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Is it already the last Wednesday of the month again? That felt
quick! Of course, that means it must be MAME 0.241 release day.
This month you’ll get to play The Tower, a rather poor quality
imitation of Crazy Climber running on the DECO Cassette system.
There’s a brand new software list for the Tandy/Memorex VIS multimedia
player. Keep in mind that this was effectively a ’286-based Windows
PC with no disk cache running software from a CD-ROM drive. It
shouldn’t come as a surprise that it wasn’t popular, earning the
backronym “Virtually Impossible to Sell”. A three-player version
of Wally wo Sagase! (based on the popular Where’s Wally? books)
has also been found, dumped and emulated.
As well as an assortment of newly supported NES/Famicom cartridges,
you’ll have a better experience with the Zapper lightgun, improved
PPU (graphics) and APU (sound) emulation, and several fixes for
the related coin-operated VS. System and PlayChoice-10 systems.
Newly supported systems include some electronic toys from Entex
and Mattel, and a couple more Fidelity chess computers. If you’re
interested in scripting MAME, the Lua interface now exposes address
space taps for intercepting emulated memory accesses, as well as
debugger expressions, and a simpler way to discover general input
types.
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As lunar new year draws near and we approach a quarter of a century
since Nicola Salmoria released MAME to the public, it’s time for
MAME 0.240 – the first release of the 2022 calendar year. Wait,
what was that? A quarter of a century? Yes, on 5 February, it will
be twenty-five years since MAME 0.1 was released, supporting just
five Z80-based games. MAME is coming up to its silver jubilee! And
what a long way we’ve come…
This month, we’ve added support for dozens more versions of the
Igrosoft five-reel slot machines. But buried in there are the
remaining versions of Nintendo Game & Watch series games (rare
versions of Helmet, Judge and Mario’s Cement Factory), two more
Elektronika games based on Nintendo programs, a German version of
Exidy’s Mouse Trap, and the incredibly rare Mahjong Block Jongbou
2 from SNK.
In the software lists, there are a whole pile of recently dumped
prototypes of console games, and some homebrew titles for the Bandai
RX-78. That’s on top of the steady stream of Apple II floppies,
Commodore 64 cassettes, FM Towns CDs, and newly supported NES and
Famicom cartridges. Building on the work last month, the CD-i has
received a few more fixes that improve performance and add support
for more discs.
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Did you think we’d let 2021 finish without a parting MAME release?
MAME 0.239 is here, just in time for the new year. This release
includes a fix for many subtle and not-so-subtle sound and music
timing issues in games using Yamaha FM synthesis chips. The frame
rate for Gaelco games has been adjusted to satisfy some wily
protection checks, fixing crashes when continuing in Thunder Hoop
and graphical issues in Squash. A big update for Philips CD-i
emulation just made it in for this release, greatly improving the
experience in a lot of games. Nintendo Famicom Disk System emulation
has also seen some improvements this month.
This release is packed with even more Soviet re-skins of the Game
& Watch Egg program, the latest Apple II dumps and cracks, another
batch of Commodore 64 cassettes, and more exotic NES and Famicom
cartridges. Milan Galcik, who’s been busy with the Elektronika
hand-held games, has also completed a Slovak UI translation and
updated the neglected Czech translation. Both genuine and cloned
Apple II systems have had emulation updates this month, with a
number of unique VTech Laser and Franklin ACE features now supported,
and performance improvements for the Apple IIgs.
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You know what time it is? It’s time for MAME 0.238, our November
release! After many years of waiting, the rare space shooter Monster
Zero from Nihon Game is now playable. Despite the title, this game
does not feature a three-headed space dragon. This release adds
support for Fowling and Monkey Goalkeeper, two more Elektronika
hand-held games built around the Egg/Mickey Mouse Game & Watch
program.
There are a few changes to MAME’s UI and the debugger this month.
Firstly, MAME is now less eager to reset your input configuration
if you run it without connecting a game controller. Analog inputs
support a few more configuration options, and we’ve added some
(long overdue) documentation for the input configuration process.
The timecode logging feature (used by people making gameplay videos)
has been moved to a plugin, and debugger memory views now support
octal data display, and octal or decimal address display.
Support for several Famicom controllers has been added or fixed
this month, including the IGS Tap-tap Mat, Bandai Family Trainer,
Bandai Power Pad, Bandai Hyper Shot, Konami Doremikko Piano Keyboard,
and Konami Exciting Boxing air bag. Also involving peripheral
support, the Acorn Archimedes drivers now support podule expansions,
the Econet module slot, serial/parallel ports, and extension ROM
sockets.
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For everyone who’s waited patiently all month, MAME 0.237 is out
today! As well as the updates to the UI and debugger that we’ve
already announced, there are several updates to the included plugins:
* A brand-new input macro plugin.
* The data plugin can now show text from the Japanese command.dat
file (or a Chinese command.txt file if you rename it to command.dat).
* The location the hiscore support plugin uses to store its data
and configuration has changed. You won’t lose your high scores,
but you need to move the .hi files from the hi folder to the hiscore
folder in your plugin data (homepath) folder.
* The configuration format for the autofire plugin has changed.
Unfortunately, you will need to add your autofire button settings
again.
Interesting machines added this month include a Mexican TRS-80
Color Computer clone, Tronica Thunder Ball (a re-skin of Space
Rescue with a nautical theme), the original version of Pengo that
the widespread bootlegs seem to be based on, the original hardware
revision of the Laser 128 (Apple II clone), and a slightly older
version of Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha for Asia.
Master of multi-memory controllers kmg is still on a roll broadening
NES/Famicom and clone cartridge compatibility. Highlights of the
month include:
* Railway management simulator A Ressha de Ikou.
* Recent NES/Famicom games released by Ancient to promote Gotta
Protectors (Minna de Mamotte Knight). NES development is still
alive over two decades after the last licensed title was released
in 1995.
* The two Korean Brilliant Com (영재컴) edutainment games.
* Some multi-game cartridges featuring the ambitious Titenic game,
inspired by a highly successful James Cameron film.
* Kart Fighter – using the engine from an unlicensed NES port of
Street Fighter II, and unlicensed depictions of the character roster
from Super Mario Kart, this is almost a premonition of Super Smash
Bros. It even features Yoshi’s tail smash, and depicts Kinopio
(Toad) as a bare-knuckle brawler long before the Mii costume was
available for purchase.
