This is the home of the Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL portable Jaguar emulator which is based on the source code released by David Raingeard (Cal2) of what used to be Potato Emulation (URL kept for historic reasons). You can usually find the latest release of the emulator as well as sporadic news about the development of it here. For discussions concerning development and/or use of VJ, please use the official SDLEmu forum over at emuforums.
| 2008-10-14 | Wow, has it really been two years since we last updated this page? How time flies! That means that Shamus’ son was just edging towards the two year old mark! But I digress. The big news this time around is that while we’re waiting for Niels to show up, we’ve temporarily moved the main development trunk to SVN sitting on Shamus’ server! Details on how to get the development source can be found down below, near the anonymous CVS checkout procedure. Yes, now you too can experiment with broken code! |
| 2006-09-22 | Things are quiet—a little too quiet… At any rate, development of Virtual Jaguar has only slowed down to a glacial pace, not stopped. Yes, we’re still here, and if we were going away we would let you know in no uncertain terms. The next release will be 1.1.0, since it’s a major rewrite of the blitter (and hopefully the last, since it’ll be correct this time!). No ETA as of yet, because Shamus is going through some major life changes at the moment (as if having a baby isn’t major enough!). We’re also hoping that Ryan will switch the project over to subversion soon (Mmm, subversion…). Stay tuned… |
| 2005-08-10 | It’s been quiet, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is going on (as usual ;-). Shamus has been busy with a rewrite of the blitter, and it’s looking very promising. Once it’s stable, we’ll probably do a 1.1.0 release. Keep an eye out! |
| 2005-05-24 | Development continues, albeit slowly at the moment. Shamus hasn’t had much free time over the last six months—hmm, I wonder why? ;-) Virtual Jaguar is getting a new timer based execution core which will hopefully fix up some lingering timing issues as well as a much needed facelift to the GUI. As a result, CVS builds may or may not work well. You know where to send the patches. ;-) Thanks go to Aaron Giles for the timer idea (yeah, yeah, we know—it’s been around quite a few years and we’re a little slow on the uptake ;-). |
| 2004-11-30 | Development on VJ has slowed down for at least one of the VJ developers and we can’t blame him too much: Shamus’s wife gave birth to their son on 13 November 2004! Mother, father and son are all doing well, in spite of a lack of sleep and energy and the general crankiness that comes with it. ;-) And to the naysayers we say: The emulator is not dead. Indeed, it can’t die because it’s open source. And of course, everyone is invited to try their hand at improving it. You know where to send the patches. ;-) |
| 2004-10-07 | It’s been over a year since the last official release, so here comes Virtual Jaguar 1.0.7! See the Downloads section to get it. And good to see you again, Niels! ;-) One thing to note about this release is that it’s now sensitive to file extensions and will not work properly if your files have incorrect extensions. Read the relevant section of the README or click here for an explanation. |
| 2004-07-07 | Things have been slow on the development front… What’s most likely to happen is a 1.0.7 release with a more feature-complete 1.0.8 release later. The reason for this is that there are filename and configuration file path search brokenness in 1.0.6 that have long since been fixed but keep biting the newbies—a 1.0.7 release would address those problems (besides fixing a few other things ;-). In the meantime, the kind folks over at CVS Compile have taken it upon themselves to do CVS releases of Virtual Jaguar—which means that we don’t have to. ;-) We will, of course, still publish official releases here. |
| 2004-01-07 | In order to keep things moving along, I’ve tentatively decided to make CVS binaries for the Win32 platform available on a semi-regular basis for those people who are unable to build it from CVS. Check the Downloads section to get it! Keep in mind that the unofficial builds may be buggy and do nasty things with your coffee maker—you have been warned! If they do, be sure to let us know about it in the forums. ;-) |
| 2004-01-06 | Things are brewing... Stay tuned! |
| 2003-11-08 | The upcoming 1.0.7 code is looking good, and will feature a nice new GUI and the usual Jaguar chipset fixes. I’ve been going through checking for good ROMs and have come across a few that are more than likely bad dumps. These have been noted down below in the Compatibility section. I’ve also been looking at a bunch of these so-called “PD ROMs” as well and been cleaning up and adding headers where necessary. I may release these cleaned up homebrew programs in a single pack in the near future because a lot of them actually work with VJ, and you shouldn’t have to memorize/enter a run address to enjoy them! |
