Blog entries about Emulators

1. I think it was worth asking the developer of SmartGear to go commercial; his excellent emulator has been further enhanced after the major upgrades (the touch screen tap zones) in the previous version reviewed HERE.

1. SmartGear updated – with great sound improvements; it’ll also receive touchscreen tap area support!!

SmartGear, which is undoubtedly the best[*] all-in-one emulator for both Windows Mobile platforms, has finally fixed the “clicking sound” problem in their new, 0.34 version

Also see THIS thread page in the official SmartGear thread at MoDaCo for more info & what people report on the new stuff.

Finally, the developer has announced adding support for on-screen tap areas, which will be a god-send for many-many Pocket PC users with touchscreens. After all, on several handsets, it’s much easier to press the virtual buttons on the touchscreen instead of the small / hard-to-press hardware buttons.

PocketCaprice, the only Amstrad CPC emulator for the Pocket PC (no Smartphone compliance, sorry), has just been updated with several new features, enhancements and bugfixes:

• Built-in keyboard support.
• Added disk image saving function.
• Added snapshot saving function.
• On screen buttons added.
• New assembly blit routine, may be faster depending on CPU model.
• Intel 2700g double pixel feature (Dell x51v/x50v).
• Sound buffer synchronization fixed.

UPDATE (08/18/2007): Larry has a useful post HERE, in the official MoDaCo thread. He has also made the beta public - see THIS post.
(end of update)

It’s pretty much unnecessary to introduce SmartGear for any Windows Mobile game / emulator freak. It’s a MUST for ALL MS Smartphone (both 176*220 and QVGA) AND QVGA Pocket PC users – it’s WAY faster than any other emulator on low-speed devices and has few bugs (most importantly, speed issues on (W)VGA Pocket PC’s and lack of Genesis / Sega Megadrive sound emulation), as is also pointed out in several of my previous articles.

Thanks to the courtesy of the developer, Larry Bank, I had the chance to “test drive” the new version, which will be released VERY soon. Now that he has modified the code so that audio emulation takes precedence over video emulation (even at the expense of, on VGA devices, excess dropped frames), you’ll very rarely (if ever) hear sound problems any more if you use the default frame dropping configuration. That is, you make sure both the “Throttle farmerate” and the “Skip every other frame” checkboxes are both checked in. Note that I had slight problems with the sound in GBC emulation (with 1062 - Wendy - Every Witch Way (USA)(Menace)) – I don’t know if other GBC titles exhibit the same behavior.

This is the latest part of my Games News series; you can find the previous part HERE. The news in this part applies to both the Pocket PC (Windows Mobile 6 Pro / Classic) and MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) devices - that is, no matter what Windows Mobile device you have, you WILL want to read on.

Arcade Park 1.3 out – now, with redefinable fire button!

Arcade Park is, in my opinion, a really good collection of reimplementation of old arcade games reviewed HERE (you may also want to check out the two other reviews linked at the end) containing several old subgames. It’s available for example HERE for all mobile platforms, including both the MS Smartphone (both 176*220 and QVGA) and Pocket PC (it’s even compatible with 240*240 square-screen devices; unfortunately, it doesn’t make use of high resolution on VGA ones).

(main menu on a 176*220 Smartphone; the same on a QVGA/VGA PPC / QVGA Smartphone)

In-game screenshot on a 176*220 Smartphone; the same on a QVGA/VGA PPC / QVGA Smartphone)

The biggest problem with the game, so far, have been the inability to redefine keys; most importantly, the Action button. Now, oin the new version, you can do it in the new Controls menu. Example 176*220 SP screenshots: 1 2 (on a QVGA PPC / SP)

Note that the following news items apply to both the Pocket PC (Windows Mobile 6 Pro / Classic) and MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) devices!

• SmartGear, updated to version 0.27, goes official and is also released for the desktop PC!

  I’ve often elaborated on SmartGear, one of the best handheld and desktop gaming console emulators for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone. The author, Larry Bank, is well-known for his excellent knowledge of the assembly programming the ARM processor. Fortunately, this also means he’s making use of extensive assembly programming.

  Its homepage is HERE.

  Being finally formally released also means I was able to nominate it in the various Emulator categories of the Best Software Awards 2007. It certainly deserves it as it’s apart from some compatibility problems with some games, it’s easily the best emulator, CPU usage- and TI OMAP-friendliness-wise. Now, the new Emulators categories really contain the BEST emulators available today.

  I’d like to also point out that Larry is working on the brand new, speed-wise much enhanced and WM5-compliant PQV version; he’s looking for feedback HERE and HERE.

• FinalBurn for WinCE 0.011 released!

