After extensive testing, I have determined that in Internet Explorer 5, Microsoft has continued their tradition of crap. Though MSIE4 was comparable to Netscape Communicator 4, MSIE5 sucks compared to what Raptor 5 is already capable of. Like IE5 gave me a real good impression when it crashed on the 2nd page I loaded, but that's not what I'm talking about. IE5 seems to support very little more that IE4 did. Raptor on the other hand, supports tons of really cool new features and should put Netscape very far on top whenever they decide to release it. Microsoft really blew it with this version. I may start adding new stuff soon on test pages (but first I really should get some of the archive pages update ;)
Raptor 5 Beta | MSIE5

UltraHLE official site returns!
TheFox of Emulators Unlimited has brought the UltraHLE site back from the grave, as promised. It includes screenshots of all the games that work, partially work, and don't work (the Wheel of Fortune wireframe is amusing). Here is the statement made:

"We are proud to reopen the OFFICIAL UltraHLE homepage as it was majorly requested by the emulation and media public and here it is :) It will be ran by The Fox and in the next few months we should see some exciting things added to this site as a media section, interviews and so on..."

BTW, UltraHLE and the bleem! beta were never erased from our archives (whoops) but you had to go searching in our FTP archives. Now I guess it doesn't matter :)

bleem!'s early impact on the media
~~~
[ Next-Gen: Can Emulators Go Mass Market | Wired | IGNPSX ]

David Tucker has updated his VBEmu page with more news and pics. He figured out the remaining lines on the VB controller go to the diagrams page for the pin out, and he reproduced his oOscilloscope trace. Also, he did some research on making a 'red' palette for the emu, he thinks he can make it look OK if he does some trickery with the contrast (ie: brighten up all the palette entries to make it look ok). So maybe the next release will have an optional support for a red palette. Some cool screen shots of the red palette with games, as well as a some other misc. screen shots are available on the official VB emulator homepage.

Neil has finally nailed down the internal vector problems in the linedraw code for the Windows port, and now the vector games are working. He needs to iron out a few minor details, but it's looking great! Brian Peek has found the last bug in the sound code for the Windows port, and now it sounds great! What this all means is that POSSIBLY a Windows beta will be ready for beta testers by the weekend. This is by no means a guarantee, but things are looking good. Post your comments and questions in our Retrocade message board.

It was August the last time we saw a release of this multi system emulator, but it now appears that a new release is rapidly approaching. Last night a private beta was released to those on the dev list. It has since added the following systems for emulation:

• ZX-Spectrum 48k [Allard van der Bas]
• Atari 7800 [Dan Boris]
• PC-compatible (MDA, CGA, Tandy 1000) [Juergen Buchmueller]
• RA+A Spectrum I+ [Mathis Rosenhauer]
• TI-994a [Raphael Nabet] (My first computer BTW! ;-)

Emu News World closes down
Just weeks after Emu News Service got a new server and domain name, and expanded to Emu News World, it has shut down. Emu News Service has been one of the top emu news sites for the past two and a half years it has been up. Jim Pragit has been offered a new full-time programming job with a consulting firm. His commute adds two and a half hours to his day, taking away from the time he normally updates Emu News. Since he does not want Emu News to become a "shadow" of its former self, he is discontinuing it. He has put up the sections he was last working on. Good luck to Jim in the future. You can read the full statement here.

I have been experimenting with IE-only tags (which will work in Netscape 5) and other upcoming tags. Netscape 5 looks very promising, however currently there are several bugs present and for example, this page overloads it and only displays fuzz. However with the recent release of IE 5, I thought I'd fool with some new tags. IE3+ users will notice that the counter will update itself and stay current every 30 secs. This will only be noticable if there are other visitors while you stay browsing this page. I MARQUEE'd it just to make it noticable. All it is is an IFRAME which calls an AutoRefreshing CGI that reads counter data but does not increment. What does this have to do with emulation, you ask? Well I guess you could say I'm simulating the Java applet that serves the same purpose ;) Stay tuned for other odd additions including Netscape 4 compatible LAYERs sometime.... HTML is getting as hard to keep up with as emunews! I don't like IE, but Raptor 5 has prompted me to start experimenting with new things... you can get the latest copy here.

Moonlit Coalition has announced the third of five systems to be emulated by Moonrise/Sunset. It is the NES. The first two announced were the N64 and the PSX. The others will remain a mystery until the become "rock solid truth." This is one project to watch.

Did you like the screen shots of Bloody Roar, Jet Moto 2, and Tekken 3 posted yesterday on the bleem! site? Well, if you did, you're in luck, as they have now posted screen shots of Gran Turismo, one of the most popular game ever for the PSX! There are three screen shots available: [1, 2, 3]. Click on the respective links to view the individual pics. Because the bleem! site has been getting hammered and exceeding their bandwidth consumption, these pics are compressed even more, so the real emulation looks even better! Thanks to Park Kyungjae for the news.

Well most people interested in N64 emulation have obviously heard of this so called "project". Most people believe it to be another fake, but now comes an interesting or maybe well thought out twist. According to this page, Nintendo is flying the "Total64 Team" to Japan. So that they can work on it being the "Official N64 emulator from Nintendo". Umm... well, you can make your own opinions about this if its going to be true or not, or just another hoax. Give your views also in our UltraHLE/N64 emulation message board. Thanks to Sean Casey for the news.

Also mentioned on the Glide Underground is an apparant hack of UltraHLE going around called Extremme 64. If you encounter this, you are urged to delete it immediatley.

Version 0.91 of the Memotech MTX512 emulator is being worked on and should be released shortly. Here's a preliminary feature list of the next release:

• Addresses some problems with lowercase filenames
• Interrupt/CTC-architecture
• Tape conversion
• Control over (virtual) PCB-switches etc.
• Printer output
• Double size window

Wow! The bleem! site has been updated by DragonYen again of EliteGamer.com. This update is mainly for those who want to see the improvement that a D3D compatible 3D card will give you over software rendering. Needless to say, these screen shots are stunning to say the least. There are shots of Bloody Roar, Jet Moto 2, and Tekken 3 (click on the the respective links to view the shots). These shots are taken with the latest beta of bleem, on a STB Velocity 128 3D AGP (Nvidia Riva 128) in 800x600 resolution and 16bit color. Thanks to darkreign, TDG, Autumn Child and drcck97 for the news. Discussion is encouraged in our general emulation message board.

The SoM64 page has been updated with some news. A public beta could be available as soon as a month from now, and it will not only be a N64 emulator, but also a SNES emulator as well! This has the makings of being an awesome emulator!

