Emulator Stuff:

If you have been computing for any number of years and long for the good ole days, there's quite a bit of retro stuff around. While there is a lot to be said about today's 3-D surround-sound killer games, these come with a price that usually spelt more trouble than it is worth.

Powerful PCs, large RAM memory, mega hard disk space... accompanied by manuals thicker than the Bible! Who has time to master all the commands or keep up with the action? (especially after you have saved it to return to the game in a week or month).

If you like a good blast, addictive brain teaser or just a game of chance... these games have already been created on the older computers! In the past, a few friends of mine would search the computer hangouts, magazines or mail order places for playable versions of Space Invaders, Galaxians and Donkey Kongs.

Now with Internet, we realize that we are not alone and that there is a mine of information out there.

Retro Computing

Logging on the net, we discovered many sites devoted to older computing systems. Starting with the Classic Home Video Games Museum at (http: //www.owlnet.rice.edu/ ~dgb /museum), we find links to other interesting sites such as the Computer History and Emulation Homepage (http: //freeflight.com /fms /comp). The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file contains a wealth of researched information with valuable pointers to other sites.

Apple Stuff

For most of us today, whether we are a PC user or Apple buff, there may be an old Apple ][ tucked away somewhere. If you are longing for the flawless fluid movements of the original Lode Runner, Dung Beetles or Choplifter, look no further than the Apple Emulator site at http://www.ecnet.net/users/mumbu/pages/apple2.html.

If this is your cup of tea, download an Apple ][ emulator from our very own Singapore website at http:// www.iscs.nus.sg /~chankumh /emu /apple.html . For PC users, there is the choice of a DOS emulator, ApplePC or a windows version, AppleWin. Both work like the old faithful with all the low resolution graphics and crackling sounds. Mac users have an interestingly named emulator, STM that, believe it or not, stands for Stop The Madness.

There are tons of popular Apple games, utilities etc. waiting to be downloaded for free at many sites, the best being ftp:// ftp.asimov.net/ pub/ apple-ii/ . You can put 10 Apple games in one diskette!

Commodore C64

If you want better sound, why not try the C64 emulator. A very user-friendly site at http:// www.csun.edu /~hbbuse08/ will allow you to download the very efficient C64s emulator as well as a load of games (favorites like Silkworm and Pacmania) and utilities. Especially, you will want to load the SID player where you can get superb music that Commodore is well known for. There are files for "Girls just want to have fun" to trivial stuff like video music of Frogger or Pacman.

There is a multitude of sites for the old Commodore computers, some of the more active ones are in European sites. There are also many current on-line magazines for the Commodore on the net.

What is your fancy?

If you enjoy the very old, you can go all the way back to CPM where BASIC and text games rule the day. A pretty good emulator is called MyZ80 which works well. For something more fun and less ancient, there is the Sinclair emulator, simply named Z80. It looks good, runs smoothly and is much more user-friendly. There is a host of Sinclair games on the net. My favorite is a darts game called 180. I haven't found another system that have a better rendering of a computer dart game.

Try getting these goodies at http:// www.ozemail.com /~martinf/ or http:// www.why.net /home /adam /com /#marker-103.

However, if you would like something more recent, why not go for the Mac? The only emulator running on the PC is the Executor. Now on its version 2.0, it will run quite a few of the Mac software including most of the classic B&W games that I really liked.

The nice thing about this emulator is that it is very fast. I have tried running PC DOS on the Mac and Atari ST, and it runs very slowly! It reads Mac CDs and disks directly. I got a shareware game CD by Wayzata and managed to run more than half of the 650 games. Download this emulator from http://freeflight,com/fms/comp.

In conclusion

Internet brings people together. Whatever your interest may be, you will find that you are not alone. Already, I have made several pals in the course of this pursuit. Why not log in and relive yesterday's arcade today?

All links are correct at the time of writing, but may be moved by the various webmasters.

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