Have a goosie at YaK's Emulator of the Week!
25/1/97
Another excellent emulator that has recently had a major new release is the EMU Atari vector emulator, which has now gone to version 2.0. This emulator now has a really nice front end, from which you can set up various parameters for each game; many of the games now have sound support; there have been various tweakings of the games themselves, rendering them more authentic emulations; and partial support has been added to emulate Space Invaders (although that's unfinished and the game behaves a little oddly. Never mind, because you can always play Space Invaders in Sparcade). The game Black Widow looks really cool - it was unplayable in the previous release, and it turns out to be like Robotron-on-a-Web - very nice. It's a little hard to play off the keyboard, but future versions of Emu will allow joystick support. Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe now save their hi-score tables, and I'm really enjoying having a blast on Deluxe - I was never this good at it when it was originally released!
Both these emulators should be available for download from Moose's (or at least one of his mirrors - I heard in email that Moose has been kicked off Rocknet, apparently they thought his shareware pages made his site "commercial", which is crap). Anyway, you can still get to the mirror, which is still updated. Moose is apparently looking for a new ISP. (Thanx to Rob Sedgebeer for this info).
I have updated the other links to Moose on this page to point at the mirror, until he re-emerges on another ISP.
Poking around my emu sites, I also note that the excellent Stella VCS emulator is just about to release version 0.6. Keep an eye on the Stella site and grab it when it comes out. Stella is the best of the VCS emulators, and has had sound support since v0.5. It's a lot of fun. Don't bother with the w95 version, which runs in a small window and is slow - get the DOS version and install it so that clicking on a ROM image or .VCS file launches the emu - it works just fine right from the w95 desktop, and runs full-screen and at the proper speed.
(1/12/96)
The field of videogames andd computers is an insanely fast-moving domain. What was state of the art ten years ago is a museum-piece now. However, unlike conventional museum-pieces, digital tech is not subject to decay and eventual extinction. Old hardware can be emulated perfectly and, once translated into the digital domain, will live forever. All those old games you grew up with aren't dead - they are being given immortality by a new and skilled breed of coders, the emulator programmers. As a game creator it's especially interesting looking at the emulators, since anyone interested in the history of Llamasoft can not only read about the games and the systems - they can also play them right on their PC.
Digital archaeology is fun - you get to play all those old classics without needing to drop any quarters or fossick around with ancient hardware and decaying cassette tapes; your museum doesn't need a room (or indeed a building) of its own, and by the very nature of the subject matter doesn't take up a whole lot of space on your hard disk. And it's cheap, since most emulator authors have the decency to publish their wares as freeware. For a lot of these guys it's a labour of love.
Since last time I updated this section I have picked up a couple of cool new emus. First off I was delighted to find PCVic - an emulator for the beloved old Commodore Vic-20 that llaunched Llamasoft's strange and furry career. The latest version even makes a pretty good stab at emulating the Vic's sound chip, which is quite rare in emulators at the moment. Sound is often left until last, or not bothered with at all.
Nip over to the CBM Vic-20 page to pick up a copy of the emulator, and check out all the other Vic-oriented stuff that's there. Then, why not blast your brains out on a tasty collection of Llamasoft Vic games? As is my policy on emulator code, I am making available all the Llamasoft ROM images available free to emulator users. Likewise, they may be freely carried by any emulator sites that care to have them. Download my Vic games here. I still love Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time!
It pays to visit Moose's frequently. Not only do you get to see that really silly animated picture of the gun-toting moose with severe lip-and-eyeball twitch, but also you get access to what is probably the best site around for keeping up with the coin-op emulation scene. Moose is tracking the development of just about every coin-op emu out there, and has them all arrayed conveniently for you to download. He updates his page frequently as new versions are released. Last time I went there I found an updated version of the Emu Atari vector emulator - it now runs Battlezone! There is also a cool new Win95 Phoenix/Pleiades emulator, which is good for those who want to play Phoenix but who don't have a version of the Spice-u-lator. (The Spice-u-lator is arguably the best emulator out there, but unfortunately it is extremely hard to come by. Apparently the author, Dave Spicer, had some problems with unscrupulous souls selling the emulator - with roms, which is a definite nono - and withdrew it from general release. He's currently looking to set up a deal for commercial release, but that is going to be hard, as there are so many different companies with the copyrights on all the different ROMs - sorting out a deal with all of them would be a nightmare. I remember this was discussed extensively within Atari when plans were afoot for a 2600 emu and CD-ROM of games for the Jaguar. Anyway, there was a freeware release, which I have - it runs Phoenix, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Amidar, Space Invaders and some weird Centipede clone, and it's cool. According to Moose, the latest version runs over 30 games, and I would give my left knacker, or at least pay a hefty shareware fee, to get hold of that one. *sigh*... oh well, let's hope that Spicer can find a way to release his emulator and not get ripped off, 'coz it'll be well worth waiting for).
Old systems, it seems, do not in fact die - they just get emulated. Most PCs are powerful enough to run almost perfect copies of all those old 8-bit architectures that ol' dinosaurs (hey, I'm 34, I'm already a dinosaur [although I'd rather be a llama]) like me cut our codin' teeth on. So if you want to go on a bigtime nostalgia trip, or you are just interested to see just how little game designers back then had to work with, then nip off out there into netspace and grab some of the emulation software that's floating around. It's a lot of fun, and you can get to play some of those old Llamasoft classics too...
So far I have emulators for the Amstrad CPC, the ColecoVision (with just about all the carts) and, of course, my beloved c64 :-)... I have just been enjoying myself with that, playing Thrust - a most excellent game, simple and elegant in design, that used to be the absolute favourite of me and my mates many moons ago. I remember nights in the Yaklab when I had to run 4 C64s continuously just to keep up with everyone's Thrust habit. The game runs perfectly, full-screen, on my PC and is just as addictive as it ever was. I have been learning once again to manoeuvre my bollock through tight spaces :-)
The best emu I have seen so far for the C64 is PC64 - there is a w95 version, but get the DOS version, as it runs full-screen a *lot* faster than the w95 version, and it makes a pretty decent attempt at emulating SID. Runs fine in a DOS session from w95 too.
A good start for emulator-hunting is at this page which has llinks to some of the better ones. Software can sometimes take a bit of rooting out, as many places are cagey about distributing the images - some of the games are still technically protected by copyright. There's a pretty decent archive at arnold, and there are a few others - you just have to dig around for them. Personally I think it's silly for companies to worry about images of their old 8-bit games being used for emulators. Speaking for Llamasoft, we are certainly not making any money selling 8-bit games anymore, and I would be perfectly happy for non-commercial users to use binary images of our 8-bit games with their appropriate emulators, and for those images to appear on FTP sites. Share and enjoy. :-)
Speaking of sharing and enjoying, if anyone is having trouble getting hold of Llamasoft games for emulators, you can download them from right here. I noted that some people are having trouble finding the games. If anyone wants to put the games on an emu site, I am quite happy for them to be uploaded. So far I have collected the following games:
For C64 the current set contains:
Of course, I suppose in ten years time someone will be playing Iridis Alpha on a C64 emulator that is itself running on a PC emulator running on some awesome system... and getting all nostalgic about Intel processors and Windoze 95... - "remember that company... Microsoft, wasn't it? They were pretty big back then..."... hehe >:-}