What can you play on an Atari Falcon 030?

[Snowbound1996]

So, the Atari Falcon looks gorgeous, and as Atari's last and (arguably) strongest computer, there's a certain fascination it evokes for me, but what exactly can you play with it?
The Falcon had very few games made to natively run on it's hardware, so can it emulate other computers and consoles?? It's contemporary rival, the Amiga 1200, can emulate all sorts of things like the NES, Master System, MS-DOS, Atari 2600 and more.

Does the Atari Falcon have any ability to emulate stuff like GameBoy, Atari 8 bit computer games, or more? Does it gain options with an 060 accelerator? I'd love a list of everything and anything it can emulate. If it can't emulate anything, I might just have to admire the design of the Falcon but keep away from buying it.

[larrylaffer]

The falcon IMHO is a great computer but with a 68060 accelerator (like the ct60) it changes league...

 

You can run Mint OS (both with the 030 and the 060), and in the 060 you can run a ton of ports such as Doom, Quake etc. You can also run ScumVM which is the framework that many adventures use (such as Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Loom etc).

 

I am pretty sure that I have seen all these emulators also running on falcon.

 

There is finally a ton of productivity and music software that is available for it.

[mikro]

More than 100 doesn't count as "few" in my book: http://christophe.bray.free.fr/informatique/falcon/falcon_jeux.htm 

 

And yes, there are emulators for many platforms as well, http://rg.atari.org/emulate.htm comes into my mind first. Then it depends how much accuracy you require, EmuXL (an Atari 8-bit emulator) runs fairly well on 68030 while Atari800 really needs at least a fast 68030.

[Snowbound1996]

Oh wow, all I could ever find online were emulators *for* Atari ST/Falcon computers, I couldn't find any emulators *on* the Falcon.

 

So there's emulators on Falcon for

 

--Gameboy

--NES

--Atari 8 bit

--ScummVM

 

correct? Are there other emulators on Falcon as well  and where's a good resource for them all?

 

I imagine emulators for Amiga could be ported fairly easily to the Falcon since they both use Motorola chips?

 

Also, thanks for all the help so far, until now it seemed like the Falcon didn't have any emulators on it!

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Snowbound1996

[larrylaffer]

I am pretty sure I have seen an emulator for C64 and one for spectrum.

 

I don't think it is possible to emulate an Amiga on a falcon. The custom chips would make it impossible as you will need a lot of cpu cycles to emulate them.

[Snowbound1996]

Ohh C64 and Spectrum too huh? Neat. If there's a link for them that'd be great.

 

And I meant porting emulators on the Amiga like it's master system emulator

[BJolly]

Using a program called "backward" The Falcon can be configured to be backwardly compatible with masses of programs and games that run on the Atari ST range of computers.

[larrylaffer]

24 minutes ago, Snowbound1996 said:

Ohh C64 and Spectrum too huh? Neat. If there's a link for them that'd be great.

A quick Google search received this: https://www.atariuptodate.de/en/emulators/ but haven't downloaded anything from there before.

 

26 minutes ago, Snowbound1996 said:

And I meant porting emulators on the Amiga like it's master system emulator

Oh, I misunderstood, sorry. Yeah, maybe. If one has the source code and the time 😉

[+DarkLord]

You might want to check here:

 

https://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd3.php?s=n#DL

 

A lot of these HD adapted ST games have been fixed to run on later TOS

versions and 4 megs as well as adding a cover photo and trainers. Quite

a few of them will also run on the Falcon. Check the game description(s).

 

HTH's. 

 

[Snowbound1996]

1 hour ago, DarkLord said:

You might want to check here:

 

https://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd3.php?s=n#DL

 

A lot of these HD adapted ST games have been fixed to run on later TOS

versions and 4 megs as well as adding a cover photo and trainers. Quite

a few of them will also run on the Falcon. Check the game description(s).

 

HTH's. 

 

I'll definitely check this out as well, thank you DarkLord!

[+DarkLord]

You're most welcome.   (and thank P.Pera for all the hard work

on these conversions).

[Snowbound1996]

So, it's been fun delving into research about the Falcon and I've definitely learned a lot. One emulation surprise is with Godboy GodiNES. They seem cool, but it appears they can only emulate a handful of games? I must admit I thought they were "full" emulators that could play all GameBoy and NES games

[tjlazer]

There is an Atari 800 emulator and it ran dog slow on it (just like it does on an Amiga with an 030).  You need an 060.

[JamesWD]

95% of all my original ST games run just fine on my Falcon with the brilliant Backward Utility most use v2.71 very few 'need' v2.8.

 

There was a v3 but never needed it, as the 5% that didn't work I didn't care about anyway.

Edited July 5, 2023 by JamesWD