I believe 2025 will be judged on how much of the potential the project has been building up is realized. On a personal level I feel it could be a very slow year, but we will see.
Interesting Prototypes
Gaelco’s Xor World is a game that didn’t make it to market. A version of it, on a dedicated PCB, has been supported in MAME for many years now, but 2025 saw several other versions of the game being made available for emulation. It was also discovered that while the Modular System was mostly used to create bootleg games it did form part of Gaelco’s internal development process, and one of the versions of Xor World that was being developed was designed to run on Modular System hardware and it’s very different to the version of the game that was already known about.
The other version of Xor World that has significant differences from the previously supported one is running on a hardware type closer to several other Gaelco games. Gaelco dubbed these platforms ‘flat’ hardware types, because they were single PCBs, as opposed to the massive stacks of PCBs used in the Modular setups. There are a lot of differents in the graphical and audio department with this one when compared with other supported versions.
An additional set of the already known version of Xor World was also provided, but it only differs by a single byte from the already known set. It isn’t clear what that byte controls, but as the game is a prototype it’s possibly a tweak used on location testing. This version of the game ran on a dedicated PCB design, with some unusual choices, like using PROMs for colour instead of paletteram, and a Philips SAA1099 based sound system. It’s the least complex of the hardware designs, and some presentation elements are stripped back, but may have been the final version.
When telling the story of influential arcade games, one that can’t be ignored is another Gaelco title, easily their most famous and another with an interesting development history. World Rally Championship was a 1993 isometric racer that put Gaelco on the map even outside of Spain. It’s known, from interviews with people who worked on the game at the time that it was originally meant to feature famous Spanish rally driver Carlos Sainz, but all references to him were removed after he changed teams during the course of the development of the game. Much like with Xor World, Gaelco made several versions of World Rally available for emulation, and one of them was an earlier development version from November of 1992, also running on the Modular System, which predates the change to remove Carlos Sainz from the game. Due to being an earlier version, on weaker hardware there are numerous other changes too, nor is the game protected unlike the final version which had many layers of protection to prevent bootlegging. There’s a lot of historical weight to this prototype, so it’s good to see it emulated in MAME!
Master Boy Olympic is a special version of Gaelco’s quiz game Master Boy that seems to have been developed to coincide with the Barcelona 92 Olympics. It isn’t clear how much distribution, if any, it saw at the time.
Improvements to Playstation based hardware
The weaknesses of MAME’s Playstation emulation can easily be seen when trying to run the library from the home console, but a number of those issues were also showing up when it came to the more limited cases of arcade games using Playstation based hardware. One of the most asked about of those cases was Primal Rage II. Some fixes to the SPU (sound hardware) handling and a few IDE ones (specific to the arcade hardware which used a Hard Drive ratehr than a CD) brought that up to working state in 2025; ironically before the original Primal Rage can even be considered fully working.
The aformentioned SPU fixes also fixed a long standing bug with Strider 2, which would previously crash if both buttons were pressed when walking. That one also gained proper working state.
Bloody Roar 2 also benefited from these changes, and now runs the attract FMV without freezing during it, meaning you can leave the game running the demo cycle without issue, which previously wasn’t possible.
Some Taito G-Net games also benefitted from these improvements. While it’s always been possible to boot Space Invaders Anniversary with some CPU overclock/underclock workarounds it has never booted properly by default in MAME, so has always been considered a ‘NOT WORKING’ title. The changes made allow it to boot without any trickery
It’s likely a number of games for the home system were also improved by the same changes, but at the time of writing there’s no comprehensive list of those.
More Plug & Play
The new dumping techniques developed at the very end of 2024 saw their use spill over into 2025, with a number of other devices being dumped and emulated. Let’s! TV Play Kawashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu – Nou to Karata o Kitaeru Taikan Zunou Family Mattore, an entry in the Kawashima ‘Brain Training’ series usually found on Nintendo handhelds but in this case in the form of a Plug and Play was one of the first in 2025 to be added. It’s all in Japanese, and runs on SunPlus tech.