| 2003-10-03 | MacOS X download is finally up. Been having some problems with my ISP, and will hopefully have them sorted out by the weekend. In the meantime, CVS has been updated with a preliminary 1.0.7 snapshot. Not for the faint of heart! |
| 2003-09-23 | A Debian package of the 1.0.6 release has been prepared by Ryan Underwood. Check the Downloads section to get it! |
| 2003-09-22 | Virtual Jaguar 1.0.6 release. See the Downloads section to get it! |
| 2003-09-05 | Lots of development on Virtual Jaguar has been going on, and a partial list of goodies that will be in the 1.0.6 release is OpenGL support, fully virtualized screen, configuration file support, and various graphics fixes. Most of the focus in the past few days has been on the DSP core and getting it to work with various ROMs. Once these are ironed out, a new release may be forthcoming... |
| 2003-08-28 | Virtual Jaguar 1.0.5 release. See the Downloads section to get it! |
| 2003-08-22 | The Virtual Jaguar home page is finally up! |
The current Virtual Jaguar developers are Niels Wagenaar (Win32/Linux), Carwin Jones (BeOS), Adam Green (MacOS), and James L. Hammons (Win32). The Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL portable Jaguar emulator has been successfully ported and run on the following platforms:
The original source was based upon Aaron Giles CoJag driver from M.A.M.E. and used the Starscream 68000 emulator core. Since then Starscream has been replaced by the more portable Musashi 68000 core and lots of improvements and changes have obscured the underlying code’s CoJag origins (to be fair, Mr. Raingeard had made quite a few changes from the CoJag driver before we got our hands on it)!
Currently all the major subsystems found in a real Jaguar are emulated to some degree. There are of course some problems remaining—some that we are aware of, and many more that we are not! See the Compatibility section to get a feel for some of the undiscovered problems…
In the near future, various technical aspects of a real Jaguar will be posted here as well.
Here are a few screen shots showing VJ in action:
The latest official release is 1.0.7. Pick your poison:
Those of you who like to live on the bleeding edge can grab sources from anonymous CVS. To download from CVS use the following (password is anonymous):
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.icculus.org:/cvs/cvsroot login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.icculus.org:/cvs/cvsroot co virtualjaguar
You can also get the latest CVS from the kind folks over at CVS Compile. Be sure to let them know how much you appreciate their support!
BIG NOTE: The bleeding edge has temporarily moved to Subversion on a different server. You can grab sources from anonymous SVN. To download from the SVN repository use the following:
svn co https://shamusworld.gotdns.org/svn/virtualjaguar/trunk
Here’s the latest compatibility stats for VJ (CVS version!). Please note that this list was checked against VJ with the DSP off unless otherwise noted. Also note that in the case of homebrew programs (PD), I have listed only the latest version that I have personally fixed—these are always in .jag format (unless otherwise noted). Click here for an explanation of the various Jaguar file formats.
| Title | Works? | Caveats |
| Alien vs Predator (1994) | Yes | Requires DSP to prevent freezes whenever you try to use an elevator or vent |
| Arkanna Demo (PD) | ? | Run addresss is unknown |
| Assassin Demo, The Part 1 (1999) (PD) | ? | Run addresss is unknown |
| Assassin Demo 1.0 Release 2 (PD) | ? | Run addresss is unknown |
| Asteroid (2000) (PD) | Yes | Display is incorrectly centered (probably also PAL only) |
| Atari Karts (1995) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Attack of the Mutant Penguins (1996) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| BadCode0 by Badcoder (1999) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode1 by Badcoder (1999) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode2 by Badcoder (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode3 by Badcoder (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode4 by Badcoder (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode4 C by Badcoder (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode4 (Metal) by Badcoder (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| BadCode4 (New Metal) by Badcoder (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Baldies (CD) | ? | Don’t have it |
| Battlemorph (CD) | ? | Don’t have it |
| Battlesphere | ? | No known good dump |
| Battlesphere Gold | ? | No known good dump |
| Brain Dead 13 (CD) | ? | Don’t have it |
| Brutal Sports Football (1994) (Telegames) | Yes | Note that the GoodJag version has an extraneous 512 bytes in front of the actual ROM data. Removal of this bogus “header” makes it possible to pass the BIOS check and run |
| Bubsy - Fractured Furry Tails (1994) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Cannon Fodder (1995) (Computer West) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Checkered Flag (1994) | Yes | Requires DSP to play, has small graphical glitch |