* Well-known low-effort Mario-themed hack 7 Grand Dad. PUSH ↑ START
BUTTON. GET ADDITION GAME. AND NOURISH THE BLOOD
Amiga software compatibility has been improved this month, the NEC
PC-6001 family has gained a cartridge software list, and another
batch of Commodore 64 cassettes has been added. An issue was
identified with “fake E7” Apple II cracks that could prevent them
from working if they were written out to disks to use on original
hardware. Although this didn’t prevent them from being used in
MAME, disk images with the issue fixed have been added to the
software list. Over a hundred Apple IIgs cracks have been added,
too.
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All checksums have been double-checked against existing RMD160 and
SHA512 hashes
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The big event of the day is here! MAME 0.236 is ready for your
enjoyment! Sadly, this month marked the passing of Sir Clive
Sinclair, who it could be argued did more to put computers into
the hands of everyday people than anyone. There’s a small update
to MAME’s ZX Spectrum software list in this release.
The effort to dump and preserve protection microcontrollers is
still going well. This month’s additions include Juuouki and Wonder
Planet. Protection simulation has been removed for Wonder Planet
and Space Harrier. Remember, this is a worthy cause that provides
multiple benefits: it improves accuracy by taking guesses out of
emulation, helps people maintain and repair ageing arcade boards,
and simplifies MAME’s code.
MAME’s NEC PC-8001 now supports floppy disks. The PC-8001 and
PC-8801 software lists have been reorganised to match, and a big
batch of items from the Neo Kobe collection have been added. MAME
continues to improve its NES/Famicom cartridge coverage. There are
a whole lot of games you can play now, including Chinese RPGs,
fighting game bootlegs, and pirate multi-game cartridges. Experience
a parallel universe of software of such inconsistent quality that
you can’t stop going down the rabbit hole! Saturn emulation has
seen a few improvements, with several games that didn’t boot
previously reaching playable status this month.
As you might expect, the FM Towns, PC-98 and V.Smile software lists
have been updated as usual. A couple of recently dumped prototypes
have been added to the SNES and Game Boy software lists. The
SpongeBob SquarePants Jellyfish Dodge game has been dumped and
emulated, and a Korean version of Sotsugyo Shousho known as Jor-eop
Jeungmyeongseo has been found. More pleasant surprises include
working emulation for the IDE protection dongle included in Killer
Instinct 2 upgrade kit, and some fixes for Atari 8-bit home computers
using the ANTIC video chip.
For people with more exotic tastes, MAME has added its oldest
working software list additions: Munching Squares and Punchy for
the MIT TX-0. There’s also a new disassembler for the DEC VAX
architecture. In more mundane news, you can now reduce the
proliferation of duplicate ROM sets for families of similar keyboards
and other devices.
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What’s in store with MAME 0.235? First of all, the lost unencrypted
version of Rafflesia has resurfaced, ending a long saga! A genuine
copy of Bubble Buster, an early North American version of Puzzle
Bobble, has been found, and a prototype of Tecfri’s Sauro known as
Sea Wolf has been dumped. This release includes an update to BGFX
and fixes for the long-standing issues with YUV decoding, so
LaserDisc games can be played with BGFX shaders.
Konami Viper emulation now has sound support thanks to Windy Fairy,
and a big batch of unlicensed multi-game cartridges for NES/Famicom
are now playable. As usual, the Apple II, FM Towns and PC-98 software
lists have been updated with the latest dumps.
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Hi everyone! After four busy weeks, MAME 0.234 is ready! Newly
supported systems include Runaway (a licensed version of Sega’s
Head On made by Sun Electronics), Konami’s Magical Twin Bee (the
European version of Twin Bee Yahhoo!), and Tronica’s LCD hand-held
Spider (same program as Space Mission, but with different artwork).
Although it was added last month, VS Mahjong Triangle is now working.
This is a rare early example of a mahjong game supporting two
simultaneous single-player games, or a two-player game – a format
popularised a decade later by Psikyo’s Taisen Hot Gimmick.
There have been two significant sets of improvements for 3D arcade
games this month: rewritten 3dfx Voodoo Graphics emulation, giving
significant performance gains in many cases, and continued development
on Konami’s ZR017 and GTI Club hardware. Although not directly
related to 3D graphics, bug fixes for the Fujitsu TGP DSP make
Motor Raid more playable. We haven’t forgotten 2D arcade games –
Namco racing games have seen another round of fixes for missing or
incorrectly positioned sprites, and missing sprites are now drawn
in Data East’s Chanbara.
For home systems, our friend kmg has been hard at work adding
support for pirate NES/Famicom cartridges, and Brian Johnson has
fixed a couple of video issues on the Epson QX-10. Kelvin Sherlock
added support for the LANceGS card, providing another networking
option for Apple II users.
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Are you ready for MAME 0.233? With dozens of reported issues fixed,
over a hundred pull requests merged, and a flurry of development
across all areas, our mid-year release is huge! Some of the more
interesting machines added this month include several prototype
JAKKS Pacific TV Games, the elusive English version of Namco’s
Armadillo Racing, and the LCD hand-held game Space Mission from
Tronica.
There are lots of new Apple IIgs and Macintosh software list items,
tying in nicely with the recently improved emulation of these
systems, as well as an update to the Colour Genie collection, and
a massive haul of MicroBee floppy dumps. A few more Mattel Juice
Box cartridges have been dumped, allowing you to marvel at the
poor-quality, 6 frames-per-second video.
Significantly improved systems include the Atari Portfolio, Tandy
MC-10, and Tandy VIS. Carl has continued to work on Japanese home
computers, and Ville Linde is back this month, bringing a batch of
updates for the Konami Hornet platform. Juno First, The Tin Star,
The Empire Strikes Back have all had bugs squashed, and some of
the last remaining regressions from the Yamaha FM synthesis rewrite
have been resolved. David Haywood has turned his attention to
bootlegs of games including Final Lap 3, Guttang Gottong, and Alien
Storm.
This release includes preliminary sound support for the Super A'Can
console. On the topic of sound, some Yamaha synthesisers have been
promoted to working, and MAME can now play back standard MIDI files
to exercise machines that take MIDI input.
There are several general usability improvements in this release,
including updated Chinese and Greek translations, better configuration
handling for slot devices, and a few small enhancements to the
built-in user interface. Issues with artwork using SVG and Windows
DIB (BMP) images on ARM/AArch64-based Linux systems should also be
fixed.
