Drew's Emulation Page

My recent infatuation with classic (1979 to 1985-ish - basically, before the industry became dominated by fighting and racing games) video games began in 1996 when my friend showed me a copy of "Scramble" running on his PC. He was running a piece of freeware software known as Sparcade by Dave Spicer. It was an arcade emulator - it ran the original ROMs from the original video games, and emulated all the hardware (CPU, video memory, interrupts, user input, sprites, etc). This was unlike any of the "clones" I'd played in the past - this was exactly like the original games, because it was running exactly the same software, generating exactly the same sounds, with exactly the same bugs and quirks I remembered in the original games.

Nowadays, the original Sparcade is largely out of date, although a newer version with support for some great shoot-em-ups (Slapfight, Salamander, Nemesis, Vulcan Venture) has been released. The emulator I use the most is MAME, which supports over 300 different arcade games. Best of all, the source code is released publicly, which not only allows a huge number of people to work on it, but also allows interested hackers to really get a feel for how emulators work. It's an impressive body of code.

If you are interested, I recommend you check out www.classicgaming.com to learn more about arcade emulators. This site not only has the emulators available for download, but also the original arcade ROM images and any sound samples required. In addition, there are emulators for other systems (Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, X68000, Amiga, Apple II) that you may find useful. Finally, there are a number of commercial arcade emulators (Microsoft Arcade and Return of Arcade, William's Arcade Classics I/II, Namco museum for the PSX) that you can pick up fairly cheaply.

I've recently saved up some cash and purchased a collection of actual arcade games for my home. Most games from the classic era cost in the $200-$500 range, although some rare or exceptionally well-kept ones can be worth even more. You can find out more about these in the USENET groups rec.games.video.arcade.collecting and rec.games.video.arcade.marketplace. Click here to check out my collection.

If there is one drawback with the emulators, it is that typical PC input devices don't really have the same "feel" that real arcade controllers have. That's why I built my own arcade-style controllers for use with my PC:
 

Spinner

Several games (Tempest, Pong, Tron, Warlords, Arkanoid) used a spin knob as an input device. While most emulators will allow you to use a mouse in place of a spinner, there's no substitute for the real thing, so I built my own.

Joystick

This page shows you how to build your own arcade-style control panel by hooking up arcade hardware to cheap PC gamepads. You can also do a web search for "arcade joystick" to find more sites. I have a few tips for you as well.

Last updated on July 31, 1999
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