Presented by: Mozgus

It’s no secret that many developer interviews in the mid-90’s cited the Sega Saturn as a very complex and challenging machine to work with. In fact, it’s one of the key factors which led to machine’s downfall in the face of the Sony Playstation. Developers struggled to produce the experiences they envisioned within the time-frame allotted. If such a console were so hard for experienced, professional programmers to work with, the notion of emulating the machine must strike fear and doubt into the hearts of all who dream it.

So how did just one person accomplish that which all others could never quite reach, including Sega itself? I wish I had that answer for you, but I’ve yet to find any kind of interview with this mysterious Japanese programmer, who goes by the alias, Shima. There’s bound to be some knowledge to be had in his forum, but we’ll need someone to translate.

What I can tell you, and this is pretty much inarguable, is that SSF is by far the best means of playing a Saturn without actually owning one. Game consoles don’t last forever, and without projects like this, entire libraries of software could essentially lose it’s function someday. This is why the importance of emulation should never be underestimated. If this backlog is authentic, Shima has been dedicated to the project for over 9 years now. Very impressive.

Yes, I know there are other attempts such as Giri Giri and Satourne, and I know they deserve respect too. However, this is more of a practical introduction to Saturn emulation, and as such, I feel that SSF is the most reliable and easy to setup, and produces the most authentic experience. I would provide technical guides and such, but fortunately, others have already done this for me.

The Basics of SSF

• To start with, SSF’s Wiki page provides a quick breakdown of what it is and what it does.
• The official SSF page can always be found here, or try this link for a Google Translation. You can also obtain the newest builds, although not always on the same release day, at Zophar’s Domain or the like.
• SSF Tribute’s FAQ is an absolutely essential read.

Requirements to Run SSF

• SSF does not require a BIOS file to run, however it will raise the compatibility rate of the app, so I suggest you find one. I dare not link to one, but if you’re reading this and clicking things I share, you’ve already got a tab open to a site that offers it.
• Check out the required hardware specs.
• It really just comes down to a powerful CPU. A video card merely needs Direct-X 9 functionality, and I’m not even completely sure that’s true.
• Regardless, updating your Direct-X couldn’t hurt.

Configuring SSF

• A very detailed guide to all of SSF’s configuration options can be found here.
• Although, in most cases, you only need to go to Option > EZ Setting > Set Highest Compatibility achieve the best results.
• If you have a decent dual-core CPU, this will not have any real performance impact.

What Games Work on SSF?

• Software compatibility lists can be found here, here, and here.
• Check out an absolutely gigantic selection of screenshots taken with SSF.
• For good measure, here’s a video I recorded of Panzer Dragoon Zwei running on SSF. It demonstrates how extremely close to perfect the emulation can be.
• Some games like Virtua Fighter 2 require the deinterlacing checked or they look pretty tore up.  I assume it’s because the game runs in 480i, whereas most games are half that, and can’t display any interlacing to begin with.
• Deinterlacing can slowdown the gameplay if your CPU isn’t up to snuff.

Getting Support for SSF

• Please don’t ask for support in the comments here — here’s some links that can probably get you good answers quicker
• Zophar’s Domain Forum – General Emulation
• This thread in ngemu.com’s forum
• Racketboy’s emulation forum

Is SSF for you?

If you once owned a Saturn and have occasionally felt nostalgic about the titles you’ve let go, stop reading this and acquire SSF immediately. It should find a permanent home on your hard drive. For those who’ve never had a Saturn, I highly suggest you acquire some of Racket’s listed gems, by any means neccessary. You’re bound to find something fun in there. Although, perhaps you’re the historical type, and want to see which games defined the Saturn. Or maybe you’re strapped for time, and require the ones that still matter today. No wait, I’ve got it. You’re a penny pincher!

Ironically, the only people it might not be for are those who still have fully working Saturns, like myself. You see, SSF has yet to implement any real advantages over a Saturn, unless you just hate dealing with discs (you can rip your game discs to ISOs and play them mounted to virtual drives), or you hate replacing the internal CMOS save battery each year. It also offers no visual enhancements, besides de-interlacing and a full screen bilinear filter (not to be confused with texture filtering). Beggars can’t be choosers however, and I certainly agree that emulation accuracy needs to be nearly flawless before visual enhancements come to play.

While by no means recent news, I hope this overview gives you guys something new to mess around with for a while.

Just because we have a DS doesn’t mean we don’t want to play some older portable Nintendo games.  While we could play the original Gameboy cartridges on our Gameboy Advances, the Nintendo DS doesn’t afford us that luxury.  However, with a little emulation power, we can resolve that issue and make your portable gaming life even better.

What Is The Best Gameboy/Gameboy Color Emulator?

While GNUboy DS (aka DS_GBC / DSBoy) was the first Gameboy emulator for the DS that had sound support (there was also the GBA-based Gooba Color), Lameboy quickly rose to victory as the superior emulator for the classic Nintendo portables.   Lameboy is constantly being updated (last update as of this writing was just a few months ago) and has excellent compatibility, sound emulation, and save state support that its competition can not boast of.    There is still some slight room for improvement, but I think you will be pleased by how polished Lameboy actually is. Along with nesDS, it is on the top of the Nintendo DS Emulation family.

