Items tagged with emulator
Emulation is not always easy. Just look at all of the brands trying to emulate the success Nintendo has enjoyed in the retro console space with its NES Classic and SNES Classic launches. But that is not the only kind of emulation we are talking about. As it relates to Nintendo, Yuzu is a popular Switch emulator, and after recently offering an online function, it quickly took it down. It is not entirely clear why exactly Yuzu's developers yanked the online component. There are multiple possibilities, though. One is that it might not have worked up to their standards. Or it could have proved difficult to manage and maintain, taking up resources that could be applied elsewhere in the emulator's...
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The original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, released in 1985, is about as iconic as a video game could possibly get. The history of Mario has been retold a countless number of times, but when you sit back and look at the past 33 years of the mustached character, the amount of progress we've made is really breathtaking. Today, games are hyper-realistic at times, and the capabilities are only going to improve as time goes on. New games obviously stomp older ones when it comes to the graphics department, but not always where gameplay is concerned. Sometimes, simpler is best, and that's exactly why a game like Super Mario Bros. continues to be so admired, despite being well...
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By now you've probably heard all about Billy Mitchell, the controversial "King of Kong" that rose to fame thanks to his mastery of the arcade classic Donkey Kong. However, earlier this year there were suspicions raised about cheating through the use of emulators (MAME). In April, Twin Galaxies stripped Mitchell of every single one of his high scores, including the high watermark 1,062,800 run. Since that time, Mitchell has been on a mission to clear his name and show that he really is the King of Kong. "The fact of the matter is now there is a true professional due diligence being done to investigate things that happened as far as 35 years ago, in a professional manner,...
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The Commodore 64 holds a Guinness World record as the highest-selling single computer model of all time. After its initial release in August 1982, the C64 went on to sell millions of units – outselling all other popular 8-bit machines at the time, including the Apple II. For many long-time technology geeks, including me, the Commodore 64 was the first personal computer they ever owned. So, it’s no surprise that all these years later, the machine still hold a special place in our hearts. It is with that in mind, along with knowing how popular our Building An Amiga Emulator article was, that we decided to show you how to build your own ultra small form factor Commodore 64 emulator,...
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The developers behind the popular 3DS emulator Citra have now announced an emulator for the Nintendo Switch called Yuzu. This moment was inevitable, though most people probably did not expect a Switch emulator to arrive so quickly after the hybrid game console's launch just 10 months. Nevertheless, it's here, albeit the initial release is based on experimental open-source code. "It is written in C++ with portability in mind, with builds actively maintained for Windows, Linux, and macOS," the Yuzu team states. "The emulator is currently only useful for homebrew development and researcher purposes." Part of the reason why something like Yuzu can exist (and arrive so quickly) is because Nintendo...
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Emulator fans who want to play PlayStation 3 games on their computer may be familiar with the RPCS3 emulator that has been around for quite some time. The emulator has been updated and now supports high resolution rendering. The emulator can allow you to play favorite PS3 games at much higher resolutions than the PS3 could handle, all the way up to 10K resolution. Gaming at 10K resolution isn't something that we are ready for today, but there are lots of people out there who are ready for 4K gaming and the emulator will handle that. The video below shows side-by-side comparisons of games when ran in 720p, which was the native resolution for the PS3 compared to 4K rendering with 16x anisotropic...
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It looks like the team that developed popular emulators for Nintendo's Wii U (CEMU) and 3DS (Citra) game consoles, has some competition with regards to the Nintendo Switch. A new emulator for the hybrid console called RyujiNX has emerged, and it is not the same one as the experimental emulator (Yuzu) that was already known to be in development. Let the games begin, in a matter of speaking. Other than being a new contender, what makes RyujiNX stand out is that it is the first to have booted a handful of commercial games on the Switch. That is a huge step towards the ultimate end goal of actually being able to play games, not just boot them—at present, games are not actually playable through...
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The Nintendo Switch is one of the hottest items in tech these days, with the only other gadget that is as equally hard to find being its sibling — the NES Classic Edition. Although Nintendo has promised to double Switch production during the next fiscal year, finding a unit in stock online is a crapshoot and trying to score one at a brick and mortar retail establishment often means camping out the night before doors open. With the hot new console being so hard to find, it is often tempting for people to take shortcuts to get their hands on some Nintendo Switch gaming goodness. Unfortunately, there are scammers out there that are banking on these people to fall into their traps. The security...
