Did they seriously write an emulator using *Unity*? No wonder it runs so poorly. Unity is the wrong tool for this, period. Better question: Which language did they use? Unity supports a few language bindings, including C# and javascript. If they used javascript, that would definitely explain why it emulates MD games worse than a 486 in the mid-90s.
I literally have a 486 '93 working machine out for another reason but I am now very tempted to revisit arcadeathome and find some remnants of an old emu.
Comparison video idea: Record the 486 running one of the Sega Forever games in Genecyst (or KGen98?), side-by-side with an Android or iOS device running the same game from Sega Forever.
From what I'd gathered it's using some derivative of Jenesis... If that's true, yup, they used Java. The excuse they used for using Unity is for "portability". Because we all know how difficult it is to port C based emulators to different platforms, as long as you know your stuff and have the right tools. Personally, I feel they employed a Unity app developer for a straight-up emulator developer's job, and have paid the price.
It's definitely not Java. Not in Unity; it doesn't support Java. Javascript perhaps (mind, they are entirely different languages with close to no connection), but that'd be a pretty substantial rewrite from Jenesis, which was in Java.
Bah, curse my lack of sleep, I knew that. Honest. I'm not sure if the emulator itself is actually written in Unity - I've read elsewhere (in a forum thread where the Libretro guys were commenting, possibly the NeoGAF one) that the Unity part of the app is a wrapper serving the ads and providing the interface, the emulator is provided by a separate emulation core, and that the wrapper was partly responsible for the poor performance, and the majority of the bloat. If that is the case, it could still be Jenesis. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was implied it was in that forum thread... I'll have to dig up the link, maybe I misread. Edit: Bloody hell, I keep having to edit these posts because once I submit half of the post it in a different font size to another... What the chuff is going on with this forum?
It could be a port of jEnesisDS, since that was rewritten from the original Java form. It was used previously in Sonic Classic Collection.
Given I HAD a 486-with-delusions-of-grandieur (a 100MHz Pentium Overdrive) that could only run Mega Drive games at an even vaguely playable rate by booting out of Windows into DOS, setting the Frame Skip to 4, and then playing the game through a jerky mess, I can assure you that Sega Forever is nowhere near that bad. It's not up to today's standards by a long shot, but it is not as bad as this piece of hyperbole. =P
What a debacle! This idea gained some mainstream attention on non-gaming forums. People will end up trying these games and just thinking they didn't age well, when in fact its poor emulation. These are SEGA's masterpieces. They'll never replicate their old success. They need to treat them as such, and present them in a pristine and timeless manner. Its like the Louvre displaying the Mona Lisa but never bothering to clean the bullet-proof glass in front of it, and giving all their customers a crappy, blurry, ridiculously distorted view.
This seems the most probable given they've mentioned in interviews that their experience of emulation on DS helped them in the Sega Forever program.
I downloaded the starting lineup. What a disappointment. The framerate sucks so bad on my iPhone that they're borderline unplayable. The selection is a little iffy, too. Phantasy Star II and Comix Zone are great, but I'm not gonna lie, Altered Beast and Kid Chameleon are not favorites of mine. I would much rather Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Space Harrier, OutRun, Shinobi, etc. Sadly I kind of get the sense that Revenge of Shinobi is in licensing purgatory like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which is probably why M2 hasn't done either for 3DS. (They skipped right to Shinobi III.) Sonic 3 for the Michael Jackson music, Revenge of Shinobi because it shameless infringed on the copyrights of Spider-Man, Batman, Godzilla, etc. etc.... Sadly, now that the Switch is out, we've probably seen the last of M2's 3DS ports, anyway. Which is a shame, because they were absolutely stellar, especially the arcade ports.
So somebody find a way to fix it, Danny! Because it's a really bad thing! 50~100 Mb per SG-1000 game is going to be awesome. :specialed: EDIT: What? No, they removed those long ago.
It is, but that's a problem with the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. It is, unfortunately, rather out of Sega's control. The best they can do is put all supported games into the products description and keywords, which wouldn't guarantee them high search results on those titles.
I knew they removed the other characters, but I thought they left Spider-Man in. Apparently they took him out in a 2009 re-release. So in that case I really don't know why we haven't seen Revenge of Shinobi re-released in a while. Granted, Shinobi III is better, I just found it odd that M2 skipped straight to that one. Does anyone know the reason why Sega is so hesitant to do anything with Sonic 3 & Knuckles? I know Christian Whitehead made a prototype. Is it because of the music, or is it because they'd want to release it was two separate games?
Reminder that the person in charge of mobile distribution gave the emulated titles a greenlight, even after experiencing the piss-poor emulation. Dare I say it, this makes AtGames' previous attempts look amazing in comparison.
So Virtua Tennis Challenge has now been added to Forever. My connection here at home is terrible, so... does anyone here have the game? It'd be interesting to see whether the performance has changed due to the Forever stuff, like with Sonic 1.
This still hasn't been fixed, btw... they might as well have Link x Knuckles anti-hotlink CulT style.
