LOS ANGELES--Last August, Sega announced it was preparing a sequel to Virtua Fighter 4, appropriately titled Virtua Fighter 5. The game was being developed for Sega's new Lindbergh arcade board, which is based on a 3GHz Intel Pentium 4 CPU. The fact the board was based on PC architecture led some to speculate the game would be coming to the Xbox 360, as the porting process would be less complex than that to other consoles.

Today, Sega announced that Virtua Fighter 5 is indeed coming to a next-generation console...but not the Xbox 360. The game will be exclusive to the PlayStation 3 when it is released in North America in Spring 2007. Like the 360, though, the game will feature high-definition graphics and will support 720p resolution.

Virtua Fighter 5 will sport more than 15 characters, including many from previous installments. Also, it will include two new characters, Eileen and El Blaze. Of Chinese descent, Eileen "uses a monkey kung-fu fighting style that she learned from her grandfather, a former kung-fu master," according to Sega. As one might gather from the name, El Blaze is a master of lucha libre, the flamboyant style of Mexican wrestling.

Besides introducing two new characters, Sega also released some gameplay details about Virtua Fighter 5. The publisher carefully avoided any mention of an online mode but did say players could win in-game money for their victories, which they could then use at an in-game shop. Sega also said that players could pick form several customizable costumes and "attachable items" that "can be placed onto each fighter's various body parts."

Gamespot(ting)

Confirming rumors, Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka has officially left Sega to start his own studio, called "Prope."

ImageApparently, Naka and Sega are still on amicable terms, as the publisher will contribute 10 percent of the studio's startup capital. Sega said that its support of the company is in line with a plan to help Sega developers form independent companies.

According to Prope's website, the name is derived from the Latin word meaning "'beside' and 'near' future."

It continues, "We named our company PROPE in the hopes of bringing game entertainment much closer to users, establishing closer ties between users and us, and creating near future entertainment."

The firm will commit to new IP, and will officially form on June 1. Projects are yet to be announced.

next-gen.biz

Java MegaDrive/Genesis Emulator

jEnesis v0.0.4  (2006-05-07)

 

- fixed overlapping operator pixels (Vectorman 2 baloon sprites)

- rendering switched to LWJGL with enormous speed increase in scaled modes and using VSync in fullscreen mode to avoid Java timing issues

- fixed ROXL and NEG flag bug, making a lot more games work properly

- Made M68000 Reset instruction not having any effect (fixed Dragon's Revenge..)

- M68000 TAS write cycle is ignored now (Gargoyles)

- fixed Illegal Instruction Exceptions (Dyna Brothers 2, Heavy Nova...)

- fixed Move Instruction timings (Sailormoon Intro bug)

- fixed window behavior in certain situations (Mario Andretti Racing, World Championship Soccer 2, M1 Abrams Battle Tank...)

- added window granular clipping (Dragon Ball Z)

- improved Motorola 68000 - Zilog Z80 responiveness

- added Cpu freezing during DMA and DMA busy flag emulation (fixing Galahad, Eternal Champions, Street Fighter Games, F1 World Championship and many others...)

- more accurate Interrupt timing and HVCounter (Panorama Cotton, Burning Force, Galahad, Lotus 1+2 and others)

- fixed DMA fills again (Landstalker)

- made VDP emulation more accurate, also showing mirrored sprites in Castlevania now.

- added VDP window bug emulation

- added VDP invalid horizontal scroll size emulation

- Added Sprite Overflow and Sprite Collision flag emulation

- Corrected sprite pixel overflow setting in too early (Flink)

- Sprite masking documentation seemed not to be precise, so i experimented a bit, and changed it. It now works like in the big 2... and Majikaru Hashito no Butsutobi Turbo! Daibouken has feet now... yeah

- Fixed 128*64 Background Layers (Barkley Shut Up and Jam, Dragon Slayer 1+2 - Legend of Heroes)

- Fixed SRAM detection if not declared in the rom header (NBA JAM TE, Blockbuster Competition 2, Buck Rogers...)

- Added emulation and detection of the X24C01 EEPROM. (Wonderboy in Monsterworld, Megaman can be saved)

- Added emulation and detection of the X24C02P EEPROM. (NBA JAM can now be saved)

- Added new icon indicating that a game uses an EEPROM

- Made Rom validation a bit less restrictive, allowing more beta and unlicenced games to boot

- Display name of the game now gets detected depending on the region of the game. If it seems "unreadable", the filename gets displayed

- Added support for.gen roms

- Added .7z support for normal loading of a rom, as well as for the "Browse Zip" option, which therefore got renamed to "Browse Archive". The support for solid .7z archives might still be a bit buggy! I also cant guarantee that it can open every .7z archive atm. There is also support for plain .lzma files through the "Open Rom" dialog.

>> Get it HERE.

BBC emulator

May 7th 2006  B-em v1.1 released.

 

Changes from v1.0:

 

* Can now emulate a Model B with 1770 FDC

* Better mode 7 emulation - many programs improved, eg Granny's Garden

* Added cursor to modes 0-6

* Altered video timing a little

* Added more commands to 1770 FDC - Watford DDFS now works (single density only)

* Some optimisations to video code

* Update VGM logging to latest spec

>> Get it HERE.