Starting in 1996, a lot of people attempted to emulate the Genesis, leading to a lot of emulator projects. Especially most of the DOS-based emulators are already discontinued, but strangely enough one of them managed to be the most accurate: KGen98 by Steve Snake. Another one that was quite sucessful, and imposed some standards in the Genesis emulation world was Bloodlust Studios' Genecyst, with features like GYM music dumping, and .GST savestates (that would be supported by most emulators released after it).

Beginning the new century, a new breed of Windows-based Genesis emulator appeared on the scene: Stephane Dallongeville can take the fame of having programmed the one that was the best by a long time: GENS. Also, Quintesson coded AGES, a pioneer on Sega CD and 32X emulation (it was the first one to emulate it, and the first one to NOT require 32X BIOS dumps for run games). But they quickly bite the dust, when Steve Snake released his latest masterpiece: KEGA Fusion! It can emulate everything: from the venerable Sega Game 1000 to the ill-fated 32X, plus some other consoles between then, including our beloved Genesis!.

On August 2006, Haze, from MAME, released HazeMD, a new emulator made for replace the crappy MAME/MESS Genesis emulation core (used in Genesis-based arcades, like Megatech and Megaplay). It was written from scratch in a very short time, and it's an attempt to do the most accurate possible emulation of the Genesis and related stuff. More recently, in early 2008 another new emulator just surfaced: Regen (coded by AamirM). It's aim is also for accuracy. In the meanwhile, Notaz, author from PicoDrive? (a very portable Genesis emulator), coded the first SVP emulation core, solving one of the missing pieces on the Genesis emulation puzzle. Finally, development on Gens resurrected under the Gens/GS project, merging the changes of the various forks out there, and fixing lots and lots of bugs on the ancient Gens core, so this legend is back to the scene.

And the future promises more surprises, as the time advances...


A long time has past since that good ol' emulators appeared on Genesis emulation scene (Genecyst and KGen). Now there are lots of emulators that not only emulates the Genesis, it also can deal with addons like Sega CD and 32X, external devices, and even Master System and Game Gear emulation!
Here are the most used Genesis emulators:

Emulator	Version	Rating	Systems emulated (Genesis=base)	Comments
Kega Fusion	3.63 (Win32 / Linux-x86 / MacIntel)	10/10	Sega CD / 32X / SCD32X / SVP / SMS / GG / SG-1000 / Pico	Another hit of the great Steve Snake, this is one of the best Sega 8/16/32-bit consoles emulator now available (except for Saturn, of course!). It is the only that has full support for stuff like Sega CD 32X, Menacer light gun, Sega Mouse and more... This is still currently developed, and it's now available for all popular platforms.
Gens / Gens/GS	2.14 (Official) / r7 (GS)	9/10	Sega CD / 32X	Developed by Stephane Dallongeville, it was once the best Genesis emulator on the earth. At least, this one is the only full-featured emulator released under a GPL license, so you can reach the sources and try to improve it. There are lots of versions based on Gens core, and also has Linux, BeOS, and XBOX versios. Currently, the (very active) Gens/GS build features lots of core bugfixes and neat addons from other forks, so give it a try.
Xega	0.10	7/10	Sega CD / 32X (partial support)	Well, there are not much to say about this emulator coded by Michel Gerritse. Bugs here and there, but, hey, this is a fast emulator!. Give it a try. It will be replaced in the future by Project Triton, so for now it's "on hold".
Ages	0.30	6/10	Sega CD / SMS / GG (partial support) / 32X	Ages was the first emulator to emulate the 32X, and it is now a classic in emulation. Developed by a guy called Quintesson, unfortunately, this emulator is discontinued (a sad notice), and it is slow as hell.
retroDrive	r5	5/10	32X	Another almost-unknown tailored emulator, coded by Tim Meekins, it has good 32X support, but nothing more. Even the keys cannot be remapped!. But someday it will be updated... I hope so.
HazeMD	0.14a	?/10	32X (PARTIAL) / SVP / SMS / GG (partial!)	This is a fairly-new emulator from Haze, one of the masterminds behind MAME development, and in fact, it's being developed to replace MAME/MESS Genesis emulation core. It's quite crude (no GUI, can crash in a few cases, and it can only load ROMs from a MAME-style set, with specific filenames), but can emulate some tricky carts.
Regen	0.97(Win32) / 0.95(Linux)	?/10	SVP / SMS / GG / SG-1000 / SC-3000	Coded by AamirM. Quite new, aimed for perfect accuracy rather than speed, features native Windows and Linux ports. Also features a graphical debugger, perfect for ROM hackers.

Want more? (like Gens WIPs, DGen, and the oldskool emulatos like KGen/Genecyst) Go here, but please be aware that their list is not kept very up-to-date (BEWARE: aggresive pop-ups!)

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