Paranoid's Blog - Is it Real, or is it Atarimax?

RSS Bot · September 17, 2006

So, I was just reading JoeyBastard's blog about emulation and multicarts, and it got me thinking about where I am on the spectrum. I think I started out in the middle, leaning toward's Joey's perspective, but since, I've moved the other way. I *know* I'm a huge fan of the Multicart, for a number of reasons we'll discuss in a moment. But, I've recently become far more receptive to Emulation as well - to the point where, recently I've had doubts about how sound my investments in real hardware have been, because I think I might have been able to achieve pretty near the same thing with a PC with emulation and a decent stick like the Speedlink Competition Pro USB.

And that really is the critical thing, there... or it gets into the right area. The whole INTERFACE is what makes emulation work or not work. Purists really dislike MAME because, well, there are just some pretty big issues that are difficult and/or expensive to overcome with MAME emulation... *if* you insist that your experience be completely faithful to the original arcade experience. If, on the other hand, you're ok with a VGA monitor, or an 8 way joystick, or timing that is a little bit off every odd frame... then MAME will probably work for you. For me, MAME works... and works well... and everyone who comes over is completely blown away by my MAME cabinet. But MAME emulation fits a niche because it isn't practical for many of us to have dozens of full sized arcade cabinets at our houses. So, it doesn't *have* to be perfect in order for it to remain a viable alternative for many.

Console and computer emulation, on the other hand, is a different story. Almost anyone can afford some extra space for a console or an old computer hooked up to a TV somewhere... You can have almost every console every made in a footprint a little larger than a single MAME cabinet. And, you can do this fairly inexpensively, too. So, emulation has to be a lot better for it to remain a viable solution. It not only has to be very accurate, but it has to bring significant advantages over having the ACTUAL physical hardware. And that is a tough one to achieve via emulation. But, it can be done...

Emulation is "free". The "hardware" is free, the "software" is free. If you've got a decent modern PC, you can have emulation of almost any oldschool console or PC you want. That is a big advantage.

Emulation takes *zero* footprint outside of your physical hard drive. Even there, the real estate of even a FULL Atari 8 Bit library on your hard drive is less than an album of MP3s.

Emulation is easier to support and maintain. There are no hardware failures with emulation. Well, if there are, they're with your physical PC, and parts for IT are generally easier to find and easier to replace than parts on an old console. No searching for obscure wall-warts with weird polarity and strange connectors. No cleaning edge-connectors with alchohol and #2 erasers. No prying 72 pins out on a NES. Whatever the problem is, you're not going to have it with emulation.

The INTERESTING thing would be, all other things being equal, I wonder how many could tell if a game was emulated or the real deal. Figure the same joystick, the same monitor, the same game... one emulated, one on real hardware, the PC or console hidden inside a cabinet... whatever buttons and switches need to be, faithfully recreated on the cabinet... (because you can easily map F2 for Start to a genuine START button, for example).

I think most people wouldn't have a clue.... I mean, you could have a real machine, real cart.... real machine, multi-cart... emulated machine, ROM image... all side by side... and as long as the JOYSTICK was the same on all three, I don't think anyone could tell the difference. That is my hypothesis on the deal, anyhow.

Joystick/Controllers and Switches are really the big thing, I think, with emulation. The only other thing I'd consider is that it may be easier to pick a PHYSICAL cartridge from a collection, put it in, and turn the power on, than to load a PC, load the emulator, browse to your library of images, and load the image... not to mention maintaining that virtual library of rom images as files and folders on a PC is a little bit more challenging, too. Which is where, in my opinion, a Multicart becomes a nice compromise between maintaining a PC library of ROM images and having a physical library of rom images.

The AtariMax 8 bit MyIDE Multicart and Atari800Win PLus are kind of my uber-examples of what I'm talking about, currently. Using Atari800Win PLus was a critical part of configuring my Multicart. In the process, I've pretty much got it where My Atari 800xl and my emulator look and behave EXACTLY the same. The joystick is pretty much the same on either platform... the only real difference is physically labeled Start, Option, Select, etc buttons on my Atari versus mapped Function keys on the Emulator. And I'm pretty torn on which is better. The emulation is REALLY good.

I'm really NOT trying to build a case for emulation only, or Multicarts only, or, for that matter, that you MUST have the original hardware. I don't think there is a case for any of these positions. It comes down to your personal preference. After all... I've got 2 7800s, 3 5200s, 1 2600, 2 Genesis 1s, a Coleco, NES, SNES, INTV, Vectrex, Atari 800, 800xl, and various carts for all of them, and more on the way. I think I get the allure of real hardware, of original boxes, of having the carts.

But, I don't feel a need to plug in the physical cart to play, if I've got it on a Multicart (in most cases, anyhow). In that case, the conveinience is way more important to me, and the carts are in storage as backup (should a multicart or the system it works on go bad). To that same extent, I'll often just load up the emulator down on the PC and play with the USB stick rather than go up and turn on the consoles or the Atari 8 bit... for the sake of convienience. As a matter of fact, Joey specifically mentioned emulation on a laptop... I actually *prefer* Demon Attack for the 8 bit on my 17" widescreen laptop to any other version. In this format, it is clearly NOT even really 8 bit emulation. It becomes more like a port to the modern PC hardware. And it is COOL. You would have to see it, see how gorgeous the screen is, to understand. And if you're LOOKING for the original experience of 2600 Demon Attack on a 13" color TV with dials, using RF modulation... you would probably disagree with me. This goes way beyond that experience, in a totally different direction. But, in my mind, not a *bad* direction.

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