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The Commodore 64 (C64) is the most successful home computer ever manufactured. This also shows in the number of the software products (mainly games) released for the system.
Fortunately, Windows Mobile, both the traditional Pocket PC and the touch screen-less Smartphone version, has pretty good Commodore 64 emulators.
In this roundup, I elaborate on them all on both platforms. I also present a small gift to the entire QVGA (320*240) MS Smartphone community: a C64 emulator, hacked by me, which does make use of the entire QVGA screen, as opposed to the pre-hacked state. And, of course, the roundup itself is also a nice present: as with all my other emulation-related articles, nowhere else will you find a better, more thorough article on all these subjects, I think
1.1 Is Windows Mobile-based C64 emulation worth the trouble at all?
As opposed to, say, emulating the Amstrad CPC or the Commodore Amiga, the answer is YES, for two reasons.
First, the device has a plethora of good (!) games. While the same games typically exist on other platforms (back in the eighties, games were released for several computer and/on gaming console platforms at the same time), the C64 had a more game-friendly hardware when compared to most home computers (and even some dedicated gaming consoles) of that time.
This means for example the C64 version of the classic game "Uridium" is orders of magnitude better than, for example, the very slow and in no way spectacular (not even mentioning its also sub-par sound / music) ZX Spectrum version. With other games, the differences may not be so apparent (after all, Uridium used the superfast character mode on the C64, unlike on the ZX Spectrum, where it needed to do some heavy bitmap moving), but, generally, if you can, say, only choose from a ZX Spectrum, an Apple II, an Amstrad CPC and a C64 port, check out the latter first for the best possible graphics / sound. (The only exception is the high-resolution mode of the Amstrad CPC, which results in particularly text-based adventures' delivering a much better gaming experience. Unfortunately, as PocketCaprice doesn't support the high-resolution mode on VGA devices, this advantage is non-existing on our mobile platform.)
Second, as opposed to emulating the Amiga, Windows Mobile-based C64 emulators have no speed problems at all - not even on very slow handhelds. While it's impossible to play most Amiga games on even the fastest Windows Mobile devices without stuttering sound, C64 games run on even on lowest-end, 7-year-old models without problems. This also includes today's TI OMAP-based models, of course.
Supporting low-end hardware, fortunately, also means support for even low-end, low-resolution (176*220) MS Smartphones. As the Smartphone platform has way fewer games than its big brother, the Pocket PC, emulation becomes even more important. While, fortunately, there are some really excellent gaming console emulators for MS Smartphones (even 176*220 ones) - for example, Masterall's emulator masterpieces and SmartGear, home computers are generally not emulated on the platform (that is, there are no for example Atari ST or Amiga emulators for the MS Smartphone). The lack of (home computer) emulators and native games makes it very important for any MS Smartphone user to have access to a plethora of C64 games, which are, with many titles, perfectly emulated even on low-end, cheap mobiles.
1.1.1 When to stick to emulating another platform?
Of course, not all titles should be played in a C64 emulator. For example, when a particular title also exist for the Nintendo NES, the SNES, NEC’s TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine), the Sega Master System (SMS), Genesis / Mega Drive or Game Gear, going for these emulators may turn out to be a better choice. (Please do click the links for the complete rundown of the Windows Mobile emulation possibilities. Also make sure you follow the other, for example Amiga / Atari ST / Amstrad CPC / IBM PC links to emulating home computers.) With the exception of SNES, the emulators of these systems are also very low-end handheld-friendly and the games, in general, are at least as good as on the C64.
This is particularly important when you don't want to shell out any money for the emulators - the free C64 emulators are WAY worse than many console emulators, compatibility- and controllability-wise. For example, the best free C64 emulator, PocketHobbit, doesn't support redefining fire buttons (let alone providing rapid/auto- or screentap-based firing) and defaults to application buttons traditionally found next to the D-pad. This means you can only play games heavily relying on both the D-pad and the fire button in the not most ideal Portrait orientation. As opposed to this restriction, most of the above-linked, free (!) console emulators either support touchscreen-based firing or, at least, button redefining capabilities so that you can assign the fire functionality to a button much easier accessible with the right hand (assuming you're right-handed and use your left hand to control the D-pad) when in Landscape orientation.
Of course, these issues don't exist with PocketCommodore64, but, as opposed to almost all of the recommended gaming console emulators (even including the otherwise commercial SmartGear, which is freely registered for users that do provide feedback on compatibility issues), it's commercial.
That is, in general, if you plan to play a given title but would like to get the best gaming experience, go to Wikipedia, look up the given title and check out what other platforms it has been ported to (it’s listed in the text box on the right, in the “Platform(s)” row). In general, you can safely ignore the Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and the Commodore Amiga (as long as you want sound) computers. If there is an Atari ST port (another, more advanced home computer with excellent Windows Mobile emulation capabilities), you may want to check it out; as is the case with the NES, SNES, SMS, PC Engine, Genesis and, in cases (only as a last resort – the Game Gear has a low-resolution screen, which you may not particularly like), the Game Gear ports. Most of these games / ROM's are available on the Web. In my past articles, I've explained how you can find these titles and what you will need to play them on your Windows Mobile device.
The same stands for games that have a native Windows Mobile interpreter; for example, Magnetic Scrolls or Lucasarts titles.
Finally, the case is the same with titles that are plain incompatible with the C64 emulators available on Windows Mobile. There are only few of them (and this number will decrease even further when the brand new & completely redesigned version of PocketCommodore64 is released); still, it's good to keep in mind that, with most games, you have alternative platforms like SMS well emulated under Windows Mobile.
An example of titles that belong to this ("you need to find an alternative platform because current C64 emulators are plain incompatible with the title") category is the well-known, famous Impossible Mission. While some people (including the developer of PocketCommodore64) had success with emulating this title on Windows Mobile, I haven't managed to do so, not even after testing four different, independent versions (using the traditional parlance, "cracks") of the original game and, of course, actively trying to make the emulators run in NTSC mode. (The original Impossible Mission, along with some cracked versions, are NTSC.) With this title, the only way of playing turned out to be emulating SMS with, say, SmartGear.
The SMS version of Impossible Mission is of even better quality than the C64 one, with all the goodies like digitized sound. Not so with the ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC versions - they not only lack digitized sound, but are also uglier and have less sophisticated graphics - that is, as has already been pointed out, should be avoided.
1.2 Downloading C64 games / apps / demos off the Web
All emulators are common in that they, generally, read standardized file formats. If you're new to C64 emulation, you need to know about .d64 disk images, .t64 tape images and, finally, directly exported .prg files. (There are some more obscure file formats as well, for example, the cartridge formats.) A decent emulator should handle at least the first, D64, as the vast majority of the titles are in this format. D64 is exclusively used to store the data / dependent / overlay files of programs not available in a one-file (.PRG) version and, generally, can't be converted into a non-D64 format (back in the Golden Age of the C64, when disk drives were really expensive and a lot of C64 users just couldn't afford them, it required a lot of work from crackers to make an initially disk-only application fit into the cassette format, preferably contained in one-file); this means the lack of D64 support means you won't be able to play games arriving exclusively as D64 and containing more than one files.
There are several tools to convert between the different file formats (for example, to extract individual files from a D64 file); I'll elaborate on D64 Editor later.
As long as you don't want to transfer your own disks into files on your PC or Windows Mobile device (which requires a genuine 1541 drive hooked up to a PC and accessed via Star Commander), you can download almost all titles off the Web. One of the best sources to download C64 games / software is the Blast! archive. As it contains some 340 disk images, you will want to consult the alphabetical list of all games to quickly find which image contains the game you’re looking for.
1.3 Using the emulators
After you've downloaded the games you'd like to play and installed the emulator, start the latter. Copy the games to your Windows Mobile device. Check the "ZIP support?" row in the Feature & Comparison Chart (from now on: Chart) to see whether you need to uncompress the ZIP files; if the particular emulator doesn't support compressed ZIP files, then, do this before the transfer. In general, only PocketCommodore64 supports ZIP'ed archives and even it has some restrictions; namely, you can't select individual files inside a ZIP'ed D64 disk image. That is, if you want to do this (and you WILL want it with, say, the Blast! disk images for the incompatibility reasons outlined above), you will need to unZIP these (and ONLY these - for example, d64 files downloaded from HERE can all be auto-started and, therefore, you will not need to go into them from the file manager to select the program to run) d64 files even when played with PocketCommodore64.
If the emulator uses the standard file selector dialog box on Windows Mobile (see the "File dialog box?" row in the Chart), then, you will need to put the files in either in \My Documents or a subfolder of it in the main storage or, with pre-WM5 devices, on the storage card. With a WM5 (or later) device, with a storage card, the files MUST be put in either the root of the card or a direct subfolder of it. Keep this in mind if you don't see the files you've transferred to your PDA, accessed from an emulator relying on the standard file dialog box (that is, PocketHobbit and ComeBack64ce - PocketCommodore64 (Pocket PC) and PocketHobbitSP2003 (Smarthone) both use their own file dialog box). Also, you may want to install a file dialog box replacement like Mad Programmer's File Dialog Changer in order to be able to navigate to any directory. Please see my earlier articles on how it should be installed and used.
After transferring the disk / tape images / programs to your handheld, you will need to instruct the emulator to load and, then, execute then.
1.3.1 Loading programs into the emulators
In general, there are two ways of loading a program. The first is just attaching a disk image to a virtual drive (like inserting a disk in a physical drive but not doing anything else) and, later, manually loading a file from there by issuing
either the load"*",8[,1] command, which loads the first program on the disk. With games occupying at least an entire disk, it'll load the game itself; with disk images with more than one program, only the first. This means you will NOT want to use this approach when you want to start a program not being the first in a disk image.
or, the load"<programname>",8[,1] command, which lets for selecting and loading any program, not just the first.
The second is a one-step approach, which not only attaches a virtual image to an emulator, but also loads a program from there. This is what the "Autoload File" functionality in PocketCommodore64 (the only Windows Mobile app capable of this) stands for.
In PocketCommodore64, if you double-click a disk image (it may even be compressed; that is, ZIP'ed), it will be assigned to virtual drive 8 (the default) and the first program will be autoloaded.
Note that the other two D64-capable emulators (PocketHobbit (Pocket PC) and PocketHobbitSP2003 (Smarthone)) only allow for attaching disk images and, then, with a separate (!), predefined command / menu item, loading the first program. While this still doesn't involve having to entering the full load"*",8[,1] command on the on-screen keyboard (with PocketHobbitSP2003, the phone's phonepad or, when existing, the full keyboard), it certainly involves (much) more screen taps / menu navigation.
For example, with PocketHobbit (the free Hobbit port for the Pocket PC), you first click a disk drive icon, select "Insert disk…", select the disk image to be attached to the selected virtual drive and, then, click the disk icon again and select "Load and execute first program". Note that, despite what the title states, it will NOT execute the program - you will still need to manually enter 'run' to do this.
With PocketHobbitSP2003 (the Smartphone Hobbit port), the situation is even worse: first, you press the left soft key to bring up the file selector / disk image attach screen; you select an image using the up/down arrows, Action, Options / Go Up and, finally, Open (left softkey) and also pressing OK on the next notification box (titled as "Error" - it's an information box, NOT reporting any error! Unfortunately, using error notifications instead of simple info boxes are VERY misleading for the uninitiated). Now that the image is attached, you will need to load the first program by pressing the right softkey, going up (with several Up presses) to the LOAD"*",8,1 button and pressing Action on it, which will load (but, as with PocketHobbit, still NOT execute!) the program into memory. Finally, to run it, you will need to go back to the text entry dialog (right softkey) and enter 'run' on either the phone dialpad (fortunately, here, the English T9 will work just fine) or the built-in full keyboard if present. Unfortunately, there's no shorthand RUN button.
See how much easier the PocketCommodore64 approach is?
And that's not all: should you need a quick way to execute a non-first program in a disk image file, PocketCommodore64 also allows for this. Just expand the tree represented by a disk image (by clicking the + sign in front of it) and double-click the program name - still in the "Autoload File" mode. (Note that you can NOT expand ZIP'ed disk images, as has already been pointed out. This, I think, is a bug.) This kind of functionality is (also) severely missing from the other two Pocket PC-based emulators.
1.3.2 Other features / settings
1.3.2.1 Turbo mode
Almost all emulators allow for a "turbo" mode in addition to the "100% speed" one. The former will allow for, on current, fast Windows Mobile devices, much (400-500% of the original C64 speed) faster program execution.
Enabling turbo mode also greatly speeds up disk emulation with the free PocketHobbit. However, it also results in most importantly character input problems: with enabled turbo mode (which is, with PocketHobbit, is the default), you won't even be able to enter 'run' because of the doubled characters. That is, should you go with PocketHobbit (you shouldn't - PocketCommodore64 is WAY better and, IMHO, certainly worth its price; you should go with PocketHobbit only if you really can't shell out money for the former), you will find yourself always switching between the two modes. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to switch - just click the standing / running icons in the lower right corner.
Again, as has been pointed out, you will need to enable Turbo mode with PocketHobbit - otherwise, disk operations (loading programs) will be way too slow. Fortunately, this isn't the case with any other emulators: you can always keep them in the "throttled", "100% original speed" state without sacrificing disk loading speed.
