Model 2 Emulator & ePSXe, the return of dinosaurs of emulation
These aren’t exactly last hour events but, taking into consideration the specific gravity of the mentioned software and the twist that emulation has taken in the last months/years, it seems to me due to report that two of the more advanced and appreciated standalone emulators out there haven’t stopped their race yet to the development and termination of bugs and assorted defects.
Of course here we’re not talking about emulation of PlayStation 2 or even more recent systems like DS, PSP or Wii. The period of time taken into consideration is the half of the Nineties, when 3D synthetic graphic was still youngish and the battle for the users money was played by Sega, with his arcade board Model 2, and Sony with the exploit of the original PlayStation project.
And considering that as a good consumer of 200 liras (ie less of quarter of dollars) I’ve never forgot from where I come, I’ll begin with Sega at all: in 1993 a 3D videgame in the arcades was still impressive, the PS1 was thence to come and the Model 2 lifted up the standard thanks to the upgrade on the previous version of the “Model” hardware by introducing, among the other things, texture mapping for the enrichment of the cold and rough polygons.
I’m referring, to be clear, to the system that, in his original version and in the three following revisions 2A CRX, 2B CRX and 2C CRX gave life to classics such as Daytona USA (1993), Virtua Cop (1994), Dead or Alive (1996), Dynamite Cop (1996), Sega Rally Championship (1995) and The House of the Dead (1997) only to cite few of them.
ElSemi, the author of Model 2 Emulator , is one of the most active mamedevs on the front of emulation of the “new” systems supported by MAME, the “Borg cube” of emulators, a software capable of documenting an embarrassing amount of information and simulation routines of the past and probably future arcades as well as sweeping out all the contenders.
After five months of inactivity on Model 2 and a work that seemed to be completely shifted on the MAME side – it’s embarrassing to read, in the whatsnew of the emulator created by Nicola Salmoria, his contributions to the project – at the beginning of June however ElSemi ha began to release a blast of updates for the Model 2 Emulator too. The 0.7 version was out on the 3rd of June, then followed by the 0.7a (06/04), 0.8 (06/23) and 0.8a (06/24) updates.
Many, too many are the news introduced in the above said revisions for an emulator that evidently, and luckily for me, is still alive and kicking. Among all of them must be mentioned notable things like a most accurate emulation of the TGP graphic co-processors, thanks to which most of the graphic bugs of Daytona USA and Sega Rally Championship were killed; the shift to vertex and pixel shader rendering on the discrete GPU, with the resulting benefits for the accuracy and the speed of the overall emulation.
And further: a better timing in the emulation of the sound chip SCSP; addition of a netwoking mode that, for the low latency levels existing in the links between the original arcades, gives its best only on LAN connections or on Internet connections with qualities far superior from the domestic ADSL lines (ElSemi cites explicitly the optical fibers, then fate vobis); a better support to force feedback and compatible peripherals (including the Xbox 360 controllers).
And then of course a significant amount of killed bugs, a better support to Model 2 games and much more. The last version of Model 2 Emulator is available on the ElSemi website, and banally it is essential to have the related ROMs to play the desired videogames. I know where to find them, you should know it too but in any case I’m available for some tip on the fly for the matter 😉
If the Model 2 Emulator coming back is an important fact, the update to ePSXe could be defined as historic. EPSXe is all along rated as the best PlayStation (1) emulator, being able to rely on an out of ordinary compatibility with the endless stock of videogames for the Sony machine and a plug-in structure that let you expand the basic features and gives a superior audio-video quality output among the original one thanks to the implemented filters.
The ePSXe update is historic because, even if its popularity lasts, there were no new versions since almost 5 years. So the 24th of May was released ePSXe 1.7.0 with the related updated plug-in for the GPU on Pete’s Domain. In this case also, the work of coders that in these years has hugely improved the compatibility of MAME with arcade games based on the PS1 hardware has been poured in the par excellence PlayStation emulator at last.
And work on the PS1 side, in these years, was huge: ePSXe 1.7.0 counts among its improvements substantial changes to joypad support (including those with embedded vibration), updated version of the plug-in for the sound part of the console (aka SPU), rewrite of the code for the ISO disc images support, rewri
tten MDEC decoder and assorted fixes to code for CD-ROM and emulation core.
As a result of all these fixes, rewritings and all the rest 50 games were added to the already solid list of supported videogames. To this end the ePSXe team has published an explicative screenshot showing some of these titles, including among the others Need for Speed 1, Paca Paca Passion, Transformers best of wars, Final Fantasy 4, Vampire Hunter D and Virus 2000.
