Neogeo Emulator information

[vtnwesley]

At VTE we are gearing up for a possible Neogeo section. It's been a long time coming. However, we don't post emulators on VTE unless we've used and evaluted them first, so I was wondering if anyone might know a bit about typical Neogeo emulators. Here are my questions. They are fairly generic. Feel free to add your own two cents if there is anything else I should be keeping in mind.

1.) do most Neogeo emulators need a BIOS rom to run?

2.) Do emulators that support NeoCD games need a SEPARATE BIOS?

3.) What types of roms do Neogeo emulators use? Typical MAME arcade type roms, or are they Neogeo specific dumps?

4.) Whenever MAME is updated, so are many of the ROMs. As you may be aware, the supported mame roms get a “Version number” of sorts to show they are the supported up-to-date ones. Is there any particular release number Neogeo emulators prefer?

5.) Do Neogeo emulators tend to have GUIs or are they mostly command line driven?

6.) Are there any details about specific Neogeo emulators I should keep in mind as a VTE Editor? (was it the first at anything, is it the best at anything, does it emulator 99% of the game library perfectly, etc)



7.) The Rage/NeoRage people seem kind of bitter about people hacking their emulator without permission. Can anyone give me more info on the how's and why's of this? Feel free to name names lol.

Thank you very much for your time,
Wesley Pollow
VTemulation.net

[Agozer]

1) Yes. All of them.
2) Yes.
3) Non-MAME Neo-Geo sets. MAME use MAME Neo-Geo sets of course.
4) Neo-Geo games do not have version numbers. As I said before, other Neo-Geo emulators do not use MAME sets, AFAIK.
5) All of them have GUIs.
6) NeoRAGEx usually needs hacked P1/P2 roms to boot the newer Neo-Geo games properly, and it doesn't support encrypted sets. All the games are playable on all emulators, with a few exceptions like VLiner and Diggerman. NEORAGEx doesn't emulate raster effects, same with Kawaks I think.
7) I don't know. They chose not to update NeoRAGEx anymore, and people didn't like that so hacks started to surface.

[Allnatural]

3) Non-MAME Neo-Geo sets. MAME use MAME Neo-Geo sets of course.

The MAME sets are also used by Nebula and Kawaks.

[Agozer]

The MAME sets are also used by Nebula and Kawaks.

Some MAME sets aren't supported in Nebula/Kawaks. At least not in Nebula, since Nebula doesn't support certain C decryptions.

In any case, you are right.

[vtnwesley]

Wow, thanks for the info. Good stuff. Feel kind of bad for those Rage/Neorage people. Sounds like the fan community basically stole their closed-source code. I can see why they'd be outraged. Much to my dismay, it seems most things involving that emulator have fallen off the face of the planet. Their webhost email boxes are full and unattended. One of my biggest pet peeves. Come on guys, just take down those email links... Let's not be lazy lol. Thanks again for the info, folks.

[Agozer]

Well yeah, the roiginal NeoRAGEx has fallen off the face of the earth. The only hack that has still some development going on is the EGCG one.