1.3.2.2 Buttons
Better emulators (on Windows Mobile, PocketCommodore64 only) also let for redefining buttons. This is essential when playing in landscape orientation and you plan to use a hardware button far away from the D-pad to avoid cramped hands & awkward handling. Too bad neither PocketHobbit nor ComeBack64ce support this, which, as has already been pointed out, makes them a bad candidate for playing in Landscape orientation.
Good news for Smartphone users: PocketHobbitSP2003, as opposed to the Pocket PC port, makes use of the "Volume up" button as another, alternate fire button, in addition to the * on the keypad. This will be especially handy on models that have easily accessible volume keys (for example, the HTC Oxygene / s310), as opposed to models with recessed, very-hard-to-press keys (for example, the currently best MS Smartphone, the HTC Vox / s710).
1.3.2.3 Changing orientation
In the default Portrait mode, only part of the entire screen estate is used as the original C64 uses a Landscape 320*200 screen (meaning 8:5 aspect ratio). This not only means suboptimal screen estate utilization (which can be an issue particularly with devices that have smaller, say, 2…2.8" screens), but also image resizing / downscaling issues.
First, some words on how you can switch to the Landscape mode. It's very easy with ComeBack64ce - you just click the screen and it rotates. With PocketHobbit, it’s also pretty easy (click the screen icon (the leftmost one at the bottom) and select either of the Landscape modes from the menu). With PocketHobbitSP2003, you need to press button 4 to do the same.
With PocketCommodore64, it's a bit more complicated: you first need to assign a button to the "Display toggle" functionality and, then, by pressing the just-assigned button, you can iterate through the available screen modes, including the Landscape ones.
To assign "Display toggle", click the Settings icon (it's under "Autoload file"); then, click Setup Controls (it's under the two joystick assignment checkboxes in the upper left corner) and, finally, click "Display toggle". Now, press the button you'd like to assign this functionality to (even the screen will do - if you don't want to use the touch screen as the fire button). After this, you can start changing orientations by keeping pressing the just-assigned key (or the touch screen).
1.3.2.4 Using different screen rendition modes; image downscaling issues
It’s not only the orientation that has a direct effect on the screen estate usage, but also whether borders are displayed and whether the emulator is VGA-aware when running on a VGA device.
First, some math. The full size of the original C64 screen, with borders, is 384 * 272 pixels; while, without borders, it’s 320 * 200. As the resolution of the (Windows Mobile) QVGA screen is 320*240 pixels, you can only display the picture (without the mostly useless borders) of the original C64 without having to drop some pixel columns (and, consequently, rows, if you plan to keep the 8:5 aspect ratio) if you use landscape orientation AND you don’t display any borders.
Landscape mode done this way is supported by all free Pocket PC clients: PocketHobbit, ComeBack64ce and PocketCommodore64 running on a QVGA device. These three all completely ignore the borders and only display the active screen area. In general, this is the best approach because, as has already been mentioned, displaying the border would mean an original horizontal resolution higher than the physical (horizontal) resolution of the QVGA screen; that is, some pixel columns (and rows) would be needed to be thrown away. Example screenshots of PocketCommodore64 (again, running on a QVGA device): 1 2; the latter in the second Landscape mode, without on-screen controls.
PocketCommodore64, when running on a VGA (640 *480) device, behaves differently. As PocketCommodore64 is VGA-aware and it does make advantage of the high resolution of the screen (it’s the only c64 emulator to do so), it is also displaying the borders around the active area so that you can see what the (few) programs (mostly intros and demos) that do use the border do.
Again, as VGA devices have plenty of additional pixels, this doesn’t result in noticeable distortion caused by completely thrown-away pixel rows / columns. Actually, exactly the opposite is happening. That is, because, in VGA mode, PocketCommodore64 needs to stretch 384 columns (and 272 rows) to completely fill in the 640 * 400 (without the on-screen controls, 640 * 480) available screen estate, some pixel rows / columns must be rendered twice. This also means there will be some kind of distortion, but it’s just a bit ugly because of the doubled lines / rows. Column / row doubling is still WAY better than completely throwing away information (that is, not rendering certain pixel columns / rows). The latter results in definite information loss and, in extreme cases (as with downsizing the original 320*200 screen to 176*125 to fit the screen of a low-resolution MS Smartphone in Portrait mode, which means having to drop almost every second rows / columns. The latter results in severely reduced and, at times, plain unreadable text as can be seen for example in THIS screenshot), almost fully unreadable characters.
As opposed to the Landscape mode (where, again, no row / column dropping takes place), in Portrait mode, as you need to force 320 columns in a screen that, physically, has 240 columns only, you already need to throw away every fourth column. If you do stick to the original 8:5 aspect ratio of the C64, then, you also need to drop 50 rows as well, further reducing readability.
As the latter (dropping rows) isn’t really necessary (as there will be a lot of screen estate unused even when you use really big on-screen keyboards / controllers), some emulators don’t necessarily stick to the 8:5 aspect ratio but, instead, render all the original 200 pixel rows. This means they don’t drop a single row, only columns.
In this respect, there are two kinds of emulators. PocketCommodore64 (related screenshot HERE) and ComeBack64ce (screenshot HERE) use the latter, much better and more preferable approach, while PocketHobbit does drop some rows. While the latter “only” drops 30 rows (that is, it doesn’t technically adhere to the 8:5 aspect ratio either), the results are still way worse than with the former two emulators (as can be seen in the screenshot, for example the center line of E’s is completely thrown away. Let me point out that characters in the character ROM of the C64, generally, only contain single rows; this is why they can be made unreadable so easily even with moderate pixel row dropping).
In addition to the default mode, in Portrait mode on QVGA devices, PocketCommodore64 is able to iterate over four different screen configurations so that you can find your favorite (most probably, you’ll prefer the default first). On VGA devices, on the other hand, the four Portrait modes are the same; for example, the only way to get completely rid of the (horizontal) borders is to manually configuring the fourth screen mode (the user mode) by passing the coordinates to display should be using the (default) 32,36,352,236 coordinates as is explained in the sixth chapter (Advanced Features) of the official document, under the 10th bullet. This, however doesn’t seem to work on VGA devices – it must be a VGA-related bug.
1.3.2.5 Joysticks
The C64 has two joystick ports. Most single-player C64 games used the joystick in Port 2. However, you may need a joystick in Port 1 with some games / intros. It's worth knowing what the implications are and how joysticks are emulated.
First, the tested emulators vastly differ in what joystick port is, by default, emulated by the D-pad and the fire button. You can find this information in the "What is D-pad (with desktop emulators, cursor block) by default assigned to?" row of the Chart. As can clearly be seen, PocketCommodore64 assigns both of them. This is probably the best approach as you will rarely need to manually reconfigure what joystick port is being emulated. However, it may result in, with some games, funny results; for example, with the well-known two-player classic Wizard of Wor. When played with the default settings, both players are activated; this means if you press Up on the D-pad, both players' sprites will move up. This is not necessarily what you want; therefore, in these cases, you will want to disable one of the two joystick assignments.
PocketHobbit, as opposed to the rest of the emulators, emulates Port 1 by default. Again, this port is used by far fewer games than Port 2 and, therefore, you will often need to switch over to the latter. Fortunately, doing this is very easy: just click the joystick icon on the main emulation screen and select Joystick 2 in the menu.
Both ComeBack64ce and PocketHobbitSP2003 emulate Port 2 by default; with the latter, you can swap between the two with the phonepad button 5.
Still speaking of the ability to emulate both joysticks at the same time, in the "Can D-pad (on desktop: cursor block) be assigned to both joysticks at the same time to reduce time in finding out how you can go on with a given game / cracker intro? " row, I've explained whether this is doable. As can be seen, only PocketCommodore64 and PocketHobbit are capable of this.
I also listed whether a given emulator supports rapid- and autofire. Unfortunately, only PocketCommodore64 is capable of doing this. You can enable these separately with the lowermost four checkboxes in the Settings / Setup Controls dialog.
Let me quickly explain the difference between the two modes. Rapid fire is only activated when and while you do press the fire button (or the screen, if the fire functionality is assigned to the screen). Auto fire is, on the other hand, always active, no matter whether you press the fire button or not. It's game dependent which one you want to prefer; with shoot'em ups like Katakis where you will always want fire, you'll want to prefer autofire; with games like Wizard of Wor, where autofire greatly slows down the movement when firing at a wall nearby, rapid fire only, if at all.
Finally, I've also elaborated on whether the buttons (most importantly, the fire button - after all, I don't think you will want to use something different than the D-pad to emulate the four (eight) directions of the joystick) of the joystick can be reassigned. As can clearly be seen, only PocketCommodore64, the best C64 emulator allows for this - the other don't. I've also listed the default fire button for all the emulators; as can clearly be seen, PocketHobbit's approach (Button 1 + 3/4) is clearly the worst, while that (the volume up, on the upper left side of the phone, can also be used as a fire button, which is the best solution for landscape playing) of PocketHobbitSP2003 is pretty good, even if you can't actively redefine buttons.
2. Windows Mobile Professional / Classic (Pocket PC) emulators
2. 1. PocketCommodore64 (current version: v2.52)
Without doubt the best, most featureful & compatible C64 emulator is the commercial PocketCommodore64. It has (almost) all the best and whistles a gamer would ever need; for example, touch screen used as fire button, freely redefinable control keys (including fire), rapid and auto fire, a plethora of different screen modes (including total screen off for simple music playback), stereo (!) sound, support for both NTSC and PAL modes, support for VGA Pocket PC's etc.
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It's way better than any other C64 emulator on Windows Mobile and has a very high compatibility rate with games.
It’s constantly improved; the developers are already working on the new, even more compatible and advanced 3.x series. It’s still not known when it’s released; now, there already are internal alpha test builds.
Unfortunately, currently PocketCommodore64 has no MS Smartphone-compatible versions. Some time in the past, there was a beta for low-res Smartphones, but it was never released outside of a few beta testers. The screen limitation was the biggest hurdle, but the poor CPU performance and system interruptions were also factors in not releasing it. As most issues should be negated in the newest Smartphones (particularly now that QVGA models, like the HTC Vox / S710, are becoming more and more common), hope there will also be a Smartphone version too – even as early as the forthcoming 3.0 version.
The only problem with the emulator (in addition to the high CPU usage) is the lack of multiplayer capabilities, which, on the desktop CCS64, is already implemented. Bluetooth local multiplayer was originally promised, but the limitations, that is, the packet speed problems, forced it to be dropped on initial release. Now, it exists only as an Easter egg, but I don’t know how it can be activated (I’ve tried to click everywhere in the GUI to find “hidden” icons / buttons).
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned Bluetooth multiplayer incompatibility, during betatests of multiplayer-enabled PocketCommodore64 versions, was not a question of transmission rate. This means for example Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) Bluetooth, as opposed to earlier non-EDR versions, won’t help. It seems to be an issue of interval between Tx packets supported by the hardware and operating systems. Only emulation, not typical games, would be affected by this limitation, which is why there are commercial games with this feature, but few emulators. The developer has, however, promised to look into the possible solutions again for version 3.0.
A review; another one at AximSite; AximSite thread.
In the previous sections, I’ve already compared the capabilities & features of this emulator to the other (free) C64 emulators; in here, I won’t go on with this. Also consult the Chart for more comparative info.
Note that the emulator has a pretty extensive manual. It's pretty much usable and up-to-date. Note that it refers to a slightly older, 2.0 version and some things have changed in the meantime; most importantly, there is no longer a separate "accurate timing" version.
2.2 PocketHobbit 1.0
This free emulator, based on well-known multiplatform C64 emulator Frodo is a typical example of “you get what you pay for”. While it has some advantages (for example, the much lower CPU usage, the somewhat better scene demo compliance and, of course, the transparent keyboard in Landscape mode also visible in the screenshot below - see n0p’s excellent DOSBox port for something similar) over PocketCommodore64, in general, it’s way worse. It’s slower (at the same clock speed / frameskip settings), not VGA-aware (which will especially be a problem in Portrait mode, where it, unlike the two other C64 emulators, doesn’t “cheat” using 200 rows – see the example screenshots in the Chart demonstrating this), it doesn’t allow for joystick fire button reassignment etc.
All in all, it’s, while having certain strengths, a mediocre title. You should only check it out if you are absolutely sure you can’t purchase PocketCommodore64 and/or need to watch some demos, which might be more compatible with this title and/or absolutely need a title that doesn't force you to underclock your Pocket PC to save battery life.
2.3 ComeBack64ce 0.5
(note that zimmers.net only has an even older 1999 version HERE; THIS page too has an outdated version)
This is the worst c64 emulator for Windows Mobile. It’s really lacking features and the compatibility issues (it’s not at all compatible with VGA devices and, what is more, it’s also completely lacking WM5+ support) are a showstopper for many current Windows Mobile users.
