Classic CFRPs on PPC emulation

[Paranoid]

I've loaded up the Atari 8 bit, C-64, NES and Amiga emulators for my PPC...

 

and I'd like to have a classic FRP to kill the time with... I thought Ultima 3 would be a good choice. So I checked it out on all of the systems mentioned above.

 

all of them seem to have some limitations. I'm wondering what a good classic FRP would be, and I'm thinking it would need to be something that is joystick driven... where a single fire button brings up menus... rather than using a bunch of complex keyboard commands... something mouse driven on the Amiga would probably be fine, too... with the same criteria... mouse buttons bring up menus... I've got a fold out keyboard... and... it depends on the mapping, but it *can* work. So far, the Atari 8 bit seems to play the BEST with both the fold out keyboard and the onscreen keyboard touch display... Atari emulators are always so far ahead of the competition...

 

But the 8 bit version of Ultima 3 is probably the worst. Straight black and white. All of the other versions are far prettier (with the Amiga version being the nicest of the four).

 

Any suggestions? It seems like Phantasy I, II and III had a more simple interface that Ultima. Am I right in this memory?

 

This would be something you know, that I might bust out while camping rather than the Game Boy Advance, or while on a flight... or waiting at DMV or the Dentists... when I want to do something more than a simple quick game of DK-5200...

[+remowilliams]

But the 8 bit version of Ultima 3 is probably the worst. Straight black and white. All of the other versions are far prettier (with the Amiga version being the nicest of the four).

Ultima 3 is not black and white. Your emulator is not supporting GTIA/CTIA artifacting, or you haven't enabled it.

 

That'll teach you to use emulators.

[Uzumaki]

Computer emulation of older games are somewhat awkward on any PDAs. Most decent games required keyboard and it's kind of hard to play it while holding the external keyboard or tapping the on screen keyboard at molasses rate of 2 words per minute.

 

I wanted to play Ultima 5 on my PPC but either Frodo didn't support or something doesn't work with the external keyboard. I'd have to see if there are MS-DOS emu for ARM based PPC and to find the DOS version of U5. I have the original (PC and C64 versions) but no way in H-E-Double-L would I spring for an ancient 5.25" drive just to copy over a 15 year old disks that may not work anymore.

[Paranoid]

Ultima 3 is not black and white. Your emulator is not supporting GTIA/CTIA artifacting, or you haven't enabled it.

 

That'll teach you to use emulators.

 

Sweet. Turned on the GTIA, and sure enough... color is there.

 

I'll get back to "awkward on PDAs" later. I disagree. I think it must be device dependent.

[+remowilliams]

I'll get back to "awkward on PDAs" later. I disagree. I think it must be device dependent.

 

Well, I literally have tried almost all of them (PDA/PPC) with the same results. Every device usually has a fatal flaw for emulation/gaming. It's usually the directional controls being totally unsuited for anything other than scrolling through a contact list. Though strategy/RPG (i.e. non joystick/action oriented) stuff usually can work fairly well on PDAs. And then there is that whole simultaneous button press problem that plages most hardware.

 

It's a shame really. My ancient Casio E105 was the first and last PDA apparently that rocked for gaming.

 

These days its the GP2X that rocks the portable emulation house!

[Paranoid]

I had the E115 and a 105. I thought it sucked, at least for realization of gaming. It was huge, the size of an old school transistor radio from the 70s, and it was just too damn slow. It *was* the best thing going at the time, of course.

 

I now have an iPaq 2210. CF and SD and a real logical layout, and 400mhz Strongarm processor. Makes for a killer combonation of features. So far, the layout of the directional controller (I just verified it is very responsive on 8 way games using Berzerk) and surrounding buttons is GREAT for gaming.

 

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ipaq_2215.htm

 

It remains artificially high in price if you can find it, though, despite it's age, because it really does have a killer combo of features, especially with the dual expansion port capabilities via the CF/SD. I have 4gb of memory on the thing, and I can pop out the CF and put in a wireless or other CF card and still have 2gb. It was all I took on my vacation to England a couple of years ago. I was able to connect wirelessly and update photos from my digital camera to my Photobucket every night, send and receive e-mail, browse the net via PocketIE... plus have a load of MP3s on it.

 

 

Now, back to Ultima 3...

 

So, I played around with the GTIA/CTIA artifacting, and Ultima 3 is in color, but it crashes when you Journey Onward. Once you change to anything other than "none" for artifacting, it starts crashing, and keeps crashing, even if you go back to none, as soon as you try to Journey Onward.

 

Anyone have any suggestions or experience with this?

 

Duplicated the results on my PDA and on Atari800Win++