Emulator reviews

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*  PART 6  - EMULATOR REVIEWS  *
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I thought as the magazine is entitled "Emulate" it was high time we took a look at some of the Emulators currently doing the rounds on the web pages, FTP sites and BBS's around the globe!

As more and more computers become obsolete, more and more emulators appear to start people "retro-computing" in the hope of bringing back the memories of the days when games were playable, cheap (well..some of them!) and were above all good fun! (Stop me if I begin to sound like an old fogey!) So, I have scoured the web and have come up with short reviews of a few of the newer emulators, not only for the humble Speccy, but also some for computers which made the Speccy obsolete, now having been relegated to the bargain shops themselves!!

WSPECEM

I start with a Speccy emulator which has just been released on the Internet. When this emulator was announced recently on C.S.S, it took me slightly by surprise - I had heard no mention of it before - therefore it couldn't be very good, could it? How wrong I was...

This new Spectrum Emulator for Windows 3.1/95 is top class. It runs in a window which can be re-sized as you wish, and it even multitasks under Windows 95 (well, as much as W95 can multitask!) It recognizes and can convert between nearly all of the Spectrum file-types, even including TAP and SLT support.

The version I have tried shows great potential. There are several features missing which would make it a major rival to Z80, the main one being 128k support. Currently, you cannot use 128k snapshots with it, although the emulator will bravely try to load any snapshot you throw at it, giving you the appropriate "This probably won't work" warning! Nevertheless, you can take a good look at a 128k game's title screen before the emulator crashes, and I am sure that 128k support will appear in a later version.

Another drawback is speed. The emulator runs at normal Spectrum speed on my 75Mhz Pentium while in a small window. Enlarged to a whole screen, the emulator does drag quite significantly. Also, there is no option to alter speed, although the author may be saving this option for registered users (though the emulator is freeware...at the moment!).

Finally, there are no real "advanced" features implemented yet, such as Plus-D, Microdrive or Tape-File editing.

If you just use your emulator for games, download this gem immediately, otherwise stick to your DOS emulator until more features are added.

PC64

A complex Commodore Emulator, PC64 offers a massive amount of features, including support for Disks and Tapes, with the option of connecting up to 8 external disk drives. However "complex" is the operative word and after a few hours usage, I felt that I still hadn't got to grips with most of it's features. However it is a well designed DOS-based emulator, although I'm sure no readers of Emulate! will be using it - if only out of principal!!

VGB

The "Virtual Gameboy" is the first of several console emulators that have recently appeared. There versions now for Unix, Windows and DOS, although the latest Windows version is not very nice to use, as a big "Register this or die" (or words to those effect!) message is printed across screen at all times! I know the idea of shareware is just for trial, but surely it would have been better just to disable some features? Anyway...

The VGB is a nice emulator, running about 85% of gameboy games at a near perfect speed on my P75. It is hard to make copies of Gameboy carts yourself without an expensive piece of equipment, although you need look no further than the newly created Alt.Binaries.Gameboy newsgroup to find enough games to keep you happy for many a day!

SMS

Another console emulator, this time for the Sega Master System. I have fond memories of this, as the MS was my first step away from a Speccy (boo..hiss I hear you say!) This emulator has only just (by a matter of days) been released in a playable form with version 0.2.

The previous version 0.0 (!) was only capable of playing the soundtrack of a game (Bet that was gripping stuff!), but the latest version is looking very impressive. I played two games (Alex Kidd and Wonderboy) and found that the emulator run at an excellent speed, with perfect sound. The only problem is the sprite update in some games, which causes old sprites to be left on the screen. This should be fixed shortly according to the readme file. LATEST - It has been fixed with version 0.3!

SPW

Another console emulator, this time for the Super Nintendo. When run, it looked fine. It only works under Windows 95 and seems a bit slow, but the game I loaded (Kick Off 3) seemed to run perfectly. I couldn't fathom out any of the control buttons, but I never let that put me off!

Also, there is apparently no game that runs 100% and very few games that run better than 50%, but I'm sure that will be improved upon in future releases. My advice - leave this one alone until a later version (and also when the instructions have been translated into English!)

UAE

They said it couldn't be done....they shouted it couldn't be done...they SCREAMED it couldn't be done...but it has!

The subject of many a debate on the Emulators newsgroup was the possibility of creating a functional Amiga emulator for the PC. Well, after many false starts, we finally have an emulator that is worth downloading. The Unix Amiga Emulator (previously called the Unusable Amiga Emulator due to the fact that it couldn't even boot!) is now up to version 0.6 and looks set for a proper release soon. A lot of games still do not work with the emulator, although Monkey Island and The Bards Tale amongst others, work fine. The emulator is still quite slow and there is a slight problem with the screen centering, but this seems to have proved all the doubters wrong!

Anyway, thats enough emulators for this month. If you want to download any of the emulators listed above, you can find links on the Emulate! Web Pages.

NOTE: The Amiga Emulator requires an image of the KickStart ROM to be able to boot. This can be obtained by using a small program supplied with the emulator on a real Amiga. Alternatively, check out one of the warez newsgroups as they will probably soon be doing the rounds there (I didn't say that!!!)

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