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Retro gaming made a major resurgence this past holiday season, with the release of Nintendo’s ultra-hyped NES Classic, a scaled down clone of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Out of the box, the NES Classic has thirty preloaded game titles, though some recent hacks exposed a method for uploading more if you're willing to mess with it. That's all well and good, but if you weren’t able to get your hands on one this past holiday season -- like the majority of people -- getting your retro-gaming fix isn't happening any time soon, unless you fork out an unreasonable sum, paying hundreds to scalpers, for a product that retails for $60.But, why not roll your own? The Elusive NES Classic...
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It appears as though Google has scooped up LeapDroid, a popular Android emulator that makes it possible to play Android games on a PC. That said, the carefully worded announcement that has overtaken LeapDroid's website is that the LeapDroid team is "joining Google" as they embark on the "next phase" of their journey, details of which they're not yet ready to share. "While it's too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new colleagues at Google to continue pushing the frontier of technology. In order to focus on our next chapter, we have decided to discontinue the development of LeapDroid emulator," LeapDroid said.Anyone who already has LeapDroid can continue to...
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If you have been itching to play some classic arcade games, then consider that itch scratched. The Internet Arcade has made around 900 classic arcade games from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s available for free to play in your web browser. The games use the JavaScript Multi Emulator Super System (JSMESS) software package that allows everyone to play the games in an internet browser. To make this possible required “months of testing, refinement, improvements, and efforts,” according to Jason Scott, one of the team members who worked on the JSMESS. However, not all of the emulated games will run smoothly or are fully playable. Some games, which employed more exotic controls,...
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If you're in your thirties or older, then perhaps you cut your teeth on an Amiga, and specifically the Amiga 500, the best selling model in the series. It was put out by Commodore, and compared to the popular Commodore 64 released in 1982, the Amiga 500 was a big step up. At the heart of the system was AmigaDOS, later renamed AmigaOS, which initially required a Motorola 68000 series processor. Assuming you ever played on an Amiga, it's probably been several years since you toyed around with one, that is unless you're one of the diehards that have kept the platform alive long after Commodore went bankrupt (in 1994). Be that as it may, if you're looking for a blast to the past, a programmer by...
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Everyone loves a good vintage gaming console ROM, and the Internet Archive is introducing five classic console emulators from way, way back as part of its Historical Software collection. The “Console Living Room” list is comprised of the Atari 2600, Atari 7800 ProSystem, ColecoVision, Magnavox Odyssey 2, and the Astrocade. The Internet Archive uses JSMESS, and everything runs in your web browser. Here’s the kicker: These emulations don’t just have a few games to choose from. There are hundreds and hundreds of titles. For example, hit up the Atari 2600 page and scroll...and scroll. Frogger on the Atari 2600 Where the Internet Archive is a bit different from run-of-the-mill...
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It’s not hard to find old TV shows, movies, and other media classics these days, but software of times past isn’t always as easy to track down, and even if you do find it collecting dust in a closet or drawer somewhere, it can be hard or impossible to read the old media or emulate it. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has developed a solution. The site announced the Historical Software Archive, which is a repository of “prominent and historically notable pieces of software” that can actually be run within a web browser. Using JSMESS, a Javascript port of the MESS emulator, anyone using Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer can explore a number of older software...
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So far, the tiny and inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer has been about as successful as anyone could have hoped for. More than a million units have been sold so far, there’s a dedicated app store, and hobbyists and developers have been making and porting games and the like. The latest fun consists of a DOS emulator for the Raspberry Pi that enables you to play older PC games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Little Big Adventure, and more. Coder Patrick Alto based the emulator on one he built for the Nintendo DS, and the latest release offers fixes including better support for USB devices such as keyboards and two-button mice. He further says that the current status of the build is as follows:...
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Heather Mackey of Nvdia has written a new blog post discussing the company's hardware emulation equipment, thus affording us an opportunity to discuss a little-mentioned aspect of microprocessor development. Although we'll be discussing Nvidia products in particular, both software tools (aka, simulation) and hardware emulation are vital to all microprocessor design firms, including Intel, AMD, Via/Centaur, and ARM. There's a significant difference between software simulation and hardware emulation. In simulation, software tools are used to simulate the logic of a new design or product respin. The advantage to simulation is that most such tools are mature, flexible, and inexpensive. The...
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Jonesing for a way to play PS 1 games, and happen to have an iPod handy? An enterprising developer may have the answer to your woes.Previously only available as a private beta to donators, a PlayStation 1 emulator for the iPhone and iPod has been released to the public. The version is 0.1.0 so it’s obviously far from done, but psx4iPhone is available now.The developer, ZodTTD, indicates that although there will be public releases to come, if you want to see the full range of beta releases, you should sign up for the ZodTTD Beta Testers Club by donating.Good luck getting used to a touchscreen instead of a regular controller, but honestly, who knows? It might just catch on....
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