EA Sports Classics is often mistaken for a ‘Megadrive on a Chip’ system, but is actually ports of 2 EA Sports Games to SunPlus SPG110 hardware which is an entirely different platform. Currently FIFA works reasonably well, but NHL has some logic bugs with collisions.
The USA version of the EA Sports unit features Madden 95 instead of FIFA, it also has emulation problems at present owing to the incomplete emulation of the SPG110 chipset.
While EA Sports ran on older SPG110 tech, some of the JAKKS games used newer tech. Known by GPAC500, but based on the GPL162xx chipset this newer gen tech still has some emulation issues, but new dumps will definitely help move things forward. One game dumped using that tech was “The Amazing Spider-Man and The Masked Menace”. You can play the game somewhat, but there are many graphical errors and no sound at the time of writing.
Another GPL162xx based game to be dumped in 2025 was Power Rangers to the Rescue. While still considered ‘Not Working’ and lacking sound this makes less use of the new GPL162xx features, suggesting maybe it was first developed for the older tech before being moved over to this platform. It is playable, but until the overall emulation of the platform is more trusted will retain the flag.
Disney Pixar Classics runs on the better understood SunPlus SPG24x based hardware and features games themed around Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Monsters Inc. This one is fully playable.
Spider-Man in Villain Round-Up is another JAKKS Pacific game, and it includes a Smash-TV like game.
Marvel Heroes: Ultimate Action is unusual in that it contains 2 Ghost Rider themed games, a character don’t see much of.
Shrek / Over the Hedge gives you mini-games from 2 different animated movies.
Arcade Gold featuring Pac-Man is one of the later versions of the JAKKS Pacific Namco arcade collections, and while not the biggest, contains a sizeable number of games.
Retro Arcade featuring Pac-Man is the largest of the JAKKS Pacific compilations, and includes all the games except for Ms Pac-Man (exclusive to the Ms Pac-Man units) and the non-new version of Rally-X (which is found only on a Game-Key)
The Super Pac-Man collection is an earlier unit, what’s interesting is it appears this one was originally going to be released as a Game-Key before being switched to a full unit.
Disney Princess Magical Adventure feature Snow White, Ariel the Little Mermaid and others
Cinderella – Once Upon a Midnight focuses on characters from Cinderella
Sleeping Beauty – Tales of Enchantment turns the spotlight to Sleeping Beauty
High School Musical mixes things up a little by structuring the mini-games around locations on an overworld map, where you must drive around talking to characters.
The Cheetah Girls Passport to Fame was a plug and play based on the girl group from the mid 2000s.
Wheel of Fortune had a 2nd Edition Plug and Play with additional content over the first release. It also ditched the D-Pad controls although interestingly they still function in emulation as support for them wasn’t removed from the device.
Nicktoons Summer Camp is a multiplayer game for up to 4 players, although you do have to take it in turns.
Dora the Explorer – Dora’s World Adventure is yet another Dora themed Plug and Play, definitely one for a younger audience.
Go Diego Go sits nicely alongside Dora the Explorer
Also very much for kids is Sesame Street Beat, which had a very simple 2 button controller with no joystick. This one was dumped from a PAL unit, and unlike the majority of these JAKKS Pacific games it doesn’t seem like the ROM is coded properly to work with both PAL and NTSC timings so it will be interesting to compare a ROM from a US unit in the future.
Developed by Pronto Games for JAKKS Pacific, Deal or no Deal is based on the US version of the TV quiz show, and follows the formula found there.
Pronto Games also handled the adaptation of 1 Vs 100 which shares similar presentation values to Deal or No Deal.
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is yet another game based on a TV show
Hannah Montana – One in a Million is the first of a number of Hannah Montana themed units JAKKS Pacific put out
The other Hannah Montana game, Hannah Montana – Best of Both Worlds is more of a life simulator
Avatar is based on the Nickelodeon series
Jeopardy! is another one based on a TV gameshow of the same name
The Price is Right is also based on a TV show, but it’s a GPL16250 game, so emulation isn’t as good yet
Bejeweled Deluxe is another GPL16250 based game, which is playable but has obvious visual issues and currently lacks sound
Thomas & Friends – Right on Time runs on SPG110 hardware
Teledoodle is an interactive TV paint program on SPG110 hardware, currently lacks controls
Blue’s Room is also SPG110 based and like Teledoodle lacks controls at the time of writing.
