clownmdemu – 68k Overhaul

Ever since adding support for the Z80, the next improvement that I wanted to make to my emulator was overhauling the 68k CPU interpreter. As detailed in the first emulator-related blog post, the 68k CPU interpreter was one of the first parts of the emulator that I created. It was also the first CPU interpreter

Porting Sonic Mania to the Wii U

I’m still quite busy these days, but I did find time in the last month to start a new project: As you can imagine, this was pretty similar to the Sonic CD port that I did last year: not only do they run on the same engine (RSDK – Mania just uses a newer version),

Project Sand: Sonic Aftermath

I was digging through some old Sonic hacks of mine when I stumbled across these ancient relics from 2014 and 2016. Remember that Project Sand/Sonic Aftermath hack that I have a few old videos about? Here’s the one level of it that was worked on before the project died: Sand Zone from Cave Story. There’s

clownmdemu and clownassembler released

Sorry for the drought of blog posts lately: I’ve been busy with work and a lot of other IRL stuff. Still, if there’s one thing I can give an update on, it’s that two of my projects have finally seen a release: clownmdemu and clownassembler have been released on Sonic Retro, Sonic Stuff Research Group,

clownmdemu – Z80 Support

With the addition of FM support, my Mega Drive emulator came much closer to being able to provide a complete experience for certain games such as Sonic 1. Unfortunately, there was still one major missing feature: drums, voice clips, and sometime even all audio entirely, were inaudible. What gives? Sonic 1 plays most of its

clownmdemu – FM Audio Emulation

It finally happened! With university over, I decided to tackle what is perhaps my greatest challenge yet in writing this emulator: emulating the YM2612. The YM2612 is the Mega Drive’s primary audio chip. Apparently, it is a cost-effective, stripped-down version of the YM2608: while the YM2608 featured FM, SSG, Rhythm, and ADPCM modules, the YM2612

The Mega Drive’s Interlaced Video Output

Today, I looked into adding support for the Mega Drive’s interlaced video output to my emulator. It didn’t go how I planned, and I eventually realised that it was worthless to pursue. Still, I think this makes for a fun story. First, I should probably go over the basics of how old CRT TVs would

Knuckles in Sonic 2 Disassembled

With my honours project complete, I decided to put my newfound free time into a project that I’ve been meaning to get around to for almost five years: disassembling Knuckles in Sonic 2. In case you don’t know, Knuckles in Sonic 2 (which I’m just going to call ‘KiS2’ from now on) is a version

Everything That I Know About Sonic the Hedgehog’s Source Code

I’ve been meaning to write this for years: To my understanding, not much is commonly known about the source code of the original Sonic the Hedgehog games. As someone who’s been obsessed with the programming of these games for almost ten years, I believe that I know a lot more than most people do. Unfortunately,

Assembler 4

It’s been a week since the last update, so what’s new? Well, the biggest improvement is that the assembler can now assemble SuperEgg’s Sonic 2 Nick Arcade disassembly without any modification. In addition, the assembler is now case-insensitive. Symbol case-insensitivity is user-configurable, just like in asm68k. Also like asm68k, the assembler can now output a