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It’s time for MAME 0.232, and do we have a surprise for you! The
incredibly rare Universal game Mrs. Dynamite has finally been found
and dumped! This is an early example of a game where you place
bombs to kill enemies that walk over them, showing Universal’s
flair for cute characters and cutscenes. Mrs. Dynamite is believed
to had performed poorly on location tests, and never had a widespread
release. The graphics in the version that has been dumped don’t
match what’s shown on flyers. Other arcade additions include Dokaben
2 and a prototype of Spinal Breakers.
Namco racing games have taken a leap forward this month. Final Lap
has its sprite chip hooked up subtly differently to later games on
the System II platform, which had been causing graphical issues on
the title screen. Lack of playback status register emulation in
the C140 sound chip was causing issues with engine sounds in Final
Lap, Suzuka 8 Hours, and Four Trax. The horizontal position of the
road layer has also been adjusted to better match videos made using
original hardware.
A number of bug fixes allow previously unplayable Japanese home
computer games, including µPD7220 issues affecting the Madou
Monogatari games on PC-98, the missing 1-bit DAC sound on PC-98,
broken sprites in Asuka 120% Burning Fest. on FM Towns, and background
bugs on Sharp X68000. Mac media support continues to improve, with
working CD-ROM drives on more Macs, and fixes for high density
floppy drives. The V.Smile Smart Keyboard is now supported, in US,
French, and German variants. Tim Lindner has continued to fix
long-standing bugs in Tandy CoCo 3 emulation.
Software list additions include Taiwanese Game Gear cartridges,
Master System prototypes, a big batch of software for the Australian
MicroBee series, and quite a few add-on ROMs for the Acorn BBC
Micro. We’ve also got the latest Apple II floppy dumps and cracks,
FM Towns floppies and CDs, and PC floppies.
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MAME 0.231, our April release, is out now! The Yamaha FM synthesis
rewrite is progressing, with the OPL family (including YM2413,
YM3526, YM3812, YMF262 and Y8950) done this month. A number of
regressions reported against the previous release have also been
fixed. Most things should be improved, but if you notice something
wrong with a system using one of these chips, be sure to let us
know. Warp-1, a very rare Sun Electronics game from the late ’70s,
has been added this month. This is an early example of an “into
the screen” space shooter.
For as long as it has been emulated, the “3D” stages in Contra have
been too easy. This comes down to the functionality of the Konami
007452 chip, which Konami calls a VRC&DMP. Now we know that VRC
stands for Virtual ROM Controller, and controls ROM banking. However,
the DMP part has been more of a mystery, assumed to be some kind
of protection. This month, furrtek worked out that it’s apparently
some kind of Divide/Multiply Processor, for 16-bit maths operations
that would be unacceptably slow on the games’s pair of 6809-family
CPUs. The great news is the game now runs correctly, the bad news
is you’ll probably die a lot more.
David “Haze” Haywood is back this month with fixes for several
arcade games that have never been quite right. He’s fixed graphical
priority issues in SNK’s Beast Busters and Mechanized Attack,
improved timing in Seibu Kaihatsu’s Shot Rider, and corrected layer
offsets in Mitchell’s Funky Jet. He also added support for a couple
of protected Mega Drive bootleg games from Argentina. Recently,
David has been streaming MAME gaming sessions, often highlighting
under-appreciated games. You can watch the recorded streams on his
YouTube channel. Still on the topic of things that have never been
right, sasuke has been busy this month. He’s improved the Nichibutsu
1412M2 DAC playback rate and timer period calculation, most noticeable
on the Mighty Guy soundtrack, and made Taito’s unicycling game
Cycle Maabou playable.
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Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for MAME 0.230! There are big
changes this month, but before we get to that, let’s highlight some
of the more routine additions. Several TV games featuring adaptations
of popular Hasbro board games are now supported, as well as a couple
of VTech systems featuring Dora the Explorer. Several electronic
toys and handheld LED game from Mattel and Invicta have been emulated
this month. There’s a big update for the Apple II software lists
this month, with clean cracks of lots of educational software from
MECC.
If you’ve been following along with development, you’re no doubt
excited about the new Yamaha OPM/OPN (YM2151, YM2203, YM2608,
YM2610, YM2610B, YM2612, and YM3438) sound emulation core. This
addresses numerous subtle and not-so-subtle issues, particularly
in Sega and Data East games. Windy Fairy and Jennifer Taylor have
continued to improve MAME’s support for Konami rhythm games, making
beatmania IIDX, Beatmania III, Keyboardmania and ParaParaParadise
games playable. Thanks to Happy, a couple more graphics issues with
the Hyper Neo Geo 64 have been fixed.
There’s been a lot of work on the Apple IIgs and 68k Mac drivers
this month. As well as the flood of machines promoted to working,
Apple 3.5" floppy support has been revolutionised, and improvements
to ADB GLU microcontroller simulation make the IIgs control panel
usable. On the console side, save EEPROM support has been fixed
for several Mega Drive games.
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It’s been an eventful month, culminating in the release of MAME
0.229 today. One change that you’ll notice straight away is that
the “64” suffix is no longer added to the file name for 64-bit
versions of MAME. If you’re unsure, you can see the data model at
the end of the window title.
One very elusive Argentinian title has finally made it into MAME
this month. We’re very proud to present Ms PacMan Twin, an extensive
hack of Ms. Pac-Man with simultaneous two-player cooperative
gameplay. Another rarity you can now experience is Midway’s unreleased
Power Up Baseball – the NBA Jam of baseball. On the topic of
prototypes, Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey Fatality Edition is now
supported.
Several TV games for preschool age children from JAKKS Pacific’s
Sharp Cookie line have been dumped and emulated, featuring popular
characters like Dora the Explorer, Scooby-Doo, Spider-Man and Thomas
the Tank Engine. Travelling back a little, Mattel’s representations
of Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, and Tag as electronic toys are now
supported. Elektronika Autoslalom has arrived from Russia (with
love). Another batch of JPM IMPACT fruit machines have been promoted
to working this month, making use of new artwork engine features
for their internal layouts.
Updates to the Win32 and Qt debuggers add a context menu to debugger
views with an option to copy visible text to the clipboard, improve
behaviour when views are scrolled to the bottom, and fix a crash
when right-clicking some memory views. We’re lucky enough to have
received another shader update from cgwg, improving the appearance
of the popular crt-geom and crt-geom-deluxe effects. We’ve added
support for the NEC/Renesas V850 family to unidasm.