| Chroma-Luma Colors Picker (1996) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Chroma-Luma Colors Picker for Mouse (1996) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Club Drive (1994) | Yes | Can play a little before it dumps out |
| Cybermorph (1993) | Yes | Requires DSP |
| Defender 2000 (1996) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Doom - Evil Unleashed (1994) | Yes | Requires DSP. In game, the screen is horizontally compressed to half its size (we know what the problem is, we’re just not sure how to fix it without introducing crappy hacks) |
| Double Dragon V (1995) (Williams) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Dragon - The Bruce Lee Story (1994) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Dragon’s Lair (CD) | ? | Don’t have it |
| Evolution - Dino Dudes (1993) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Fever Pitch Soccer (1995) | No | ... |
| Fight For Life (1996) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Flashback (1995) (U.S. Gold) | Yes | Some glitches still happen in the game |
| Flip Out (1995) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| FORCE Design - Legion Force Jidai Intro Demo 0! (2001) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Gorf 2000 (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Hover Strike (1995) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| I-War (1995) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| International Sensible Soccer (1995) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Iron Soldier (1994) | Yes | Intro screens work, but it seems the actual game itself doesn’t |
| JagFest Demo (2001) (PD) | ? | Run addresss is unknown |
| JagMania (Jan 06) (2001) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| JagMarble (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Jaguar Tetris (1995) (PD) | No | Shows game screen for 1 second before going black |
| JDC Demo V1 (2000) (PD) | Yes | Only 1st time VJ is run |
| JDC Demo V2 (2000) (PD) | No | Stays stuck on the “Runs On” screen |
| JDC Demo V3 - E-JagFest Demo by Lars Hannig (2000) (PD) | Yes | Only 1st time VJ is run |
| Joypad-TeamTap Test Program (2000) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Kasumi Ninja (1994) | Yes | Requires DSP. Graphical glitches on the shadows |
| Missile Command 3D (1995) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Music Demo (2002) (ScatoLOGIC) | ? | Run addresss is unknown |
| Myst (demo) (CD) | ? | Don’t have it |
| Native (Demo) (1997) | Yes | Requires DSP (note that even so, the demo has no sound whatsoever--it was written this way). Has graphical glitches in game |
| NBA Jam TE (1996) | Yes | Requires DSP. Has graphical glitches |
| Painter (1996) (PD) | Yes | ... |
| Phase Zero (2000) (PD) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Pinball Fantasies (1995) (Computer West) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Pitfall - The Mayan Adventure (1995) | No | ... |
| Power Drive Rally (1995) (TWI) | No | ... |
| Primal Rage (CD) | ? | Don’t have it |
| Protector | ? | No known good dump |
| Protector SE | ? | No known good dump |
| Raiden (1994) | Yes | Has graphical glitches |
| Rayman (1995) (UBI Soft) | Yes | A glitch in the 68K emulation can sometimes cause it to exit unexpectedly |
| Ruiner Pinball (1995) | No | ... |
| Super Burnout (1995) | No | Requires DSP. Gets past the title screen and track selection, but then hangs |
| Super Cross 3D (1995) | Yes | Note: Bad ROM CRC is 4A08A2BD, good ROM CRC is EC22F572] |
| Syndicate (1995) (Ocean) | Yes | Has graphical glitches. Not extensively tested |
| Tempest 2000 (1994) | Yes | Has problems in the demo: Dumps to the game selection screen after playing the demo for a few seconds. Probably other problems as well |
| Theme Park (1995) (Ocean) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy (1993) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Troy Aikman NFL Football (1995) (Williams) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Ultra Vortek (1995) | No | ... |
| Ultra Vortek (Beta) | Yes | Requires DSP |
| Val D’Isere Skiing & Snowboarding (1994) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| White Men Can’t Jump (1995) | No | ... |
| Wolfenstein 3D (1994) | Yes | Requires DSP. The old DSP core works, but to hear any sound it needs the new pipelined DSP core |
| Zool 2 (1994) | Yes | Not extensively tested |
| Zoop! (1996) | No | ... |
If something that was previously working breaks between revisions (and it’s not acknowledged above), or you have tested a title that we haven’t, please let us know about it in the forums.
Thanks go out to Aaron Giles for his original CoJag sources, and to David Raingeard for opening up his source code to the original Virtual Jaguar—without their work we would have nothing to show you today. Thanks also to Karl Stenerud for his portable 68000 emulator core. A great big thank you goes out to Sam Lantinga for his amazing SDL library which makes cross platform sound and graphics so easy. And last but not least, many, many thanks to Ryan C. Gordon for hosting Virtual Jaguar’s CVS and webspace.