[PMS] PSPUAE – Amiga emulation on PSP

If you have been around this blog for a while, you know that me and PSPUAE developers have a history together. There’s been a bit of drama, but we like each other now. At some point I stopped following releases of PSPUAE, but nevertheless I do support FOL, Horace and others and I do hope that they’ll reach real playable emulator before PSP becomes extinct.

For the sake of PMS (PSP eMulation Series) I have downloaded and tested the newest edition of PSPUAE. This latest revision sports Fame/C core, meaning that there the essential part of the emulator (engine, so to speak) was changed for this release. Of course, such transition is not something that can be made easily, so the devs warn that there might be some kinks in this version.

I tested it on a couple of games with mixed results:

• Warzone was noticeably faster, played smoothly without any frameskip,
• SWIV was faster, but with glitches,
• Wolfchild made PSPUAE hang up and I needed to restart it,
• Lotus III was playable, but with a lot of frameskipping.

There is no point crying about it, though, as the notice on PSUAE webpage by FOL states very clearly that:

Im only releasing this, because people wanted it. Be warned its unstable and can guru alot. That said it is faster.

Please do not post regarding crashing issues with this release, as I have already pointed out its flaws. Unless someone wants to improve the FAME/C CPU core, im done with it.

So if you don’t like it, you’ll have to go back to one of the previous versions, which, while probably a bit slower, are also significantly more stable and bug-free. All the downloads are available at PSPUAE project website.

Amiga versus PC

The things you can find while searching for retro stuff on YouTube are just plain amazing. This movie showcases the differences in the way Amiga and PC games looked and sounded:

Yes, not having Amiga some of my friends had was one of my biggest childhood traumas (at first I was stuck with ZX Spectrum+, later had early monochrome PC) and this videos goes to show why. People are busy with Xbox360 vs PS3 comparisons nowadays, but the fanboy wars were not uncommon in the good old days either, even though there is no doubt – Amiga was the superior platform when it came to gaming back then, both in terms of audiovisual prowess and number of exclusives.

If you see the second video comparison of two systems, you will notice that PC started catching up later. From the perspective of today, we can see who won the race in the end… but in its era, Amiga totally rocked.

PS. Still waiting for the continuation of Atari ST vs Amiga video I mentioned in this post – the preview is already out, but not the full movie yet.

Atari ST versus Amiga

“Humans have always hated dwarves and elves“, as Witcher has it, while in the real world Amiga and Atari ST users have always hated each other. I myself was always Amiga fan, even though I didn’t even have one (aww…), but I have actually played Starblade on Atari ST once.

Amiga fanboys accused Atari ST of having inferior graphical and sound capacity, Atari ST folks were bashing Amiga users. I never actually did in-depth comparison (I am too lazy), but I have accidentally found a video on YouTube that compares different games’ title screens, detailing number of colours and resolution.

It is a very interesting comparison (its author promises similar one for gameplay as well). After seeing this I admit that Atari ST had less colours a its disposal, but on the other hand programmers made really good job dithering them to obtain very similar results.

100 Amiga games in 10 minutes!

For nostalgics like me – a must. One hundred Amiga games flashback – I recognized so many of those…

There are similar videos on Youtube with early PC games – if anyone is interested, let me know through comments and I’ll post them here as well. Enjoy!

Emulating Amiga on PSP with PSPUAE 0.63

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about PSPUAE, the Amiga emulator on PSP. Being an avid Amiga fan since childhood, I bought PSP fueled by the desire to play Amiga games on the go. Unfortunately, the reality was not that great back then, which made me somewhat bitter and unpleasant (read here to find out more).

Anyhow, just recently I have got my hands on the newest version of PSPUAE, namely 0.63 nicknamed “Birthday Edition”. Happy birthday, PSPUAE!

Right, and now to the essentials: it certainly is nice, but how does it play?

The answer to that is : really good. One year has passed and it was not wasted. There’s a lot of things that have changed since I first got a copy of PSPUAE

Most importantly, the authors have significantly improved the speed of emulation with this edition. Although still not sufficient to fully emulate every game in perfect fluidity, PSPUAE definitely has made progress. Many games are emulated almost perfectly, and many more have accelerated and crossed over a threshold from barely playable to playable.

The usability has also improved, in terms of user interface and the customization options available. The menu is more user friendly and I had no problem finding the options I needed.

Another important feature is the use of so called save-states. They allow for loading the state of Amiga memory directly in the emulator, instead of emulating the regular loading process from a fake drive – thus allowing for much faster loading times. It sounds a little complicated, but it boils down to being able to start playing without having to wait for a long time. Certainly a nice feature.

