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re discovering and re loving Emulation


Class316

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12 hours ago, Keatah said:

 

I recall my first try at emulating something was running 8088 PC software on the 68000 Amiga. It was a lousy failure-filled experience. First I got thrown out of the computer store for trying to make a copy of the Amiga Transformer. And later when I *did* get a copy I couldn't get the fuck'n thing to work for a long while. And when I did, it sucked and ran like 500 kHz something or other. I think I got MS-DOS to boot and that was it.

PC-Ditto for the Atari ST wasn't much better.  It supposedly ran about the speed of a 1mhz PC, but since the slowest PCs ran at 4.77mhz, that wasn't good performance at all.   Still seems that some people put up with it so they could run Lotus 1-2-3 at home or whatever.

 

ST had a few other emulators,  the Mac emulators ran extremely well since they shared a CPU,  I also remember an Atari 8-bit emulator, an Apple II emulator (which seemed to also run slowly in the demo I saw), and CP/M, which I downloaded but had no idea how to use.

 

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

I wouldn't revisit emulation till I got a hold of Microsoft Arcade and 2600 Activision ActionPacks. MSArcade wasn't really an emulator, but Windows 3.1 rewrites of BattleZone, Tempest, MissileCommand, Centipede, and Asteroids. In any case I was slapphappy to have it. And the ActionPacks taught me about ROMZ as we discoverlearned that there were multiple parts to this puzzle, executable and game-data. It was thrilling to get a rom from another game like Combat or Outlaw to run. Not everything ran, and I had to learn about bankswitching to match up roms that would work.

The other thing that pushed me into the emulator scene was making the jump to PC the bittersweet feeling of leaving the ST behind.  Finding ST emulators meant that it wouldn't be a completely alien new world, and that lead me to other emulators  and this was right at the time when the emulation scene was taking off..   So I remember all the emulators you mentioned as well as the Mame precursor emulators (I forget what they were called). 

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On 2/9/2021 at 9:26 AM, zzip said:

The other thing that pushed me into the emulator scene was making the jump to PC the bittersweet feeling of leaving the ST behind.  Finding ST emulators meant that it wouldn't be a completely alien new world, and that lead me to other emulators  and this was right at the time when the emulation scene was taking off..   So I remember all the emulators you mentioned as well as the Mame precursor emulators (I forget what they were called). 

 

That's how it was for me as well.  In the 80's and early 90's, buying a new computer meant you couldn't use any software you had before (unless you only used PC clones).

 

All the sudden all computers had to be Windows PC's like it or not (yeah there were Macs but they were too expensive as well as incompable).  Not only was I able to move from ST's to PC's using emulators but could also re-experience 2600 & even arcade games I loved as a kid but never thought I could play again.  So I started seeing PC hardware as a universal standard that can run virtually anything out there.

 

 

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On 2/9/2021 at 8:26 AM, zzip said:

The other thing that pushed me into the emulator scene was making the jump to PC the bittersweet feeling of leaving the ST behind.

This wasn't the case at all with me. I had always planned on keeping my Apple II material, and everything else was gone or going. So it was a fresh start. Everything was all new all over again - with a sense of how things should be. Which leads into the testing and sporadic feature suggestions to help get them polished up. In some small way.

 

I always thought that ROM board for the PC, from Emulators Inc. was the epitome of emulation. Gemulator was it? Let you use real rom chips for GEM or the first MAC OS if I remember right..?

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On 2/13/2021 at 3:25 AM, Keatah said:

I always thought that ROM board for the PC, from Emulators Inc. was the epitome of emulation. Gemulator was it? Let you use real rom chips for GEM or the first MAC OS if I remember right..?

Yes Gemulator.  I don't recall if it took Mac roms,  possibly?   The only thing the board did was host the ROMS,  it didn't do any emulation itself, that was all done in software.    I met the creator at a show and he believed that was the only legal way to do a commercial emulator-  the user provided the physical ROMs.   But I don't see how a user creating their own ROM dump file from their ST is illegal, you are generally allowed to make backups.

 

Interesting he also wrote The Xformer Atari 8-bit emulators, and not only did they take ROM files, they distributed the the rom files in the free version!   Don't know how that came about.

