Portable Power in your hands....
and all
we want to do is play old games with it...tut!Its Great playing all
these games on your PC. The fun never ends (only when its time for bed
or when Mum calls for tea). The Pocket PC is one such device that you
could take anywhere and while being a stonking little device with lots
of useful functions, as with everything computer wise, you gotta ask can
it play games. PeeknPoke locked Paul J. in a cupboard with his
new Pocket PC and made him play emulators on it (while slipping him much
needed ale - a major point of retroplaying) and what we could use it for
retro wise....
Retro
gaming in the palm of your hand! Retro gaming does not have to be played
on just a console , PC or Macintosh. Many systems can be emulated on the
latest Pocket PC's. You know those gadgets which look cool but a lot of
people don't really use properly and end up just inputting their address
book into?
The latest Pocket PC's are getting faster and faster, the latest
models which have a 400mhz processor running Pocket 2003 (Pocket version
of Windows) are now capable of running a whole host of consoles. The
fastest PPC at the moment is the
Asus MyPal 620 which is £234. However it is a good idea to also buy a CompactFlash
card to put all the games/movies you download onto it as believe me you
will fill it up soon ! Once you have one of the fastest PPC's you can
now run a whole host of emulators. Older or cheaper PPC's can still run
many emulators but if you want to play GBA, Megadrive, SNES or MAME
games then you'll have to get the fastest PPC out there.
Pocketgamer
has a host of links to the best emulators. There are Pocket PC emulators
for...
Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari ST, MAME (Arcade systems),
Master System, Gamegear, Atari Lynx, Atari 2600, Colecovision, Gameboy /
Gameboy Colour / Gameboy Advanced, NES, SNES, Megadrive / Genesis, PC
Engine / Turbogrfx, MSX, Wonderswan,Neo Geo Pocket and Oric.
One of the best emulators out there is
Morphgear which combines many console systems altogether. Morphgear is an
excellent emulator but each module costs 15 dollars so things can get a
bit pricey. However the emulator is worth getting as the SNES and PC
Engine modules are free and both are two of the best emulators out
there for their respective systems. The PC Engine (also known as
Turbografix) was never a huge console in Europe but it features a ton of
great games. Reviews of many of the games can be found
here
. Bloody Wolf, New Zealand Story , Rainbow Islands and Gradius (Nemesis)
are some of the best games which can be found easily on the net to
download.
There are currently two SNES emulators for the PPC, one in Morphgear
and also PocketSNES which is another free emulator and can be found
here
. However only the latest PPC's can really play these games well with
100% speed and sound. Playing Mario Kart or MarioLand on your PPC is a
dream ! There are over 500 SNES games to be found online.
The Sinclair Spectrum has its very own PPC emulator in
Pocketclive
which is free and is superb. If you think of how low the filesizes are
for Spectrum games you can fit a ton of games onto your PPC or
CompactFlash card, also games can easily be found for the Spectrum (over
6000). You can load up .Z80, .SNA or .TAP files or even write your own
program in Sinclair Basic ! Games can be saved at any stage and reloaded
at a later time.
The Commodore C64 also has its own
emulator
but this is not free, however at 7 dollars it is a bargain. Again games
can easily be found for the C64 on the internet and the emulator is
superb. A great buy for just 7 dollars.
PocketVCS
is the Atari 2600 Video Console emulator is a great looking emulator and
its free.
The games for this system are tiny, maybe a maximum of 4k and there are
a host of great games for this old console, remember Space Invaders (101
different versions), Ms Pacman and many others.
The older consoles have some great emulators for them most of which
are free.
PocketNES is capable of emulating over 3000 NES titles. Yet again you can save your game at any state and theres many many NES
games out there. The
Mastersystem (Plus Gamegear combined) is free. Again a whole host of Master System titles and Gamegear
games run on this emulator. Many great Sega games from the past can be
found like Outrun, Golden Axe and many others.
My favourite emulator which only runs on the latest fastest Pocket
PC's is MegaMameCE. This MAME emulator (Arcade games) is capable of
running several hundred MAME games (version 0.36) and playing the
original arcade rom of Bombjack, Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble or
Commando is a dream ! The sound is slightly muffled but runs full speed
and if you think that this is the actual arcade rom running on your PPC,
wow ! This time you dont have to pay 10p to play, just press one of the
buttons to input credits ! Remember Morphgear features a free Megadrive
emulator, with the latest PPC's you can play Sonic and many others !!!
There are other emulators for the Pocket PC, CastCE is a very good
Atari ST emulator which runs very well but can only be played at
landscape not portrait. Still very good. There is an emulator for the
MSX home computer, this machine was not very popular in the UK but has a
host of great Konami games available to it. The Gameboy has a fair few
emulators, play the original Super Mario Land or Tetris on the emulator
or many other 100's of games. Again the latest PPC's can play several
GBA games such as Mario Kart Advanced or Warioware but a fair few GBA
games are still slow or the sound does not work. Still very good for the
ones which are available though.
There are even emulators for machines such as Colecovision , Oric and
some of the early Apple computers ! The big news is that there is
actually a Playstation emulator (without sound) available for Pocket PC
! You need a lot of space on your Flash card for the files but it does
seem to be playable and should get better in time.
FPSE is available for download at the link.
Overall there are many different emulators to choose from, most of
which are free. As for the games you'll find them all over the net,
remember you should own the original game if you are downloading the ROM
etc. Pocket PC's should get faster and faster and very soon all GBA
games will be able to be emulated and who knows what next, the N64 etc
?!? For now imagine a Pocket PC the size of a gameboy and the ability to
play 1000's of different retro games for different consoles in the palm
of your hand.
Its a reality already!
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