The worst limitation, in addition to the inability to run on WM5+ and/or VGA devices, is the lack of floppy emulation. Therefore, if, for some reason, you still want to use it, you need to know how you can extract individual .PRG (executable program) files from a d64 disk image. Get D64 Editor; that is, THIS file (also linked from HERE), unzip it, and start setup\SETUP.EXE. After installing, start it (ignore the font error messages), drag a d64 image on it, select the program to export, right click it and select File Export. Select a target directory; the file will be exported as an <originalfilename>.PRG file, which can already be read by ComeBack64ce.
Probably the only plus of this emulator is the clever Portrait mode: it, by not sticking to the 8:5 aspect ratio but displaying all the default 200 rows (as opposed to 150), avoids having to drop 50 horizontal pixel lines and, this way, presents a much better rendition in Portrait mode than the other free emulator, PocketHobbit. Otherwise, it’s clearly worse than even PocketHobbit, let alone PocketCommodore64.
3. Windows Mobile Standard (MS Smartphone) emulators
Unfortunately, none of the Pocket PC emulators can be hacked into Smartphone. See the “MS Smartphone compliance?” row in the Chart for more info on my hacking attempts.
There is only one native C64 emulator for the MS Smartphone, PocketHobbitSP2003. Fortunately, it’s pretty nice.
3.1 PocketHobbitSP2003 Alpha 11
This emulator works flawlessly on both low(er)-end, 176*220 Smartphones and high(er)-end QVGA ones. Note that if you plan to use the latter, you will need to “hack” the main executable of the emulator as described in HERE. Should you be afraid of this, I’ve made the hacked, high-resolution emulator HERE. That is, if you have a QVGA Portrait device like the HTC Vox, get THIS instead of the official version.
If you’ve used to the Pocket PC version, you’ll find the usage of this emulator a bit strange at first. Fortunately, after a bit getting used to, it will turn out to be REALLY easy-to-use. If you are unsure about getting started with loading programs off D64 / T64 files, just make sure you read my mini-tutorial in section “1.3.1 Loading programs into the emulators”.
It runs pretty well even on low-end, “slow”, 201 MHz TI OMAP-based Smartphones. I’ve tested it on the 176*220 HTC Oxygen / s310 and the QVGA HTC Vox / s710 (with the hacked QVGA version on the latter). Worked flawlessly; highly recommended.
4. Desktop emus
Finally, I’ve also included two desktop C64 emulators in the Chart so that you can see what the differences are between Windows Mobile and desktop emulators. I also provide some tangible information on the compatibility rate of these emulators, should you want to get the most compatible emulator for your desktop Windows computer.
Note that there are (were) several other emulator projects; for example, JaC64 1.0 (a brand new, 1.0 version of this Java-based emulator has just been released); Frodo 4.1b (download HERE and NOT at the original link!), Comeback64 b4 (no longer existing at the original page; desktop Windows version HERE); Hoxs64 v1.0.4.22 (a new, actively developed project with a current, 7 June 2007 version), Miha Peternel’s long-abandoned C64S and, finally, ED64, a Pascal-based “toy” emulator.
4.1 CCS64 3.2
This commercial emulator is no doubt the BEST emulator, compatibility-wise. It is not only able to run many new, high quality C64 demos, but also a lot of other, otherwise “problematic” titles (for example, the Blast! loader) the other desktop C64 emulator, VICE, isn’t capable of running.
What is more, the 3.x series even supports Internet multiplay, of which I’ve also made some screenshots (of the client joining a game 1 2). Of the multiplayer mode, should you be interested in playing, for example, Archon, Archon II (Adept), International Karate or Wizard of Wor through the Internet, there are some additional tutorials and forums; for example, this German language, OLD (beta-stage) tutorial and this official CCS64 subforum.
4.2 VICE 1.21
This emulator is the most known, free C64 emulator, boasting several ports.
While it does have its advantages (most importantly, being free and having considerably less CPU usage than CCS64), it’s clearly less compatible. This means you shouldn’t use it as the first alternative to watch demos – use CCS64 for the latter. The same stands for “tricky” stuff VICE is unable to run, while CSS64 still is.
5. The comparison & feature chart
It’s HERE. DO CLICK THE LINK!
As I’ve already explained most of the rows and tests I’ve elaborated on in the chart, I don’t think further explanation is necessary.
It’s very important that you thoroughly scrutinize the chart and do check out the screenshots – they really make my point much straighter. Needless to say, as with all my other comparison / feature charts, there are a lot of mini-tutorials & additional explanations & tips in there. You DO lose a LOT if you don’t spend at least some minutes scrutinizing it.
Note that with some games (for example, Impossible Mission and Guild of Thieves), I’ve tested more than one versions (“cracks”) to find out which versions are playable. You may also want to look for cracker notes / nicks in either the directory list of the disk or the cracker intro starting the game to safely identify the given version, should you run into a non-working title.
Also, I’ve tested the ten most popular C64 demos, mostly to find out what demos can be run under Windows Mobile. As can clearly be seen, most demos just won’t work – the one that did start under PocketCommodore64 did crash later. In this regard, PocketHobbit behaved a bit better. This, however, doesn’t mean PocketCommodore64 is bad, not in the least – demos are VERY hard to correctly emulate. No wonder not even the best desktop emulator, CSS64 can’t run some of them. Needless to say, VICE is considerably worse in this respect than CSS64.
It's very important to point out that the Blast! disks all have a main menu on them, which is incompatible with most emulators out there (except for the desktop-based CCS64). This means you will NOT want to play the games on these disk images with the traditional load"*",8 command, which loads the menu, letting the user select the game to play. Except for the desktop Windows-only CCS64, this won't work. The solution to this problem is looking up the number of the game you plan to play in the loader once (in an emulator compatible with at least the main menu - the desktop-based and, as opposed to the commercial CCS64, free VICE is one of them) and loading the individual title using the load"X",8 command, where X should be the number of the game to be loaded. With the games I've tested of the Blast! collection, in the comparison & feature chart, I've also stated this number with each tested game so that you don't need to look them up yourself.
In addition to the Blast! Collection, there are a lot of other pages to download games from. You'll want to prefer them when, for example, you look for some strictly disk-based (non-one-file) games - with them, the Blast! version (if it does contain the given game at all - it's mostly with one-file games that the Blast! collection excels at), generally, is inferior to disk images found elsewhere.
You may also find some games at this generic desktop emulator overview, which has some gaming-related pages & downloads.
As far as demos are concerned, c64.ch will be your best friend. It contains all the remarkable C64 demos. While most emulators (particularly on Windows Mobile; in there, the, in this regard, most compatible emulator is PocketHobbit) will have a hard time running them, if you do find a compatible emulator (which, in most cases, means the desktop-based CCS64 - it's the most demo-friendly emulator available), they may be well worth checking if you want to see what the C64 is really capable of and why even today there are some people developing demos for it.
You don't even know HOW USEFUL this one was.
Thank you very much.
<<warhawk title music>>
btw...
shame, theres no atarixl/xe emu, that allows to change joy settings
version 3.0 of PocketCommodore64 has just been released. It's REALLY cool and HIGHLY recommended for both PPC and Smartphone users. See my complete review at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2288477
The Commodore 64 (C64) is the most successful home computer ever manufactured. This also shows in the number of the software products (mainly games) released for the system.
Fortunately, Windows Mobile, both the traditional Pocket PC and the touch screen-less Smartphone version, has pretty good Commodore 64 emulators.
In this roundup, I elaborate on them all on both platforms. I also present a small gift to the entire QVGA (320*240) MS Smartphone community: a C64 emulator, hacked by me, which does make use of the entire QVGA screen, as opposed to the pre-hacked state. And, of course, the roundup itself is also a nice present: as with all my other emulation-related articles, nowhere else will you find a better, more thorough article on all these subjects, I think
1.1 Is Windows Mobile-based C64 emulation worth the trouble at all?
As opposed to, say, emulating the Amstrad CPC or the Commodore Amiga, the answer is YES, for two reasons.
First, the device has a plethora of good (!) games. While the same games typically exist on other platforms (back in the eighties, games were released for several computer and/on gaming console platforms at the same time), the C64 had a more game-friendly hardware when compared to most home computers (and even some dedicated gaming consoles) of that time.
This means for example the C64 version of the classic game "Uridium" is orders of magnitude better than, for example, the very slow and in no way spectacular (not even mentioning its also sub-par sound / music) ZX Spectrum version. With other games, the differences may not be so apparent (after all, Uridium used the superfast character mode on the C64, unlike on the ZX Spectrum, where it needed to do some heavy bitmap moving), but, generally, if you can, say, only choose from a ZX Spectrum, an Apple II, an Amstrad CPC and a C64 port, check out the latter first for the best possible graphics / sound. (The only exception is the high-resolution mode of the Amstrad CPC, which results in particularly text-based adventures' delivering a much better gaming experience. Unfortunately, as PocketCaprice doesn't support the high-resolution mode on VGA devices, this advantage is non-existing on our mobile platform.)
Second, as opposed to emulating the Amiga, Windows Mobile-based C64 emulators have no speed problems at all - not even on very slow handhelds. While it's impossible to play most Amiga games on even the fastest Windows Mobile devices without stuttering sound, C64 games run on even on lowest-end, 7-year-old models without problems. This also includes today's TI OMAP-based models, of course.
Supporting low-end hardware, fortunately, also means support for even low-end, low-resolution (176*220) MS Smartphones. As the Smartphone platform has way fewer games than its big brother, the Pocket PC, emulation becomes even more important. While, fortunately, there are some really excellent gaming console emulators for MS Smartphones (even 176*220 ones) - for example, Masterall's emulator masterpieces and SmartGear, home computers are generally not emulated on the platform (that is, there are no for example Atari ST or Amiga emulators for the MS Smartphone). The lack of (home computer) emulators and native games makes it very important for any MS Smartphone user to have access to a plethora of C64 games, which are, with many titles, perfectly emulated even on low-end, cheap mobiles.
1.1.1 When to stick to emulating another platform?
Of course, not all titles should be played in a C64 emulator. For example, when a particular title also exist for the Nintendo NES, the SNES, NEC’s TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine), the Sega Master System (SMS), Genesis / Mega Drive or Game Gear, going for these emulators may turn out to be a better choice. (Please do click the links for the complete rundown of the Windows Mobile emulation possibilities. Also make sure you follow the other, for example Amiga / Atari ST / Amstrad CPC / IBM PC links to emulating home computers.) With the exception of SNES, the emulators of these systems are also very low-end handheld-friendly and the games, in general, are at least as good as on the C64.
This is particularly important when you don't want to shell out any money for the emulators - the free C64 emulators are WAY worse than many console emulators, compatibility- and controllability-wise. For example, the best free C64 emulator, PocketHobbit, doesn't support redefining fire buttons (let alone providing rapid/auto- or screentap-based firing) and defaults to application buttons traditionally found next to the D-pad. This means you can only play games heavily relying on both the D-pad and the fire button in the not most ideal Portrait orientation. As opposed to this restriction, most of the above-linked, free (!) console emulators either support touchscreen-based firing or, at least, button redefining capabilities so that you can assign the fire functionality to a button much easier accessible with the right hand (assuming you're right-handed and use your left hand to control the D-pad) when in Landscape orientation.
Of course, these issues don't exist with PocketCommodore64, but, as opposed to almost all of the recommended gaming console emulators (even including the otherwise commercial SmartGear, which is freely registered for users that do provide feedback on compatibility issues), it's commercial.
That is, in general, if you plan to play a given title but would like to get the best gaming experience, go to Wikipedia, look up the given title and check out what other platforms it has been ported to (it’s listed in the text box on the right, in the “Platform(s)” row). In general, you can safely ignore the Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and the Commodore Amiga (as long as you want sound) computers. If there is an Atari ST port (another, more advanced home computer with excellent Windows Mobile emulation capabilities), you may want to check it out; as is the case with the NES, SNES, SMS, PC Engine, Genesis and, in cases (only as a last resort – the Game Gear has a low-resolution screen, which you may not particularly like), the Game Gear ports. Most of these games / ROM's are available on the Web. In my past articles, I've explained how you can find these titles and what you will need to play them on your Windows Mobile device.
The same stands for games that have a native Windows Mobile interpreter; for example, Magnetic Scrolls or Lucasarts titles.
Finally, the case is the same with titles that are plain incompatible with the C64 emulators available on Windows Mobile. There are only few of them (and this number will decrease even further when the brand new & completely redesigned version of PocketCommodore64 is released); still, it's good to keep in mind that, with most games, you have alternative platforms like SMS well emulated under Windows Mobile.
An example of titles that belong to this ("you need to find an alternative platform because current C64 emulators are plain incompatible with the title") category is the well-known, famous Impossible Mission. While some people (including the developer of PocketCommodore64) had success with emulating this title on Windows Mobile, I haven't managed to do so, not even after testing four different, independent versions (using the traditional parlance, "cracks") of the original game and, of course, actively trying to make the emulators run in NTSC mode. (The original Impossible Mission, along with some cracked versions, are NTSC.) With this title, the only way of playing turned out to be emulating SMS with, say, SmartGear.
The SMS version of Impossible Mission is of even better quality than the C64 one, with all the goodies like digitized sound. Not so with the ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC versions - they not only lack digitized sound, but are also uglier and have less sophisticated graphics - that is, as has already been pointed out, should be avoided.
