Bygone Battles
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LINUX USER Retro-Gaming Emulating Legacy Game Platforms Bygone Battles Do you miss your trusty Sinclair Spectrum? Do you long for the Commodore you know only in your history books? Old platforms come alive using the tools of the retro-gamers. BY IAN POINTER efore the computer industry set- tled on the IBM PC, there were Bmany different types of computers with exotic-sounding names like Enter- prise, Oric, Dragon, Electron, Spectrum, and Amiga. Although these machines are no longer with us, most of these legacy systems sill have ardent fans that keep their memory alive. These fans prefer the simplicity of the older era – when pro- grams had to fit inside tiny quantities of memory and programmers had to use Gavin Banns,Gavin www.visipix.com every trick they could imagine to get the most out of a computer – to the fast processors and gigabytes storage of today. These enthusiasts are more common than you might think; the coming of the Internet has allowed people from all across the world to reminisce about the past, and for the last eight years, a Clas- can even use Linux to develop new pro- found at http://www.libsdl.org. It is sic Gaming Expo (http://www.cgexpo. grams for these old computers. probably best to download the source com) has been held in America, with and build it manually, so you can be sure exhibitions from big arcade firms like Sinclair Spectrum it doesn’t use older graphics systems like Midway and Konami, plus lectures from The Spectrum, released in 1982, was the svgalib. hardware geniuses such as Steve Woz- most popular home computer in the UK, Fuse emulates all the major revisions niak, co-founder of Apple. and it is fondly remembered for its of the Spectrum, including the American While purists will be satisfied with strange rubber keyboard. Despite its lim- Timex versions plus some of the Russian nothing less than the real machines, ited color and sound abilities, it built up clones. It also has a method of recording in many cases this is not practical or pos- an impressive software library, compris- applications you are using for later play- sible, and so the enthusiasts started ing thousands of games and other types back, so you can send proof that you writing programs called emulators, of applications. It went through multiple have completed Jet Set Willy to all your which allow old computers to be simu- revisions, starting with the humble origi- friends. The interface is a little esoteric; lated on today’s hardware. These nal with 16 Kilobytes of RAM, to a the menu system within the emulator is programs often go beyond the original’s version with a 3” inch disk drive, a custom built and accessed via the func- capabilities, for example allowing the proper keyboard, an improved sound tion keys. This makes reading the state of the computer to be saved for chip, and 128 Kilobytes of RAM. The accompanying documentation almost later use (useful when playing games), Spectrum also flourished in the Soviet essential, although for most cases, press- or providing the ability to communicate Union; the plans for the machine were ing F1, ‘F’ for File, and ‘O’ to load a with other copies of the emulator over smuggled across the Iron Curtain, lead- Spectrum image file will be enough to the Internet. ing to the production of many illegal get by. This article will explain where to clones. World of Spectrum [1] is a repository obtain some of the more popular Linux- Fuse is a Spectrum emulator for Linux for Sinclair information, and it contains based emulators (starting with the early that can be found at http://fuse- scans of magazines and copies of the 8-bit systems then moving on to 16-bit emulator.sourceforge.net. Like all the manuals, as well as thousands of games computers and consoles),where to get emulators in this article, it works best and other software. Five games that are software to run on them, and how you with the SDL libraries, which can be worth seeking out are: 3D Deathchase, 78 December 2004 www.linux-magazine.com Retro-Gaming LINUX USER Jet Set Willy (seen in Figure 1), Dan Dare into the 16-bit era. It was popular with III, Robocop, and Chaos. filmmakers due to a hardware add-on called the Video Toaster, which allowed Commodore 64 the Amiga to mix digital effects with While the Spectrum was the computer of video, and was used to generate some of the UK and Russia, in the rest of the the special effects for TV series such as world the Commodore 64 was the most SeaQuest DSV and Babylon 5. popular 8-bit system. For its time, it had There were many different versions of wonderful graphics, a proper keyboard, the