(currently a placeholder page for 2026 progress)
After a busy 2025, where there were a large number of new dumps, but not necessarily new emulation, I think we’ll start to see a slowdown in 2026. As we saw with Jammin’ in 2025, the lengths people are having to go to in order to find previously undumped arcade games are reaching the point of extreme; while there are hundreds of known undumped arcade titles it’s possible many of those were never released, or no longer exist at all if they were. Likewise the majority of the Plug and Play devices for which there is a know dumping method have now been dumped, and even in other fields there are only a finite number of systems.
Much of the 2025 update consisted of progress that was the result of new dumps, sprinkled with a handful of important progress on systems already in MAME, and while I titled that write-up as “Time to make the most of potential” the focus on that being necessary will be even stronger in 2026.
The year started with a number of improvements to the Atari Jaguar emulation. MAME’s existing code was built mainly around the needs of the CoJag arcade games (and even then was lacking in some places) The changes allow some games to run, and have much better visuals, but at the time of writing there are still many stability issues. Atari Jaguar emulation has always been difficult to get right, especially when you can’t hide away a bunch of per-game hacks in a closed source project. Any progress is promising, but there’s still a long, long way to go at the time of writing this.
Nichibutsu’s Moon Raker is one of their less common games ‘Moon’ games and was eclipsed by the popularity of Moon Cresta. It runs on earlier tech, similar to Space Invaders, and plays very differently to either. The emulation lacks a starfield (although the unique starfield ROM is dumped) and also audio for the time being.
Atari released a game called Relief Pitcher in 1992, however the concept was originally tried 6 years earlier on their System 1 platform. The 1986 game, while built around similar ideas, is an entirely different game, with the released game being more like a sequel to it. Presentation on this one is much more cartoony, fitting with Atari’s other output at the time, while the 1992 release used more realistic looking graphics which was the way Atari were taking things after the success of Pit Fighter.
Waku Waku Jumbo is another one of the Sega “Kiddie Rides” in the Waku Waku series. This one has you flying a jumbo jet across a bunch of landscapes.
Monkichicchi no Fuwafuwa Puzzle is a puzzle game from Sunwise, running on hardware similar to many popular Toaplan shooters. It’s very likely a prototype. The version that’s been emulated is from around 1995, but apparently a revised version of the game was shown at a 1997 show in Japan with the title “Dakko-chan no Fuwafuwa Puzzle” but that version isn’t yet emulated (assuming there were any differences)
Taito’s Adventure Canoe has appeared in a number of recent Taito compilations, so is fairly well known at this point, but support was added for it in MAME.
Status Games were mostly known for casino style games as well as arcade quiz titles, all running on very primitive hardware with just a single tilemap. That didn’t stop them from trying to make a more ‘traditional’ arcade game using their hardware though, and Planet Patrol, a 1982 maze game, was the result. Clearly an attempt to cash-in on the Pac-Man craze this is a very simple game that really fails to elevate itself even beyond the most basic offerings you could play at home instead. An interesting part of history, but not a game likely to have been remembered by anybody who played it.
Qianxi Jielong / Hongxin Jielong is a card game from a lesser known manufacturer, Hom Inn. Work was done on getting the emulation running, and the game seems to be playable, although full functionality hasn’t yet been verified.
The Predators is a title that was planned to be released by Williams in 1986. Cabinets were produced for what would have been a massive 4 player head to head set-up, but ultimately the game never made it into full production. Developed by Q Video Systems this employs an unusual line blitter, for which the emulation is still imperfect.
Progress on 3D Systems
Continuing on from 2025, MAME saw more progress on the emulation of a number of 3D systems.
Sega’s Model 2 saw many more improvements, bringing titles that didn’t previously work at all to near playable status, although in some cases the visuals are still too dark by default. (Keeping this section brief for now as there might be further improvements over the course of the year which would invalidate any screenshots I upload now)
Namco System 21 emulation also saw an overhaul, with visual and stability improvements across the board.
Battery Operated Games
Battery operated games, be they TV games or handhelds continued to be worked on in 2026. Amongst those was a version of Tetris put out in a mini arcade cabinet by Basic Fun. This one runs on GeneralPlus GPL951xx series hardware, but strangely bypasses the native video support to program the LCDC directly and likewise only uses the DAC output for sound. A few issues prevent it from being considered ‘working’ but it is mostly functional.
Work was also done on the VT ‘enhanced NES’ hardware, including studying some of the devices where extra protection is involved. One such device is the Go Retro Portable, which now runs well enough for some of the games to be playable, including the version of Tetris found on that handheld. Other games in the collection still fail however, so overall it’s considered not working.
Most online sources said that the JAKKS Pacific Winnie the Pooh unit had no Game Key expansions released for it, with the only one being in development cancelled prior to release. This information turned out to be inaccurate, and a retail copy of the GameKey, titled ‘Sweet as Honey’ was found in Italy. Support for it was added to the driver.
Better ROM dumps
Not all emulation bugs can be fixed just by improving the code, in some cases the only known ROM dumps are incomplete, or bad in some way. That was the case for the Japanese version of Final Lap 2, which was meant to be using different tile ROMs for the Japanese text in attract mode. With the correct ROM that text now shows correctly.
