Vic 20 emulation for the Sega MD (Genesis)

Post by **Jeff-20** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 2:00 pm

I was in South Korea hunting for the PC-engine VIc 20 emulator (I'll post pics of that later)... and I found this one for the Sega Megadrive (Genesis).

It was just a standard cart with a vic 20 game for the Sega 16bit! When I got home, I looked up the author (according to the title screen). He's in Finland and was suprised that his old demo had made it to a cart form.

Having lived in HK, I was familiar with the pirate network. They probably snatched the program back in the high-life of the Sega 16bit unit. The cart seemed to have been constructed in the mid 90s.

The language barrier between the Finnish programmer and myself prevented me from finding out more, but does this imply that all vic games can be easily ported following this model?

I downloaded the rom to make these pics. He went in and altered the title screens to make it MD friendly, but other than that, it is the same game.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 1:27 am

Cool. Speaking of consoles, I just noticed that the VICE project is ported to Xbox since about a year ago.

It seems Kari (Pure-Byte) made several Omega Race versions, both imitating VIC-20 and the arcade (?), see

http://www.genesiscollective.com/ShowPa ... meLink=978

The screenshots you published are posted on a Russian Sega Megadrive site - maybe the game is possible to run in several resolutions/modes or the Genesis collective have translated the screenshots into B/W on purpose.

What did Kari say - is it an Omega Race conversion or a VIC-20 implementation? I'm leaning towards the former.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 11:00 am

I grabbed the images myself from a Gen emulator...

His english was not not very good, so we couldn't discuss it. He was just suprised that it was still floating around and showed me an HTML-framed VIC emulator. It may have even been a flash based thing. I don't remember. It was over a year. I'll check for the old email and post the link.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 11:54 am

Aha, I thought you had been to Korea last week or something. If there does exist a VIC-20 emulator for the Megadrive, Google knows surprisingly little about it.

On the subject, I wonder which is the most accurate VIC-20 emulator for PlayStation 2; the specific PS2VIC or the PS2VICE port of VICE 1.14. I would assume the latter. They're both written by the same person, so I assume the VIC emu was a test of concept before porting the whole package. Not that I own any console at all, so I can not try it (and no, no matter how much I endorse emulation, I would not bother with emulation inside emulation, even if I had the PC power to do it).

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 7:19 pm

I realize there is no actual emulator, but I wondered if the model of Omega race could be used for any other VIC game.

What I love is the PADDLE option on the text screen! "Press B for paddles?" There's no response.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:57 am

My money is on that Kari wrote the game from scratch in 68000 assembly, ripping graphics and emulating game play as the VIC-20 plays the game. Of course he could have a 6502 interpreting module and connect some own rendering engine (read: VIC-I chip) to the virtual addresses needed. It would be more a simulator than an emulator, but it could work with other software. Hard to tell without looking at the ROM (!) itself, and my Megadrive experience is non-existing and my 68000 is weak.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 4:22 am

I think he has written it from scratch... Simply because anything else would not be allowed legally without permission from Commodore and Bally Midway. Maybe it's not even allowed anyway when it's so close to the original and has the same name... It probably isn't....

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 5:56 am

Well, it was something released on the demo/bootleg scene which has found its way onto a Megadrive cartridge somewhere in Asia, as Jeff wrote. If Bally Midway would argue, it should be to the anonymous person in Korea (or whatever) who made it available for sale.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 9:25 am

It was apparent in his email that he did not intend for it to ever make it to cart form. He was only suprised and commented on how long ago it was created. (Yet, he didn't seem too bothered that someone else was profiting off of it now, mostly amused).