Easy Installation

After some of my frustrating experiences getting some of my GP2X emulators to run, I was very happy with the simplicity of the Lameboy installation. Assuming your homebrew cart doesn’t require patching, all you do is download the executable file and put it in a folder with some Gameboy ROMs. (Actually, you don’t need folders, and your ROMs can be elsewhere, but folders usually help keep things organized)

For my CycloDS Evolution cartridge, I just copied over a folder (named “GB”) that had the executable and my ROMs on to MicroSD card, popped it in my DS Lite, and I was good to go. No configuration is required to get things up and running.  If you have an older homebrew solution, you may need to patch the executable before use.
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Video Tour of Lameboy

To get a better feel for how Lameboy handles, I’ve recorded a quick video that walks through some of the menus and shows a few games in action.

Lameboy’s Best Features

• High compatibility
• Full speed for most games
• Support for large games greater than 2 MB in size
• Zipped ROM support for games smaller than 2 MB
• “Fast Mode” with L-trigger
• Auto save on exit to menu
• Pseudo bilinear upscaling mode
• Super Game Boy borders and coloring support
• Rumble emulation with slot 2 devices with rumble
• Green color scheme option emulating original Game Boy color palette (green to very light green)
• Configurable X/Y Keys
• Save states

Complaints & Limitations

• I can’t seem to exit out of Lameboy and go back to my CycloDS menu (like I can with regular games)
• Some games like Shantae have some minor audio processing issues (see video above for Shantae example)
• Would be cool to have a rewind feature like nesds

Download

• The Official Lameboy Site

Note: Special thanks to Ivo for helping me explore all of the emulators for the DS — you should see more of these posts from us in the future.

Adding some retro functionality to your Nintendo DS is always a good thing. This time we will be showing off NES emulation for all your favorite 8-bit Nintendo classics.

What Is The Best NES Emulator?

I was surprised to find that most of the emulation sites out there are pushing old NES emulators that are just slight modifications of their GBA counterparts. nesDS, on the other hand, customized the PocketNES code to take full advantage of the DS hardware and to improve performance and compatibility. It isn’t perfect, but I think you will find it quite suitable for most games.

Easy Installation

After some of my frustrating experiences getting some of my GP2X emulators to run, I was very happy with the simplicity of the nesDS installation. Assuming your homebrew cart doesn’t require patching, all you do is download the executable file and put it in a folder with some NES ROMs. (Actually, you don’t need folders, and your ROMs can be elsewhere, but folders usually help keep things organized)

For my CycloDS Evolution cartridge, I just copied over a folder (named “NES”) that had the executable and my ROMs on to MicroSD card, popped it in my DS Lite, and I was good to go. No configuration needed. (Configurations options are availible for tweaking, but I don’t bother)

If you need need installation assistance with older DS homebrew solutions, check out this wiki guide at PocketHeaven.

Video Tour of nesDS

To get a better feel for how nesDS handles, I’ve recorded a quick video that walks through some of the menus and shows a few popular games in action.

nesDS’s Best Features

• High compatibility
• Full speed for most games
• “Rewind” feature with R-trigger
• “Fast Mode” with L-trigger
• Save states

Complaints & Limitations

• Not a huge deal, but I can’t seem to navigate the menus with the D-pad and face buttons. It all seems to be touch-screen based. Since the menu options are small, you will need a stylus for best results.
• There is no DPCM sound (SMB3 drums, Kung Fu laughing, etc), unlike PocketNES.
• There is also no raw PCM sound (speech in Joshua, SCAT, Big Bird’s Hide and Speak), like PocketNES.

Download

• The Official nesDS Site
• Download Mirror from Racketboy

Many of the most old-school of gamers still pride themselves on playing all the classics on the original hardware and look down on emulation. Many other Nintendo fans may be loading up their Wiis with plenty of excellent N64 games on the Virtual Console. However, if you are looking for something to breath a bit of fresh air into your favorite N64 games, you may want to look into some neat little hacks you can do with an N64 emulator and some select plugins and texture packs.

What Can These Tweaks Do?

Even though it was 64-bit, the N64 was still in that era where 3D processing was at its infancy and the graphics weren’t quite as smooth as we might like. In fact, the 32-bit Playstation had a number of later games that gave the best of the N64 a run for its money in terms of graphics. However, with some emulation tweaks, we can give some of your favorite N64 classics a significant boost to help transition them into the modern era.

While I wasn’t as impressed with most of these as much as I was with the PS1 emulation enhancements we covered a while back, there are some very interesting examples of a high-gloss finish added to some of the best of the N64 library.

Basic Image Enhancement Plugins

Without doing anything too terribly complicated, you can make most any N64 game look significantly better by using Project64 with a plugin, typically the Rice Video Plugin (find others on list of plugins here). These improvements are usually made by enhancing the 3D model textures and using anti-aliasing techniques to smoothen the rough edges of the polygons. Here are some great examples of enhanced screenshots (click to enlarge)

Kirby 64

Super Smash Bros.