1.2 Downloading C64 games / apps / demos off the Web
All emulators are common in that they, generally, read standardized file formats. If you're new to C64 emulation, you need to know about .d64 disk images, .t64 tape images and, finally, directly exported .prg files. (There are some more obscure file formats as well, for example, the cartridge formats.) A decent emulator should handle at least the first, D64, as the vast majority of the titles are in this format. D64 is exclusively used to store the data / dependent / overlay files of programs not available in a one-file (.PRG) version and, generally, can't be converted into a non-D64 format (back in the Golden Age of the C64, when disk drives were really expensive and a lot of C64 users just couldn't afford them, it required a lot of work from crackers to make an initially disk-only application fit into the cassette format, preferably contained in one-file); this means the lack of D64 support means you won't be able to play games arriving exclusively as D64 and containing more than one files.
There are several tools to convert between the different file formats (for example, to extract individual files from a D64 file); I'll elaborate on D64 Editor later.
As long as you don't want to transfer your own disks into files on your PC or Windows Mobile device (which requires a genuine 1541 drive hooked up to a PC and accessed via Star Commander), you can download almost all titles off the Web. One of the best sources to download C64 games / software is the Blast! archive. As it contains some 340 disk images, you will want to consult the alphabetical list of all games to quickly find which image contains the game you’re looking for.
It's very important to point out that the Blast! disks all have a main menu on them, which is incompatible with most emulators out there (except for the desktop-based CCS64). This means you will NOT want to play the games on these disk images with the traditional load"*",8 command, which loads the menu, letting the user select the game to play. Except for the desktop Windows-only CCS64, this won't work. The solution to this problem is looking up the number of the game you plan to play in the loader once (in an emulator compatible with at least the main menu - the desktop-based and, as opposed to the commercial CCS64, free VICE is one of them) and loading the individual title using the load"X",8 command, where X should be the number of the game to be loaded. With the games I've tested of the Blast! collection, in the comparison & feature chart, I've also stated this number with each tested game so that you don't need to look them up yourself.
In addition to the Blast! Collection, there are a lot of other pages to download games from. You'll want to prefer them when, for example, you look for some strictly disk-based (non-one-file) games - with them, the Blast! version (if it does contain the given game at all - it's mostly with one-file games that the Blast! collection excels at), generally, is inferior to disk images found elsewhere.
You may also find some games at this generic desktop emulator overview, which has some gaming-related pages & downloads.
As far as demos are concerned, c64.ch will be your best friend. It contains all the remarkable C64 demos. While most emulators (particularly on Windows Mobile; in there, the, in this regard, most compatible emulator is PocketHobbit) will have a hard time running them, if you do find a compatible emulator (which, in most cases, means the desktop-based CCS64 - it's the most demo-friendly emulator available), they may be well worth checking if you want to see what the C64 is really capable of and why even today there are some people developing demos for it.
1.3 Using the emulators
After you've downloaded the games you'd like to play and installed the emulator, start the latter. Copy the games to your Windows Mobile device. Check the "ZIP support?" row in the Feature & Comparison Chart (from now on: Chart) to see whether you need to uncompress the ZIP files; if the particular emulator doesn't support compressed ZIP files, then, do this before the transfer. In general, only PocketCommodore64 supports ZIP'ed archives and even it has some restrictions; namely, you can't select individual files inside a ZIP'ed D64 disk image. That is, if you want to do this (and you WILL want it with, say, the Blast! disk images for the incompatibility reasons outlined above), you will need to unZIP these (and ONLY these - for example, d64 files downloaded from HERE can all be auto-started and, therefore, you will not need to go into them from the file manager to select the program to run) d64 files even when played with PocketCommodore64.
If the emulator uses the standard file selector dialog box on Windows Mobile (see the "File dialog box?" row in the Chart), then, you will need to put the files in either in \My Documents or a subfolder of it in the main storage or, with pre-WM5 devices, on the storage card. With a WM5 (or later) device, with a storage card, the files MUST be put in either the root of the card or a direct subfolder of it. Keep this in mind if you don't see the files you've transferred to your PDA, accessed from an emulator relying on the standard file dialog box (that is, PocketHobbit and ComeBack64ce - PocketCommodore64 (Pocket PC) and PocketHobbitSP2003 (Smarthone) both use their own file dialog box). Also, you may want to install a file dialog box replacement like Mad Programmer's File Dialog Changer in order to be able to navigate to any directory. Please see my earlier articles on how it should be installed and used.
After transferring the disk / tape images / programs to your handheld, you will need to instruct the emulator to load and, then, execute then.
1.3.1 Loading programs into the emulators
In general, there are two ways of loading a program. The first is just attaching a disk image to a virtual drive (like inserting a disk in a physical drive but not doing anything else) and, later, manually loading a file from there by issuing
either the load"*",8[,1] command, which loads the first program on the disk. With games occupying at least an entire disk, it'll load the game itself; with disk images with more than one program, only the first. This means you will NOT want to use this approach when you want to start a program not being the first in a disk image.
or, the load"<programname>",8[,1] command, which lets for selecting and loading any program, not just the first.
The second is a one-step approach, which not only attaches a virtual image to an emulator, but also loads a program from there. This is what the "Autoload File" functionality in PocketCommodore64 (the only Windows Mobile app capable of this) stands for.
In PocketCommodore64, if you double-click a disk image (it may even be compressed; that is, ZIP'ed), it will be assigned to virtual drive 8 (the default) and the first program will be autoloaded.
Note that the other two D64-capable emulators (PocketHobbit (Pocket PC) and PocketHobbitSP2003 (Smarthone)) only allow for attaching disk images and, then, with a separate (!), predefined command / menu item, loading the first program. While this still doesn't involve having to entering the full load"*",8[,1] command on the on-screen keyboard (with PocketHobbitSP2003, the phone's phonepad or, when existing, the full keyboard), it certainly involves (much) more screen taps / menu navigation.
For example, with PocketHobbit (the free Hobbit port for the Pocket PC), you first click a disk drive icon, select "Insert disk…", select the disk image to be attached to the selected virtual drive and, then, click the disk icon again and select "Load and execute first program". Note that, despite what the title states, it will NOT execute the program - you will still need to manually enter 'run' to do this.
With PocketHobbitSP2003 (the Smartphone Hobbit port), the situation is even worse: first, you press the left soft key to bring up the file selector / disk image attach screen; you select an image using the up/down arrows, Action, Options / Go Up and, finally, Open (left softkey) and also pressing OK on the next notification box (titled as "Error" - it's an information box, NOT reporting any error! Unfortunately, using error notifications instead of simple info boxes are VERY misleading for the uninitiated). Now that the image is attached, you will need to load the first program by pressing the right softkey, going up (with several Up presses) to the LOAD"*",8,1 button and pressing Action on it, which will load (but, as with PocketHobbit, still NOT execute!) the program into memory. Finally, to run it, you will need to go back to the text entry dialog (right softkey) and enter 'run' on either the phone dialpad (fortunately, here, the English T9 will work just fine) or the built-in full keyboard if present. Unfortunately, there's no shorthand RUN button.
See how much easier the PocketCommodore64 approach is?
And that's not all: should you need a quick way to execute a non-first program in a disk image file, PocketCommodore64 also allows for this. Just expand the tree represented by a disk image (by clicking the + sign in front of it) and double-click the program name - still in the "Autoload File" mode. (Note that you can NOT expand ZIP'ed disk images, as has already been pointed out. This, I think, is a bug.) This kind of functionality is (also) severely missing from the other two Pocket PC-based emulators.
1.3.2 Other features / settings
1.3.2.1 Turbo mode
Almost all emulators allow for a "turbo" mode in addition to the "100% speed" one. The former will allow for, on current, fast Windows Mobile devices, much (400-500% of the original C64 speed) faster program execution.
Enabling turbo mode also greatly speeds up disk emulation with the free PocketHobbit. However, it also results in most importantly character input problems: with enabled turbo mode (which is, with PocketHobbit, is the default), you won't even be able to enter 'run' because of the doubled characters. That is, should you go with PocketHobbit (you shouldn't - PocketCommodore64 is WAY better and, IMHO, certainly worth its price; you should go with PocketHobbit only if you really can't shell out money for the former), you will find yourself always switching between the two modes. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to switch - just click the standing / running icons in the lower right corner.
Again, as has been pointed out, you will need to enable Turbo mode with PocketHobbit - otherwise, disk operations (loading programs) will be way too slow. Fortunately, this isn't the case with any other emulators: you can always keep them in the "throttled", "100% original speed" state without sacrificing disk loading speed.
1.3.2.2 Buttons
Better emulators (on Windows Mobile, PocketCommodore64 only) also let for redefining buttons. This is essential when playing in landscape orientation and you plan to use a hardware button far away from the D-pad to avoid cramped hands & awkward handling. Too bad neither PocketHobbit nor ComeBack64ce support this, which, as has already been pointed out, makes them a bad candidate for playing in Landscape orientation.
Good news for Smartphone users: PocketHobbitSP2003, as opposed to the Pocket PC port, makes use of the "Volume up" button as another, alternate fire button, in addition to the * on the keypad. This will be especially handy on models that have easily accessible volume keys (for example, the HTC Oxygene / s310), as opposed to models with recessed, very-hard-to-press keys (for example, the currently best MS Smartphone, the HTC Vox / s710).
1.3.2.3 Changing orientation
In the default Portrait mode, only part of the entire screen estate is used as the original C64 uses a Landscape 320*200 screen (meaning 8:5 aspect ratio). This not only means suboptimal screen estate utilization (which can be an issue particularly with devices that have smaller, say, 2…2.8" screens), but also image resizing / downscaling issues.
First, some words on how you can switch to the Landscape mode. It's very easy with ComeBack64ce - you just click the screen and it rotates. With PocketHobbit, it’s also pretty easy (click the screen icon (the leftmost one at the bottom) and select either of the Landscape modes from the menu). With PocketHobbitSP2003, you need to press button 4 to do the same.
With PocketCommodore64, it's a bit more complicated: you first need to assign a button to the "Display toggle" functionality and, then, by pressing the just-assigned button, you can iterate through the available screen modes, including the Landscape ones.
To assign "Display toggle", click the Settings icon (it's under "Autoload file"); then, click Setup Controls (it's under the two joystick assignment checkboxes in the upper left corner) and, finally, click "Display toggle". Now, press the button you'd like to assign this functionality to (even the screen will do - if you don't want to use the touch screen as the fire button). After this, you can start changing orientations by keeping pressing the just-assigned key (or the touch screen).
1.3.2.4 Using different screen rendition modes; image downscaling issues
It’s not only the orientation that has a direct effect on the screen estate usage, but also whether borders are displayed and whether the emulator is VGA-aware when running on a VGA device.
First, some math. The full size of the original C64 screen, with borders, is 384 * 272 pixels; while, without borders, it’s 320 * 200. As the resolution of the (Windows Mobile) QVGA screen is 320*240 pixels, you can only display the picture (without the mostly useless borders) of the original C64 without having to drop some pixel columns (and, consequently, rows, if you plan to keep the 8:5 aspect ratio) if you use landscape orientation AND you don’t display any borders.
Landscape mode done this way is supported by all free Pocket PC clients: PocketHobbit, ComeBack64ce and PocketCommodore64 running on a QVGA device. These three all completely ignore the borders and only display the active screen area. In general, this is the best approach because, as has already been mentioned, displaying the border would mean an original horizontal resolution higher than the physical (horizontal) resolution of the QVGA screen; that is, some pixel columns (and rows) would be needed to be thrown away. Example screenshots of PocketCommodore64 (again, running on a QVGA device): 1 2; the latter in the second Landscape mode, without on-screen controls.
PocketCommodore64, when running on a VGA (640 *480) device, behaves differently. As PocketCommodore64 is VGA-aware and it does make advantage of the high resolution of the screen (it’s the only c64 emulator to do so), it is also displaying the borders around the active area so that you can see what the (few) programs (mostly intros and demos) that do use the border do.
Again, as VGA devices have plenty of additional pixels, this doesn’t result in noticeable distortion caused by completely thrown-away pixel rows / columns. Actually, exactly the opposite is happening. That is, because, in VGA mode, PocketCommodore64 needs to stretch 384 columns (and 272 rows) to completely fill in the 640 * 400 (without the on-screen controls, 640 * 480) available screen estate, some pixel rows / columns must be rendered twice. This also means there will be some kind of distortion, but it’s just a bit ugly because of the doubled lines / rows. Column / row doubling is still WAY better than completely throwing away information (that is, not rendering certain pixel columns / rows). The latter results in definite information loss and, in extreme cases (as with downsizing the original 320*200 screen to 176*125 to fit the screen of a low-resolution MS Smartphone in Portrait mode, which means having to drop almost every second rows / columns. The latter results in severely reduced and, at times, plain unreadable text as can be seen for example in THIS screenshot), almost fully unreadable characters.
As opposed to the Landscape mode (where, again, no row / column dropping takes place), in Portrait mode, as you need to force 320 columns in a screen that, physically, has 240 columns only, you already need to throw away every fourth column. If you do stick to the original 8:5 aspect ratio of the C64, then, you also need to drop 50 rows as well, further reducing readability.