That’s all we’ve got time for here, but there are lots of software
list updates, newly dumped bootlegs, bug fixes, and other enhancements.
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Bump PKGREVISION.
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Has it already been an entire month? It must have been, because
MAME 0.228 is ready today! We’ve added support for two very rare
arcade games this month. The first is Namennayo, an overhead-view
obstacle course game making unauthorised use of Satoru Tsuda’s
Nameneko characters. The second is Get A Way, an overhead-view
racing game made by Universal, touted as the “first game in the
world to feature a 16-bit microcomputer.” Universal went on to
create the much loved Mr. Do! character. Emulation is preliminary
– while the game is playable, there are some graphical issues, and
sound is absent.
In other arcade emulation news, Windy Fairy has made a triumphant
return, bringing numerous fixes for issues affecting Bemani rhythm
games running on System 573 hardware. Thanks to the persistent
efforts of David “Haze” Haywood, various fruit machines from JPM
are starting to become playable in MAME. Interestingly, these
machines rely on similar Brooktree RAMDACs to NCD X11 terminals,
and Motorola DUARTs used by numerous other systems emulated in
MAME. A complete dump of the type 01 program for Zaccaria’s Cat
and Mouse has finally been obtained, making both known versions of
this obscure game playable at last.
For hand-held consoles, the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color have
had an overhaul, and Game Gear X-Terminator cartridges are now
supported. Several Bandai RX-78 cartridges have been dumped,
exercising more aspects of the emulation and allowing several
shortcomings to be fixed. We’ve also made some progress on emulating
Apple’s floppy drive controllers, providing a path to support for
SuperDrive high-density floppy drives, and eventually the HD20
external hard disk.
There’s been plenty more happening, including a new LCD shader from
cgwg, all the latest FM Towns software dumps, fixes for recent
regressions, and more code modernisation.
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It’s time to say goodbye to 2020, and we’re doing that with the
release of MAME 0.227, the fruit of our extended November/December
development cycle. A lot has happened in these two months, in terms
of internal improvements to MAME as well as user-visible changes.
If you’ve been following along with development, you’ll have noticed
that we’ve migrated MAME to C++17, overhauled the Lua interface,
further streamlined and enhanced the emulated memory system, and
cleaned up a lot of ageing code.
MAME 0.227 adds preliminary support for macOS on AArch64, also
known as “Apple Silicon”. Please note that we lack a native A64
recompiler back-end, and there are some issues with our C recompiler
back-end. If you’re running an A64 build of MAME, you can disable
recompilers for most systems that use them with the -nodrc option
on the command line. You may get better performance for emulated
systems with MIPS III or PowerPC processors by running an x86-64
build of MAME under Rosetta 2 with recompilers enabled. (Yo, ’sup
dawg. I heard you like recompilers…)
Lots of long-standing issues have been fixed in this release.
Missing platforms in stage 15 of Sega’s Quartet now appear properly.
This relies on a protection microcontroller feature that we were
previously unaware of. Protection features that are only used late
in the game have been a recurring source of frustration not just
for emulator developers, but also for arcade bootleggers, and even
publishers re-issuing old games in new formats. It seems Sega missed
this feature in their Astro City Mini release. Another long-standing
protection issue was fixed this month that made Atari’s Rampart
impossible to complete on Veteran difficulty. This one was actually
a regression that managed to stay unresolved for years, possibly
because the game’s high difficulty makes it difficult to reach.
While we’re on the topic, protection simulation has been added for
the versions of Sega’s Carnival that run on Head On hardware.
While protection emulation may encompass the most noticeable fixes,
lots of other things that have been improved as well. Graphical
issues have been fixed in Chase Bombers, Championship Bowling, and
Prop Cycle. NFL Blitz ’99 no longer skips animations in attract
mode. DIP switch descriptions have been corrected in 3-D Bowling,
Bloxeed and Mahjong Tenkaigen. Game switching now works on Multipede,
and Klax bootlegs are playable, with working sound.
It wouldn’t be a MAME release without new supported systems. This
month we’ve got TV games from dreamGEAR, JungelTac, LexiBook and
Senario. As always, the quality varies enormously. New versions of
1944: The Loop Master, Cookie & Bibi 2, F-1 Grand Prix, Forgotten
Worlds, and Narc have been found and dumped. One of the newly
supported Narc versions is particularly interesting, as it appears
to be an early test version, lacking a substantial amount of content
found in other versions of the game. Another incomplete copy of
Unico’s Master’s Fury was found, which could be combined with the
previous incomplete set to make the game playable.
Finally, there are a few improvements to the internal user interface.
There are more controls for screenshots, aspect ratio and scaling
accessible from the Video Options menu. You can now use NOT codes
when assigning analog joystick axes to digital inputs. The menus
for the Cheat and Autofire plugins have been made more consistent.
Of course, there’s far more that we don’t have space for here, but
you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, and get the
source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.
It’s been a very tough year for a lot of us, but it’s still been
a great year for MAME development. Thanks to everyone who contributed
this year, even if it was just a kind word or helping out a user
on a community forum. Have a great new year, and keep the spirit
of digital preservation alive!
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You know what day it is? It’s MAME 0.226 day! A lot has happened
in this development cycle, and plenty of it is worth getting excited
about! First of all, there’s a change that affects all systems with
keyboard inputs, including most computers. MAME now allows you to
activate and deactivate keyboard and keypad inputs per emulated
device in the Keyboard Mode menu. When a system has multiple
keyboards (for example a computer with a terminal connected to a
serial port), you can choose which keyboard you want to type on
rather than effectively typing on all the keyboards at once. If a
system has multiple devices with keyboard inputs, MAME will start
with only one enabled by default. Sadly, MAME doesn’t have mind-reading
capabilities yet, so it may not always choose the keyboard you want
to type on. If you find you can’t type on an emulated computer,
check that the right keyboard is enabled in the Keyboard Mode menu.
Another batch of layout/artwork system updates are ready this month.
More image formats are supported, several long-standing alignment
and clipping bugs have been fixed, more parameter animation features
are available, and external artwork loads faster. Lots of systems
using built-in layouts look prettier, but Cosmo Gang probably shows
the biggest improvement in this release (yes, the electromechanical
redemption game). Try it out in MAME 0.226, and maybe do a before/after
comparison to see how far we’ve come.
