There were early rumours circulating in discussions on comp.sys.acorn.games, and the appearance of a fluffy Sonic the Hedgehog at Acorn World 97 teased users, and finally, I am very pleased to announce, that there is definately a Megadrive emulator under development for the Acorn range of computers. Given the nature of the backer, and the reliability and dedication of the programmer, I am certain that this is not vapourware. I can reveal that this is not a port of an emulator from another platform, and is being developed entirely for the Acorn.
One
piece of information that I am very pleased to mention, is that the due
to the hand crafted ARM code, the emulator will not be RISC PC only and
should indeed run on less powerful acorns. How much less powerful remains
to be seen. A5000 owners, I wouldn't get your hopes up just yet - I'm not.
There is also a parallel version written in C that is portable, it has been tested on powerful macs to run at 80 fps, and over 100% normal speed on 200MHz PCs, the Acorn port should be pretty nifty as well, though the MC68000 core has yet to be optimised.
It seems likely that the ARM code version will be made commercially available (ie. you'll have to pay for sonic), and the C version may be freely distributable (ie. you'll just have to download sonic). This could be another major turning point for Acorn emulation, with an emulator that should rival the mighty Genecyst being available on Acorn and other platforms. Witha b it of luck the emulator should be out around early June.
By request, I cannot give too much away, but I would like to say that this will be a welcome addition to the Acorn Emulation scene, with such a popular (and reasonably modern) system emulated. Hopefully we can look forward to other more powerful systems being emulated in the future.
Speed Rating: ARM 7500FE - Perfect, StrongARM - Perfect (all theoretical of course)
Emulators:
On the way!
ROMs:
Megadrive
ROMs
Genesis
ROMs
Planet
ROM's megadrive ROMs
The
Underworld's megadrive ROMs
Emulation Archive
genesis ROMs
Ultra
Romz
RomS
Quite
a few ROMs
Reviews
and Roms (and worms!)
Down...
The Dump
- over 500 megadrive ROMs! (currently down)
Underground
cities ROMs
Recommended ROMs:
Road Rash 1 & 2, Sonic 1 2 3 & Knuckles & 3D, MicroMachines,
Phantasy Star, Mortal Kombat 3, Earthworm Jim, Speedball 2, Desert Strike,
Jungle Strike, Worms, Thunderforce3, Dune2.