As the latter (dropping rows) isn’t really necessary (as there will be a lot of screen estate unused even when you use really big on-screen keyboards / controllers), some emulators don’t necessarily stick to the 8:5 aspect ratio but, instead, render all the original 200 pixel rows. This means they don’t drop a single row, only columns.
In this respect, there are two kinds of emulators. PocketCommodore64 (related screenshot HERE) and ComeBack64ce (screenshot HERE) use the latter, much better and more preferable approach, while PocketHobbit does drop some rows. While the latter “only” drops 30 rows (that is, it doesn’t technically adhere to the 8:5 aspect ratio either), the results are still way worse than with the former two emulators (as can be seen in the screenshot, for example the center line of E’s is completely thrown away. Let me point out that characters in the character ROM of the C64, generally, only contain single rows; this is why they can be made unreadable so easily even with moderate pixel row dropping).
In addition to the default mode, in Portrait mode on QVGA devices, PocketCommodore64 is able to iterate over four different screen configurations so that you can find your favorite (most probably, you’ll prefer the default first). On VGA devices, on the other hand, the four Portrait modes are the same; for example, the only way to get completely rid of the (horizontal) borders is to manually configuring the fourth screen mode (the user mode) by passing the coordinates to display should be using the (default) 32,36,352,236 coordinates as is explained in the sixth chapter (Advanced Features) of the official document, under the 10th bullet. This, however doesn’t seem to work on VGA devices – it must be a VGA-related bug.
1.3.2.5 Joysticks
The C64 has two joystick ports. Most single-player C64 games used the joystick in Port 2. However, you may need a joystick in Port 1 with some games / intros. It's worth knowing what the implications are and how joysticks are emulated.
First, the tested emulators vastly differ in what joystick port is, by default, emulated by the D-pad and the fire button. You can find this information in the "What is D-pad (with desktop emulators, cursor block) by default assigned to?" row of the Chart. As can clearly be seen, PocketCommodore64 assigns both of them. This is probably the best approach as you will rarely need to manually reconfigure what joystick port is being emulated. However, it may result in, with some games, funny results; for example, with the well-known two-player classic Wizard of Wor. When played with the default settings, both players are activated; this means if you press Up on the D-pad, both players' sprites will move up. This is not necessarily what you want; therefore, in these cases, you will want to disable one of the two joystick assignments.
PocketHobbit, as opposed to the rest of the emulators, emulates Port 1 by default. Again, this port is used by far fewer games than Port 2 and, therefore, you will often need to switch over to the latter. Fortunately, doing this is very easy: just click the joystick icon on the main emulation screen and select Joystick 2 in the menu.
Both ComeBack64ce and PocketHobbitSP2003 emulate Port 2 by default; with the latter, you can swap between the two with the phonepad button 5.
Still speaking of the ability to emulate both joysticks at the same time, in the "Can D-pad (on desktop: cursor block) be assigned to both joysticks at the same time to reduce time in finding out how you can go on with a given game / cracker intro? " row, I've explained whether this is doable. As can be seen, only PocketCommodore64 and PocketHobbit are capable of this.
I also listed whether a given emulator supports rapid- and autofire. Unfortunately, only PocketCommodore64 is capable of doing this. You can enable these separately with the lowermost four checkboxes in the Settings / Setup Controls dialog.
Let me quickly explain the difference between the two modes. Rapid fire is only activated when and while you do press the fire button (or the screen, if the fire functionality is assigned to the screen). Auto fire is, on the other hand, always active, no matter whether you press the fire button or not. It's game dependent which one you want to prefer; with shoot'em ups like Katakis where you will always want fire, you'll want to prefer autofire; with games like Wizard of Wor, where autofire greatly slows down the movement when firing at a wall nearby, rapid fire only, if at all.
Finally, I've also elaborated on whether the buttons (most importantly, the fire button - after all, I don't think you will want to use something different than the D-pad to emulate the four (eight) directions of the joystick) of the joystick can be reassigned. As can clearly be seen, only PocketCommodore64, the best C64 emulator allows for this - the other don't. I've also listed the default fire button for all the emulators; as can clearly be seen, PocketHobbit's approach (Button 1 + 3/4) is clearly the worst, while that (the volume up, on the upper left side of the phone, can also be used as a fire button, which is the best solution for landscape playing) of PocketHobbitSP2003 is pretty good, even if you can't actively redefine buttons.
2. Windows Mobile Professional / Classic (Pocket PC) emulators
2. 1. PocketCommodore64 (current version: v2.52)
Without doubt the best, most featureful & compatible C64 emulator is the commercial PocketCommodore64. It has (almost) all the bells and whistles a gamer would ever need; for example, touch screen used as fire button, freely redefinable control keys (including fire), rapid and auto fire, a plethora of different screen modes (including total screen off for simple music playback), stereo (!) sound, support for both NTSC and PAL modes, support for VGA Pocket PC's etc.
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It's way better than any other C64 emulator on Windows Mobile and has a very high compatibility rate with games.
It’s constantly improved; the developers are already working on the new, even more compatible and advanced 3.x series. It’s still not known when it’s released; now, there already are internal alpha test builds.
Unfortunately, currently PocketCommodore64 has no MS Smartphone-compatible versions. Some time in the past, there was a beta for low-res Smartphones, but it was never released outside of a few beta testers. The screen limitation was the biggest hurdle, but the poor CPU performance and system interruptions were also factors in not releasing it. As most issues should be negated in the newest Smartphones (particularly now that QVGA models, like the HTC Vox / S710, are becoming more and more common), hope there will also be a Smartphone version too – even as early as the forthcoming 3.0 version.
The only problem with the emulator (in addition to the high CPU usage) is the lack of multiplayer capabilities, which, on the desktop CCS64, is already implemented. Bluetooth local multiplayer was originally promised, but the limitations, that is, the packet speed problems, forced it to be dropped on initial release. Now, it exists only as an Easter egg, but I don’t know how it can be activated (I’ve tried to click everywhere in the GUI to find “hidden” icons / buttons).
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned Bluetooth multiplayer incompatibility, during betatests of multiplayer-enabled PocketCommodore64 versions, was not a question of transmission rate. This means for example Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) Bluetooth, as opposed to earlier non-EDR versions, won’t help. It seems to be an issue of interval between Tx packets supported by the hardware and operating systems. Only emulation, not typical games, would be affected by this limitation, which is why there are commercial games with this feature, but few emulators. The developer has, however, promised to look into the possible solutions again for version 3.0.
A review; another one at AximSite; AximSite thread.
In the previous sections, I’ve already compared the capabilities & features of this emulator to the other (free) C64 emulators; in here, I won’t go on with this. Also consult the Chart for more comparative info.
Note that the emulator has a pretty extensive manual. It's pretty much usable and up-to-date. Note that it refers to a slightly older, 2.0 version and some things have changed in the meantime; most importantly, there is no longer a separate "accurate timing" version.
2.2 PocketHobbit 1.0
This free emulator, based on well-known multiplatform C64 emulator Frodo is a typical example of “you get what you pay for”. While it has some advantages (for example, the much lower CPU usage, the somewhat better scene demo compliance and, of course, the transparent keyboard in Landscape mode also visible in the screenshot below - see n0p’s excellent DOSBox port for something similar) over PocketCommodore64, in general, it’s way worse. It’s slower (at the same clock speed / frameskip settings), not VGA-aware (which will especially be a problem in Portrait mode, where it, unlike the two other C64 emulators, doesn’t “cheat” using 200 rows – see the example screenshots in the Chart demonstrating this), it doesn’t allow for joystick fire button reassignment etc.
All in all, it’s, while having certain strengths, a mediocre title. You should only check it out if you are absolutely sure you can’t purchase PocketCommodore64 and/or need to watch some demos, which might be more compatible with this title and/or absolutely need a title that doesn't force you to underclock your Pocket PC to save battery life.
2.3 ComeBack64ce 0.5
(note that zimmers.net only has an even older 1999 version HERE; THIS page too has an outdated version)
This is the worst c64 emulator for Windows Mobile. It’s really lacking features and the compatibility issues (it’s not at all compatible with VGA devices and, what is more, it’s also completely lacking WM5+ support) are a showstopper for many current Windows Mobile users.
The worst limitation, in addition to the inability to run on WM5+ and/or VGA devices, is the lack of floppy emulation. Therefore, if, for some reason, you still want to use it, you need to know how you can extract individual .PRG (executable program) files from a d64 disk image. Get D64 Editor; that is, THIS file (also linked from HERE), unzip it, and start setup\SETUP.EXE. After installing, start it (ignore the font error messages), drag a d64 image on it, select the program to export, right click it and select File Export. Select a target directory; the file will be exported as an <originalfilename>.PRG file, which can already be read by ComeBack64ce.
Probably the only plus of this emulator is the clever Portrait mode: it, by not sticking to the 8:5 aspect ratio but displaying all the default 200 rows (as opposed to 150), avoids having to drop 50 horizontal pixel lines and, this way, presents a much better rendition in Portrait mode than the other free emulator, PocketHobbit. Otherwise, it’s clearly worse than even PocketHobbit, let alone PocketCommodore64.
3. Windows Mobile Standard (MS Smartphone) emulators
Unfortunately, none of the Pocket PC emulators can be hacked into Smartphone. See the “MS Smartphone compliance?” row in the Chart for more info on my hacking attempts.
There is only one native C64 emulator for the MS Smartphone, PocketHobbitSP2003. Fortunately, it’s pretty nice.
3.1 PocketHobbitSP2003 Alpha 11
This emulator works flawlessly on both low(er)-end, 176*220 Smartphones and high(er)-end QVGA ones. Note that if you plan to use the latter, you will need to “hack” the main executable of the emulator as described in HERE. Should you be afraid of this, I’ve made the hacked, high-resolution emulator HERE. That is, if you have a QVGA Portrait device like the HTC Vox, get THIS instead of the official version.
If you’ve used to the Pocket PC version, you’ll find the usage of this emulator a bit strange at first. Fortunately, after a bit getting used to, it will turn out to be REALLY easy-to-use. If you are unsure about getting started with loading programs off D64 / T64 files, just make sure you read my mini-tutorial in section “1.3.1 Loading programs into the emulators”.
It runs pretty well even on low-end, “slow”, 201 MHz TI OMAP-based Smartphones. I’ve tested it on the 176*220 HTC Oxygen / s310 and the QVGA HTC Vox / s710 (with the hacked QVGA version on the latter). Worked flawlessly; highly recommended.
4. Desktop emus
Finally, I’ve also included two desktop C64 emulators in the Chart so that you can see what the differences are between Windows Mobile and desktop emulators. I also provide some tangible information on the compatibility rate of these emulators, should you want to get the most compatible emulator for your desktop Windows computer.
Note that there are (were) several other emulator projects; for example, JaC64 1.0 (a brand new, 1.0 version of this Java-based emulator has just been released); Frodo 4.1b (download HERE and NOT at the original link!), Comeback64 b4 (no longer existing at the original page; desktop Windows version HERE); Hoxs64 v1.0.4.22 (a new, actively developed project with a current, 7 June 2007 version), Miha Peternel’s long-abandoned C64S and, finally, ED64, a Pascal-based “toy” emulator.
4.1 CCS64 3.2
This commercial emulator is no doubt the BEST emulator, compatibility-wise. It is not only able to run many new, high quality C64 demos, but also a lot of other, otherwise “problematic” titles (for example, the Blast! loader) the other desktop C64 emulator, VICE, isn’t capable of running.
What is more, the 3.x series even supports Internet multiplay, of which I’ve also made some screenshots (of the client joining a game 1 2). Of the multiplayer mode, should you be interested in playing, for example, Archon, Archon II (Adept), International Karate or Wizard of Wor through the Internet, there are some additional tutorials and forums; for example, this German language, OLD (beta-stage) tutorial and this official CCS64 subforum.
4.2 VICE 1.21
This emulator is the most known, free C64 emulator, boasting several ports.
While it does have its advantages (most importantly, being free and having considerably less CPU usage than CCS64), it’s clearly less compatible. This means you shouldn’t use it as the first alternative to watch demos – use CCS64 for the latter. The same stands for “tricky” stuff VICE is unable to run, while CSS64 still is.
5. The comparison & feature chart
It’s HERE. DO CLICK THE LINK!
As I’ve already explained most of the rows and tests I’ve elaborated on in the chart, I don’t think further explanation is necessary.
It’s very important that you thoroughly scrutinize the chart and do check out the screenshots – they really make my point much straighter. Needless to say, as with all my other comparison / feature charts, there are a lot of mini-tutorials & additional explanations & tips in there. You DO lose a LOT if you don’t spend at least some minutes scrutinizing it.
Note that with some games (for example, Impossible Mission and Guild of Thieves), I’ve tested more than one versions (“cracks”) to find out which versions are playable. You may also want to look for cracker notes / nicks in either the directory list of the disk or the cracker intro starting the game to safely identify the given version, should you run into a non-working title.
