I have actually learnt a lot about the machine when I started working as software developer in 2006, because one of my coworkers turned out to be ex-C64 coder. His stories on programming tricks possible on the small machine were incredible – coding assembler programs that would work in phase with TV screen’s moving electron beam in order to achieve more colours or higher resolution, or hacking graphics chip by sending carefully malformed commands in order to be able to access frame, a part of the screen unavailable through regular commands. No wonder that guy is tenfold better programmer than me – at the time, I was struggling with Basic on my Speccy.
But even though Commodore 64 was not the machine I would be very familiar with, it is one of the pillars of the 8-bit era, so of course I couldn’t let it slip when covering emulation on PSP. At first, I have given a try to PSPYape by ZX-81 (my default behaviour when trying to emulate anything 8bit), but for the first time in my life his creation failed me. I believe it is because this particular emulator has not been updated since 2007 and was trying to run it on custom firmware 5.00 M-33 5. If you can hear this, ZX-81, please update the program, s’il vous plait.
After some googling, I have found a working emulator: called PSPVice, it is a neat piece of homebrew that works on every firmware. There are different builds available on program’s website, so just chose the one for your particular PSP.
One of the most famous C64 titles of it era were Last Ninja and Giana Sisters, which I remember from stories of the old times. I gave these games a try and they were running great – plus they are still enjoyable to play. I haven’t seen any problems with emulation, but I admit my testing was not extensive. The only little annoyance was that saving screenshots didn’t work, which is why I am using the image from PSPVice website. There is an onscreen keyboard available and handy autcompletion mechanism that automates loading games for those of us who have no clue which command to use.
Out of curiosity, I tried running the superb Edge of Disgrace demo that I have written about recently, but apparently it is using Commodore 64′s hardware so extensively that PSPVice crashes. This often happens with demos pushing hardware to its limits, so it is not something that I would consider a drawback of the emulator.
All in all, PSPVice is a great emulator and does its job very well, so whether you want to go back to your childhood programming days or are curious why C-64 was almost a cult object for some, thanks to PSPVice your PSP is a good place to do it.
Update: It seems like PSPVice got updated recently, which makes it even better!
Posted by barts706 