Another Super Smash Bros shot

Jet Force Gemini

Goldeneye 007

Yes, you can render the Sky Box – Glide64 HQ plugin works well also
Another screenshot

Custom Texture Packs

One of the coolest tricks in N64 emulation is re-texturing. With this technique, the original graphics of the game are taken out, redone using high resolution textures or a different graphic style (such as Cell Shading), and then reinserted for playback on the PC. These texture packs consist of zipped files that you download and use in combination with a copy of the original game ROM and specific emulators. (See this guide for a detailed example)

The only disadvantage to this technique is that there is a lot of time and effort that goes into these texture packs. Dedicated members of the N64 emulation community pour their creativity and skill into these creations and is is no small task to adequately take care of one game, let alone the entire N64 library. Because of this, not every N64 game is going to have high-resolution texture packs available. Although, you are free to join in on the initiative yourself.

Below are some of my favorite examples of texture packs (click to enlarge screens), but there are more available. If you have a favorite that isn’t mentioned, feel free to drop some links in the comments section below.

Mario 64 – RiSiO’s Alternative Cartoon Mario 64

More Screenshots
Video Sample
Download Texture Pack

The Legend of Zelda: OoT – Hi-Res Pack

More Screenshots (With Before & After)
Zelda-Specific Instructions
Download Texture Pack

Paper Mario – Mollymutt’s Hi-rez

More Screenshots
Long thread with updates

Banjo-Kazooie - Macphisto’s Hi-Res Banjo-Kazooie

More Screenshots
Download Texture Pack

F-Zero X – speiles F-ZERO X retexture

More Screenshots
Download Texture Pack

Other Texture Packs (thanks CoolROM):

• Diddy Kong Racing by _pm_
• GoldenEye 007 by Kerber2k
• Legend of Zelda, The: Majora’s Mask by Djipi and MDtauk (Screenshots here)
• Mario Kart 64 by Mazzocchi
• Monopoly by krhyluv
• Starfox 64 by Kid A
• Super Mario 64 by cloudscapes, _pm_, and John Doe
• Super Smash Bros. by _pm_ and optimus$prime
• Virtual Chess 64 by sToRm_seveN
• Wave Race 64 by The Dave
• WWF No Mercy by alanchiz

Special thanks: NeoGAF members from this thread that shared their N64 screenshots and

Note from racketboy: I felt this piece from fastbilly1 did a wonderful job looking at one of the most pivotal console FPSs and how it is still relevant and practical today. I hope you enjoy it.

Few games have caused as much awe and frustration as Rareware’s 1997 Goldeneye 007. Bringing four-player FPS multiplayer to a console was unheard of at the time to the vast majority of gamers. Sure there were the PC fans who had played through Wolfenstien 3D, Rise of the Triad, or Doom 1 & 2, but the casual crowd had yet been exposed to slaughtering their friends for fun. Predating Half Life by a year, Goldeneye provided us a reason to gather up the troops and stalk the halls of the temple. But how does it play today?

Controls

Simplicity was what made Goldeneye unique and special. While not as simple as Mario Kart 64, compared to other FPSs, Goldeneye’s control scheme was intuitive enough that even the very casual gamers could pick up the majority of the nuances with just a handful of games under their belts. “Use the joystick to move and the trigger to shoot, blue button opens doors and reloads the gun” with that basic rundown of controls most anyone could join you until they either wanted to learn the more advanced controls or became bored of the game (this would become commonplace if you played with people who always hunted down the new players, you all know what I am talking about).

The controls are still spot on, and have been added into more modern games as optional controls (in Halo that is Legacy with the triggers in Southpaw). They may seem alittle akward at first, but after a couple games you will feel the groove coming back. And if you cannot get use to the single joystick controls, pick one of the 2.1 control styles and grab another controller. Sure it means on a 1 on 1 game but you will get a more modern control style.

Multiplayer:

Goldeneyes is not so much unique as it is an example of utter brilliance. The stage designs are nearly flawless. From the open breezeways of the Temple, to the labyrinth like Complex, to the harrowing halls of the Facility, the stages had the right amount of everything to make for epic battles of supremacy. Though after ten years of playing Temple it grows quite stale. The same goes for the Facility.

If you played the game to the extent that the majority of us did, you will still remember the hiding spots in the Complex, the high holes in the Temple’s main room, and ofcourse the bullet proof glass in the Facility, they will seem like old friends. But after playing them for a few hours you will remember that the Facility is bottlenecked at the bullet proof glass, the hiding spots in complex are nigh useless, and that still nobody remembers those holes in the Temple’s walls. Is this to say that the stages are bad? No, but I do not believe that most people will be willing to put in anywhere near the amount of time the use to on them. They were amazing, but by todays standards they are very plain and lack gusto. Then again I started playing through Goldeneye again a couple weeks ago and have enjoyed the spats of multiplayer quite a bit. But when compared to something like Timesplitters 2/Future Perfect, Halo, or Half Life 2, there really is no fair comparison.