Apple II systems have seen some significant development this month.
Firstly, a number of issues with demos using raster split effects
have been fixed. The Apple II has no hardware support for raster
effects, so these demos rely on open bus read behaviour to work
out what the video hardware is doing. Getting this to work requires
precise emulation of memory access timings. Secondly, two parallel
printer cards are now working: Orange Micro’s popular Grappler+
and Apple’s Parallel Interface Card. The Grappler+ is well-supported
by Apple II software and provides a better out-of-the-box experience
if you want to try one of them.
Sega’s Tranquillizer Gun was a somewhat ambitious title for 1980,
but was largely overlooked at the time. It’s finally fully emulated
in MAME, with audio emulation and protection simulation being added
in this release. We’ve also added support for Must Shoot TV, an
unreleased prototype developed at Incredible Technologies. Step
into the shoes of disgruntled ITS Cable employee Chuck and go on
a rampage!
Far more has been added this month than we can cover in detail
here, like another batch of TV games (including several Vs Maxx
titles), support for Mattel Aquarius CAQ format cassette images,
and working Sega Mega Play games.
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Whether it’s the Autumn harvest moon, or the ornamental plum blossoms
are blowing in the Spring breeze, it’s time for something special:
MAME 0.225 is out today! We’ve got some big updates that benefit
everyone! First of all, MAME’s sound output system has been
overhauled, with better sample rate conversion and mixing. This
makes pretty much everything sound sweeter, but on top of that,
the Votrax SC-01 speech synthesiser has been tuned up. Does anyone
here speak Q*Bertese? SC-01 speech has been added to the Apple II
Mockingboard card, too. While we’re talking about Apple II cards,
Rhett Aultman has ported the CS8900A Crystal LAN Ethernet controller
from VICE, allowing MAME to emulate the a2RetroSystems Uthernet
card.
Other across-the-board enhancements include more artwork system
features (you’ll start to see this show up in external artwork
soon), an option to reduce repeated warnings about imperfectly
emulated features, and several internal improvements to make
development simpler. Significant newly emulated system features
include the Philips P2000T’s cassette drive from Erwin Jansen, the
Acorn BBC Micro Hybrid Music 4000 Keyboard, internal boot ROM
support for the WonderSwan hand-helds, and initial support for the
NS32000 CPU.
Newly emulated systems include several TV games from MSI based on
arcade titles, a couple of Senario Double Dance Mania titles, Sun
Mixing’s elusive Super Bubble Bobble, a location test version of
Battle Garegga, a couple more versions of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure,
and three more Street Fighter II': Champion Edition bootlegs. Some
of the immediately noticeable fixes this month include 15-bit
graphics mode refinements for FM Towns from r09, gaps in zoomed
sprites on Data East MLC and Seta 2 fixed by cam900, Galaga LED
outputs lost during refactoring restored, and clickable artwork
remaining clickable when rotated.
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Are you ready kids? MAME 0.224 (our August release) is out now! As
always, there’s plenty to talk about. First of all, the Magnavox
Odyssey² and Philips Videopac+ G7400 have had a major overhaul,
with many graphical errors fixed, most software working, and support
for the Chess and Home Computer modules. The Gigatron 8-bit homebrew
computer, created by the late Marcel van Kervinck and based entirely
on 7400-series logic chips, is now working with graphics and
controller support. Acorn 8-bit expansions continue to arrive, with
several additions for the BBC Micro and Electron. Speaking of
expansions, regular contributor F.Ulivi has delivered serial modules
for the HP Integral PC and HP9825/HP9845 families.
Analog arcade audio continues to advance. If you’ve played Namco’s
Tank Battalion, ancestor of the NES classic Battle City, you’ll be
acutely aware of the limitations of the sample-based audio. That
has been addressed this month, with netlist-based audio emulation.
For Midway, 280 ZZZAP sound has been further refined, and netlist-based
audio has been implemented for Laguna Racer and Super Speed race,
which use similar circuitry. Sega G-80 games have received some
long-overdue attention, with netlist-based audio added for Astro
Blaster, Eliminator, Space Fury and Zektor, as well as better
Universal Sound Board emulation for Star Trek and Tac/Scan, and
more accurate CPU timing. Other games receiving netlist-based audio
are Destroyer and Flyball from Atari, and Fire One and Star Fire
from Exidy. On the topic of audio emulation, the ultra low cost
GameKing now has preliminary sound emulation, making the games feel
more complete.
Work on UK gambling systems has continued, with several more
Barcrest, BWB and JPM games working in this release. There are also
a number of new European gambling games, including several Cherry
Master and Jolly Joker sets. A significant number of arcade driving
games have had additional internal layouts optimised for use on
wide aspect ratio displays added. Other advances in home computer
emulation include Apple IIe RGB monitor mode support, Apple II CMS
SCSII II card support, and proper emulation speed for the VTech
Laser 500.
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pkgsrc change: add a BUILDLINK_TRANSFORM that should fix the build
on powerpc (and possibly sparc64), from he@.
MAME 0.223 has finally arrived, and what a release it is – there’s
definitely something for everyone! Starting with some of the more
esoteric additions, Linus Åkesson’s AVR-based hardware chiptune
project and Power Ninja Action Challenge demos are now supported.
These demos use minimal hardware to generate sound and/or video,
relying on precise CPU timings to work. With this release, every
hand-held LCD game from Nintendo’s Game & Watch and related lines
is supported in MAME, with Donkey Kong Hockey bringing up the rear.
Also of note is the Bassmate Computer fishing aid, made by Nintendo
and marketed by Telko and other companies, which is clearly based
on the dual-screen Game & Watch design. The steady stream of TV
games hasn’t stopped, with a number of French releases from
Conny/VideoJet among this month’s batch.
For the first time ever, games running on the Barcrest MPU4 video
system are emulated well enough to be playable. Titles that are
now working include several games based on the popular British TV
game show The Crystal Maze, Adders and Ladders, The Mating Game,
and Prize Tetris. In a clear win for MAME’s modular architecture,
the breakthrough came through the discovery of a significant flaw
in our Motorola MC6840 Programmable Timer Module emulation that
was causing issues for the Fairlight CMI IIx synthesiser. In the
same manner, the Busicom 141-PF desk calculator is now working,
thanks to improvements made to Intel 4004 CPU emulation that came
out of emulating the INTELLEC 4 development system and the prototype
4004-based controller board for Flicker pinball. The Busicom 141-PF
is historically significant, being the first application of Intel’s
first microprocessor.
