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SegaCD Emulators
Due to the complicated nature of the Sega CD's 68000 chip running simultaneously with the Genesis' chip at the same
Mhz and the fact that Sega didn't yet have a development website open on the Internet for hackers to swipe valuable
tech info off of (did someone say Saturn?) the Sega CD has yet to be emulated to the point of games actually
executing. I still have hopes that someone with an iron will and a lot of spare time will reverse-engineer the
Sega CD in order to make an emulator for it. Until then, we can only watch these brave authors try what is thought
to be the impossible. To make things easier, we no longer show abandoned Sega CD emus.
Joseph Fenton, creator of Fusion, the Macintosh emulator, has started development
of a general Sega emulator supporting Genesis, 32X, and Sega CD. We are going to see
results very soon with this pro on the job, and I'll keep this page updated with info
on it's progress. The emulator is currently planned for the PowerPC platform for both
Power Macintosh and AmigaPPC. An i386 compiled DOS version may be ported after the
PowerPC release.
It's Eek of 32Xulator fame, now he's moved onto Sega CD emulation. As of version
.4 there isn't much the emulator can do, however version .5 should be able to run the
Sega CD Bios! I have high hopes for this project. Eek has also informed me that he
will be adding 32X support later on in the emu's development. I will keep you informed
on this CDX1's progress.
The Sega CD portion of Christian Fowler's has been delayed for now, however the Sega Genesis
32X version is still alive and work continues on it. This project to emulate all of the older
Sega systems hasn't been entirely in vain, the GameGear/Master System emulation is complete
and part of the Genesis and 32X emulation also. An early version was released a while ago
that would load part of the Sega CD game inserted and create a log file of the events that
occured when doing so. Then you were to send in the log files for different games to help
them make the emulator. So many people sent in log files that the team had to tell people
to stop sending them (I myself sent in 5 logs). The program also loaded the Sega CD Boot
Rom, if you were sneaky enough to get it (was hard back then), but it wouldn't let you do
anything more with it. The emu has a nice little GUI with some cool little effects built
in.
This emulation project was just started and some work has been done on it. At this time the future
of the emulator doesn't seem too bright, as I don't think the authors know what they're up against,
but I'd love them to prove me wrong! I'll be keeping an eye on the project, stay tuned for updates.
Hybrid's Sega CD emulation project is a new project started in light, probably, of Eidolon's discovery of
the original Sega CD patents, which answers the hardest questions about the dual 68ks' syncronicity. Hybrid's
project is different than other emulation projects because he doesn't plan to emulate all of the games with an
all-purpose Sega CD emulator. He's going to take the MAME approach and emulate the games one by one. He says he
will start with Tomcat Alley. I wish him the best of luck.
This project hasn't been going on long, but Atani has already posted screen shots, inlcuding on of the title screen for
Lunar: Eternal Blue. He has also released versions of his emulator, however none of them can make such screen shots. I think
this emulator is a fake! There are 3 screen shots on his site 1 with text loading the game and then two screen shots, the bios screen
and the Lunar: Eternal Blue title screen. The first, where it shows the emulator loading, is a very clean and clear image, whereas the
two others look exactly like poorly captured composite images from a Snappy. I think that if Atani actually releases and emulator that
will show these screens, it won't be an EMULATOR, but rather a SIMULATOR, simply showing static images from the bios screena and then a
title screen. Atani assures me this is not so, but seeing as how no source code will be released, I am very sceptical. The versions can
be found in the downloads section.
Last Updated: 11/26/98
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