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On 2/16/2021 at 9:21 AM, zzip said:

Yes Gemulator.  I don't recall if it took Mac roms,  possibly?   The only thing the board did was host the ROMS,  it didn't do any emulation itself, that was all done in software.    I met the creator at a show and he believed that was the only legal way to do a commercial emulator-  the user provided the physical ROMs.   But I don't see how a user creating their own ROM dump file from their ST is illegal, you are generally allowed to make backups.

 

Interesting he also wrote The Xformer Atari 8-bit emulators, and not only did they take ROM files, they distributed the the rom files in the free version!   Don't know how that came about.

I remember that little controversy on the newsgroups... The real reason was that Gemulator used to be the only Atari ST emulator but soon more became available for free for Unices and even on MS-DOS, and Darek didn't like that at all!  He made a lot of enemies in the ST community so he created SoftMac which also used the Gemulator board for ROMs...and same thing also happened with the Mac community. 

 

Interesting that the current version of Gemulator (and SoftMac which got merged in it) now uses ROM images, including EmuTOS, as the ISA based board is now useless!

 

As for the OS & DOS images being included with Xformer, I believe that Atari gave Darek permission to included them with ST Xformer as they didn't want to officially support the 8-bit line anymore.  This is why you can legally download them to use on other and better 8-bit emulators. :P

 

(My personal interest in wanting Gemulator BITD was to have a more powerful TOS machine on at-the-time more available 486 hardware.  When I finally got a PC that had Windows 98, it became a moot point with other ST emus available.)

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On 2/19/2021 at 6:21 PM, MrMaddog said:

I remember that little controversy on the newsgroups... The real reason was that Gemulator used to be the only Atari ST emulator but soon more became available for free for Unices and even on MS-DOS, and Darek didn't like that at all!  He made a lot of enemies in the ST community so he created SoftMac which also used the Gemulator board for ROMs...and same thing also happened with the Mac community.

I remember when I met Darek, he referred to that first free ST for unix emulator as "the pirate emulator".

 

I get it though,  he was trying to build a business selling emulators.  He even named the company "Emulators Inc" and had emulators.com.   And then the online emulator scene happened when all these free emulators started popping up overnight!  He was like the boy trying to sticking his hole in the dam trying to stop it from breaking, but he couldn't stop the flood! 

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The beauty of emulation is it (generally) just works.  There is (usually) very little hardware, storage, and/or maintenance involved.  I know that I have been enjoying playing N64, Dreamcast, and PSP on my Nvidia Shield TV, which fortunately all of those run (more or less) flawlessly.  Now, I do have to remember how I have set up my controllers, particularly in the case with N64.  But, honestly, couldn't be happier as it provides me a good, clean, simple yet expansive setup.  However, nothing wrong with those the opposite of me.  I totally get and understand wanting to use the original media and hardware.  It just isn't for me at all anymore.  I, personally, have just moved very far from that.

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9 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

The beauty of emulation is it (generally) just works.

[..]

It just isn't for me at all anymore.  I, personally, have just moved very far from that.

Same here with the exception of Apple II hardware. It's my childhood computer.. it and all the stuff that surrounds it such as peripherals and accessories and such. It's all very nostalgic. And it's what I learned the bulk of computer concepts & operations on. Programming. Storage. Memory. I/O. And all the aspects that make up "software". Plus all the good times with gaming.

 

I could not see myself getting into other platforms with the same gusto. Not today. For it would be tedious and time consuming. Emulation can and does get me 90% the way there with 2% the hassle.

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10 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Same here with the exception of Apple II hardware. It's my childhood computer.. it and all the stuff that surrounds it such as peripherals and accessories and such. It's all very nostalgic. And it's what I learned the bulk of computer concepts & operations on. Programming. Storage. Memory. I/O. And all the aspects that make up "software". Plus all the good times with gaming.

 

I could not see myself getting into other platforms with the same gusto. Not today. For it would be tedious and time consuming. Emulation can and does get me 90% the way there with 2% the hassle.

I totally get it, understand, and respect this.  I think there is plenty of room and range for people that just want to do gaming via emulation to people that want to game using exclusively original software and hardware and everywhere in between, such as in your case with the Apple II and nothing else after that.

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5 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

It just isn't for me at all anymore.  I, personally, have just moved very far from that.

I did for a little while, but then I had to get back into the real thing. Had to rebuild most of my Genesis and NES collection from scratch. Fortunately, my cousin bought most of our NES games, and I was able to buy a bunch back from him.