Fans of classic vector arcade games are in for a treat this month.
Former project coordinator Aaron Giles has contributed netlist-based
sound emulation for thirteen Cinematronics vector games: Space War,
Barrier, Star Hawk, Speed Freak, Star Castle, War of the Worlds,
Sundance, Tail Gunner, Rip Off, Armor Attack, Warrior, Solar Quest
and Boxing Bugs. This resolves long-standing issues with the previous
simulation based on playing recorded samples. Colin Howell has also
refined the sound emulation for Midway’s 280-ZZZAP and Gun Fight.
V.Smile joystick inputs are now working for all dumped cartridges,
and with fixes for ROM bank selection the V.Smile Motion software
is also usable. The accelerometer-based V.Smile Motion controller
is not emulated, but the software can all be used with the standard
V.Smile joystick controller. Another pair of systems with inputs
that now work is the original Macintosh (128K/512K/512Ke) and
Macintosh Plus. These systems’ keyboards are now fully emulated,
including the separate numeric keypad available for the original
Macintosh, the Macintosh Plus keyboard with integrated numeric
keypad, and a few European ISO layout keyboards for the original
Macintosh. There are still some emulation issues, but you can play
Beyond Dark Castle with MAME’s Macintosh Plus emulation again.
In other home computer emulation news, MAME’s SAM Coupé driver now
supports a number of peripherals that connect to the rear expansion
port, a software list containing IRIX hard disk installations for
SGI MIPS workstations has been added, and tape loading now works
for the Specialist system (a DIY computer designed in the USSR).
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MAME 0.222
26 Jun 2020
MAME 0.222, the product of our May/June development cycle, is ready
today, and it’s a very exciting release. There are lots of bug
fixes, including some long-standing issues with classics like
Bosconian and Gaplus, and missing pan/zoom effects in games on Seta
hardware. Two more Nintendo LCD games are supported: the Panorama
Screen version of Popeye, and the two-player Donkey Kong 3 Micro
Vs. System. New versions of supported games include a review copy
of DonPachi that allows the game to be paused for photography, and
a version of the adult Qix game Gals Panic for the Taiwanese market.
Other advancements on the arcade side include audio circuitry
emulation for 280-ZZZAP, and protection microcontroller emulation
for Kick and Run and Captain Silver.
The GRiD Compass series were possibly the first rugged computers
in the clamshell form factor, possibly best known for their use on
NASA space shuttle missions in the 1980s. The initial model, the
Compass 1101, is now usable in MAME. There are lots of improvements
to the Tandy Color Computer drivers in this release, with better
cartridge support being a theme. Acorn BBC series drivers now
support Solidisk file system ROMs. Writing to IMD floppy images
(popular for CP/M computers) is now supported, and a critical bug
affecting writes to HFE disk images has been fixed. Software list
additions include a collection of CDs for the SGI MIPS workstations.
There are several updates to Apple II emulation this month, including
support for several accelerators, a new IWM floppy controller core,
and support for using two memory cards simultaneously on the CFFA2.
As usual, we’ve added the latest original software dumps and clean
cracks to the software lists, including lots of educational titles.
Finally, the memory system has been optimised, yielding performance
improvements in all emulated systems, you no longer need to avoid
non-ASCII characters in paths when using the chdman tool, and
jedutil supports more devices.
MAME 0.221
19 May 2020
Our fourth release of the year, MAME 0.221, is now ready. There
are lots of interesting changes this time. We’ll start with some
of the additions. There’s another load of TV games from JAKKS
Pacific, Senario, Tech2Go and others. We’ve added another Panorama
Screen Game & Watch title: this one features the lovable comic
strip canine Snoopy. On the arcade side, we’ve got Great Bishi
Bashi Champ and Anime Champ (both from Konami), Goori Goori (Unico),
the prototype Galun.Pa! (Capcom CPS), a censored German version of
Gun.Smoke, a Japanese location test version of DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou,
and more bootlegs of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Final Fight, Galaxian,
Pang! 3 and Warriors of Fate.
In computer emulation, we’re proud to present another working UNIX
workstation: the MIPS R3000 version of Sony’s NEWS family. NEWS
was never widespread outside Japan, so it’s very exciting to see
this running. F.Ulivi has added support for the Swedish/Finnish
and German versions of the HP 86B, and added two service ROMs to
the software list. ICEknight contributed a cassette software list
for the Timex NTSC variants of the Sinclair home computers. There
are some nice emulation improvements for the Luxor ABC family of
computers, with the ABC 802 now considered working.
Other additions include discrete audio emulation for Midway’s Gun
Fight, voice output for Filetto, support for configurable Toshiba
Pasopia PAC2 slot devices, more vgmplay features, and lots more
Capcom CPS mappers implemented according to equations from dumped
PALs. This release also cleans up and simplifies ROM loading. For
the most part things should work as well as or better than they
did before, but MAME will no longer find loose CHD files in top-level
media directories. This is intentional – it’s unwieldy with the
number of supported systems.
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In a world of uncertainty, perhaps you can derive a little comfort
from MAME 0.220, our delayed release for the March development
cycle. This month has seen fixes for some old bugs in Final Star
Force, Ribbit! and Night Slashers, emulation of Crab Grab (the
other Game & Watch title with a colour overlay), the acquisition
of Solite Spirits (an early version of what became 1945k III), and
preliminary work on the Naruto TV game running on the XaviX 2
platform. There are some big software list updates this month,
including a lot of Apple II software aimed at North Dakota schools,
and the latest VGM music packs. Speaking of which, the VGM player
can now show pretty visualisations while you listen.
Newly supported peripherals include the Baby Blue II CPU Plus card
for PC compatibles, serial and CP/M modules for the HP 85 and HP
86, more sound and disk expansions for the TI-99 family, the CoCo
PSG cartridge, and a variety of 8-bit Acorn expansions. We’ve added
ROM dumps for a lot of synthesisers in this release, and while most
of them are not working yet, they’re there to tinker with if you’re
interested.
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MAME 0.219 arrives today, just in time for the end of February!