Also, I’ve tested the ten most popular C64 demos, mostly to find out what demos can be run under Windows Mobile. As can clearly be seen, most demos just won’t work – the one that did start under PocketCommodore64 did crash later. In this regard, PocketHobbit behaved a bit better. This, however, doesn’t mean PocketCommodore64 is bad, not in the least – demos are VERY hard to correctly emulate. No wonder not even the best desktop emulator, CSS64 can’t run some of them. Needless to say, VICE is considerably worse in this respect than CSS64.
Many of you may have heard of ScummVM, THE multiplatform (including Windows Mobile) interpreter for LucasArts (and similar) adventure games.
In my emulation-related article & tutorial series, I’ve deliberately waited for the final version of the brand new and pretty much groundbreaking ScummVM 0.10.0 (AKA Tic-Tac-Toe, coming from the Roman numeral form 0.X.0) to appear so that the article doesn’t get outdated too soon. (BTW, this is the reason I haven’t come up with a FPSEce article either. I’ll only publish it when the new release, which is slated for the near future, is released. In the meantime, go give a try to the current version – it REALLY shines at emulating the Sony PlayStation!)
I think it was worth waiting: the new Tic-Tac-Toe edition is really great and indeed represents a breakthrough in interpreting many graphics adventures released in the late eighties and during the entire nineties.
Some of the adventures ScummVM supports include Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; Wyrmkeep's Inherit the Earth; Coktel Vision's Gobliiins; Westwood Studios' The Legend of Kyrandia and games based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more. You can find a thorough list with details on which games are supported and how well on the compatibility page. (Note that the latter reflects the state of the latest nightly build. The official 0.10.0 compatibility chart is HERE. As of 07/02/2007, it’s only Sierra’s Gold Rush! that has better compatibility rate than with the 0.10.0 version).
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Important note: PocketScumm used to be the name of the PocketPC port of ScummVM, but that name is now deprecated. Now, the official name is “ScummVM for Windows CE”. Don’t use the former to look for reviews or downloads as it will only show very old versions.
1.1 Why should you bother?
It’s very simple: no other emulator is capable of emulating these games so well. There surely are several Amiga, MS-DOS, Atari ST, NES, C64 etc. emulators out there for Windows Mobile, but none of them runs these games so well – if at all.
As far as MS-DOS is concerned – that is, the platform that both
quantity (it has ALL the titles - for example, all titles released after 1994 are MS-DOS and Mac OS only and not any more released for other platforms) and,
except for some VERY rare exceptions (for example, the FM Towns version of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders because of the 256 colors and/or the CD music tracks), quality-wise (for example, games and/or remakes released for MS-DOS, starting with 1992, have native 256-color VGA support, unlike the, say, 32-color and, therefore, much worse-looking Amiga versions)
is the best, the available native emulators (see their FULL review & roundup HERE) all
are restricted to playing pre-1994 games (no 32-bit, Windows, 80386 and/or high-res VGA games, sorry), while many, excellent adventure games were released for platforms that, currently, isn’t possible to emulate on Windows Mobile. Examples of these games are Broken Sword I/II, Monkey Island 3, The Dig etc.
have mouse pointer problems (for example, NONE of the current MS-DOS emulators can emulate the cursor in DOTT – see the related info in the MS-DOS emulator article)
if they at all (for example, the commercial PocketDOS doesn’t emulate anything else than the beeper) emulate Adlib / SoundBlaster sound, it will most probably be stuttering, even on the fastest, 624 MHz devices
use the CPU excessively, meaning short battery life, device heatup and, when used together with A2DP, excessive sound stuttering and additional slowdown (because of A2DP’s being CPU intensive).
In addition, there are no other interpreters at all to play these games. There is only a Sierra AGI interpreter, PocketSarien (see review & tutorial HERE), but it, if AGI games are sufficient for you, suffers from several problems (Portrait mode only; no SIP on VGA devices etc). ScummVM, fortunately, supports AGI games (while getting rid of the above-explained problems with PocketSarien) – and a LOT more!
It’s worth pointing out that FM Towns, one of the most remarkable platform having received the, technically (256-color VGA graphics and CD audio sound even as early as 1989!), best possible ports of these old games between 1988 and 1992, has no emulators for Windows Mobile. That is, you can not rely on emulating these platforms to play the games ported exclusively for them.
As far as other, in general, home systems are concerned, which also have ports of these old adventure games, they are either (vastly) inferior to MS-DOS (for example, the mouse-less NES and the C64 or, strictly as far as the visual quality of Lucasarts titles – number of colors – and emulation problems (with the Amiga emulator, lack of disk swapping capabilities; stuttering, useless sound etc.; with the Atari emulator, mouse dragging problems) is concerned, Amiga / Atari ST) or have no emulators (Mac OS). Needless to say, these emulators put MUCH more burden on the CPU than ScummVM – 100%, apart from some excellent NES emulators (for example, SmartGear).
Finally, there is only one native Windows Mobile port of the games emulated by ScummVM; that of Broken Sword. However, even with that, in cases, you will want to prefer playing the original version under ScummVM than the native one (as opposed to the general rule of native apps / games being far better than emulated / interpreted ones). I’ll elaborate on this later, in a separate section.
(Note that as far as the recently added Sierra AGI support is concerned, there's no SCI support, albeit there's talk of integrating the FreeSCI engine HERE. See the above-linked article for more info on running Sierra SCI games on Windows Mobile. Also note that PocketSarien automatically skips the age verification system in LSL1; ScummVM doesn’t. As it’s not possible to press Alt-X, unless you are ready to jot down the right answers, you may want to prefer PocketSarien to play this game. Speaking of passing initial code entering, if you get into problems with Monkey 2, you’ll want to read THIS and THIS).
1.2 The Tutorial: Downloading, installing and playing games
In this entire 1.2 section, I explain what you can play, whether it’s worth playing, where you can download / get the games from and, finally, how you can play them.
Note that, in here, I will also frequently refer to three important, additional documentation (in addition to the ScummVM Wiki pages). The most important of them is SirDave's PocketScumm Manual in the WindowsCE forum of ScummVM. The two other files are in the distribution ZIP file of ScummVM, in the Doc subdirectory. In there, ‘README’ contains generic and ‘README-WinCE.txt’ contains Windows Mobile-related information.
I recommend reading all these three documents (in any order) to get a full picture of ScummVM. However, in here, I also present you a self-sufficient tutorial, should you find reading all the linked tutorials and manuals far too overwhelming (I would) - it will suffice in most cases. It's only with, say, extracting CD audio tracks and ripping / compressing CD-only games that you will REALLY need to consult the other documents; most importantly, SirDave's tutorial.
First, what games are playable?
A LOT – and not just Lucasfilm games, but from a lot of other software companies. As has already been stated, you will want to check out THIS page for the list of supported games.
Even VGA games (Touche, Broken Sword etc) are playable – on VGA Pocket PC’s, using high-resolution VGA. These games even run on QVGA Windows Mobile devices, with downscaled, resized graphics – with some zoom-in capabilities to magnify the upper and lower half of the screen to make text more readable. I’ll elaborate on scaling issues later.
1.2.1 What about Broken Sword, the only old game having a native PPC port?
ScummVM may even be better at emulating an old title than native games for Windows Mobile. Take, for example, Broken Sword, the only game that has been natively ported to the Pocket PC.
The emulated version of Broken Sword is, generally, superior to the native one when played on a VGA device, particularly in the following respects:
much better music and sound: much higher sampling frequency, no compression effects and, at times (for example, the sound of the wind right at the start of the game), stereo.
Much lower CPU usage (~17% as opposed to ~42% on a 624 MHz device) and, therefore, better battery life
It has somewhat lower memory requirements
In this case, shouldn't you have the original Broken Sword disks but if you still want to prefer it over the native PPC port, I recommend buying the latter. Then, you hit two birds with one stone. First, you support continued native Windows Mobile development by supporting the company that ported Broken Sword, AstraWare. Second, then, you will have the right to get the PC version of Broken Sword off, say, Bittorrent for free - if you only have one version installed at a time, you can righfully use a version originally written for another platform.
You will, however, want to stick to the native Windows Mobile version if:
you have a QVGA device and you MUST read the text at the bottom of the screen. Then, the native port is the way to go – just compare THIS QVGA screenshot of the native version to that of the emulated game running on a QVGA device. Zooming only partially helps the bad readibility of the latter as can be seen in HERE.
you need the additional, really useful “Tool” functionality of the native WM version, which is an excellent way to combat the lack of a “free look” mode (see THIS with enabled tools; also see THIS “What's Free Look is for?” thread).
1.2.2 Downloading / getting games
While it’s pretty hard to find these old games in shops, most of them can be found on eBay. Also see THIS thread for more info.
Of course, you can also download them pretty easily from abandonware sites (which I will NOT link) or different torrents. It is illegal in most cases, though; and, with several games, you’ll also run into copy protection problems you won’t find a solution to. An example of them is Future Wars, which asks for copy protection codes at start; they aren’t available anywhere, as is also explained HERE.
Note that the official ‘Extras’ download page of ScummVM has two full games ('Beneath a Steel Sky' and 'Flight of the Amazon Queen'). You may want to start with them.
1.2.2.1 Source platform considerations - what version should you use?
ScummVM is not only able to make use of MS-DOS data files, but also those initially created for other platforms: Amigas, Atari ST's, Commodore 64's, NES'es, Acorns.
Unfortunately, these data files are, in cases, vastly inferior to the MS-DOS versions, particularly color depth-wise. A typical Amiga game uses 32 colors and is, therefore, visually much less appealing than a 256-color MS-DOS version.
Furthermore, you will need to do some manual work to extract the files from these versions. If you have the original machine and you have a way to transfer them (via, say, some kind of a networking connection), you can do this from the operating system of the given platform. If, on the othe rhand, you don't have these, you will need to turn to various disk and ROM image file extractor tools to do the trick as the C64 / Atari / Amiga / NES games are mostly distributed as .D64 / .AMS / .ADF / .NES disk/ROM images, respectively, and ScummVM isn't able to parse these disk/ROM images.
To extract the needed data files from these files, you'll need the various disk image extractor tools in the Tools package available for a separate download HERE. As you most probably won't want to use them (again and again, try preferring the MS-DOS or the FM Towns versions because of, at least, the superior graphics), I don't provide a full tutorial to using them.
Note that as far as the Commodore 64 version of Zak version is concerned (Maniac doesn’t work per the documenation), the version accessible at c64.com isn’t recognized (with side A being disk1 and B disk2) and the data file extractor doesn’t find anything. This means you may encounter incompatibility issues like this with other games too.
1.2.3 Installing ScummVM for WinCE
After downloading the archive file containing the emulator, you'll need to extract at least SCUMMVM.exe from it (and the two MODERN.* files if you need gradually colored dialog boxes -if you don't use them, then, the ScummVM dialogs won't have a gradient-colored background as can be seen in HERE – as opposed to the normal, default case).
Transfer SCUMMVM.exe (and, if you need them, the two MODERN.* files) anywhere on your handheld. As the EXE file is pretty big, I recommend a storage card, but you can also put it in the main storage (making sure you do NOT put it in the root directory of your PDA - then, running auto scan will most probably result in a crash). Note that, as opposed to what SirDave's tutorial states, you do NOT need to put the games into a subdirectory under the SCUMMVM.exe executable file.
Note that there are some other files in the ZIP distribution archive as well. They are additional data files for some games. You can easily guess, by their name, which game they stand for (Kyrandia, Beneath a Steel Sky, Flight of the Amazon Queen). You won't need them unless you want to play these games.
Finally, there's a file called pred.dic in there. If you plan to play Sierra AGI games using the predictive touchpad (simulator), you'll want to make sure you also transfer it to the destination.
(Of course, you can safely copy over all the files to your handheld, without ever thinking of what you can leave out.)
1.2.4 Installing games
First, create a directory to store the files of the particular game (separately for each game). It can - as opposed to some remarks and recommendations - be named anything, ScummVM will correctly identify its platform, game, language etc. This means you do NOT need to put the (data) files of, for example, Maniac Mansion in a subdirectory named "maniac"; the same stands for for example Day of the Tentacle. That is, you don't need to use the directory name "tentacle" to store its data files in – it can be given any name.
If you want to play more than one games under ScummVM, I recommend putting all the games, in separate subdirectories, under a common parent directory (for example, \Storage Card\ScummVM Games); then, you will be able to make ScummVM recognize all your games with a single click (by just selecting that parent directory). These mass game addition capabilities are really useful and let for really reducing the number of taps needed to deploy more than a handful of games.
If you don't want to fuss around, just copy all the files of your game to this directory (as a rule of thumb, you can safely leave out .EXE files). If you do want to save some storage space OR you're trying to put an originally CD-based game in there, you will need to do some more serious work.
First, there is a great Wiki page on the needed datafiles HERE at the ScummVM Wiki. SirDave's PocketScumm Manual also has some excellent subtutorials for Zak McKracken-FM Towns, Monkey Island 1-CD Version, Loom CD Version, Monkey Island 1-Floppy Disk VGA Version, Monkey Island 2, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis, The Dig, Curse of Monkey Island, Beneath A Steel Sky-WinCD Version, Simon The Sorcerer DOS and Windows Talkie, Simon The Sorcerer 2 DOS and Windows Talkie, Broken Sword 1 & 2 and Full Throttle. That is, should you need to know how these mostly CD-based games need to be installed (for example, the audio CD tracks extracted, the sound / music / video files compressed etc.), make sure you read the relevant section in the tutorial.