SpongeBob SquarePants Dilly Dabbler is an activity collection game featuring Spongebob, also on SPG110 hardawre
There were 2 Carl Edwards Plug and Play devices released back around 2007. One of them on an 8-bit Elan platform, the other on 16-bit SunPlus hardware. They’re both awful for many of the same reasons. The 8-bit one has been dumped for a while but has a number of emulation issues, the 16-bit one was dumped in 2025 and appears to run fine.
The Whac-A-Mole Plug and Play was a much more popular unit. It’s another SPG24x based unit, and captures the spirit of Whac-A-Mole well, with frantic action and plenty of annoying sound effects to taunt you.
Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots isn’t a toy that really lends itself to a great deal of depth when it comes to a video game adaptation, and so the Plug and Play based on it, while well presented, doesn’t do anything to push the fighting game genre.
The Hot Wheels Plug and Play is something of a frustrating affair.
Littlest Pet Shop sees you adopting pets and looking after them.
Barbie Pet Rescue also has you taking care of a variety of animals.
Backyard Baseball and Soccer is one of those cases where you see the Atari name being dragged through the dirt on the packaging. You did get 2 games for your money, but they’re rather slow paced and not too exciting.
Mission: Paintball is a lightgun game from Tiger Electronics in 2004. Emulating lightgun games always feels important because you can’t use the original hardware with modern TVs.
Mission: Paintball Trainer was the sequel and is also now emulated
Webdiver Gladion W-05 DX is a XaviX based system which in physical form is a transforming robot. The robot has 2 different forms, which the game software is able to detect and play a different mini-game based on. The first game is a mech shooting game, while the 2nd form is a train-like vehicle where you have to dodge obstacles. There is also some (still unemulated) functionality for connecting other robots in the series to get different weapons in the shooting game.
SuperXaviX hardware emulation continued to move forward in 2025, with new ROM dumps, and improvements to the emulation allowing them to show more correct graphics and/or not just crash, even if many still have no controls
The Super Sentai (Power Rangers) themed game is an example of a SuperXaviX game which used previously emulated video modes, but now shows a full attract demo cycle.
Ryo Ishikawa Excite Golf is a 2010 sequel to the original Excite Golf, and this time runs on SuperXaviX hardware, again showing the progress being made, but also highlighting some remaining issues. Controls aren’t emulated at the time of writing though.
Minna no Tetris from Epoch runs on SunPlus SPG24x hardware, which is unusual for Epoch as the majority of their output of the era used XaviX technology. The game itself doesn’t disappoint though and lives up to the high standards you see with the majority of Epoch Plug and Plays. A variety of game modes and difficulty settings as well as VS modes against either another player or a CPU opponent make this a solid experience. Despite the Japanese menus it’s easy to figure out and a big step up from the Tetris licensed games Radica put to market outside of Japan.
Some My Arcade Tetris units also run to a degree, although the frontend menus are not properly visible to navigate so they retain a NOT WORKING status in MAME for the time being.
The Pro version runs on Megadrive clone hardware.
The other versions run on one of the bootleggy NES-clone VT platforms
Yet another Tetris game is “Tetris in a Tin” put out by Fizz Creations, it actually runs on VT369 hardware, although you wouldn’t think it from the primitive graphics.
Radica’s Family Tetris was also dumped. This one runs on an ELAN EU3A13 platform. It’s playable, but sound emulation is incomplete so most sounds don’t work properly.
A trio of ‘Interactive Coloring Book’ devices from Techno Source is up next. These run on VT168 hardware and all have the same features, just with images taken from different Disney IPs. There’s one for Cars, another for Toy Story and a final one for Disney Princesses.
Returning to Disney and related licensed products, and the previously mentioned VT369 progress, a number of the Lexibook V369 based units which contain cheaply reskined games now boot too, although at the time of writing many games in them are still unplayable.