~~~~~
[IGN64: N2000X]

A new N64 emulator to run under the Linux(OpenGL) platform is under development called NINU. So far the CPU is complete, and they are starting on the "HLE" part. ;-) Visit it's webpage here. Thanks to KwYxZ for the news. Also according to KwYxZ, UltraHLE is supposed to run quite well under Wine (Windows emulator) for Linux. It also supposeably runs faster than under Win98 itself (which is hard to believe). However, bad news for TNT owners as Glide wrappers don't seem to work, so you must own a 3DFX card if you want to attempt this. ;-)

Fx3 has posted some nice screen shots of some NES games running under RockNES. Games include: Battle Toads/Double Dragon, RC Pro Am, Ghost Busters, Pro Am II and Gradius II. official RockNES page. As for the news:

According to EBworld, the PSX2 will have "unparalleled connectivity capabilities." But don't take it from me, read the article below.
[EBWorld]

According to the story at the link provided below, a new low-cost Amiga PC and an Internet appliance should be released by Gateway before year's end. Of course, when Gateway originally acquired the rights to the Amiga in '97, it promissed a new machine by the fall of '98, so naturally people are skeptical. Still, its cool to hope for it, being the big Amiga fan that I am. Read the entire article from the link provided above. Thanks to Alcoholic Rug and Stephen W. Bryant for the news.
[ZDNet]

Another in the series of Namco System 1 hardware games has been added to JAS, called Dragon Spirit. Screen shots are provided at the link below. The graphics are pretty much done, but sound is still a bit screwy. There is no known release date with support for this game yet.
[Dragon Spirit Screenshots]

Let me let you know of the reasons why I haven't been updating regularly. First and foremost, my school has put up proxies. Right now they are incorrectly configured (what a f'ing surprise) and I cannot update unless I let the whole world know my password (sounds like M$ here;) In addition, school activities, bad weather, and sickness has prevented me from getting my updates uploaded, or even ready when I'd have liked. I have gotten all releases up-to-date, but I am still filling in missed (and accidently deleted) news. Deezer should start getting the files uploaded now that I have the updates listed :) I have started a new info box system which I really wanted to start one year ago. You can see the examples by clicking the names of the programs on NEO*GEO Utilities section, for example. Some files and stuff have been fixed. I have tried to get the message board working, but for some reason, it isn't. This board hasn't been used for two years now, but if anybody would like to see if they can get it working, contact me. Also, sometime recently Patent Pending passed 40,000 hits and the KonTek main page has passed 10,000. On top of that TMK is rapidly approaching it's 2nd birthday. Since winter is exiting, I think it's time for a PP logo update. Mail me and tell me what you think should be on the new logo... Pikachu? Link? Also, we really need maintainers for PP, check below to see what I mean. I don't know what's going on with our surrent ones, but it's not much. Oh, I also have decided I may as well release TetriNet skins for PP and 404 Not Found. They include only new grafx and music, I never got around to creating new sounds. Enjoy. For now, I guess, MEGAߥTE, out.

Connectix to continue development of VGS for Windows
Despite everything Sony has tried to do to Connectix, Connectix has announced that it is continuing development of the VGS for Windows. At this point there is nothing that Sony can do about it. Read the relating articles below for more information.
[ ZDNet | MacWeek ]