As far as the games not discussed in SirDave's PocketScumm Manual are concerned, the "just copy everything over" approach works in most cases (as these games are mostly non-CD-based). Should you still want to know what files can be deleted, again, consult THIS page.
Note that the SirDave tutorial discusses a previous version of CDex, a CD audio track extractor program; the current one uses a slightly different GUI and needs a different approach. In the following subsection, I elaborate on this.
1.2.4.1 Differences in using CDex
While extracting the CD audio tracks with Cdex is done pretty much the same way as is described in the " Monkey Island 1-CD Version" section of SirDave's tutorial, the following needs to be added:
1, you MUST explicitly set the file name format. By default, it'd add a number before the manually entered "TrackX" name, which confuses ScummVM (that is, it just won't play back these tracks). To do this, go to the Filenames tab and make sure you only leave %4 in the Filename Format field as can be seen in THIS screenshot.
2. In the Encoder tab, you don’t need to touch anything. You can decrease the value of Output samplerate, but I don’t recommend it – playing back MP3 files at 44 kHz instead o, say, 32 kHz doesn’t put much additional burden on the CPU. This also means I do NOT recommend using low sampling rates like 22 kHz: why should you use low-quality sound when, with almost no additional CPU usage, you can have MUCH better sound quality? This also means I recommend using 128 kbps MP3's, as opposed to 64 kbps ones (the latter are sufficient for 22 kHz MP3's but not for 44 kHz ones).
1.2.5 Starting games
After you've copied the (data) files (along with additional stuff like MP3'ized CD audio tracks, if present) of your favorite oldies to their directories, you can fire up ScummVM. I recommend creating a shortcut to Windows\Start Menu\Programs (or any subfolder) so that you can avoid having to start it from a file manager. Including them there also fixes one (possible) problem described in THIS and THIS threads, which discusses the question "What to do if the on-screen keyboard pops up when clicking its standard place". The solution, as has been explained, is just starting it from a menu (for example, Start menu) where no SIP icon is displayed - this will be inherited by the interpreters.
After the main GUI is presented, click 'Add Game…’ and navigate to the directory you've stored your game(s) in (note that you'll be presented a "Do you want to perform an automatic scan" dialog there. You can safely press Yes; if nothing is found, you'll be taken back to the directory selector screen - that is, the same as with the case of selecting No). Either highlight the directory as can be seen in HERE or step into it and select Choose.
Now, if you've indeed transferred all the needed (data) files, ScummVM recognizes the game, its language, version etc., and shows it in a new listbox. Then, just select the game you want to play and click the now-enabled Start button.
(Another screenshot of the directory selection dialog; you can also select the parent of it to avoid having to add all games one by one; the results will be like THIS.)
1.2.5.1 Key / button mapping
If the game requires (for example, Gobliiins needs mapping the right click action, Broken Sword requires a keymap to quickly hide / show the toolbar etc.) additional, mandatory key or functionality mappings, you'll be prompted before launching a game that requires the given functionality to be mapped to a hardware button. For example, starting Gobliiins will result in THIS dialog to be presented.
Note that these key mappings are generic and need to be done only once. That is, if you fire up a game that requires the right click functionality to be mandatorily assigned to a hardware button, this setting will be used in other titles too, upon subsequent starts. Currently, there are no separate, game-specific settings, unlike with some other emulators / interpreters (for example, Finalburn Alpha with Neo-Geo games and button mappings).
To map a specific functionality to a given button / key, select it in the list (screenshot HERE, showing assigning a button to right-click), click Map (result HERE), and press the button to map the functionality to (result HERE). When you're presented a mandatory (optional) button mapping dialog at startup, you'll also need to press OK after different mappings to move to the next mapping (or the game itself, when there are no more mandatory / optional mappings). Note that, with optional mappings you don't necessarily want to do (for example, the absolutely useless double Zoom mapping on a VGA device when playing VGA titles), you will want to click Cancel right away, without losing two buttons for the (useless) zoom mappings.
There are several useful mappings:
Right-click is very important with many games; for example, Gobliiins
Hiding the taskbar is very important in some cases; for example, Broken Sword. With these games, you’re, as usual, prompted to assign the rihgt mouse button and to hide the toolbar.
Without hiding the toolbar, you won’t see the transcript as can be seen in HERE and HERE (first screenshot with displayed toolbar; second with hidden).
The Zoom (which is very useful on QVGA devices playing originally VGA games to make the text somewhat more readable ) mapping is optionally asked when starting a VGA game. Note that VGA Pocket PC users are also asked to set it as can be seen in HERE; naturally, this is a bug - on VGA devices, there's no point in defining zoom buttons, only on QVGA ones.
Mapping the four directions may also be VERY useful, particularly with Smartphone devices with Sierra AGI games. With these titles, you may want to direct your character using the D-pad, while using other buttons / keys (or phonepad buttons - for example, 2/4/6/8, that is, the traditional phonepad buttons for directions) to direct the cursor itself. In order to do this, you'll need to assign the four directions to, say, 2/4/6/8. Then, D-pad will be exclusively used to emulate the cursor keys on an IBM PC keyboard, while the 2/4/6/8 phonepad keys to control the mouse cursor (not that important with old Sierra AGI games). Note that, if you add at least the up/down arrows this way, you'll also be able to navigate lists in the ScummVM GUI's (but, unfortunately, not the entire GUI - unlike with most native WM5+ GUI's).
And, of course, the multi-function mapping is also of high importance. See the dedicated section for more info.
On Smartphones, the default key mappings are as follows:
* Up, Down, Left, Right : (dpad) arrow keys
* Left Click : softkey A
* Right Click : softkey B
* Save : call/talk
* Skip : back
* Zone : 9
* Multi Function (for example, predictive input dialog with Sierra AGI games) : 8
* Bind keys : end call
* Keyboard : (dpad) enter
* Rotate : 5
* Quit : 0
Again, note that direction mappings are NOT implemented by default. Should you need them (in a, say, Sierra AGI game), you'll need to manually add them.
1.2.6 Toolbar icons
When the game starts, you’ll be shown some icons. They are pretty easy to use:
The Menu icon (only displayed in Lucasarts games) brings up the standard menu.
The Escape icon helps a lot with quickly skipping animations and other non-interactive scenes.
The Mute icon quickly mutes / unmutes sound.
The Button Assignment icon takes you to the already-known button assignment dialog. You WILL want to use it to make your life much easier.
The Change Orientation icon lets for changing the screen orientation. Note the following: in many cases, you’ll only be able to switch between left- and right-handed Landscape mode. You can only use Portrait mode with originally 320*2x0 games played on either a QVGA or a VGA screen; the latter in the default, 1x scaling mode.
1.2.7 Predictive dialpad support – even onscreen!
With Sierra AGI games (that is, games that require excessive text input), if you plan to play them on a Smartphone (or any Pocket PC device with a built-in dialpad; for example, some ASUS PPC PE edition models – for example, the P525), you will be able to use the phonepad in predictive mode, with a special dictionary built up from the dictionary of English language Sierra AGI titles. It’s pretty much similar to using predictive (T9) input on Smartphone devices and is really a pleasure to use.
If you have a Pocket PC without a hardware dialpad but, like me, really dislike the really bad on-screen keyboard of ScummVM, you will want to assign the Multi Function functionality to a hardware button as can be seen in HERE. After this, in a Sierra AGI game, you’ll only need to press this button to quickly bring up the predictive keyboard and tap the on-screen buttons corresponding to the command; for example, in THIS example, ‘look’. After clicking OK, the command will be executed just great.
Incidentally, “Multi Function” button does a lot more in other games. A quick search for “Multi Function” in README-WinCE.txt reveals the following:
Full Throttle -> win an action sequence (cheat)
Fate of Atlantis -> sucker punch (cheat)
Bargon -> F1 (start the game)
All AGI games -> bring up the predictive input dialog
1.2.8 Built-in QWERTY keyboard support
Fortunately, built-in QWERTY keyboards are (at least as far as Pocket PC’s are concerned) supported, which is VERY good news for Sierra AGI players. As the game also supports left-handed landscape mode, you won’t need to continuously turn the device between Landscape and Portrait mode either, unlike with the Portrait-only PocketSarien.
On my test HTC Wizard, everything worked OK (as opposed to what is stated in HERE). Note that the keyboard must be opened AFTER the GUI comes up – NOT before starting ScummVM!
On my test HTC Universal (WM6 VGA): everything is OK too.
Note that some xv6700 users reported keyboard problems – see THIS and THIS.
As far as MS Smartphones are concerned, the HTC Vox (s710) has the same problem as in many other games / apps / emulators: numbers are used on keyboard, and not the original letters and this can’t be fixed. That is, only a subset of original English characters is accessible.
1.2.9 “Zone” mode for MS Smartphones
ScummVM has excellent Smartphone support – something not at all supported by most emulators. Apart from some bugs (for example, the lack of working (!) Zone mode on QVGA Smartphones) and the pretty hard to read text on low-res Smartphones, it has an excellent feature: Zone mode (it’s not available for key binding in the Pocket PC, that is, touchscreen-enabled version).
Zone mode stands for quickly transferring the cursor between the Action verb area, the inventory area and the main screen when you press the assigned button (by default, it’s 9 on Smartphones). Example screenshots of this (I’ve just pressed ‘9’ between these screenshots and didn’t touch the D-pad to control the cursor): the cursor is in main screen; in the middle of the Verb area, in the middle of the (in here, empty) inventory area. See how faster it is to quickly switch the cursor between the three most important areas? This really saves a lot of time.
Again, note that this, currently, ONLY works on low-res (176*220) Smartphones, NOT on QVGA ones. This bug will, hopefully, be soon fixed.
1.3 What are the problems?
Unfortunately, ScummVM also has some (minor) problems.
1.3.1 Pretty much useless on-screen keyboard
The biggest problem with the emulator is the bad, two-line, non-qwerty keyboard, in which respect MOST alternative methods are FAR better (particularly the transparent keyboard in n0p’s DOSBox port and PocketHobbit, but even PocketDOS’ on-screen landscape-mode keyboard is better)
Just compare the easiness of entering any text on the following on-screen keyboard:
to that of n0p’s DOSBox (in transparent mode; a non-transparent screenshot is HERE):
Fortunately, it’s with very few games (typically, Sierra AGI games) that you’ll need to use this on-screen keyboard. With non-Sierra ones, you will hardly need to bring it up (for example, with Touche to tap ‘y’ to exit). If you absolutely hate it, don’t have a built-in QWERTY keyboard in your handheld and don’t want to use the predictive on-screen dialpad (see the related section) on your Pocket PC either but would prefer the standard SIP keyboard, you will want to switch back to PocketSarien.
1.3.2 Lack of MIDI / MT-32 support
General MIDI or MT-32 support is very important with games released in the early nineties, when digitized music was still not used, except for some titles with CD audio tracks. An example of the former is almost all titles (for example, Monkey 1, Loom etc.); of the latter, the CD version of Monkey Island 1 (in some versions, it also contained Monkey 2; the latter didn't at all use the audio tracks of the CD). As far as CD audio is concerned, if possible, try preferring these soundtracks to emulated, bad-sounding Adlib music.
To hear the difference (if you haven’t already done so – in my MS-DOS emulation article, I’ve elaborated on this issue), you may want to download THIS file (linked from HERE), extract MT32_PCM.rom and MT32_Control.ROM from it and transfer them to the home of your desktop (!) ScummVM home directory (\Program Files\ScummVM\ by default) and make sure you set MT-32 in the Audio tab (as can be seen in HERE) before starting for example Monkey Island (MI supports MT-32). The difference in music quality is really staggering!
Unfortunately, the PPC version doesn’t support MIDI / MT-32 at all. The reason for this is the huge CPU usage of midi emulation, which just can’t be provided by current Windows Mobile-based hardware. See THIS for more info.
This is why there’s absolutely no support for it as can be seen in HERE and HERE. The first secreenshot is a PPC screenshot of the Options menu; the second is a desktop one.
It, however, supports playing back the audio tracks of some (even early) games like the CD version of Monkey Island or the FM Town version of Zak. Games, for example, Broken Sword, that entirely have digitized music are supported very well. See the CDEx-related parts of the WinCE tutorial for more info.
1.3.3 Minor QVGA Smartphone bugs
Unlike on 176*220 Smartphones, the interpreter running on QVGA Smartphones doesn’t support zoning. (See section 1.4.2.)
Furthermore, while the built-in, slide-out or clamshell keyboard worked on all my test Pocket PC’s, it failed to do the same on my HTC Vox (s710). It produced the same problems as with many other SDL-based games / apps: numbers were input instead of letters. (Also see the dedicated section on keyboard usage.)
1.3.4 No scalers for VGA Portrait mode and Portrait doesn’t work on many QVGA devices
It’s a well-known fact many Pocket PC’s (and, of course, Smartphones – like the HTC s310 (Oxygen)) have severe polarization issues in Landscape (see for example THIS for more info). Therefore, it may be preferable to be able to switch to Portrait mode on these devices.
