Drmd V1.0


Esn

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Well, there isn't really that much point in writing a review on DrMD since so much has been said on it already, but it would probably make it easier for newbies to have all of the pros and cons in one place. ;) So, I wrote one anyway.

The original review, with pictures and "reccommended games" is posted ON GP32WORLD, so you can either click the link for the complete version or read it here: :)

DrMD v1.0 by Reesy, with help from many other people who are mentioned in the "readme". Sponsored by GBAX.

Overview
A Sega Genesis/Mega Drive emulator for the GP32. Many games run great at 144Mhz and most are fullspeed (with sound) at 156Mhz. It features Reesy's ASM Z80 core, which is one of the reasons that it's so fast. I tested about 80 games with it, and it seems to be that about 60% run perfectly, 20% are playable but have minor bugs, and 20% have major bugs and are unplayable.

Features
- Zipped rom support
- Animated zipped save states, 10 slots per game
- menu controls are: A or B - enter, L+R - back (to game, or to previous menu)
- User definable controls (assignment of A/B/C buttons)
- autoframeskip (with an option to display "frames per second")
- Saveable menu options
- Rom selection screen uses long filenames found in zip files or filename found using a CRC lookup on the GoodGEN database. R & L buttons can be used to move a whole screen forward or back
- Auto region detection
- PSG & FM Sound Emulation
- 8Bit or 16Bit Rendering modes
- Cpu speed selection (22, 33, 40, 50,66, 100, 133, 144, 156, 160, 164, 166, 168, 172, 176, 180, 184, 188, 192, 196, 200, 204, 208, 212, 216, 220, 224, 228, 232, 236, 240, 244, 248, 252, 256)
- BLU+ compatible (if the screen looks strange on your GP32 when using DrMD, change this option)

Pros
- This emulator is simply amazing; it opens up a whole pile of great games for the GP32. Most of them can run almost fullspeed even at 144Mhz. The music and sound is very accurate in the majority of games.
- The autoframeskip works really well; for this reason, the game doesn't seem to speed up/slow down as is the case for emulators such as OSNES9xGP and fGB32. Most games run at an acceptable frame rate such as 30FS, but there are exceptions both ways.
- support for zipped roms is definitely a bonus, as are the animated save states (so you can tell where you saved before loading)
- many clockspeed choices

Cons
- some prominent games are still quite buggy; there's the "black screen" bug which appears in "Rings of Power", the "slow music" bug which appears in some of the Sonic games and Toejam & Earl, the "sudden unpredictable crash" bug which appears in Star Control and Phantasy Star 4 (but only on higher clockspeeds), and some general graphical bugs (transparency effects aren't supported yet)
- no option for "150Mhz"... this would have been nice

Overall
This is one of the most useable emulators on the GP32. Some games don't work, but the ones that do work surprisingly well. Reesy is still working on it, and if you're a GP32 developer or if you're willing to donate something to Reesy for his hard work, you can get on the "beta testing list". So far, 5 private betas have been released since this public release, and I've heard that a lot of bugs have been fixed (if you wish to donate, you can send a payment to drsms_reesy "at" yahoo.co.uk). Reesy does plan on releasing a new public release once most of the bugs are ironed out.

Compatibility: 7/10
Speed: 8/10 (it really depends how high your GP32 can overclock, but 144Mhz is usually sufficient)
Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
 
I know it's an old topic, but I really had to add: This is one of the best emulators on the GP32. It's so good, it prompted me to write the original Compatibility list site :) .
 
WarmFluffyUK posted on May 10 2006 at 06:48 AM said:
darkman posted on May 6 2006 at 06:23 PM said:
On your site it says 1.4 for Drmd. Is this a mistake? Is it supposed to be 4.1?

Thanks for spotting that :blink: .

Just hit your site this week with all the fun I have been having on my BLU that I recently got. My NLU may gather a lot of dust. You may notice that I changed the status of some games.
 
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