Luke Usher

The next release of my Bug!er-Up patcher will still support Bug! and Bug! Too, but also add support for Baku Baku Animal, Comix Zone, Ecco the Dolphin, and Panzer Dragoon.

Why? I genuinely have no idea.

At least I’m limiting myself to “SEGA PC” titles. Anything beyond that would be pure madness.

Konami Python arcade machine all bundled up and ready to play 2003 era soccer

Python 2 all opened up showing the PS2 and a bit of the IO board inside

Caution text on the top of the machine humorously saying you need to be a qualified engineer to open this box or else you'll die of electricity

Big 🧵time!

Lets talk about my new friend, the Konami Python.

It's kinda the odd duck of the family. The middle child between the Konami Viper and the Konami Python 2. The system was a short lived platform.

We appreciate we've not announced anything in quite some time, so we'd like to share our current development progress.
Our main focus has been getting EA's online services working so we can restore Xbox Live functionality in EA titles. Here's where things stand right now: (1/6)

It should be!

GFWL didn't die; only the marketplace (and some of the DRM which MK doesn't use) did

The Steam version still works using GFWL, including matchmaking, even on Windows 11, although nobody else is playing...

A screenshot of the 1996 port of Comix Zone working on Windows 11.

I may have a problem (Why stop at just Bug!?)

Today we have released ares v146. This release is significant because it introduces emulation for the Pioneer LaserActive, which has never been emulated successfully in the past.

Read more at ares-emu.net/news/ares-v1...
Get ares at ares-emu.net

Bug!er Up has been updated to fix some issues with incorrect audio track playback in Bug Too!

That's what happens when you decide to add support for an entire second game at the last hour, heh.

Live and learn.

The code is rushed/messy, and it's not quite as polished as something I would usually share, but it works on my machine, and that's good enough for now.

For absolutely no real reason whatsoever, I spent the weekend creating a patch for Bug! and Bug Too! to run on modern Windows

Bug!er Up fixes Windows 11 compatibility; adds support for XInput controllers, removes the CD-ROM requirement and allows custom soundtracks.

github.com/LukeUsher/bu...

MegaLD support in ares has been brewing for a while; I built a skeleton that could run the bios a long while back; Nemesis then took over and fixed the rest, and did an excellent job too!

This will be upstreamed after we’ve ironed out some details; the dump format used is not final and may change.

Other libretro-compatible frontends include Kodi Game, Bizhawk, kretro and no doubt others.

Alternative emulator abstractions *unrelated* to libretro include node (cross platform but used only by ares/higan), OpenEmu (macOS only), Delta (iOS only), I'm sure there must also be others out there.

You can view libretro as the overall project.

RetroArch started as an example frontend and reference implementation of libretro, but is now the de facto standard.

Most emulators with libretro cores were ported and are maintained by the same individuals who work on RetroArch.

It’s essentially a completely different product that shares the same concepts; the entire thing had to be rebuilt for cross platform support.

Unfortunately I’ve just never been able to vibe with it since the transition; it just feels clunky to me.

But hey, you can build console games now!

And it's here! ares v142 has been released with support for SETA Aleck 64, and more great changes, get it from ares-emu.net

Release notes: ares-emu.net/news/ares-v1...

Nintendo 64-based Aleck 64 arcade system emulation, is coming soon to ares!

grain are good for speed, I’m paying for 300 but often hit double that, it’s symmetric too

But they refuse to give you credentials to access the router, if you want to change settings support have to do it for you; it’s behind cgnat, and has no ipv6, and no static ip unless business class.

If you’re dedicated enough, nothing stops you auditing and updating the codebase without changing functionality… php8 port when?