The weapons in Goldeneye were always a mixed bag. I knew very few people who actually liked getting the PP7 (commonly referred to as the PPtrash) and even less who liked timed mines. Mixed bag or not the weapons still provide a nice balance that few games have replicated. Weapon sets may have annoyed many players, something that Perfect Dark “fixed,” but it just kept with the idea that the game was made to be simple. I mean when choosing Automatics, all the guns use the same bullets. How can that be any simpler? Yes simplicity is good to get new players, but the balance is what kept people coming back. The most powerful weapon will always spawn in the same place, the RCP90 is going to be outside the bathroom door, but you have a clear shot to it from most of the way down the hallway if you are crouched, and a headshot with the magnum will kill them. And while your RCP90 can shoot through that metal door, much like the moonraker, my Magnum can shoot through the bullet proof glass AND the door behind it. And for some reason fire can go through walls, 10 years and I still haven’t figured that one out. Ask any fan of the game two simple words and the stories will come pouring out, proximity mine. I could go on about games in Bunker, or the Temple respawn pattern, but that is not why yall are here. If you cannot tell already, I would say that apart from the Unreal Tournaments and possibly Red Fraction, there has not been a more balanced set of weapons, let alone weapon sets, in an fps. I just wish I would stop getting stuck with that daggum klobb when we are not playing License to Kill.

Scenario-wise Goldeneye pulled from its parents in the genre and ironed out a lot of the kinks in making a console version of them. Your standard deathmatch is fairly straight forward. But adding in a one shot kill option, License to Kill, spiced things up some (then people actually want the klobb). Limited lives, You only Live Twice, was fun for tournaments but not so much for casual play, sans drinking games potential. Flag tag, The Living Daylights, was probably our least played game type, even more so than limited lives. The concept is that there is one flag, and you try to hold on to it the longest, timewise. It never clicked with my group of friends and family, so my exposure to it is jaded and boorish. Ofcourse there are your usual team layouts, 2v2 and 3v1, neither all that profound, but a whole mess of a lot of fun. Finally we have one of the best, The Man with the Golden Gun. This is a very simple one where there is one Goldengun, it forces the weapon set to be goldengun, whoever grabs the gun is “it” and is the only one who can get points, everyone else is on a team to best them and grab the gun (best when played without a time limit). Enough variety to keep most players happy for sometime, it is hard to say what kind of impact it made since most of these scenarios had been in games before it. But there is no question that even by todays standards the scenarios are worthwhile, and more importantly they are still fun. However the lack of being able to use more than one at a time is a sad drawback. Team License to Kill and a true Capture the Flag mode would have been choice additions, but sadly it just is not so (though the first can be accomplished through modifiying players health and/or using a gameshark).

With twelve available by default, 33 after completing the game, and 64 if you used a cheat, there is a character for everyone. Be it the cast of the movie, your generic badguys, or even old Bond villains, the multiplayer characters are as diverse as the people who play them. Granted you will run into people who only will only play the short man oddjob or maybe that ghillisuit esq Siberian Special Forces, but there is little to gripe about characterwise. Newer games boast cast in the hundreds, Timesplitters, but really how many do you really need? Granted I do have over 1000 characters on my Mugen roster so I cant really talk.

Overall the multiplayer is still amazingly fun, even if the stage designs are a bit dated. All the tricks have been figured out and there are no secrets left, but with alittle practice, and some good friends, Goldeneye can still dish out what you remember it doing back in the 90s. Sure it is dated, the characters only kinda look like the people they are supposed to represent, and there are no reload animations, but it can still dole out that sweet endorphin rush of days gone by.

Singleplayer:

Goldeneye may have been known mostly for its divine multiplayer, but the single player was no slouch either. Following the movie decently, good enough for a movie game, the storyline took you all over the world. Starting off with the dam with that big green truck that you have to out run and ending with a brilliant jump to the bottom of the Cradle. While there were slow parts, Statue, and parts that were over the top violent, Runway’s tank, the game played fluidly from stage to stage. However the storytelling dynamics are ruined by stock characters and a somewhat convoluted jump from part to part with bare reasons for such a jump.

While this can be construed to be just like the movie, or most Bond movies for that matter, it does not translated well into a ground breaking single player experience. In its time it was unrivaled, but now with brilliant retellings of the second World War, stories of intergalactic civil wars of racism and hate, and a lonely MIT graduate in the wrong place at the wrong time, Goldeneye shows its age. And while that is not a bad thing in some aspects, the single player game did not age anywhere near as good as the multiplayer. This does not mean it is a horrible game, just that it has been surpassed.

Playing Goldeneye 007 Today

If you want to dive back into Goldeye ten years after its released, you really have three options:

1. Dust off the Nintendo 64
2. Play a Goldeneye Mod for another game
3. Emulate

We will hit all three of these in fair detail, pro and con, and some how-tos to make your experience more enjoyable

Nintendo 64:
If you don’t have one, they go for $15 at goodwill and about $30 with two controllers and a game on eBay (pre-shipping). Goldeneye will set you back another $10 or so. (You could even find a system bundled with the game) So yes it is cheap, but there are two problems with playing it on the N64:

First of all, old hardware can be spotty, I know in college we went through a N64 in a year and a half playing Mario Kart 64 (ended up that when we added extra cooling it started to work again, but who wants a pc heatsink on a console?).