  MasterAll, the other big name on the Windows Mobile scene that has been constantly releasing top emulators in the last few months, has just (some hours ago) released version 0.011 of his arcade machine emulator FinalBurn for WinCE.

  This emulator is a MUST for anyone wanting to play modern (NOT ancient! Don’t think of simple Galaga and Asteroids games!) 2D arcade games on his or her handheld, let it be either a Pocket PC or a Smartphone.

  As usual, the title is available HERE.

  See THIS for a complete review & tutorial on using the emulator.

• Final version of BEST Windows Mobile Real-Time Strategy game Machines at War released!

  I’ve published a review (which was frontpage-mentioned no less than two times at PPCT!) of Machines at War (MaW), Isotope244’s brand new real-time strategy game right upon the release of the first beta version, 0.9.

  In the meantime, also based on my remarks (for example, my asking for Attack being the default behavior for units and Move + Attack being implemented, unlike in most other Pocket PC RTS games), a lot of improvements have been made to the game and a final version has been released.

  Also, VGA support has been added, which is GREAT news for all VGA users. It’s not enabled by default; you only need to rename Settings VGA.xml to Settings.xml to make it work. An example screenshot (looks GREAT, doesn’t it?):

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).

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

1. 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,
2. 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 this respect, ScummVM is WAY better: its CPU usage is between 16-20% at 624 MHz and ~30% at 400 MHz XScale CPU's, even with active sound / music emulation.

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.

Fortunately, the Windows Mobile gaming scene is thriving. It was just a few days ago that I’ve published the last gaming news article (available HERE; it was also mentioned in THIS PPCT frontpaged story); in the meantime, there have been two major, new releases. (BTW, as far as the games reported on in the last part are concerned, in the meantime, the bugs of Plasma Duel have been fixed. I also recommend THIS PG.org thread on Corsair, which I have also nominated for this year’s Best Software Awards contest.)

Sindbad: Return of Legend – a GREAT Prince of Persia clone – finally out!

I’ve already reported on the early alpha of this title. It was pretty much useless and unplayable. Fortunately, the final version is (almost) flawless and offers a REALLY nice and rich graphics enviromnent – definitely better than the home computers or 8-bit consoles of that age (early nineties) – it’s only the SNES version that is similarly rich. (See them HERE if you’re interested.)

Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no in-game music, only (not really great) sounds.

It, as with the alpha version, is available HERE for WM2003+ -based Pocket PC’s (no MS Smartphones are supported, sorry, mostly because of the two on-screen tap areas).

Verdict: I heartily recommend the title if you’re a die-hard Prince of Persia fan and want to play through all the games based on the original game, but with brand new maps and excellent (albeit QVGA only, which is bad news for owners of VGA devices) graphics.

If, however, you “only” want to play the original Prince of Persia and find the (pretty hefty, if you ask me) price tag ($19.95) of Sindbad too big, you may want to go for emulating the original title (I particularly recommend the NES (for example, with SmartGear) and the MS-DOS emulation (with both n0p’s DOSBox port and PocketDOS); both are excellent). It’s not only free, but, as far as emulating with SmartGear is concerned, is much easier on the battery. (Sindbad continuously uses 100% CPU time even without you moving; this means heavily reduced battery life when compared to, say, the newer version(s) of SmartGear).

ConcreteSoft releases 3D Lawn Darts

It was just a few days ago that I published the last part of my Games & emulator news series. In the meantime, a lot has happened; therefore, I decided to publish the new part much earlier than I planned to.

(Note that all the reviewed / listed titles are Pocket PC-only, except for, of course, SmartGear, which also supports the MS Smartphone platform.)

First and foremost, I’ve finished publishing my article series on Emulators – the only REAL and up-to-date guides for emulating computers, calculators and gaming consoles on Windows Mobile, Pocket PC and MS Smartphone alike. I’m pretty sure I’ve fixed the, after the generic Games category (which was fixed last year with a heretic effort on my, Allen Gall’s and Hal Goldstein’s part) most problematic category of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Mag annual Awards of Best Software; that of emulators. You’ll soon see the results in both the Encyclopedia of Software & Accessories and the Best Software Awards 2007 public nomination lists as soon as I get all the emulator products into the database (which is quite a lot of work as all emulator authors need to be contacted, be made enter their products themselves and so on) and some of them nominated. I’m pretty sure we’ll no longer receive criticism like that of, for example, Rirath HERE and HERE. On the contrary - I'm pretty sure everybody will be VERY pleased with the results.

Now let’s move on and take a look at the new developments.

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was a very popular home computer system in the eighties.

The history of the Spectrum didn't end at the official, 1990 discontinuation of the series. As with the Commodore 64 (see the review of all Windows Mobile-based C64 emulators HERE) , which still receives top-notch scene demos, the Spectrum had (and is still having!) a spectacular afterlife in the ex-Soviet states; most importantly, Belarus and Russia.

