[PMS] Atari 800 on PSP

In the beginning of my ZX Spectrum ownership, there was a short period of time when my classmates didn’t have their wonderful Amigas just yet. The best computer around was my friend Tadeusz’s Atari 800XE with floppy disk drive: the tunes it generated were smoother and nicer, graphics more or less on par with Spectrum’s, but with more colours, without that annoying colour clash and of course floppy disk drive meant lighting-speed (or so it seemed back then) loading of the games.

Four of our favourite games were Druid, Gyruss, Ninja, Draconus and Archon (err, five of our… I’ll come in again). There was also a game the title of which I can’t recall, it featured orcs and defending castle from them – if you have a clue about it, gentle reader, please be kind enough to let me know through comment section. Revisitng these games on PSP seemed like an obvious choice, since of course Atari is perfectly emulated on the platform.

There are two choices for emulating Atari on PSP: ZX-81′s PSPAtari or Akop’s Atari800 PSP. Funnily enough, they are both ports of the same emulator Atari800. Both ports are very capable in terms of emulation fidelity and user friendliness, so the choice between them depends more on personal preference. As much as I have a soft spot for ZX-81 and his coding attempts, this time I have chosen Atari800 PSP as my recommendation – it is just slightly easier to use (auto-loading, PSP Start button mapped as Atari Start button) and on default settings my impression is that the emulation is a little more fluid.

The bottom line is that if you used to be 8bit Atari user and you have a PSP, then whichever emulator you chose, it is dead simple to have all your favourite classics playable on it.