Amiga, from the original Amiga 1000 and a sound chip that still sounds in 1985, the more common Amiga 500 impressive today. Over ten thousand model, and even ending up as the applications were released for it during insides of a CD-ROM based console, the its lifespan, and the addition of a disk unsuccessful CD-32. The Amiga is some- drive meant that it had more ambitious thing of a survivor, with a committed Figure 2: Impossible Mission on VICE. applications than the Spectrum, for user base that has stuck by it as it was example GEOS, a primitive GUI window- passed from company to compnay fol- EUAE is rather complex to use; it has ing system. lowing the collapse of Commodore in the standard GTK library for its user There are several C64 emulators for 1994. The Amiga is now owned by the interface, but because there are so many Linux, but the most comprehensive is Amiga Corporation, which is trying to different varieties of Amiga, each of VICE (http://www.viceteam.org). Not market the technology for use in mobile which can have different amounts of only does VICE emulate the C64, but it devices. hard drives, disk drives, and even types also includes emulators to run the PET, A Linux emulator called Unix Amiga of memory, the emulator has an over- VIC-20, C-16, the Plus/4, and the C128 Emulator (UAE) has existed for several whelming amount of options available. machines as well, which is almost every years, but for the past year, development However, for most games, the standard Commodore machine up until the has focussed on the Windows port, Win- options will suffice. release of the Amiga. UAE, and the original version has been Like the ROM, most Amiga games are VICE can record snapshots for later neglected. Richard Drummond forked not freely available, but certain compa- playback, and it also allows the video the orignal codebase, and maintains nies have given permission for their and audio streams to be recorded in what he calls Experimental UAE at games to be distributed at no charge. You MPEG form, as long as the ffmpeg library http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae, which will find several at the Amiga In A Box is present. The user interface is rather incorporates many of the recent addi- website [4]. Another good resource is confusing; menus are accessed via hold- tions to WinUAE. Aminet [5], which contains a vast array ing the left or right mouse buttons, and Unfortunately, you can’t just down- of public domain/shareware/GPL games you must select the item before releasing load the emulator and expect it to work and utilities. Commercial games you the button. straightaway. The Amiga stored part of should try and seek out are Sensible Soc- There are also some installation its operating system on a ROM chip cer (shown in Figure 3), Midwinter, issues; I built VICE from source and used known as Kickstart, and EUAE requires a Cannon Fodder, Formula 1 Grand Prix, make install as usual, but when running copy of this ROM. While the Spectrum and Gravity Power. the emulator, I found I couldn’t type any- and C64 ROM images have been released thing on the C64 screen. It turned out for free distribution, the Amiga ROM is Atari ST that I needed to set a keymap file indi- the property of Amiga Corporation and is Atari’s answer to the Amiga was the ST, vidually via the right-mouse button still protected by copyright laws. You a similar machine in some respects as it menu. Apart from those glitches, VICE is can, however, buy a copy of the Kickstart used the same CPU, but it lacked the a very good emulator. ROMs from the Amiga Forever website Amiga’s custom-built sound and graph- For C64 games, C64.com [2] is a good [3], at the price of $29.99. ics chips. However, a dedicated MIDI resource. It isn’t as thorough as World of interface on the machine made the ST Spectrum, but it contains most of the the system of choice of musicians best games available for the system. The around the world. Like the Amiga, it site has downloads available as tape and went through several revisions, eventu- disk images. From this archive, five rec- ally metamorphosing into the Atari ommended games are: International Falcon, an ill-fated machine that would Karate +, Little Computer People, Wiz- be the last Atari computer. ball, California Games, and Impossible Hatari, found at http://hatari. Mission (shown in Figure 2). sourceforge.net, is an ST emulator for Linux. It is in the beginning stages of Commodore Amiga development, but although it isn’t com- The Amiga furthered Commodore’s rep- plete, it is advanced enough to run many utation for making impressive computers Figure 1: Jet Set Willy running on FUSE.