Mess is a multiple console and computer emulator, being developed to run on several platforms. The Acorn development is being done by Gareth Long, of MAME fame, to which this is the sequel. First officially announced on the Acorn Emulation Mailing list, with the following email:
"The 'sequel' to MAME is a product called MESS. It's based on MAME, but involves a system of console drivers instead - the first being NES in this case.
The core development team is smaller than the MAME one, Basically it's myself and about three others at the moment. The others are fairly famous in the world of MAME - Brad Oliver, etc. I can confirm however that the first ever ever MESS builds occured on my Risc PC and Brad's Mac. The pre-development builds don't even work under DOS yet.
I can't release it until the others in the team are happy with it. The first release will be a simultaneous Acorn/Mac/DOS version - and, yes, we're waiting for the DOS port to be ready before it comes out. In fact, Unix versions will probably be ready before the DOS one. Who can tell?
Incidently, the technology behind the NES emulation part comes from the members of the xNES team - IE Brad Oliver etc. MESS (in NES terms at least) is the replacement for xNES. Recent reports suggest that the NES part of the emulator runs Elite perfectly - something many NES emus cannot do!
Anyway, I thought you'd be interested... This is truly an area where a worldwide freeware project can be said to have begun with Acorn machines at the outset, and personally, I'm looking forward to a whole new class of death threat from some of the more sinister emulation anoraks using other platforms." - Gareth Long
This does seem to be a very promising project, and one which the emulation scence in general, not least on the Acorn will benefit from enormously. In the future, the Sega Master System and Gameboy consoles (amongst many others) will be emulated by MESS, possibly even the megadrive and SNES, although those are quite a way off. In the mean time I think we can look forward to mario in glorious technicolour :o)
Since the first release of the above announcement, it has been announced that as well as emulating consoles, MESS will also emulate several computer systems, particular examples will be a Spectrum and BBC Micro emulator. For the first release version, which Gareth has hinted at being soonish (ie. the next few weeks, I think) a ColecoVision emulator has also been included already, as well as a few other secret things.
There has been a hint at the emulation of an Atari Lynx also being in the code!! If so, it'll be the first Lynx emu on the Acorn.
News of Master System support quoted from an email on the Acorn Emulation mailing list:
"MESS will support MS sooner rather than later, for two reasons
I can think of, if that helps.. ;-)
Okay, for those who think I'm cryptic, the two reasons are that one of
the current emulators has a video hardware device like the MS (and MESS
already has the MS sound device) and.. another device supported had, in
real life, the ability to play MS games in a sort-of emulation mode.
And for MS you can consider the Game Gear too, because that's a MS with
slightly better palette abilities." - Gareth Long
At the moment, according to the MESS webpage, the only systems fully emulated are the ColecoVision, the NES and the Sega Megadrive. Screenshots are also available to view of MESS running on a Mac.
However, in a message to the Acorn Emulation Mailling list, Gareth said that, "there will be the first initial release at the end of May. Two computers have been added to MESS's initial line-up, and an ex-CC programmer is currently browsing through the MESS driver system to add a more familiar machine to the fold...".
It seems that these 2 new systems are the Colour Genie and the TRS-80, the 'familiar machine' is as yet unannounced.
Speed Rating: unknown
Emulators:
The Official MESS webpage
- nothing to download yet though!
ROMs:
for the NES
for the ColecoVision
for the Megadrive
Recommended ROMs:
for the NES
for the ColecoVision
for the Megadrive