In order to use the emulator, user needs to have KickStart files. Due to copyright issues they are not distributed with the emulator, but they can be found on Google. The emulator itself can be downloaded from a couple of places, such us QJ.Net or its homepage.

A couple of examples of test scenarios (what a nice euphemism for playing games) is presented below :

International Karate Plus – plays great with sound and a little amount of frameskip. Fluid and playable.

WarZone – slight slowdowns, but playable with sound.

Speedball Deluxe – runs smoothly with sound. Impeccable.

SWIV – unfortunately not really playable. Sluggish even with frameskip, less so with no sound.

Another World – no problems here, runs great with sound and music.

My beloved Wolfchild also loads and plays great, with sound and decent framerate, although some frameskipping is necessary. But it finally plays fluidly!

To sum up, this is a very good release of a very good emulator. I hope for some more improvements, but given the complexity of task, I must say I appreciate what we already have. If you have a PSP, this one is a must.

Emulating Amiga on PSP with PSPUAE 0.63

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about PSPUAE, the Amiga emulator on PSP. Being an avid Amiga fan since childhood, I bought PSP fueled by the desire to play Amiga games on the go. Unfortunately, the reality was not that great back then, which made me somewhat bitter and unpleasant (read here to find out more).

Anyhow, just recently I have got my hands on the newest version of PSPUAE, namely 0.63 nicknamed “Birthday Edition”. Happy birthday, PSPUAE!

Right, and now to the essentials: it certainly is nice, but how does it play?

The answer to that is : really good. One year has passed and it was not wasted. There’s a lot of things that have changed since I first got a copy of PSPUAE

Most importantly, the authors have significantly improved the speed of emulation with this edition. Although still not sufficient to fully emulate every game in perfect fluidity, PSPUAE definitely has made progress. Many games are emulated almost perfectly, and many more have accelerated and crossed over a threshold from barely playable to playable.

The usability has also improved, in terms of user interface and the customization options available. The menu is more user friendly and I had no problem finding the options I needed.

Another important feature is the use of so called save-states. They allow for loading the state of Amiga memory directly in the emulator, instead of emulating the regular loading process from a fake drive – thus allowing for much faster loading times. It sounds a little complicated, but it boils down to being able to start playing without having to wait for a long time. Certainly a nice feature.

In order to use the emulator, user needs to have KickStart files. Due to copyright issues they are not distributed with the emulator, but they can be found on Google. The emulator itself can be downloaded from a couple of places, such us QJ.Net or its homepage.

A couple of examples of test scenarios (what a nice euphemism for playing games) is presented below :

International Karate Plus – plays great with sound and a little amount of frameskip. Fluid and playable.

WarZone – slight slowdowns, but playable with sound.

Speedball Deluxe – runs smoothly with sound. Impeccable.

SWIV – unfortunately not really playable. Sluggish even with frameskip, less so with no sound.

Another World – no problems here, runs great with sound and music.

My beloved Wolfchild also loads and plays great, with sound and decent framerate, although some frameskipping is necessary. But it finally plays fluidly!

To sum up, this is a very good release of a very good emulator. I hope for some more improvements, but given the complexity of task, I must say I appreciate what we already have. If you have a PSP, this one is a must.

Wolfchild speedrun

One of the most memorable games of my youth was Wolfchild. This can be attributed to many things, but for me it was The Game. The cyberpunkish story, the atmosphere, the graphics and music, the gameplay – Wolfchild had it all. And metallic howling of werewolf during the transformation…

I remember this commercial from Amiga Power or some other Amiga magazine.

The intro sequence, although today it may seem boring and uninteresting, back then made the kind of impression on me that today might be similar to watching Animatrix or some perfectly produced anime.

The forest level with its dark backgrounds and strange music remains for me one of the most vivid memories of 16 bit era. Also, the moment when the player beats the first boss and starts falling down from crumbling spaceship – this was really an innovative approach to already established shoot’em up genre.

As for the music – I even asked one of my friends, Arek Maciejewski (now a respected businessman), to record the music track on a tape recorder for me to listen (yes, we didn’t have CDs back then…). This music is still my soft spot – I have it in mods and also two great remixes.

Why do I reminiscence like this at this moment, and, what’s more, publicly?

The answer is that I have just discovered a video of Wolfchild speedrun on Youtube, which caused a surge of memories. So whether you are a nostalgic like me, dwelling on the 16 bit past, or a young PSP user who has never owned a Gameboy (the last 16 bit gaming machine) and never heard of Amiga, I invite you to discover the retro charm of Wolfchild story

Thanks for bringing this to us, Cubex!