Particularly in Russia, there have been a plethora of self-manufactured ZX Spectrum-based home computers throughout the entire nineties, with a lot of fans and developers. This trend even continued in this century - currently, there are still some hardware manufacturers still producing ZX Spectrum-based & compatible computers like the Pentagon and the ATM Turbo. While these models, in general, haven't really improved on the (gaming-wise, particularly weak) graphics subsystem of the original Spectrum (not taking the new low-res EGA-like mode into account), they come with plenty of memory (128k to 1M in general), good sound capabilities, IDE hard disk, CD-ROM, mouse etc.

Russia's leading role in the ZX Spectrum's surviving has also resulted in something else: a steady stream of software titles released for these ZX Spectrum-based computers. Just pay a visit to the Virtual TR-DOS main page (Wiki), which is the largest archive of the software ever released for these models. I especially recommend downloading the full app / games database (it's the Virtual TR-DOS Games & Press Base link on the main page) and browsing the database. Titles with the type "RU" are all genuine games developed by Russian developers. Titles with the type "D" are also interesting because they show what projects Russian developers have embarked on but, then, either failed at or, at least, didn't deliver a final, fully working version. The dedicated demo download page is HERE. I've even posted some screenshots of a somewhat working (!) Civilization and Wolf3D-clone in the The Comparison & Feature Chart (“Chart” for short). You WILL want to check out these demos in a capable emulator (in either the desktop-based Unreal Speccy or its Windows Mobile version, UnrealSpeccyPPC) - they are really fun and clearly show these models (except for the really bad, to avoid the infamous "color clash" of the ZX Spectrum, one-colour graphics) are much-much better than anything imaginable on the original ZX Spectrum. You may also want to check out some scene demos (again, under a capable, compatible emulator); for example, the two ZX demos written by AND, author of UnrealSpeccyPPC. While, technically (mostly graphics-wise), these clones aren't as good as the Commodore 64, some demos (and genuine Russia-based) are really top-notch.

If, on the other hand, you "only" want to play old, original, commercial games written for the original ZX models and are not at all interested in advanced stuff like watching Russian demos written for somewhat more advanced Spectrum clones, you will also want to read on - you'll find all the answers in this article.

In this roundup, I present a full roundup of the Windows Mobile (both Pocket PC and MS Smartphone) emulators of the platform. As usual, I'm absolutely sure you won't find a better discussion of the subject anywhere else. And, in addition, I present you a lot of new and REALLY groundbreaking information never ever published in English - only in Russian (one of the several languages I have the honor to speak) and a very short news item in Czech. Yes, this is the FIRST roundup to report on the BEST ZX Spectrum emulator ever written, UnrealSpeccyPPC. You can be pretty much happy that I also speak Russian (along with a lot of other languages) – without my knowing the language, Windows Mobile users would have ended up being not reported on this really groundbreaking emulator, let alone being presented with a usable tutorial, which I also provide in here &#8211.

This roundup is somewhat different from the previous one discussing Commodore 64 emulators. The sole reason for this is very simple: of the five Pocket PC-capable Spectrum emulators, there is only one that should be preferred unless you need Portrait mode or an on-screen keyboard with all the original key labels (BASIC commands etc - note that Symbol Shift'ed characters are also shown by UnrealSpeccyPPC). With the C64 emulators, there were two strong Pocket PC contenders (PocketCommodore64 and PocketHobbit, but I've also explained how the worst C64 emulator, ComeBack64ce, should be used) and, of course, the Smartphone-based PocketHobbitSP2003. In the case of the Spectrum, fortunately, there is only one really recommended emulator, which greatly simplifies the discussion.

This means I put particular emphasis on the most recommended Spectrum emulator, UnrealSpeccyPPC, unlike the other two non-disqualified titles (PocketClive and SpectrumAnyWhere), let alone the two titles (the comparatively new, but with the arrival of UnrealSpeccyPPC, already-outdated PocketSpeccy and the very old (the last version was released in 1999), Handheld PC-specific SinclairSpectrumEmulator), which I haven't included in the Chart. Of course, as far as the MS Smartphone platform is concerned, I also put particular emphasis on the most recommended MS Smartphone emulator, FuseSP. This, of course, doesn't mean I completely ignore the two non-disqualified Pocket PC-specific titles (PocketClive and SpectrumAnyWhere) - I've very thoroughly compared them to the rest in the Chart. It's just that, in the textual tutorial below, I don't elaborate on how you can for example load programs. In the Chart, you'll find most of the needed information though.

First, let's elaborate on whether it's at all worth emulating ZX Spectrum (or, of course, one of its more advanced, Russian clones).