Launcher), bringing Amiga emulation one step closer to being truly accessible. Other changes include an update to the emulation core (in line with WinUAE 2.4.2beta1), support for OpenGL shaders, theming support, new translations, keyboard emulation for the CD32 gamepad, support for hard-drive images larger than 4GB, and more. See the release notes for the full list. You can download it via this link.

After four years of silence, ZX Spectrum emulator zxsp is back and very much alive in development. The latest release is 0.8.0.pre8, which includes a CPU register editor and memory display. This is all part of a major rewrite to Qt. Head over to thezxsp blog for more details, or grab a binary from the zxsp homepage.

Multi-system emulator Bizhawk is now at version 1.2.0. This latest release adds Atari 2600 support to the existing support for NES, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and PCE/Turbografx 16 games. It also support tool-assisted recording and playback. You can get it via the TASVideos forum, and please check out emulator porter Sappharad’s latest forum post asking whether there’s interest in OS X emulators with TAS support.

DOSBox front-end Dapplegrey is now at version 3.1. The latest update allows drag-and-drop of disk images to boot them. You can get it via the Classics for X website.

Arcade emulator MAME, together with its Mac command-line port SDLMAME, has been updated to version 0.147u2. It comes with a lengthy change log, as usual. You can grab the source direct from the MAME Dev website, or download a binary from the SDLMAME site.

Java-based PSP emulator JPCSP has a shiny new SVN snapshot available. Build 2774 includes an improved MPEG module, speedups in the compiler, improvements in GE, and more. Get it via the JPCSP website.

QMC2 (aka Qmamecat II), a MAME and MESS launcher and ROM organiser, has been updated to version 0.37. (On September 17.) This is considered a major update, with heaps of changes. A few big ones are support for UME, a total rewrite of the image support module, a new system-notes detail, and local movie file support in the YouTube video player. See the change log for more details, or grab a download from the QMC2 website.

Classic Mac (that’s pre-OS X) NES emulator MacFCEU has been updated to version 0.7.6. If you happen to have an old Mac lying around and what to play some NES games, give it a try by downloading from here.

Open-source MSX emulator OpenMSX has been updated to version 0.9.1. This fixes a bug in using a directory as a disk (that part of the code was rewritten “almost completely”). Check out the release notes here, or grab a download from theOpenMSX website.

NekoLauncher Mednafen went through a couple of updates during our news hiatus. It’s now at version 0.9.26 [Build 25]. You can see the changes on the Nekocan website, but a couple of highlights are added support for emulation of the iNES mapper and Dance Pad.

Atari ST/TT/Falcon virtual machine ARAnyM has been updated to version 0.9.14. This adds a bridging network and video fixes, along with middle mouse click for input ungrab. Get it here.

The Intellivision lives! There’s a new Intellivision emulator available for Mac. jzIntv version 1.0 beta 4 comes in a Mac OS X flavor. Grab it here.

Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator Gearboy has reached version 0.5. For those new to Gearboy, it’s intended more as a learning tool for future emulator authors than a serious contender. The Mac OS X version must be compiled from source, unfortunately, but you can get it here.

I wrote back in August that Game Boy emulator gbpablog had changed name to DMGBoy. The emulator got its first release under the new name last month, with a bunch of changes and additions. Highlights include an OpenGL renderer, full-screen mode, accuracy improvements, and a change to the default keys. See the change log here, or download it via this link.

Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin shows no signs of stopping its development. It’s now just over 800 development builds since the last official release, most of which you can download here.

Atari 2600 VCS emulator Stella was updated twice in October. Version 3.7.3 changed the state file format, improved handling of illegal VSync signals and RIOT chip emulation, improved sound generation with ROMs that have irregular scanline counts, updated the PNG library, and fixed a bug in the DPC+ bankswitch scheme. Update 3.7.4 “Fixed screen blanking regression in 'Video Chess', and improved behaviour of ROMs that don't use VSync.” Get it from the Stella website.

Amstrad PCW emulator JOYCE has been updated for the first time in nearly two years. Version 2.2.5 includes compilation fixes for the latest version of libpng and fixes a crash in the native VGA driver. There aren’t any binaries available, but you can grab the source code here.

It wouldn’t be a proper MacScene news roundup without a VirtualBox maintenance release. We’ve had two since the last roundup, with a host of GUI and fixes included in the change log.

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