Wolfchild speedrun

One of the most memorable games of my youth was Wolfchild. This can be attributed to many things, but for me it was The Game. The cyberpunkish story, the atmosphere, the graphics and music, the gameplay – Wolfchild had it all. And metallic howling of werewolf during the transformation…

I remember this commercial from Amiga Power or some other Amiga magazine.

The intro sequence, although today it may seem boring and uninteresting, back then made the kind of impression on me that today might be similar to watching Animatrix or some perfectly produced anime.

The forest level with its dark backgrounds and strange music remains for me one of the most vivid memories of 16 bit era. Also, the moment when the player beats the first boss and starts falling down from crumbling spaceship – this was really an innovative approach to already established shoot’em up genre.

As for the music – I even asked one of my friends, Arek Maciejewski (now a respected businessman), to record the music track on a tape recorder for me to listen (yes, we didn’t have CDs back then…). This music is still my soft spot – I have it in mods and also two great remixes.

Why do I reminiscence like this at this moment, and, what’s more, publicly?

The answer is that I have just discovered a video of Wolfchild speedrun on Youtube, which caused a surge of memories. So whether you are a nostalgic like me, dwelling on the 16 bit past, or a young PSP user who has never owned a Gameboy (the last 16 bit gaming machine) and never heard of Amiga, I invite you to discover the retro charm of Wolfchild story

Thanks for bringing this to us, Cubex!

Reminiscing Flashback

I have told you the story of my fascination with Amiga games, maybe even a little too often. One of the unforgettable games of that generation was Flashback from Delphine Software.

Incredibly fluid animation (referenced in one of Kid Paddle comics), great atmosphere, space conspiracy, thrilling story, incredible music – this game had it all. Oh, and insane difficulty, too. Nevertheless, there are some people that still get tears in their eyes when they hear the main theme…

Reminiscence is a homebrew application aimed principally at these people. It is an engine for running Flashback on PSP, sort of an emulator created for emulating but one game. I almost overlooked it in the flood of cool homebrew apps appearing recently and I certainly am glad I didn’t.

The cult classic actually looks great on the PSP screen, and even though I don’t usually like to play my games in artificially stretched 16:9 (due to the fact that proportions look strange to me then), somehow this format goes well with Flashback.

In order to play Flashback with Reminiscence, you will need to provide the engine with data files, but this is not a problem – you can download the game from House of the Underdogs, or from any other abandonware site. You will also need to download music from Amiga version in mod format, which you can find on UnExoticA.

The game hasn’t lost anything in translation and it is a real pleasure to be able to have it in my pocket everywhere and anytime. It is as difficult as always and I have lost the patience to retry same fragment over and over, but it still is very enjoyable, especially for a nostalgic like me. I also think that younger PSP users might actually have fun playing Flashback as well, since it is a game that gets so many thing right, contrary to so many modern products.

So if you are reading this – have a flashback of gaming past and play the damn game!

Reminiscing Flashback

I have told you the story of my fascination with Amiga games, maybe even a little too often. One of the unforgettable games of that generation was Flashback from Delphine Software.

Incredibly fluid animation (referenced in one of Kid Paddle comics), great atmosphere, space conspiracy, thrilling story, incredible music – this game had it all. Oh, and insane difficulty, too. Nevertheless, there are some people that still get tears in their eyes when they hear the main theme…

Reminiscence is a homebrew application aimed principally at these people. It is an engine for running Flashback on PSP, sort of an emulator created for emulating but one game. I almost overlooked it in the flood of cool homebrew apps appearing recently and I certainly am glad I didn’t.

The cult classic actually looks great on the PSP screen, and even though I don’t usually like to play my games in artificially stretched 16:9 (due to the fact that proportions look strange to me then), somehow this format goes well with Flashback.

In order to play Flashback with Reminiscence, you will need to provide the engine with data files, but this is not a problem – you can download the game from House of the Underdogs, or from any other abandonware site. You will also need to download music from Amiga version in mod format, which you can find on UnExoticA.

The game hasn’t lost anything in translation and it is a real pleasure to be able to have it in my pocket everywhere and anytime. It is as difficult as always and I have lost the patience to retry same fragment over and over, but it still is very enjoyable, especially for a nostalgic like me. I also think that younger PSP users might actually have fun playing Flashback as well, since it is a game that gets so many thing right, contrary to so many modern products.

So if you are reading this – have a flashback of gaming past and play the damn game!