Sega Naomi 2 Emulator

[Gene Cryder]

TheNAOMI (New Arcade Operation Machine Idea) is an arcade system released by Sega in 1998. It was designed as a successor to Sega Model 3 hardware, using a similar architecture to the Sega Dreamcast.

The NAOMI was succeeded by the Sega Hikaru and Sega NAOMI 2 boards, though having out-lasted the NAOMI 2, Hikaru and Sega System SP. The Sega Chihiro, or possibly even the Sega Lindbergh, could also be seen as successors.

The NAOMI board and almost all of its variants were united in common by running on mostly the SH-4 32-bit RISC CPU. Next, all but two of these various boards shared their own form of the PowerVR 2 graphics processor with some differences in specifications (eg. either single or twin CPUs). The exception was the Cave CV1000 which ran on a Hitachi SH-3 CPU and its GPU was the Altera Cyclone EP1C12 FPGA. Many of them also utilized their own Yamaha audio chipset. Sega Hikaru had its own Sega Custom 3D GPU composed of dual PowerVR 2 GPU chips.

The Sega NAOMI 2 had 2 PowerVR CLX2 GPUs, a PowerVR Elan chip, and 2X the graphics memory. A prototype version of an unreleased game called Jet Squadron was made on the NAOMI 2 board in 2000 but the first officially released games started in 2001.

PowerVR 2-based board from Spanish company. Not their early 'Gaelco 3D' board from 1996-1998. There is also an inactive emulator for the unrelated earlier Gaelco 3D system, and MAME supports that one.

Do not add any emulator columns that are not worth adding. Certain emulators that have no reports or proof of games compatibility with certain hardware mean that their compatibility may not exist at all. Also, if those same emulators are too old, not mature enough, have been superseded by emulators that either branched off or are simply better, then there is virtually no reason to use emulators with 'doubtful' compatibility status at all.

The NAOMI GD-ROM, released in 1999, is identical to the standard NAOMI, but uses GD-ROM discs for storage instead of ROM cartridges. It comes with a DIMM Board, which is very similar to a ROM cartridge, but with RAM instead of ROM. When a game is installed, the GD ROM content is loaded onto the DIMM Board RAM, so that the game data runs from the DIMM Board rather than the GD-ROM disc. However, the amount of up to 1GB of data on the GD ROM optical storage, compared to the more expensive ROM carts (Designed as printed circuit boards) with up to 168MB of space, came at the expense of slower loading times. Though, when the NAOMI powers-on, it copies data from the comparatively slow GD-ROM to the faster DIMM memory. Thereafter, the game executes entirely in RAM (Until either the battery goes flat, after which several days of waiting are needed before re-booting; or a different GD-ROM disc is inserted).

Sega's NAOMI Satellite Terminal Hardware infrastructure enabled developers to make games with multiple control terminals, so several people could sit and play a game that has one large screen. The Satellite Terminal Hardware links up to 10 NAOMI boards. Multi-terminal systems like this made use of Memory Card Reader and Dispenser (MCRD) technology. Derby Owners Club (2000) and World Club Champion Football (2002) are two applications of these technologies.

* DEmul: The arcade boards' compatibility lists for DEmul can be found inside the 'arcade_compat.txt' file inside DEmul's release archives. It covers most boards but not the Cave CV1000 boards. Also see naomi.compat.txt.

** Flycast: The arcade boards' compatibility lists for reicast's libretro core can be found on that core's GitHub repository (Official). It now supports reading/decryption of all types of proper MAME rom sets for DC-based arcade systems (NAOMI games with M1, M2, M3 & M4 keys-based encryption; NAOMI GD-ROM games & Atomiswave games). There is no emulation for NAOMI 2 and NAOMI 2 GD-ROMs as it's held back by the fact MAME lacks documentation on the special ELAN custom chip for geometry processing on that board. Ongoing support list of arcade platforms based on the SH-4 CPU. Supports loading both .gdi and CHDv5 formatted files - see a git comment for how to format a folder with GDI dump files into highly compressed CHD files. Merged ROMs, ROMs archived with 7zip as well as parent/split ROMs are now supported. It can play Demul-compatible ROMS (In .bin/.dat file formats).

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