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EMULATION

Sega Master System and Game Gear

Five emulators are available:
Miracle --- MasterGear --- SMSPlus --- Sega --- SegaMS

Also see DarcNES, which includes 8-bit Sega support.

Name Miracle
Author Richard Talbot-Watkins and Matthew Godbolt
Port of None: This is original, hand-optimised assembly language
Available The authors' web site, or Acorn Gaming
Supports 95% of Master System cartridges - but not the Game Gear
Speed StrongARM: full; 610/710: full, with frameskip; pre-Risc PC: reasonable, with frameskip
Version 0.10 (!Help file says 0.01)

This emulator has full sound support and runs nice and fast on slower machines, but doesn't support Game Gear games.

Name MasterGear
Author David McEwen (david@acornemus.freeserve.co.uk)
Port of MasterGear, by Marat Fayzullin
Available David's web site, or Acorn Gaming
Supports 98% of Master System/Game Gear cartridges
Speed StrongARM: full; 610/710: 1/2
Version 1.33 - 9/1/99 (as of 20/6/99)

This emulator effectively replaces Sega (below), which is an earlier port of the same emulator, MasterGear. If you have a StrongARM this is definitely the best of the three emulators on this page.

Version 1.33 fixes some display bugs, and runs faster. Prior to this, version 1.32 added improved sound, SRAM support, more speed improvements and MIDI file output.

Recently David has released a couple of private beta-test versions with many new features, including vastly improved sound and a speed-up of the renderers, not to mention various bug fixes and extra configuration options. It even now features an interpolation feature to filter the display and make it clearer on high-resolution systems, and you can switch to greyscale mode if you want(!). A public release of these improvements should follow fairly soon (hopefully!).

Name SMSPlus
Author David McEwen (david@acornemus.freeserve.co.uk)
Port of SMSPlus, by Charles MacDonald
Available David's web site, or Acorn Gaming
Supports Nearly all Master System/Game Gear cartridges
Speed StrongARM: full
Version 0.94a (22/1/02)
David recommends this emulator as featuring both excellent compatibility and superb sound!

Name Sega
Author Gareth Moore (glm20@cam.ac.uk)
Port of MasterGear, by Marat Fayzullin
Available This web site
Supports 98% of Master System/Game Gear cartridges
Speed StrongARM: full (not speed limited); 610/710: 1/3rd
Version 0.71 (3rd August 1997)

Sound support in this emulator is only partial, and not very accurate.

Name SegaMS
Author Rich Mackin (richmackin@ntlworld.com)
Port of None - original code
Available Not yet released
Supports See author's website
Speed ?
Version Not yet released

This emulator is currently in developed, but is apparently pretty near release now!

...this page last updated: 16/8/01...
...back to the top...
EMULATION
Amiga
Apple II
Arcade (MAME)
Atari 2600
Atari 800
BBC Micro
Capcom Play
Coleco
Commodore
CPC
Gameboy
Lynx
Macintosh
Megadrive
MESS
MSX
NeoGeo Pocket
NES
Oric
PC
PC Engine
Sega 8-bit
SNES
Spectrum
ST
TI8x
ZX81
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Old News
2000 1999 1998
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Play arcade games with the Capcom Play emulator from David McEwen, a RISC OS original that's now been updated to version 1.25a.
Multiple Commodore machine emulator VICE upgraded to version 1.7
Full Tek review now online - finally!
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