This month we’ve got another piece of Nintendo Game & Watch history
– Pinball – as well as a quite a few TV games, including Dream Life
Superstar, Designer’s World, Jenna Jameson’s Strip Poker, and
Champiyon Pinball. The previously-added Care Bears and Piglet’s
Special Day TV games are now working, as well as the big-endian
version of the MIPS Magnum R4000. As always, the TV games vary
enormously in quality, from enjoyable titles, to low-effort games
based on licensed intellectual properties, to horrible bootlegs
using blatantly copied assets. If music/rhythm misery is your thing,
there’s even a particularly bad dance mat game in there.
On the arcade side, there are fixes for a minor but long-standing
graphical issue in Capcom’s genre-defining 1942, and also a fairly
significant graphical regression in Seibu Kaihatsu’s Raiden Fighters.
Speaking of Seibu Kaihatsu, our very own Angelo Salese significantly
improved the experience in Good E-Jan, and speaking of graphics
fixes, cam900 fixed some corner cases in Data East’s innovative,
but little-known, shoot-’em-up Boogie Wings. Software list additions
include the Commodore 64 INPUT 64 collection (courtesy of FakeShemp)
and the Spanish ZX Spectrum Load’N’Run collection (added by
ICEknight). New preliminary CPU cores and disassemblers include
IBM ROMP, the NEC 78K family, Samsung KS0164 and SSD Corp’s Xavix
2.
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It’s time for MAME 0.218, the first MAME release of 2020! We’ve
added a couple of very interesting alternate versions of systems
this month. One is a location test version of NMK’s GunNail, with
different stage order, wider player shot patterns, a larger player
hitbox, and lots of other differences from the final release. The
other is The Last Apostle Puppetshow, an incredibly rare export
version of Home Data’s Reikai Doushi. Also significant is a newer
version Valadon Automation’s Super Bagman. There’s been enough
progress made on Konami’s medal games for a number of them to be
considered working, including Buttobi Striker, Dam Dam Boy, Korokoro
Pensuke, Shuriken Boy and Yu-Gi-Oh Monster Capsule. Don’t expect
too much in terms of gameplay though — they’re essentially gambling
games for children.
There are several major computer emulation advances in this release,
in completely different areas. Possibly most exciting is the ability
to install and run Windows NT on the MIPS Magnum R4000 “Jazz”
workstation, with working networking. With the assistance of Ash
Wolf, MAME now emulates the Psion Series 5mx PDA. Psion’s EPOC32
operating system is the direct ancestor of the Symbian operating
system, that powered a generation of smartphones. IDE and SCSI hard
disk support for Acorn 8-bit systems has been added, the latter
being one of the components of the BBC Domesday Project system. In
PC emulation, Windows 3.1 is now usable with S3 ViRGE accelerated
2D video drivers. F.Ulivi has contributed microcode-level emulation
of the iSBC-202 floppy controller for the Intel Intellec MDS-II
system, adding 8" floppy disk support.
Of course there are plenty of other improvements and additions,
including re-dumps of all the incorrectly dumped GameKing cartridges,
disassemblers for PACE, WE32100 and “RipFire” 88000, better Geneve
9640 emulation, and plenty of working software list additions.
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pkglint -r --network --only "migrate"
As a side-effect of migrating the homepages, pkglint also fixed a few
indentations in unrelated lines. These and the new homepages have been
checked manually.
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MAME 0.217
What better way to celebrate Christmas than with a new MAME release?
That’s right – MAME 0.217 is scheduled for release today.
The most exciting thing this month is the recovery of the Sega
Model 1 coprocessor TGP programs for Star Wars Arcade and Wing War,
making these games fully playable. We’ve been working on Virtua
Fighter as well, and while the graphics are greatly improved, there
are still some gameplay issues as of this release. In other arcade
emulation news, sasuke has been busy fixing long-standing graphical
issues in Nichibutsu games, and AJR has made some nice improvements
to the early SNK 6502-based games.
On the home system side, there are some nice Sam Coupé improvements
from TwistedTom, support for Apple II paddle controllers, a better
Apple II colour palette, and significant improvements to Acorn
RiscPC emulation. TV game emulation is progressing steadily, with
two Lexibook systems, the Jungle Soft Zone 40, and the MiWi 16-in-1
now working.
For front-end developers, we’ve added data to the XML list format
allowing you to handle software lists enabled by slot card devices
(there are a few of these for Acorn and Sinclair home computers).
The minimaws sample script has been updated to demonstrate a number
of tasks related to handling software lists. For MAME contributors,
we’ve made save state registration a bit simpler, and more manageable
in the debugger.
MAME 0.216
With the end of November in sight, it’s time to check out MAME
0.216! We’ve addressed the reported issues with last month’s bgfx
update, and made a whole lot of little improvements to MAME’s
internal user interface. In particular, setting up controls should
be easier, and several issues affecting macOS users with non-English
number format settings have been fixed. Some of the issues caused
bad settings to be written to INI files. If you still don’t see
the filter list panel on the system selection menu, try removing
the ui.ini file.
This month, we’re able to present two unreleased 1970s prototypes
from Italian developer Model Racing: their internal code names are
Cane and Orbite. With the assistance of former Model Racing employees,
the source code was extracted from the original disks. These games
are incomplete, but they provide a unique look into early CPU-based
arcade development. Game & Watch titles continue to be emulated,
with the addition of Mario The Juggler, and the panorama screen
Mickey Mouse and Donkey Kong Circus games in this release.
This release brings GameKing emulation to MAME. The system-on-a-chip
used in this low-cost, low-resolution hand-held console from the
early 2000s has been identified and emulated. Games for the
colour-screen GameKing III are also playable. Acorn BBC Micro
emulation has been re-worked to support internal expansion boards,
and a number of additional peripherals are now available. ZX Spectrum
emulation has been enhanced with better open bus read behaviour
and support for two Miles Gordon Technology peripherals.
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https://www.mamedev.org/?p=474
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A wild MAME 0.215 appears! Yes, another month has gone by, and it’s
time to check out what’s new. On the arcade side, Taito’s incredibly
rare 4-screen top-down racer Super Dead Heat is now playable!
Joining its ranks are other rarities, such as the European release
of Capcom‘s 19XX: The War Against Destiny, and a bootleg of Jaleco’s
P-47 – The Freedom Fighter using a different sound system. We’ve
got three newly supported Game & Watch titles: Lion, Manhole, and
Spitball Sparky, as well as the crystal screen version of Super
Mario Bros. Two new JAKKS Pacific TV games, Capcom 3-in-1 and Disney
Princesses, have also been added.
