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The Emulation Thread
Use this thread to discuss emulation, including:
Arcade Machine Emulation (eg MAME)
Computer Emulation (eg WinUAE for Amiga, VICE for earlier Commodore machines)
Console/games machine emulation (Atari 2600, Vectrex, etc)
Personally I find emulators fascinating. Especially realising that a low end computer today can emulate, in software, arcade machines of the past that were the pinnacle of gaming technology at the time.
It is not just mapping the instruction set of the emulated CPU, but the ancillary chips, timings, etc. So the computer that is doing the emulating has to be many times more powerful than the emulated system. Amazing then that a Nintendo DS can even emulate some of the less taxing systems!
My favourites include:
MAME, because I spent heaps on the earlier games when they were new and in the arcades
WinUAE for Amiga emulation - I had an Amiga 1000 when they first came out, and it was seriously cutting-edge at the time. The games were a step ahead of any other system on the market, besides the Atari ST, its only natural predator. WinUAE has really improved with the newer releases - much more user friendly.
VICE, for Commodore 64 and Vic 20 emulation. Again, I had both of these machines when they were new. Got the Commodore 64 when it first came out, with a tape deck which was so incredibly slow. Like, put in a tape of a game to load, have dinner, come back and it would be just about done. Later added a disk drive, dot matrix printer, monitor instead of TV, and a 300bps modem :D
Stella - for Atari 2600 emulation. The Atari pre-dated any of my computers, and at the time was the duck's nuts of console gaming. Today, the games look ancient.
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