Secondly, the controllers can be a hassle. Yes the great thing about playing the game is that the N64 controller was spot on, nigh perfect, for the game. However, the joysticks on the controllers are simply tripe. How do you know if your controller is shot, the easy way to do it is hold it by one of the claws and shake it around in a gentle circle. If the stick moves around, well it might be time to get some new ones. Sure you can still play with the busted up sticks, I did it for years, but the difference between the sticks is night and day. Downside to this is it is increasingly difficult to purchase new first party controllers for a decent price, even on eBay.

There is another way, if you are comfortable with electronics, or know someone who is that owes you a favor, you can easily and painlessly replace the joystick and for about $7 per controller. eBay is littered with people selling the joysticks and the triwing screwdriver you may need. Once open it is a matter of plug and play to switch out the joysticks, I will make the safe bet of ten minutes per, but in reality it can take as few as two after you figure it out. So for about forty dollars and maybe an hour, you can replace all your joysticks, clean your contacts for your buttons, and have four N64 controllers that feel like new.

That is by far the best way to get better controllers, but if you do not already have four controllers eBay or craigslist are your best options. Do be careful though and make sure you are buying Nintendo brand controllers and not the third party kind. Even if the seller says they are first party if they have slowmo features, well that should be a hint.

Mods:
The most popular of all the Goldeneye mods is obviously Goldeneye Source. Utilizing the power of the Source Engine, and the creativity of the Half Life community, Goldeneye Source provides a very faithful rendition of the multiplayer to the modern audience. Sporting both online play and more maps the game could be played endlessly. However there are some drawbacks. For one you need a decent computer to run it, Half Life 2 will run on most anything, but Goldeneye Source has brought my pc down to a crawl on decently populated servers. It also requires a copy of a base Source game, your best option would be either Half Life 2 or The Orange Box. A better question would be why don’t you already have a copy or two of Half Life 2 (but that is just the TFC fan I me screaming for later this year).

One thing that I did not like about Goldeneye Source, and this is just a personal gripe, is that they took away your ability to not fall off of things. Sure it makes sense to do it that way, but that was one “problem” with Goldeneye that I actually liked. It added something so unintuitive that it through everyone for a loop the first couple games, that and I do not like falling to my death (that’s the UT/Quake fan in me talking).

Personally I prefer the mods for the Unreal Tournament series, even if they were never finished. The maps were redone in a more UT style, ie the columns in the Library main room, and really fit the game. However the guns are worthless, in comparison to even their original form. I take it to mean that the Lizard people are just that strong that it takes several shots from the Goldengun to kill them. Just using the maps with the UT weapons leads for some funny battles, but this is in no way a substitute for the original game.

Either choice is good, but for a real rendition, there is really no reason to look any further than Goldeneye Source. Sadly though it is a pcgame, meaning one player per pc (this is not Serious Sam you know), taking away some of the fun, but online and lanparties do alleviate you of that.

Emulation:
Ah the sticky subject, well this one is still kind of iffy. Rareware utilized a unique skybox that so far the emulation community has yet to duplicate. Meaning all stages that are supposed to have a sky just have black, makes Surface kinda apocalyptically foreboding. It really does not affect multiplayer that much but it is worthwhile to point out. Emulation has several major advantages over the other two options. Not only do you still have four players on one system, you can also have online through kalliera (project64k and mupen64k). You can also enhanced the graphics, though I would suggest against that, and you can up the ram to the game so you do not have as many slowdowns as you use to. However you are stuck with pretty crappy controls, and to play fourplayer with less slowdown you need a fairly “cherry” pc. The pc problem can be fixed over time or simply for a couple hundred if you are not so technically inclined, the controls are another problem all together.

You could cheat and use a mouse and keyboard, but that takes away ALL of the challenge. The more common way of playing is with pc controllers, Logictech’s DualShock styled one being the most obvious choice (which racketboy personly uses and enjoys). The Wiimote can also be used through glovepie and a Bluetooth dongle, but like the mouse and keyboard I believe the precision takes the challenge out of the game, well except when you are fighting the auto aim.

However, there is a still another easy way to get better controls, console adaptors. For N64 to USB you have two choices, Adaptoids which are the more expensive, N64-only solution or the PS1/PS2/N64 adapters that are available from eBay, Amazon, and other retailers. Sadly I have missed out on the last shipment of Adaptoids and currently play using a Super Joybox 5 and PS2 controllers. It is by far not the most ideal way of playing, the deadzone on the PS2 controllers is smaller than the N64 so sometimes when strafing you start looking up really quickly, but it is very much playable.

Another fantastic aspect of emulation is that you can hack the game. Not only can you start out with all 64 players in multiplayer available by default, you can play new stages in multiplayer. That’s right there are stages for Goldeneye that you have not memorized; Namely the Cradle (the last stage for the single player game) and the Citadel (a beta multiplayer stage – unfinished but very playable). However any stage can become a multiplayer stage with the help of the Goldeneye level editor care of the brilliant minds of the Rare Witch Project. This editor allows you to lay down items, characters, weapons, cover, statues, and even miniaturized tanks, if that is what you fancy. With this powerful tool you could simply add another set of body armor to a stage or go so far as to create your own stage – though I feel I should warn you that this does involve a fair bit of work and I did end up crashing the emulator countless times, my entire pc once, for one reason or another (standard fare for me and level creation actually).

