Kega Fusion
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| Kega Fusion | |
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 Kega Fusion 3.1 running a Mega Drive game (Alien Soldier) |
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| Developer: | Steve Snake |
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| Latest release: | 3.51 / January 6, 2006 |
| OS: | Microsoft Windows |
| Use: | Emulator |
| License: | Proprietary |
| Website: | Kega Fusion at Eidolon's Inn |
Kega Fusion is an emulator for the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis. It also emulates the Sega Mega-CD and Sega 32X add-ons (together or separately), as well as the Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, SG-1000 and SC-3000. It runs on the Microsoft Windows platform. Kega Fusion is based on the earlier Kega and its successor Kega Lazarus, both of which have been discontinued.
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[edit] History
[edit] KGen (1997)
KGen was Steve Snake's original attempt at a Genesis emulator, written because at the time the only existing emulator, Genem, ran slowly and had poor sound quality. This was the first Mega Drive emulator to feature true digital YM2612 emulation, rather than "bodgy OPL3 rubbish" (as Steve put it) which attempted to approximate Genesis sound and music via the then popular OPL3 chips of Adlib and Sound Blaster compatible cards. Another quality emulator called Genecyst was released around the same time by Bloodlust Software and a friendly rivalry began (although mostly amongst emulation fans themselves). This was a DOS based emulator and ran on high end 486 or faster hardware, but required at least a Pentium for full speed.
[edit] KGen-X
An aborted rewrite of KGen which was never released to the public.
[edit] KGen98 (1998)
A new version of KGen rewritten from scratch, with better compatibility, more features and higher quality stereo sound. Still DOS based, its CPU requirements were about the same as its predecessor but slightly higher for the high quality sound mode and 16 bit video with raster effects and shadow/highlight modes enabled. Afterwards, Steve was commissioned by Sega to create a Windows compatible version which could be marketed with some classic games in the "Sega Smash Pack".
[edit] Kega (2002)
After a long break from the emulation scene, Snake surprised many fans with the sudden release of an all new Windows/DirectX based emulator. It included many new features, such as Sega Master System and Mega-CD emulation. To run full speed, it required at least a 500 MHz Celeron based computer. It followed the release of the very popular Gens, another Windows based Genesis emulator with excellent speed and compatibility released by Stef D in 1999.
[edit] Kega Lazarus (2003)
Kega Lazarus was so named because it was an attempt to get the emulator up to date (and beyond) after a hard disk crash caused Steve Snake to lose all his Kega sources since 0.02b (0.04b being the final release of Kega). Lazarus is supposed to have risen from the dead. An important feature during the development of Lazarus was the addition of 32X support, although at first its compatibility wasn't that great.
[edit] Kega Fusion (2005)
The final (and current) version of Kega is named "Fusion", because it is in spirit a fusion of Kega and Kega Lazarus with even more features and compatibility. It was the first version to support hardware accelerated blitters via Direct3D, as well as vastly improved 32X support.
Previously, Kega Fusion used version number 0.1 with a letter and Beta suffix, with the last revision being 0.1e. The next release was labeled Kega Fusion 3.0 beta as its developer Steve Snake said that the low version number made some people shy away; sub-1.0 version software is commonly believed to be incomplete and unstable (most freeware and open source programs are indefinitely in a beta-like state as there is no need to go gold). The logic in starting at 3.0 is that Kega Fusion is actually the third major revision of the Kega heritage, in the order of Kega, Kega Lazarus and Kega Fusion. The beta moniker was dropped after version 3.2 for the same reason.
[edit] Features
Kega Fusion focuses on accuracy as opposed to speed or other features (such as movie recording) found in emulators like Gens. To retain a high level of speed, the majority of the emulator is written in assembly language. On a Pentium III class or a similar microprocessor, Kega Fusion runs Mega Drive ROM images at 50 or 60 frames per second, though with the popular 2xSaI graphics filter plugin the processing power needed to achieve the full 50/60 frames per second is much higher (it should also be noted that emulating Sega 32X games at a playable speed requires an 850 MHz or faster microprocessor). The emphasis on accuracy is demonstrated by Fusion's emulation of the Yamaha YM2612 chip, which is reported by Steve Snake to be almost perfect — other emulators, such as Gens, suffer from imperfections in emulation of this chip as demonstrated by the title screen theme for Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic & Knuckles). Compatibility is very high with Kega Fusion, even for the Sega 32X, which has many games that are unplayable on other emulators. Since the Sega 32X BIOS routines have been more thoroughly reverse engineered than those for the Mega-CD, as of version 3.3 Kega Fusion does not require the Sega 32X BIOS images, though they can still be used. Kega Fusion can emulate all known Sega home video game consoles released before the Sega Saturn (there is some cryptic indication by Steve Snake that Saturn emulation could be possible in the future) besides Sega SF-7000 emulation which is missing.
Along with being able to emulate most Sega home console systems Kega Fusion also supports logging to a WAV file or the successor to GYM format, VGM. VGM is much like GYM in terms of how it is created but widely superior in its accuracy to YM2612 synthesis, compression (in the VGZ format) and looping. As of version 3.5, Kega Fusion supports multiplayer over the internet or LAN. While multiplayer support is still in its preliminary stages, Kega Fusion 3.51 has made multiplayer more stable. One feature popular to other emulators not present in Kega Fusion is movie logging, which has been implemented in emulators like ZSNES.
[edit] Development
Even though Kega Fusion is being developed separately from Gens, the development teams are more cooperative than antagonistic towards each other. The differences between Kega Fusion and Gens appeal to different audiences, with Kega Fusion having a more hardcore audience mainly because it is not as well known among new and/or novice emulation fans as Gens, despite being significantly more accurate. Also, due to its closed source nature, it does not have any ports for other systems, while Gens does.
