Imitation and Flattery
Belive it or not, ancient video games are still a lot of fun, and many of us still want to play them. Since most, if not all of these gems are now decades old and most of the hardware for them have disappeared it is up to us enthusiasts to keep them alive.
Meanwhile, in the space since the late '90s and now, it has been determined that things like online PvP, 1000-in-1 gamepaks and unlimited save states are things that we shouldn't have to live without. Lucky for everyone it has also been determined that we can have both have old games and modern features through the magic of emulation!
In the spirit of innovation and appropriation, we have decided to throw our hat in the ring to see if we can contribute to a better world with our own on spin on an already excellent emulator:
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The Original:
FinalBurn Neo, a multi-arcade emulator with some MAME pedigree. A true original and a testament to the spirit of retro gaming. We can't say enough good things about this project, its founders, and its contributors.
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Our version:
A fork of a fork - Funscrew FBNEO - features an open source version of GGPO compiled as a static library.
In its current form you can directly connect to your friends, enemies, and frenemies to compete or cooperate!
News + Updates
Emulator Updates
7/22/2025
We are pleased to announce that the most recent version of the emulator / GGPO code has been updated so that rollbacks are now working as expected, and everything is stable. This version of the emulator is now being used in Hyper-Reflector, a free to play P2P client for 3rd strike.
Meanwhile, the 'next steps' that were mentioned in the last update have been completely moved to the back-burner as we continue to focus on improving the netcode, and finding a way to provide some kind of spectator support that is compatible with the Hyper-Reflector P2P networking.
Talk To Me
6/12/2025
Good news! The chat feature is now working in the emulator over direct connections. You can see your messages, and the messages that others send to you. Additionally, we made sure that the 'mute chat' feature works so that you don't have to listen to whatever they want to tell you!
A chat in the emulator over a direct connection.
Next Steps:
During this set of updates, we noticed that there is a lot of old code + old tech that is just kind of laying around, probably from the decades of tech updates + contributions and so on. Things like optional sound and video systems that pre-date DX9 that probably aren't needed anymore. Because we would like to eventaully bring the current renderer up to speed, and use a universal menuing system we would like to reduce and simplify the codebase by removing all of the old code + dependencies that are no longer needed. Not exactly an exciting update, but one that needs to be done and will help out a lot in the long run.
Status Update
5/5/2025
The current focus of this project is to continue to improve and standardize the GGPO implementation. In the near term, consolidating the code, standardizing some of the APIs, and implementing a proper chat feature is the goal. Because this project is a labor of love, timelines are unknown.
Long term, there are a lot of great ideas for QOL improvements to the emulator. Namely coming up with a menuing system that is truly cross platform, and to fully implement the plug-and-play input updates from the drewCoSoftware fork. But why stop there? How about drag and drop custom shaders? DnD Pal mods? Why not take an existing emulator and improve it with more memory, instructions and wacky post-processing effects? If you have any great ideas, drop us a line!
In the meantime, keep an eye on us for more updates as we proceed.