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'the entirety' here doesn't seem to include the CPU emulation -

Gens uses
* Starscream 680x0 emulation library by Neill Corlett
* RAZE Z80 core by Richard Mitton

http://gens.consolemul.com/genstech.shtml

I still play DuckHunt on MAME, and best believe me, it's tricky with a mouse, I liked it much better with the light gun. And anyways do like me, instead of asking Santa, ask eMule

I knew about Zero Wing after the whole AYBABTU thing broke off, a while ago I thought of trying the original game, I downloaded Gens and the game's ROM, the game itself isn't bad at all, it also features the intro with the original beeps and background music too.

Out of this World (aka "Another World" in Europe) was truly an amazing game. I'm somewhat of an OOTW historian. Here's some interesting stuff for those who care:

The original game was released in a PC version which happens to work quite well in DOSEmu.

There is a sequel, called "Heart of the Alien" that was only avalible on SegaCD. MobyGames link: http://tinyurl.com/49s8w

Gens is an emulator for Windows and Linux that can play the ROM, should you be able to find it: http://gens.consolemul.com/downloads.shtml

It turns out that the OOTW engine is actually an interpreter that "plays" the game data files. One of the authors of the popular ScummVM software wrote a new interpreter called "RAW" (for rewritten another world) but subsequently took it down under pressure from the original author. It's too bad, because it worked quite well (at least on the European "Another World" data files) on both Windows and Linux.

What does it take to be a hacker?

I've been spending some of my recent spare time writing the dynamic recompilation core of a Z80 emulator. I'll probably shoot for the 68000 next. http://cottage.consolemul.com/

The project before that, I wrote a bytecode weaving tool that transforms Java 1.5 bytecode to Java 1.4 bytecode http://retroweaver.sf.net/

Java has an overwhelming share of mediocre developers, but that doesn't mean Java developers can't be "hackers".

The classics will stay alive, as long as there are people out there who care about them.

This is evidenced in the dozens of emulators out there. Here's a small sample:

Stella (Atari)

FCE Ultra (Nintendo)

Freeze SMS (Sega Master System)

Gens(Genesis)

and, of course:

MAME (Every arcade game we know and love)

On the PC side, we have some very interesting projects:

AGI/SCI Remember all those old Sierra games? Well a few people were able to reverse engineer the interpreter language. The result is that you can now make your own Sierra games, and even take apart existing ones, look at the code, screens, etc, and even modify them if you want. Truly and old schooler's paradise.

SCUMM VM So times have changed, and you can't play your LucasArts games on whatever OS you happen to be running now? ScummVM will fix that. Compatibility is not 100% but give them time.

The people behind these projects are very dedicated to saving the classics. With these kinds of people around, we should have no worries about the games we loved so much fading into obscurity.

you can even transform into different beasts, including a fire-breathing one and a flying animal that can unleash a spectacular-looking energy attack.

What the heck? This was part of the original and they make it sound like it is something new and exciting... what a crock. Time to whip out gens and relieve the good old days.

To be fair, I am sure the effects will be much more convincing and less cheesy than the good old days, but what little boy (or girl) didn't dream of getting huge muscles from absorbing some funky floating power orb, let alone start flying or breath fire.

Speaking of OOTW, you do know they made a real sequel, right? Not Flashback, but an actual game that picks up where the other one left off. It's called "Heart of the Alien", and it was unfortunately only released for the SegaCD.

But now it's it's available for free at The Underdogs. Just download, burn to a CD, and run on an emulator (I recommend Gens.)

Enjoy.