FinalBurn Alpha

Infobox_Software
name = FinalBurn Alpha



caption = Windows GUI
developer = FinalBurn Alpha Team
latest_release_version = 0.2.96.96
latest_release_date = September 11 2008
operating_system = Cross-platform
genre = Arcade emulator
license = Custom (FBA License)
website = http://www.barryharris.me.uk/
website (alternate) = http://fba.emuunlim.com/

FinalBurn Alpha is an arcade emulator for MC68000/Z80 based arcade games. It mostly plays Capcom games on the CPS-1 and CPS-2 boards as well as most of the Neo-Geo MVS arcade games and other miscellaneous hardware [ [http://www.barryharris.me.uk/fba.php Barry Harris' history of Finalburn Alpha] ] .

Origins

FinalBurn Alpha is based on Dave's Final Burn emulator. Dave's Final Burn Emulator was first called After Burner Emu, and it was first released in August 2000. It was then renamed Final Burn started in September 2000 [http://www.emuwiki.com/index.php5?title=History_of_Final_Burn History of the Final Burn emulator] - EmuWiki.com, The encyclopedia of Emulation] . It was an emulator for Sega System 16 and Sega X Board arcade games. It was the first arcade emulator to run games like the After Burner series or Power Drift.

Dave's greatest success, however, was to help emulate the CPS2 arcade board. Together with the XOR tables released by the CPS2 Shock group, Finalburn started offering CPS2 emulation almost immediately, and until the creation of other CPS2 emulators such as Kawaks or Nebula his emulator remained the only option available.

However, the frantic speed of CPS2 Shock releases contrasted with Dave's more laid back approach, and Dave soon got tired of the pressure of releasing new versions of his emulator every time a new XOR was produced. This pressure, together with the constant hate mail, finally took a toll on him. One of the latest versions of Finalburn offered Sega only emulation as a means of protest, and soon later Dave completely abandoned the emulator. Latest version available is v0.518, and can still be downloaded from his website. It emulates most CPS2 games dumped by the time of its release, together with some Sega and CPS1 titles.

Present day

Since then, the various incarnations of the FinalBurn Alpha derived project have taken over. They started by adding more CPS2 games as soon as the XOR tables were available, but since then they have included support for NeoGeo MVS, more Sega games, as well as for games developed by Gaelco, Konami, Taito and other.

More recently, from version 0.2.96.73 onwards and thanks to Oopsware's driver, CPS3 emulation has been added.

Finalburn Alpha, although it is the most popular and used descendant of the original Final Burn emulator by Dave, is not alone. As a matter of fact, Final Burn is one of the most modified emulators and the fact that its sources were published lead to a huge number of modifications/hacks/translations to appear, such as : FBA Plus!, FBA Combo, Unofficial FBA, FB Kaillera, FBA Shuffle, Final Burn Evolution, FB Next, FBA Slotman's Edition, FBCPS2 (a Chinese translation and hack), FB Hack, FBL CPS-1, a French translation. Additionally, Final Burn was ported to different platforms such as GP2X (FBA2X), BeOS (Final Burn SDL), Linux (FB Linux, an attempt that was not completed) and Xbox (Final Burn Alpha X, this port was done by third parties and was illegal because it was made using the copyrighted Xbox Development tools).

Notes