Bob

BigPEmu Atari Jaguar Emulator Released

Posted on by Bob

Developer Rich Whitehouse has just released the BigPEmu emulator – The first Atari Jaguar emulator that features 100% compatibility with the original Jaguar library.  This is also the same emulator used in the widely praised Atari 50 collection for modern console!  More information can be found in the video above and some more thoughts below the links…

Support Rich Here:  https://www.patreon.com/richwhitehouse
Download BigPEmu:  https://www.richwhitehouse.com/jaguar/index.php
Atari 50 PS5:  https://amzn.to/3VKnFog
Atari 50 Switch:  https://amzn.to/3UpZ3jT
Atari 50 Xbox Series X:  https://amzn.to/3VQJ0wt
Atari 50 PS4:  https://amzn.to/3VxumKN

While there’s a ton of things to discuss and some serious praise for Rich (please consider supporting on Patreon), I think I should start by mentioning this emulator was released with the permission of Digital Eclipse, as long as the source is (for the moment) kept closed.  As stated by Rich:

Due to private contractual obligations, I can’t release BigPEmu’s source code at this time. It’s only by the legal miracle working of the fine people at Digital Eclipse that I’m able to release this emulator publicly, and to continue working on it in my own time.

So, props to the Digital Eclipse team for caring about the community enough to do that.  Hopefully it will not go unnoticed.  Of course, the most exciting thing about this is the emulator itself!  Up until now, Jaguar emulation was good, but unreliable and certainly not up to the level of accuracy we’ve been spoiled with these past few years.  And of course, that’s no slight to previous Jaguar emulator dev’s, simply praise for Rich’s work.

It’s not just an accurate and fast emulator though…Rich was able to add some features not possible on original hardware!  One very impressive feature is an overclock/underclock option that allows some games to run at 60fps for the first time ever!  There’s CRT filters and an HDR mode that can be combined for a really awesome 4K60 output  Plus, there’s the ability to record a “movie” of your gameplay, that also interacts with savestates…honestly, way too much to list here, so please check out the main page for more info on the really neat savestate options, and the rest of the feature list!

Rich is also looking for some help to get JagCD support working, as well as JagLink, ports to other platforms and more.  I’d selfishly like to see Rich’s work integrated into a MiSTer core, so users of the FPGA platform can benefit as well!  Please consider following Rich on social media, YouTube and  of course on Patreon as well, if your budget allows.

UPDATE:  A version 1.01 was just released!  Here’s all the changes:

  • Added variable-sized EEPROM support, thanks to Reboot for providing some test cases. 512 byte and 2KB EEPROM settings are picked up from the MRQ file if it exists, otherwise any number of EEPROM address bits can be specified via the -eeprombits command line option.
  • Added JaguarGD bank switching support.
  • Fix for exception-handled M68K reads in unmapped address space.
  • Fix for Blitter not correctly wrapping cyan/red on add when ADDDSEL is set, thanks to ScatoLOGIC for reporting the BattleSphere bug which led to this fix.
  • Fix for Blitter not starting on the correct bit when block width is less than pixel size and phrase mode is not enabled, thanks to ScatoLOGIC for reporting the BattleSphere bug which led to this fix.
  • Going in for a major surgery tomorrow (2022/12/06), so expect that I’ll be mostly unavailable and that there won’t be any emulator updates for at least a couple of weeks.

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