C64

[malfunction]

The Amiga versions of both Batman games were quite good if memory serves, especially for licensed games which were even worse back then than they are these days. The C64 versions look more than capable too. I missed the 8 bit versions of a lot of games once I'd moved on to the Amiga but in retrospect there are a few that are still better on 8 bit (SWIV especially looks like a better programming job than the 16 bit versions), and the Turrican games are outright amazing on C64 (yes, I know it started there, but I never saw them at the time). I can't remember exactly when I stopped playing on the C64 but some of the later games are really quite amazing.

I must resist the urge to sit down and play Turrican 1 and 2 all the way through again on UAE...
I must resist the urge to sit down and play Turrican 1 and 2 all the way through again on UAE...
I must resist the urge to sit down and play Turrican 1 and 2 all the way through again on UAE...
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[Ferral]

sorry to hijack thread, any good amiga emulators?

You want WinUAE for Amiga emulation

Only thing is though you need the Kickstart ROM files to be able to use it and those are not allowed to be distributed at all. Once you have them though you can go from the 500 right up to CD32 system.

Amiga 500 1.3 runs everything (OCS Chipset), for the Kick 2 Rom systems (Amiga 600 & 500+ with ECS Chipset) you need to use a program called ReLoKick to soft downgrade to 1.3 for some games. The Amiga 1200 has both ECS and AGA graphics chipsets, so for the older games you have to change it to ECS and then use ReLoKick. Granted this is proper hardware, but if you have the 500 1.3 & 1200 Roms then you are good to go.

WinUAE can be a bit more time consuming and confusing getting it setup just right, once setup though save your config to just load in when you start it up again.

There is Amiga Forever which has licensed ROM files, these files though have been modified to only work with Amiga Forever, however once you have bought the program you can grab the adf emulator files from wherever and run them with Amiga Forever.

[Pob255]

A quick note about games, licenses and publishers.

Licenses in the computer games industry is very much based on book publishing, you have the creator (writer in terms of books, or developer in terms of games) and you have the publisher, now depending on the terms of the contract from when the game was made will very much determine who holds the license.

On most games made for a publisher it's the publisher who holds the license, but not always some times the developer can retain the license for any platform except the original and sometimes it can be a shared license.

That license is actually an assert, even though the game might be very old and long out of production/circulation, the license is still an assert that appears on a publishers books, if a publisher goes under, get bought up or merges with someone else then the licenses it holds are asserts that get sold off or moved across as with any other assert and some time licenses can get traded or even rented (a lot of the smaller publishers went under in the 90's early 00's so trying to track down who holds what license can be hard to do.)

It's often a reason that many older licenses don't get new remakes/reboots, because if a new title doesn't sell well you can actually end up devaluing the license, it's only recently that the actual value placed on old licenses has come into question which has seen many older licences get reboots/remakes.

This applies to ROMs because while the title and often the platform is now long dead someone still owns the rights to it, which means it's still illegal to copy or distribute it.
Some old games have become become legal, because the original developers held the license and have now made them open/public domain.
It's very much on a game by game basis.

[Ferral]

Lemon 64 used to have loads of stuff available to download but they were asked to take it all down, when looking through the games database there now they still have a few to download but its only a handful and hard to find what is available.

World of Spectrum on the other hand is officially endorsed by Amstrad and a lot of the publishers and original creators have allowed their games to be distributed free from there, there are only a few companies like Codemasters (Dizzy and all those Sim games they done to name a few) for example who have said no

Actually, thinking on it if you want to go down the Spectrum route I feel the best free Spectrum emulator at the minute is ZX Spin, works fine on 64Bit systems and has full user interface to set it up, changing systems is literally clicking the icon in the options to the machine you want, its a bit older but it works lovely :

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html

It covers all machines from the early 16k / 48k up to the QL machine. I have it set to 128k +2A (Black +2 Amstrad machine, same machine as the one I have setup after restoring it next to my C64) so most the multiload Ocean and Imagine games actually use the full 128k and do a single load. Find something that doesn't load and its easy to just change to the original Toastrack 128k made by Sinclair before they were bought by Amstrad or even drop down to the old 48k with rubber keyboard.