With the ability to make new stages and missions, coop missions at that; this could be seen as reason enough to configure an N64 emulator and figure out the editor. This powerful tool actually breathes more life into the game than anything else. Thanks to SubDrag, Zoinkity, Wreck, whoever else worked on this, and the Project64 team, almost every qualm I ever had with Goldeneye over the years is instantly gone. Sadly there is still no way to play a standard game of capture the flag, but I can live with that. Also with these tools you can finally have that All Bonds cheat, granted it really is not worth it. Sadly the last update to the Rare Witch Project was in 2005 and they never did get enough levels to create their repository they were hoping for. But hopefully enough people will take interest with it now in that even a $300 pc from Best Buy (on sale this week) can run the emulated game as well as the console and we have just passed the 10th anniversary. Granted I hope to get four adaptoids the next time they go on sale, so maybe I am not the best one to lead this charge.

SupDrag has many videos of his fantastic maps up on youtube for those who wish to know more. He even went so far as to port some of the better Perfect Dark stages to Goldeneye then, using a backup device, tested them on a console. If that is not a hardcore fan, then what does it take?

In Summary…

So this started out as a simple review of an old game to more modern counterparts, but evolved into much more. As you can see the game is as good as it was back then, even if games have surpassed it in different categories. You still get to be Bond, you still get to save the world, and you still get to kill you friends. Best of all, even after all these years the game is still fun. Subdrag and his team took the game to the next level and sadly most people did not realize that. Now, days after the 10th anniversary, we can finally give the game a proper revival. With all sorts of licensing issues it is doubtful that it will ever be re-released on a modern console, but it is fairly easy to track down, cartridge or rom, and even better the game has expanded from those twenty missions and eleven multiplayer stages we all were enthralled with back in 1997.

And who knows, maybe we will have a grassroots revival of the game, mapmakers with flock to the editor and create amazing things. Then the online community can take off and really bring the game back. If that happens, I might have to chair a league.

Quick Amiga Introduction

As the Commodore Amiga is not as famous as the previous systems I covered, I thought I should start this guide with a short introduction.

• The Commodore Amiga is a family of home computers.
• They were quite popular in Europe (in their peak), but perhaps not so known in the US (and I’m guessing even less so in Japan).
• They competed directly with other home computers of the time such as the Atari ST, and competed indirectly in the gaming machine market with the 16-bit consoles
• The Genesis had similar processing capabilities to the Amiga 500, using essentially the same CPU.
• Commodore made some pioneering forays into the CD-ROM format, 1st with the CDTV, and later with the Amiga CD32 – which I believe was the first 32-bit CD-ROM based console. (I won’t go into emulation of the CD-ROM systems in this guide, focusing on the floppy disk based Amigas.)
• The Amiga has an interesting story with some notable historic uses, namely having been used for producing graphics for the Babylon 5 TV series, and for some work of Spielberg. If you are interested in reading more about it do check the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
• Even if it wasn’t the only think it could muster, arguably the most popular use for the Amiga were games.
• Many arcade ports and multi-platform games had superior versions on the Amiga. I think it is fair to say that there weren’t many notorious exclusives produced for the Amiga (particularly comparing to the consoles of the time, as Commodore had no first party development) – but there are some, and regardless there are plenty of excellent games in the system’s library.

Find The Best Emulator For The Job

Choosing the best Amiga emulator isn’t particularly hard since there are only two to choose from: UAE and Fellow. I have little to no experience with Fellow, but I think the near general consensus is that UAE is currently the best anyway. This guide will continue discussing WinUAE, the Windows version of UAE.

Kickstart ROMs

Unlike the consoles discussed before, finding free games to test your emulator with is rather easy, as there are plenty of freeware / public domain games (including previously commercial games that the copyright holders gave permission to be distributed – thanks!).The Amiga were mostly floppy disk based systems, and instead of the “ROMs” of consoles, we have usually either ADF or IPF files that are images of the floppy disks (similar to how CD images are often ISO files).

However, the actual machine “kickstart ROMs” that you need to do anything with the emulator (similar to BIOS files found in other consoles) are copyrighted, and shouldn’t be distributed freely. Unlike most old games that are still copyrighted but not sold anywhere any longer, Cloanto (the company that holds the copyright) currently DOES sell the kickstart ROMs for a rather modest price, all included in a package called “Amiga Forever” (under $30 for the basic online version – which has lots of extra stuff on top of the ROMs). Considering what you are getting, it really is worth it in my opinion. Check it out here (and if you have questions, feel free to use the comments or head to the forums):

If you actually own an Amiga, you do have the legal right to use the corresponding kickstart ROM for emulation. In practice getting the file from the machine itself is probably not within your means, so in that case you can download it from somewhere if you can find it. Otherwise, and if you aren’t legally entitled to the ROM you want, please do consider supporting Cloanto and buying their Amiga Forever package.

Getting Some Games (or Demos)

Much like consoles, there are a number of ways to find some games for your Amiga emulator. The Cloanto site has links to sites where you can download games legally. You can also check out AMI Sector One for a decent selection of games to keep you busy.