The Lexibook Retro TV Game Console 300-in-1 machines also run on VT369 hardware, and show something now. Interestingly the menus on these are meant to use a high resolution mode, although the current emulation treats it as standard resolution.
The VT369 units sometimes also used a lower resolution LCDs, and the VT369 supports output in these lower resolution. The ‘Pocket’ range of Cyber Arcades makes use of this, although the only native low-resolution parts are the boot screen and menu, which also for some reason are rendered as vertical images natively, but are still expected to display horizontally on the same LCD as the games, which are still natively rendered as horizontal, a very strange setup.
The Lexibook Arcade Center is another example of a lower resolution disply, but with many of the games natively running at the lower resolutions.
The Mini Game Player 48-in-1 is another lower resolution unit with a similar selection of games.
Regional releases are often interesting, and in the world of Plug and Plays that’s no exception. Sonokong released a version of Popira, subtitled ‘Finger Sports’ for the Korean market, and as well as presentation changes compared to the Japanese release, there are some new songs, and others moved around to easier / more difficult patterns. While it still has a cart slot like the Japanese version, the Japanese cartridges aren’t full compatible.
The SH6578 was an older not-quite-NES-compatible chipset which some Plug and Plays used. One of those Plug and Plays was Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: DX Soul Bird from Bandai. Despite the fancy looking controller, this actually just uses 3 buttons (and only 1 of them is used in gameplay, the other 2 are just for navigating the menus)
One suprise is that some of the My Arcade units with vertical screens actually still make use of Genesis / Mega Drive based hardware, rather than being emulation based units.
The Galaga / Galaxian unit also uses Mega Drive based hardware, the inaccurate starfield is a visible tell.
For Space Invaders the extra border space acts as a tell, as the original Space Invaders used a 260×224 mode, which doesn’t quite fit into the Mega Drive’s lower resolution 256×224 and so required use of the 320×224 mode with additional black space at the top and bottom of the screen.
More IGS Gambling Games
Work from 2024 on dumping IGS027A internal ARM ROMs continued in 2025, with some unusual hardware pairings being found. Several poker games turned up with the 027A chip, but driving the very primitive video hardware otherwise found on some of IGS’s earlier Z80 based titles. Presumably this was done so that the game code could be rebuilt for newer hardware without changing the video functions. Most of the older games used a pair of chips for this video logic, but here it’s found in a single IGS033 custom.
Huahua Shijie 5 is one such example, it also has an alternate title when a hot air balloon graphic set is enabled in service mode. The game can be played, but the payout hopper is not emulated.
Qiji 6 is in the same boat, and on the surface looks like a very similar game, although in this case when the card set is changed in service mode the title remains the same.
Jin Hu Lu II is an older title, driven by a Z180 rather than the 027A ARM, multiple board revisions seem to exist, some with the IGS033 mentioned above, others with the separate IGS001/IGS002 chips.
Huahua Shijie II is presumably an older version of Huahua Shijie 5 above, although has the flower graphics like Qiji 6. This one also runs on a Z180 and has been seen with and without the IGS033.
There are many lost UK quiz machines, the kind often found in pubs, so it’s always good when they show up. Brain Box 2 was one of the ones to resurface in 2025 and offers about what you’d expect in terms of gameplay with prizes on offer.
Important Fixes for Long Term Emulation Issues
Konami’s Devastators has been supported in MAME for a long time, even marked as ‘Working’ but it’s never really been properly playable due to broken protection handling. The protection in the game takes care of many maths operations, including ones used for targetting, collisions, and enemy spawning. That was all fixed in 2025, meaning you can no longer just walk through the obstacles, enemies spawn as they should, and you can correctly target things like the guardtowers with your rockets. For the first time the game can be considered actually playable in MAME.
Proving that there’s still room to improve the classics, Contra also saw an important fix in 2025. Despite a number of bugfixes in recent years, one issue remained, stray sprites would get left on screen if you allowed the continue countdown to expire, of continued on either 0 or 10. These could block your view if you tried playing the game after that had occured. The issue was fixed in the middle of the year.