Other improvements include several more protection microcontrollers
dumped and emulated, the NCR Decision Mate V working (now including
hard disk controllers), graphics fixes for the 68k-based SNK and
Alpha Denshi games, and some graphical updates to the Super A'Can
driver.
We’ve updated bgfx, adding preliminary Vulkan support. There are
some issues we’re aware of, so if you run into issues, check our
GitHub issues page to see if it’s already known, and report it if
it isn’t. We’ve also improved support for building and running on
Linux systems without X11.
0.214:
With the end of September almost here, it’s time to see what goodies
MAME 0.214 delivers. This month, we’ve got support for five more
Nintendo Game & Watch titles (Fire, Flagman, Helmet, Judge and
Vermin), four Chinese computers from the 1980s, and three Motorola
CPU evaluation kits. Cassette support has been added or fixed for
a number of systems, the Dragon Speech Synthesis module has been
emulated, and the Dragon Sound Extension module has been fixed.
Acorn Archimedes video, sound and joystick support has been greatly
improved.
On the arcade side, remaining issues in Capcom CPS-3 video emulation
have been resolved and CD images have been upgraded to CHD version
5, Sega versus cabinet billboard support has been added to relevant
games, and long-standing issues with music tempo in Data East games
have been worked around.
0.213:
It's really about time we released MAME 0.213, with more of everything
we know you all love. First of all, we’re proud to present support
for the first Hegener + Glaser product: the “brikett” chess computers,
Mephisto, Mephisto II and Mephisto III. As you can probably guess,
there’s an addition from Nintendo’s Game & Watch line. This month
it’s Mario’s Bombs Away. On a related note, we’ve also added
Elektronika’s Kosmicheskiy Most, exported as Space Bridge, which
is an unlicensed total conversion of the Game & Watch title Fire.
If you haven’t played any of the handheld LCD games in MAME, you’re
missing something special – they look superb with external scanned
and traced artwork.
On the arcade side, we’ve added The Destroyer From Jail (a rare
Philko game), and alternate regional versions of Block Out and
Super Shanghai Dragon’s Eye. The CD for Simpsons Bowling has been
re-dumped, resolving some long-standing issues. With its protection
microcontroller dumped and emulated, Birdie Try is now fully
playable. Protection microcontrollers for The Deep and Last Mission
have also been dumped and emulated. Improvements to Seibu hardware
emulation mean Banpresto’s SD Gundam Sangokushi Rainbow Tairiku
Senki is now playable, and sprite priorities in Seibu Cup Soccer
have been improved.
In computer emulation, two interesting DOS compatible machines
based on the Intel 80186 CPU are now working: the Mindset Personal
Computer, and the Dulmont Magnum. The Apple II software lists have
been updated to include almost all known clean cracks and original
flux dumps, and the Apple II gameport ComputerEyes frame grabber
is now emulated. We’ve received a series of submissions that greatly
improve emulation of the SWTPC S/09 and SS-30 bus cards. On the
SGI front, the 4D/20 now has fully-working IRIX 4.0.5 via serial
console, and a whole host of improvements have gone into the Indy
“Newport” graphics board emulation. Finally, MAME now supports HDI,
2MG and raw hard disk image files.
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It’s the moment you’ve surely been waiting for: the release of MAME
0.212! A huge amount of work has gone into this release in a number
of different areas. Starting with the software lists, you’ll find
hundreds more clean cracks for Apple II, the Rainbow on Disk
collection for Tandy Color Computer, all the latest Game Boy Advance
dumps, and thousands more ZX Spectrum cassette images. Chess
computers now support chess piece simulation using the built-in
artwork, support has been added for several more chess computers
from Hegener & Glaser, Novag and Saitek, and the Tasc ChessSystem
R30 is now working. Three Game & Watch titles, Bomb Sweeper, Gold
Cliff and Safe Buster, have been added for this release.
Protection microcontrollers continue to fall, with Rainbow Islands
– Extra Version, Choplifter, Wyvern F-0, 1943: The Battle of Midway
and Bionic Commando no longer needing simulation, hacks or patches.
In some cases, the dumps have confirmed that the protection had
been reverse-engineered correctly and the simulation was correct,
but it's still important to preserve these programs. It’s also
important for people repairing these systems if the original
microcontrollers have failed.
There are three important sound-related fixes in this release: FM
Towns CD audio playback positions have been fixed, Konami System
573 digital audio synchronisation has been improved, and a special
low latency mode has been added for the PortAudio sound module.
For more advanced users and developers, more functionality has been
exposed to Lua scripts and plugins. The layout file format has been
overhauled to better support systems that make creative use of LEDs
and LCDs. Disassembler support has been added for the Fujitsu
F2MC-16 and National Semiconductor CompactRISC CR16B architectures.
And if you've been following along, you might notice that we’ve
waved goodbye to a little more of our C legacy with the removal of
the MACHINE_CONFIG_START macro and its associated crud.
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As we pass the half-way point of 2019, it’s time for MAME 0.211,
with all the excitement that brings. In this release, SGI Indy and
MIPS RC2030 workstations have been promoted to working. This is a
major milestone in RISC workstation emulation. If you’re feeling
nostalgic, why not try one of them out, and install IRIX or RISC/os,
respectively? This release also includes better support for the
China Education Computer Apple II derivatives, along with a
preliminary software list. This opens a window to Chinese classroom
technology in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Speaking of software
lists, we’ve added over five hundred cleanly cracked Apple II
software titles, and imported a whole lot of ZX Spectrum cassette
images.
Looking away from computer emulation for a moment, Game & Watch
preservation keeps progressing, with the addition of Ball (the
earliest Game & Watch release) and the panorama screen version of
Donkey Kong Jr. The Gaelco/Salter Pro Cycle Tele Cardioline exercise
system has been promoted to working, and the Pro Stepper system
has been added. System 573 MP3 audio has been greatly improved in
this release, and support has been added for more Bally pinball
sound boards. ClawGrip added example programs from the V.R.
Technologies VT03 software development kit. Gemcrush, a rare brick
breaking arcade game, has been added in this release.
There are lots of other improvements, including a fix for the fatal
error when switching away from MAME in Direct3D full-screen mode.
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