On VGA devices, you can only play QVGA / 320*200 games in Portrait mode in the standard, non-doubled case. This, however, means the actve screen content will only occupy a small portion of the screen as can be seen in HERE. That is, there is no 1.5* scaler to at least horizontally make use of the full screen estate.
On QVGA devices, while there’s a 0.75 scaler (to convert the originally 320-pixel-wide screen to fit the 240-pixel wide screen), it seems to refuse to work on many QVGA models (example screenshot of this mode HERE); for example, my WM5 AKU3 HTC Wizard and WM6 HTC Vox (s710) Smartphone. It, however, does work great on my WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210 and my PPC2k2 Compaq iPAQ 3660.
1.3.5 No D-pad-based quick focus transfer in the ScummVM GUI
Unfortunately, when accessing the GUI (menus) of ScummVM, you can't use the D-pad to quickly transfer the focus from one GUI element to another. This is a real pain the back on no-touchscreen Smartphone devices. It's only the lists (for example, the button mapping list) and the on-screen predictive input engine that supports quick focus transfer. The latter, of course, isn't really needed as you will most probably use the phonepad keys to quickly enter the command (and, then, press the Action button) instead of slowly transferring the focus to the on-screen buttons and pressing Action with every single letter.
Hope this functionality will be added for Smartphone users some time.
1.4 Generic compatibility and speed
It’s compatible with both Pocket PC’s (VGA, QVGA and 240*240 square-screen devices alike) and MS Smartphones (both 176*220 QQVGA and QVGA ones). The latest, brand new version, 0.10.0, no longer supports non-ARM architectures and Handheld PC’s.
As the CPU usage of ScummVM is REALLY small (MUCH-MUCH smaller than even most native games or other emulators), it flawlessly runs, with enabled (and, in most cases, even high-quality) sound / music, on even the lowest-end, Pocket PC 2000 / 2002 devices like the Compaq iPAQ 36xx series. If you (still) have a PPC2k2 device, don’t hesitate to install ScummVM on it: you’ll like it very much!
1.4.1 Down- and upscaling issues
If you’ve already read my Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulation articles (see THIS and THIS), you already know there must be some kind of scaling when trying to “squeeze in” the original screen size of CGA / low-res EGA / low-res VGA / low-res MCGA, 320*200 games, into Portrait-mode QVGA, that is, 240*320 (but not in 320*240 Landscape: in Landscape mode, no downscaling is necessary because the physical, available screen width is the same as the original and the screen height is even bigger) or 176*220 Smartphone screens. Also, the same stands for downscaling originally high-resolution (VGA, 640*480) games into QVGA screens.
During this, inevitable problems surface because when you downscale an image, information loss will happen. In the following two subsections, I explain the issues coming up. In the next section, however, I speak of the opposite direction – that is, upscaling a game to a Pocket PC with a (W)VGA screen.
1.4.1.1 Downscaling
If you squeeze a 320*2x0 (where x is either 0 or 4) image into Portrait orientation, you practically throw away every fourth column (and, if you keep the aspect ratio – which is NOT necessary and can be configured in ScummVM -, also rows). That’s not much of a loss and text, generally, remains pretty well readable. (This also applies to square-screen, 240*240 devices). An example of this downscaling can be seen in HERE.
Incidentally, the same happens when running 320*2x0 games on the 240-pixel-wide screen of current square-screen models. The square-screen converter (the one that renders 320*2x0 games on these models) works exactly the same way as the Portrait converter.
The situation is worse with traditional, low-resolution 176*220 Smartphones. First, they’re only used in Landscape mode but, even then, the text readability becomes definitely worse than with QVGA screens in Portrait mode because of the width of 220 pixels (which is 20 pixels less than the width of the QVGA screen in Portrait mode). Most games are on the verge of playability on these Smartphones.
Example screenshots of a 176*220 Smartphones running 320*200 games are HERE (GUI menu), HERE and HERE.
The worst happens when you try to downscale VGA to QVGA (because you play a VGA game on a QVGA handheld), you practically throw away every other row and (!) column. This may result in major quality degradation, particularly text readability-wise. Needless to say, you can’t downscale VGA to 240*240 square-screen devices, let alone 176*220 Smartphones – then, about two of every three pixel rows / columns should be thrown away. This also means you can’t play VGA games on a QVGA device otherwise allowing Portrait play (for example, the HP iPAQ 2210) in Portrait mode either, unlike with traditional 320*200 games.
An example of the results of VGA -> QVGA downscaling can be seen HERE and HERE; the latter using zooming. These are Touche screenshots; I’ve provided some VGA vs. downscaled QVGA screenshots with Broken Sword.
Note that zooming only works with vertical zooming (zooming into either the upper or the lower half of the screen): other people have also recommended using four quarters to make it possible to use a 1:1 rendering mode, as is the case with, say, PocketDOS.
1.4.1.2 Upscaling on VGA devices
Note: this section ONLY applies to VGA device users. Just skip it if you “only” have a handheld with a QVGA (or even worse) screen.
If you run ScummVM on a VGA device, you’ll quickly find it uses only the quarter of the available screen estate (as can be seen in HERE) in both games and when using the ScummVM GUI. To quickly fix this, click Options in the game launcher screen and select for example 2xSAI in the “Graphics mode” list as can be seen in HERE. Click OK. After a restart, both the GUI and non-VGA games will use the full screen estate – but in Landscape only. (This means if you are sensible to the Landscape polarization problems of your VGA Dell Axim x50v/x51v, you will NOT want to use pixel doubling, but stay with the original mode because it offers Portrait, no matter how tiny the actual game screen will be.)
Note that there are several options in this drop-down list. The original documentation of ScummVM (see section 5.3 Graphics filters) emphasizes there are major speed / CPU usage differences between the different video modes. Using Windows Mobile, I haven’t encountered ANY difference (including CPU usage and animation speed), except for the simple pixel doubler 2x. That is, you can safely use any of these options (except for the blocky 2x) – for example, 2xSAI. You won’t want to test the other modes.
1.4.1.2.1 Pixel doubling (2x mode) vs aliasing filters
As has already been pointed out, the standard, non-enhanced 2x mode results in blocky, badly pixelizated results. ALL the other options result in a FAR better visual experience as can be seen in for example HERE. I REALLY recommend comparing the “blockiness” of both the icons, the text and the background images. Only the blind don’t see the difference.
All in all, NEVER use the 2x mode. The other modes deliver MUCh prettier modes – as if the original game were native VGA, and not just a low-res QVGA one.
1.5 Recommended links
My other articles on emulators and game interpreters – they are a MUST.
Adventure Gaming on the Go by David Dolan (pretty old and outdated, but still a good read)
See the following links for more info on (some) of these games:
Cinematique evo1 engine (Note that Cruise for a Corpse (which is no longer based on the evo1 engine) is NOT supported as yet. See THIS for more info.)
Future Wars (asks for code; there is no code accessible anywhere)
Operation Stealth
GOB engine: Bargon Attack, Gobliiins, Gobliins 2, Goblins 3, Ween: The Prophecy
Adventure Soft’s Simon the Sorcerer series
LucasArts' games:
Maniac Mansion
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. Note that the vastly enhanced FM Towns version wasn’t converted back to the IBM PC as can also be read in HERE
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
Loom
Day of the Tentacle
The Dig
Full Throttle
The Curse of Monkey Island.
Wow thats pretty darn comprehensive dude...mm maniac mansion, DOTT, and Monley island would be pretty funky to play away on from time to time and on the move...5" VGA screen of the Athena is certainly a good size for it.
Whence I can find the time to track down those old games, I shall endevour to try this emulator, until then I thank you for your detailed tutorial to emulating 'old skool' games
Features:
Supports ROM (.rom, .mx1, .mx2) and Disk (.dsk) programs, optionally in zip files
SCC and FM sound support
Internal SRAM and save state support, auto-save and ten manual slots for save states.
Configurable on-screen multi-touch controls & keyboard support (needs Android 2.1+ for multi-touch)
Multiplayer-capable Wiimote + Classic Controller and iControlPad support (iOS & Android)
Portrait/Landscape orientation support (auto-orientation on iOS & Android)
Getting Started:
One or more MSX machine profiles and corresponding system roms are required for use. Download and extract this basic set from BlueMSX and place the MSX.emu directory into the following (make sure it has write access):
Android: root of the SD card (/sdcard)
iOS: /User/Media
WebOS: root of USB storage (/media/internal)
About Save Games:
Any data written to floppy disks is saved if the disk isn't zipped.
Internal SRAM for supported machine types is saved in the platform-dependent MSX.emu directory listed above.
Save states are named .0A.sta for the auto-save slot, and .0X.sta where X is the slot number for manual saves. The machine type and current IO devices are saved and must all be present when the state is loaded.
IMPORTENT: You Need to Download Basic Set (MSX.emu.zip) And Extract it Then Put it in Your External Card
Enjoy
Franchises established on the MSX
The most popular and famous MSX games were written by Japanese software-houses such as Konami and Hudson Soft. Several popular video game franchises were initially established on the MSX:
Aleste and Zanac (the latter developed and released alongside the original FDS version)
Bomberman
Penguin Adventure
Eggerland
Metal Gear
Parodius
Puyo Puyo
Others got various installments on the MSX, including some titles unique to the system or largely reworked versions of games on other formats:
Castlevania (as Vampire Killer)
Contra
Dragon Quest
Dragon Slayer
Final Fantasy
Gradius (Nemesis)
R-Type
Wizardry
Xak
Ys
Nostalgia 2.5.7 has been released on Google Play. Currently it requires a controller to use, but touch support is coming in the very near future.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zamastyle.nostalgia
Nostalgia was released originally in July of 2013 on the Ouya and has seen a fair amount of success. Oddly enough, it has the top spot on the Ouya app leaderboards even though the company was bought out by Razer last year. I like to think that means the app is still going strong. I've had a rough past year, but finally the app is on Play and can be installed on all kinds of hardware. My particular favorites are the Nvidia Shield line. I'm going to drop the Play store description below as its pretty verbose already:
Have you been looking for a single app to unify all of your android emulators? Wish there was a way to show all of your different games with cover art and descriptions instead of just titles? Nostalgia is your answer.
For now, Nostalgia requires a controller to use and is designed for TVs.
Tested controllers: Ouya, Wireless Xbox 360, Nyko, Moga, Wired PS3. Others may work but haven't been verified.
About this in-app purchase:
• There is only one in-app purchase in Nostalgia.
• There is one purchasable now, and there will only ever be one purchasable.
• It is a one time charge to remove the demo limitations.
• Once you purchase it, you will have access to unlimited systems and emulator configurations forever.
• Beyond this one purchase, I will NEVER charge for additional features of Nostalgia. Ever.
What is demo mode?
The ONLY limitation in demo mode is that you can only select one game system to launch an emulator. You can still use all the other features and fully populate all of the menus for any system you have so you can see what it will look like.
What is Nostalgia?
Nostalgia is not an emulator. Nostalgia is a unified front end menu for managing your emulators. It was originally developed on the Ouya android console and has been running on consoles on that platform since 2013 with more than 7000 users.
Nostalgia is a user interface compatible with many android emulators. Install the emulators and then use Nostalgia's configuration menu to set the emulator to use and the game directory. Once you have set those fields, Nostalgia can go out and fetch the best shot at the cover art and descriptions for the games. Once those steps are done you will have a fancy new menu for each of your emulated systems with cover art and all. You can see the complete list of compatible emulators below.
All screen shots are of the menu for Android applications. For legal purposes, I am not showing game covers, but this is representative of how the emulator menus look as well.
Some of the Features:
• Automated Cover and metadata fetching
• System and game level emulator selection
• Multi-platform game searching
• Set-and-Forget menu locking so your friends and family can't mess up your menu
• Custom wallpaper
• Favorite and Completed tags
Current supported Emulators:
• Mupen64 Plus AE
• Fpse
• MD.EMU (no gamegear)
• NES.EMU
• SNES9x EX+
• GBC.EMU
• GBA.EMU
• PCE.EMU
• C64.EMU
• 2600.EMU
• NEO.EMU
• NESoid
• SNESoid
• N64oid
• Gensoid
• Gearoid
• GBCoid
• Gameboid
• ePSXe
• MSX.EMU (colecovision)
• Retroarch
• Reicast
• Drastic
• SuperGnes
• PPSSPP
The app is still under development and feature requests are always welcome.
If you are interested in a lengthy read, you can find the original thread for Nostalgia on the Ouya here:
http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?4536-Nostalgia-Zamastyle
I try to be as responsive as possible to user input. All the best ideas after my original implementation have been generated by user input. Nostalgia is far from perfect and user input is what is going to bring it closer and closer to that line.
You can follow @zamastyle on twitter for updates on all things Nostalgia
My web browser was reporting response failures so I hit refresh a few times... could a mod kill the buch of identical threads that were generated and leave this one?
dra6onfire said:
My web browser was reporting response failures so I hit refresh a few times... could a mod kill the buch of identical threads that were generated and leave this one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Done
Thank you sir
..
Feature request: zip & 7zip support for compressed rom files. Command line support to start a rom with its emulator in fullscreen mode.