It might be surprising for you to find that there are lots of quality, formerly commercial games available there, which the copyright holders gave permission to be distributed (if any of said copyright holders somehow happen to read this, thank you)!

That site also has a sample of technical feats called “demos” (don’t confuse with game demos). If you are really into the demoscene (click if you want to know what that is), you can find dedicated sites with huge collections of Amiga demos (or ask about it in the comments section or the forums).

Configuring and Running the Emulator

As from this section on, I’m assuming you’ve already have:

1. Downloaded and installed WinUAE (grab the installer from the official website)
2. Got a suitable kickstart ROM (legally, from Cloanto or otherwise)
3. Got a suitable game (for example, from AMI Sector One)

Preferably don’t start with CDTV or CD32 kickstart ROMs / games, as I won’t cover those in this guide (although the guide should generalize reasonably well if you know how to handle CD-ROM images such as ISOs and so on).

Amiga emulation can get slightly more complicated than most consoles since there are different models and the games aren’t always compatible (although they should be, but some weren’t coded with flexibility in mind) – some games are finicky and only work with quite specific configurations.

For tricky games, unless you fancy trial and error until it works, you’re better off trying to find information on the web – or either looking up the configuration used by a frontend and porting it, or using the frontend directly.

I will start by showing how to configure WinUAE itself, and in the last section before the conclusion I will present a frontend that might be the better option for unexperienced users (feel free to skip to the following sections, but finish reading this one before doing that).

Something important to know (even if you use a frontend) is that the F12 key interrupts a WinUAE emulation run bringing up the main menu screen (similar to the starting one shown below). This is useful for more than one reason, such as floppy disk swapping, saving and loading states or using the reset (without needing to do the Amiga 3 finger salute). I will mention the use of F12 again in the appropriate places.

The Main Menu Screen (it is simpler than it looks)

If you put your kickstart ROM file inside the WinUAE folder (there is a folder called “ROMS”) it should automatically detect them (if not, see below).

When you start WinUAE (I’m using version 1.4.3 for reference)… Well, basically don’t stop reading yet – you don’t need to tinker with most of the sections so it is effectively much SIMPLER than it looks. This is what you will see:

In general (and particularly if you have a PC that is sufficiently powerful) you want the slider to remain on the “Best compatibility” end of the spectrum.

Note the “Reset” button on the lower left corner, which you will probably find useful (instead of quitting and restarting the emulator each time).

I won’t go over the finer points of the other all these menus as there’s enough to cover in the basics of Amiga emulation. However it is relevant to note that if your ROM wasn’t detected, you can manually direct the emulator to the file under the “ROM” menu. Naturally, in the “Display” or “Sound” menus you can do stuff like choosing to run WinUAE in a window or full screen, or if you want the sound to be accurately emulated and so on.

Controls

Something that you will probably want to do is configure your controls (if for no other reason than to know the default controls). WinUAE natively supports USB gamepads and the like, but personally I use Xpadder as I often want to map keys to spare buttons – a significant drawback of the Amiga is that the default joysticks only had one button, and thus most games use some keys (if not for anything else, to pause the game – usually mapped to the “P” key, but not always).

You can select your controls in the “Game & I/O ports” menu:

You should usually leave Port 0 as the mouse, as even games that don’t use the mouse may require a mouse click to skip an introduction or something.

WinUAE automatically recognized my USB gamepad, but if it doesn’t do that for you, consider using Xpadder instead, and configure Xpadder to replace the default keyboard layout (the “Layout B” shown in the picture) with whatever gamepad commands you desire.

Floppy drives and disk swapping

It is (mostly) enough to use only the “Quickstart” mode that WinUAE starts on by default. Assign a floppy to the DF0 virtual drive, which you do by clicking “Select disk image” and choosing a suitable file (usually an .adf).

If you want to change it, you can press eject (not needed) and/or choose another file.

For multi disk games, disk 1 should almost always be in DF0 to boot the game (there are a few cases where other disks are bootable, and disk 1 is just an intro). In the case of 2 disk games, repeat the image disk selection procedure for the second floppy drive DF1, after checking the box – this will let the emulator read from DF0 or DF1 whenever needed (as a real Amiga would) and hopefully you won’t need to swap disks during gameplay.

Some games are simply over 2 disks (the disks were double density, not high density and as such the maximum data was around 700 kB – impressive how technology evolved); some 2 disk games were coded without flexibility in mind and can only read data from DF0 (in a real Amiga, DF1 and so on are add-on external floppy drives, so it’s not actually too surprising that some games didn’t take them into account).

Whatever the reason, you will probably need to know how to swap disks in the middle of an emulation run. The game will prompt you for the disk, and you need to interrupt the emulation by using F12 to bring the menu up (I will demonstrate this in a sample run of a multi disk game). Fact is, you can enable up to 4 virtual floppy drives in the “Floppy drives” menu, and the “Disk swapper” menu probably goes even beyond (I never used it, to be honest, but it seems like it might be able to automatically swap floppy images if you set it up). I actually like swapping an occasional (virtual) floppy for old times sake, but if you hate it, have a look at the swapper as it doesn’t look too tricky to figure it out.