I do buy a lot less carts now that I have EverDrives, though... ¬_¬

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11 hours ago, Asaki said:

I did for a little while, but then I had to get back into the real thing. Had to rebuild most of my Genesis and NES collection from scratch. Fortunately, my cousin bought most of our NES games, and I was able to buy a bunch back from him.

I do buy a lot less carts now that I have EverDrives, though... ¬_¬

Very cool.  I can certainly understand wanting to get back into the real thing having owned a Genesis and NES back in day myself.  However, I can say that if I were to get into collecting I would go the hardware route with EverDrives, as opposed to the opposed of a lot of carts/software and more minimal hardware.  But, again, to each their own.  Nothing wrong with however one chooses to game imo.

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6 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

However, I can say that if I were to get into collecting I would go the hardware route with EverDrives, as opposed to the opposed of a lot of carts/software and more minimal hardware.

Don't get me wrong, I love having the actual carts, but a lot of the games that I'm still after are going a bit out of my price range (and it's great for fan translations, too!).

But if I didn't still have CRT TVs, I'd have less reason to not just go with emulation.

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  • 3 months later...
On 2/6/2021 at 10:20 PM, Class316 said:

CD-I emulation isn't. MAME is the only choice and it is far from complete. Not many games run, but Hotel Mario is one of the games that runs perfectly on MAME. Also you have to get them in CHD to run them (as you do for all CD based systems on MAME).

 

The angry video game nerd has a 2 part video on the CD-I. And among other things he talks about the Zelda games and Hotel Mario. I'm amazed Nintendo allowed these to happen. 

 

I (thankfully) didn't have one back in the day but I would read about it in magazines. Today it is fascinating to watch videos on how much of a failed system it is. So many things about it are just a joke. The bad controller. The bad games. The way they heavily secured the watch battery in the system. To name some things. 

I had a standalone CD-i emulator back in the day on Windows XP. I forget what it's called. I didn't have a powerful enough computer to run it back then though so I think all I got to see working was the system bios. I'm pretty sure that emulator didn't have joystick support either.

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38 minutes ago, TheGameCollector said:

I had a standalone CD-i emulator back in the day on Windows XP. I forget what it's called. I didn't have a powerful enough computer to run it back then though so I think all I got to see working was the system bios. I'm pretty sure that emulator didn't have joystick support either.

There's a couple of standalone CD-i emulators. But none worth much at the moment: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Philips_CD-i_emulators

 

Amazing that we have near perfect Jaguar and Saturn emulation but such horrid emulation for CD-i (and none of Jaguar CD). 
 

Although even if you somehow did get a perfectly functional CD-i emulator, what are you really going to play on it? Really nothing worthwhile that is exclusive to it. Most anything that is somewhat worth checking out on CD-i can be had elsewhere. Hotel Mario is about the only thing that's CD-i exclusive worth checking out for shits and giggles, and that runs perfectly on mame. 

 

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2 hours ago, Class316 said:

There's a couple of standalone CD-i emulators. But none worth much at the moment: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Philips_CD-i_emulators

 

Amazing that we have near perfect Jaguar and Saturn emulation but such horrid emulation for CD-i (and none of Jaguar CD). 
 

Although even if you somehow did get a perfectly functional CD-i emulator, what are you really going to play on it? Really nothing worthwhile that is exclusive to it. Most anything that is somewhat worth checking out on CD-i can be had elsewhere. Hotel Mario is about the only thing that's CD-i exclusive worth checking out for shits and giggles, and that runs perfectly on mame. 

 

Tetris and Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam are decent. Its version of Tetris is unique to the system.

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9 minutes ago, TheGameCollector said:

Tetris and Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam are decent. Its version of Tetris is unique to the system.

Unique to the system but I wouldn't say decent.

 

I've seen reviews of Mutant Rampage. Streets of Rage is better. 

 

And Tetris on CD-i is an embarrassment. You can only flip one side, a BUTTON drops your block fast, as opposed to the down button like every other person, and there's no kind of 2 player mode. Even if you can forgive all this, it has NO SOUND EFFECTS! Can you imagine that? Even the original monochrome gameboy version doesn't have all these faults and makes sounds when blocks hit something. Like how could they have screwed it up? It's mind baffling. When I first played it on Mame, I thought no sound effects was an emulation issue. But Mame actually runs it perfectly. It's mind baffling that this is supposed to be a CD system and they left out sound effects. 

 

IMO the best version of Tetris is still the monochrome Gameboy version. The second best is the SNES version in Tetris and Dr Mario. 

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