[azrael-]

Still have my C64, 1541 floppy drive and a datasette. Oh, and a huge amount of games on cassette, as well as some on floppy. I wonder if they're still good? Haven't touched them in ages.

[Ferral]

Still have my C64, 1541 floppy drive and a datasette. Oh, and a huge amount of games on cassette, as well as some on floppy. I wonder if they're still good? Haven't touched them in ages.

Should see all the C64 stuff I have, 1xC2N, 1xMills Load It C2N (Lights for fine tuning awkward to load games), 1xC16 Dark Brown 1530 Datasette with adapter to connect to C64, Action Replay Mk4, Vic 1540 Single Sided Floppy Drive, 2xC64c (1 not working) & 1 C64 Breadbin (My original 80's machine, died around 2 months ago).

I also have loads of disks with my single load tape games backed up onto them, a few original disk games (Loads went missing) and around 500 original tapes ranging from small budget releases (Hit Squad, Kixx, Mastertronic, Codemasters), small case original early releases, loads of clamshell original releases, loads of twin jewel releases and a fair few compilations, loads of Big Box releases and compilations.

Also have a Spectrum +2A with Kempston Interface (DK Tronics Games player which has a slowdown switch on it) and around 250 original tapes

Commodore Amiga 600 with around 20 original Big Box games and loads of backup disks, also have Easy adf for transferring emulator adf files back to disk

Atari 520 STe, upgraded ram to 4Mb, extra external floppy drive, Ultra Satan External Hard Drive with 4Gb SD card which has thousands of games and programs on there and around 40 original games from budget to Big Box.

SEGA Mega Drive Mk1, MegaCD Mk 1 & Master Converter Mk 1 with the card slot. 45 Megadrive cartridges, 6 or so Master Cartridges and around 7 CD games, 2 additional Competition Pro 6 button pads and 2 official SEGA Megadrive pads.

Super Nintendo with 2 official pads and only 2 games at the minute

SEGA Game Gear with power adapter and only 3 games

Nintendo Gameboy Color (Yellow one) with 8 games presently.

Also have various joysticks, Logic 3 Competition Pro Clone (easier and lighter touch than Competition Pro), Competition Pro (Leaf switches on fire buttons), Konix Speedking which is acting up moving itself in random directions, Powerplay Cruiser Pastel Color (Favorite joystick ever this one, currently residing with my Atari ST), a few Quickshot sticks ranging from first one up to the one with red base, autofire and Amstrad CPC switch for twin button and I have an official Sinclair Joystick if I want to use the side Sinclair Interface ports on my +2A

In around 2 weeks I am also getting an Amstrad CPC464 with color monitor and 40 original tape games ranging from budget up to Big Box titles.

[azrael-]

Wow! Can't beat that collection!

What I do have is original, though. Bought and abused by me (well, not really abused, as I tend to care for my stuff), way back when. My first real computer was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A, which I eventually sold off about 20 years ago. My C64 I got back in 1983 (or was it 1984?). Most of my C64 games are packed away, but I still have a couple of them on display, like Summer Games and Jumpman, and Quake Minus One, and that Frankie Goes to Hollywood game. And my Ocean Laser Genius Assembler, which I never really used much. I preferred programming using a machine code monitor instead.

A couple of years later I got my Amiga A500. Sold that off a few years on and got an Amiga 2000 with a whopping 52MB HDD instead. Sadly, the A2000 had to go to the scrapyard after dying on me. By that time I had moved on to the PC anyway. I still have quite a few games left, though. Millennium 2.2, Deuteros, Killing Cloud, Gravity to name a few.

How time flies...