Save and Load States and Their Useful Uses

If you want to use the save and load feature (and trust me, you WANT to use it), you simply need to press F12 whenever you want to do it, head into the “Misc” menu, and either a) click “save state…” and enter a name of the file to save or b) click “load sate…” and select the file to load:

Uses of this feature abound:

1. Keep your scores and/or save games in a convenient fashion
2. Save on loading times (after the first emulation of a game)
3. Use it to help with tough games (e.g. between levels of hard games without saves or passwords)

In a real Amiga you would usually save your scores into the very floppy disk the game was on (unlike cartridges, they are writable), and game saves often were kept in separate formatted disks. Replicating that is probably more trouble than it is worth for most users, and I personally just use WinUAE save and load states instead to keep my scores and saves.

If you aren’t used to home computers, you should know now that the games sometimes can take a while to load. I suggest that you keep a saved state of that game right after the game has finishing the booting up sequence and is ready to start, and that way by loading the state you can skip through and avoid the loading times (note that you should still have the required floppies “inserted” into the virtual drives, or the game will notice they are not there when it needs to read something from them, which may even cause it to crash).

I know many gamers frown upon the use of emulator save states, and consider it cheating (technically, it is). It is up to each person how they use the feature, I’m glad to have it available in certain games. Rarely I use it very frequently, in some really hard games. Sometimes I use it sparsely, for example saving only between levels. In other games I don’t use it at all.

AGA and non-AGA – a brief explanation

Amigas have custom chip sets that mostly help the CPU with sound and graphics. The 16-bit Amiga models like the A500 have a graphic chip set that differs significantly from the graphic chip set that the more modern 32-bit Amiga models like the A1200 have. For that reason, some games only run in hardware of A1200 and the like – for reasons that probably don’t interest you, these games are referred to as AGA games (it stands for “Advanced Graphical Architecture).

AGA games typically feature more colors, and often you can find AGA and regular versions of the same game. To emulate an AGA game, you need to emulate the adequate hardware, which will in turn require an appropriate kickstart ROM (like kickstart 3.1, in order to emulate an A1200 properly). The Amiga Forever package has ALL the kickstart ROM files (the most important ones for gaming purposes are probably kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 for A500, 3.0 or 3.1 for A1200, and the CD32 ROM in my opinion).

A Sample Non-AGA Run: Syndicate Step by Step

I will demonstrate the principles outlined in the guide by emulating Syndicate, a great 4 disk game (which you can get here from Ami Sector One – props to Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog for making this great game, and I suppose Electronic Arts for allowing its distribution).

This is not an AGA game, so I will use the A500 default configuration. I selected disk 1 for DF0 and disk 2 for DF1 and pressed start:

The emulator started loading the game like a real Amiga does, and after a while you should see a characteristic blue screen (don’t worry, it isn’t the Windows one):

That is very characteristic of Amiga games. If you are running with later kickstarts and/or games, you might have a similar grey screen instead, but that is besides the point. Be warned also that during loading, some games also appear to “freak out” and show loads of flashing colored lines (in a slightly trippy fashion). This is also (as far as I know) normal and characteristic, for some reason.

Despite being a legal download, the Syndicate .adf files available in Ami Sector One were clearly recovered from a cracked / pirated copy. I know this because I was presented with a cracktro (click for more info). This cracktro didn’t include a trainer (which allows you to start the game with some cheat, like infinite lives), but from my limited knowledge those are fairly common in cracked copies. I needed to skip the cracktro by using the left mouse button, which sometimes happens even for games that are controlled solely by the joystick. They don’t always have instructions on how to skip them (and inconveniently, many will loop, so you can’t just wait it out) – sometimes you just have to try guessing what you must press to go on.

After a while you are asked to choose a language (you can change with right mouse button and select with left). After that, you get a loading screen with the old Bullfrog logo from 1993 (look at those jaggies), and then the intro (which was rather cool and I suppose even cutting edge in 1993):

With disk 2 already inserted, you didn’t get this after the intro:

I went back to get this screen (I don’t remember when they ask for disk 3 or 4) as I wanted to show a typical request for a non-inserted disk. After a reset, I ran the game again with only disk 1 inserted in DF0, and sure enough the request for disk 2 popped up after the intro (this also serves to show how having it pre-inserted in DF1 saved you trouble). To insert disk 2, I just pressed F12, load up the disk 2 image (either in DF0 or DF1, as Syndicate will read from whatever drive), and then pressed “OK” (the button that is now in the place of “Start”).

Frontend: Lemonade

There are frontends that let you emulate with less hassle – like Lemonade, which comes pre-configured by the amazing Amiga community (specifically from Lemon Amiga):

I don’t have too much experience with Lemonade as I’m usually able to get my games running on my own, and only recently discovered this frontend, but from my use of it I can recommend unexperienced users to try it.

Conclusion

The guide is already somewhat long so I will finish here. I think I covered everything that was important, but if there are either corrections or something you would like me to cover in detail, ask about it in the comments section or the forums, and accordingly I’ll either reply to it or even add it to the guide if it is worth it.