PlayStation Portable emulator PPSSPP has been updated to version 0.9.9.1. This fixes a few issues discovered in the 0.9.9 release, which added support for the mp3 and aac codecs and PMP video format, fixed a number of graphical issues by adding CLUT/paletted texturing from framebuffers, improved vrot CPU instruction emulation, and much more. Mac builds are still not officially supported, and the angelXwind site that normally hosts unofficial builds seems to be down, but PPSSPP forum-goer slavezeo put together a script that can be used to compile the emulator with only a little modification.

Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin apparently received hundreds of code optimisations in July, resulting in big performance improvements, fixes to long-standing bugs, and even a few new features. Read the typically-fascinating Progress Report for a rundown of the most notable changes. They've also got a review up on the Dolphin blog for the Mayflash DolphinBar, which is a USB sensor bar designed to work with Dolphin and as a mouse replacement. If you're after new builds, there's a steady flow of automated development versions appearing every day.

It's been a long time coming, but ScummVM 1.7.0 was released in July. Five new games are supported, including 1996 claymation The Neverhood. Changes include "many" improvements to the UI, an OpenGL backend and enhanced AGOS engine, and updated MT-32 emulation. You can read a full breakdown of the changes in the release notes. Get it from the ScummVM download page.

Continue reading for more updates, including GBA on Bizhawk, loads of FS-UAE development builds, new Hatari, and more.

Sixtyforce lives! After many years of development and a trickle of releases, Gerrit Goossen's Nintendo 64 emulator has hit the big 1.0 milestone. Additions include improved controller configuration and support, a new timing mode, new low-level graphics processing, and more, while there are also a bunch of bugfixes. See the release notes for full details. And remember to pay for a licence if you'd like to see better Nintendo 64 emulation on the Mac.

Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin has shed its 32-bit support — although that shouldn't have much of an impact on us Mac users. Development highlights from May include a wide-reaching fix for indirect texture coordinate computation, fixed external frame buffer width/height handling, improved DVD seek timing, and a change to frsqrte and fres calculations (they were too precise) that fixes scores of problems. The latest dev build at the time of writing is 4.0-1859, with the most recent stable release dating back to 4.0.2 from the start of the year.

Macintosh II A/UX emulator Shoebill has been updated to version 0.0.3. This release adds support for PRAM and full-screen mode, plus you can now restart/shutdown the virtual machine without it crashing, and Shoebill uses less CPU when A/UX's scheduler idles. Get it from the Shoebill GitHub page, and follow the discussion on E-Maculation.

Game Boy emulator DMGBoy got a major update in May. Version 2.0 adds Game Boy Color compatibility and a GUI debugger, as well as a nifty 3D model of the original Game Boy that you can play your games on (see video below). You can also now resize the window in real time, with no change in aspect ratio. On my Mac it was throwing up wxWidgets errors on run, but it seems to work just fine if you suppress these. Get it from the DMGBoy Google Code page.

Continue reading for more a series of minor emulator updates, including new Mednafen, Bizhawk, and Bochs builds.

My apologies on another late roundup. I’ve been busy. It was worth the wait, though, as we’ve got a huge one this time round, including a few new emulators.

There’s a new Macintosh emulator under development! Shoebill currently emulates a Mac II running A/UX (versions 1.x.x through 2.0.0), which was Apple’s implementation of Unix some 20+ years ago, although it will eventually support booting Mac OS. It’s early days yet, with the 0.0.1 release dropping just last week, but this is the first emulator that supports A/UX and it also emulates the MMU (which other Mac emulators don’t, so we could finally have some leaps forward if somebody manages to decouple the MMU code from Shoebill). See this E-Maculation thread for discussion, or head to GitHub for a download link and screenshots. (Thanks WatchSmart!)

Shoebill isn’t the only new emulator for us to play with; 8086tiny holds claim to the title of “the world’s smallest portable, highly-functional PC emulator.” True or not, at 28K (with comments) the source code is at least tiny. It emulates an 8086 CPU plus all standard PC peripherals, and its disk images should mount out of the box in OS X. I haven’t had a chance to test it myself yet, but this looks like a great choice for running DOS or early versions of Windows. You can learn more about 8086tiny and download the source code from its official website.

Multi-system emulator BizHawk has been updated to version 1.6.0. This release adds Sega Genesis and CD support and OpenGL video output, and it also fixes some issues with stability, audio throttling, and opening NES games. Check out Sappharad’s forum thread for more details and a download link.

WatchSmart pointed out this very cool browser-based Mac Plus emulator, RetroWeb, which comes with a number of built-in games and apps and seems to run at a decent frame rate in most current browsers. You can load your own disk images, too, but that’s not really the point here — this is an easy way to reminisce or to show other people what Macs were like 25 years ago without going to the hassle of setting up Mini vMac. (It uses PCE for its core, in case you were wondering.)

Continue reading for more updates, including a full complement of Mac-on-Mac news, a new way to play a classic, progress on a NeXT emulator, and more.