NeoRAGEx

NeoRAGEx
NeoRAGEx
Developer(s) Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela
Stable release 0.6b / June 17, 1999
Operating system Microsoft Windows 95/98
Type Emulator
License Freeware
Website R.A.G.E. Homepage

NeoRAGEx is the Windows port of NeoRAGE, a DOS command-line based Neo-Geo system emulator (AES and MVS). The original NeoRAGE was the first Neo-Geo emulator available and was capable of running most of the games (except King of Fighters '99 and later) at 60fps on a Pentium 200 MMX with 32 MB of RAM system. NeoRAGEx used the Starscream 680x0 emulation library as its CPU core.[1]

NeoRAGEx was a fully 32-bit Windows based application which added an attractive GUI, sound support for games and many more features such as a screen dump tool. Within just a few releases the developers had created an excellent Neo-Geo emulator which would serve as the foundation upon which many other Neo-Geo emulators would be based and inspired (such as Nebula and Kawaks). A feature unique to NeoRAGEx was that it was able to run most dumps without having the specific support or 'driver' added to do this, as other emulators such as MAME, Nebula and Kawaks require.

As development on NeoRAGEx slowed, eventually to the point where the emulator would not run under Windows XP, members of the emulation community started work on hacked versions, firstly adding support for running under Windows XP and then adding more recently released games to the game list.

Without any updates or the original source code being released the emulator was eventually superseded by newer Neo-Geo emulators. The most prolific site hosting fan versions and hacks was neoragex.com, created by Ryan Younger ('wizardchicken') and running from August 2000 to February 2008, tallying up several million visitors each month, this site maintained an archive of hacked versions for some years after work on the official releases halted.

History

The first Neo-Geo emulator was NeoGekko, a test emulator released in June 1998 which allowed Nam 1975 to be played, but was unfortunately discontinued pending legal threats by SNK.[2]

Since the demise of NeoGekko, Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela (of RAGE fame) released a new NeoGeo emulator called NeoRAGE (NeoGeo Real Arcade Game Emulator), the second playable but the first well-known NeoGeo arcade videogame emulator. As a result, those with the resources begin dumping NeoGeo "ROMs" as fast as they can get their hands on them, which only adds fuel to the IDSA campaign's fire. NeoRage is yet another portent of things to come, as the NeoGeo is quite popular and still in commercial production. As a result, many on the emuscene sense a new generation of videogame emulators is looming on the horizon.[3]

Later it was updated and superseded by NeoRAGEx, the DirectX version of NeoRAGE released by the same authors. The last update of the emulator was June 17 1999.[4]

Although the official development has stopped, there are numerous different versions by third-party developers, like "SNK-Neo fighters", a Brazilian group who created NeoRage 5.2x, which runs almost every game released for MVS.

Reference

  1. ^ http://caesar.logiqx.com/php/emulator.php?id=neoragex
  2. ^ http://ungr.emuunlim.com/emulators.php
  3. ^ http://www.zophar.net/articles/article14.html
  4. ^ http://www.retrogames.com/0699.html

External links

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