Denial

And now i'm going to explain why.

I know that most retro people wants real hardware, they collect orginal games and peripherals. Thats fine. But that's only for a handful of Vic-20 enthusiasts. What's going to keep Vic-20 alive for a new generation...is emulators.

It's when people can run Vic-20 on their mobiles, tablet computers or laptops, Vic-20 is going to live on. An that's why emulators is such great thing, to let anyone download and use Vic-20 without paying anything for it.

I have emulators to thank for sooo much. Novadays i run just about any system using emulators, at last i could play all the ZX Spectrum games i read about in the 80's, not to mention all the new fan made games i can play. At last i got hold of every title for Nintendo 64 i couldn't afford to buy in the 90's.

At last i could compare the different systems head to head. Record movies, record sound, create a save-point anywhere in a game, skip loading times or play the emulator fast forward past boring intros, play fan translated games using a patch, use a 500 GB virtual harddrive for my virtual Atari ST or even run my virtual Atari ST on 128 Mhz. Or try different virtual processors and chipsets for my virtual Amiga.

And much much more

Emulators is really a wonderful thing and they get better all the time.

True - eventually there will be no working Vic's left.

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I'm really glad for emulators, because they will always keep retro gaming alive. And if it wasn't for emulators, i wouldn't even be here trying out new games for Vic-20.

Just wait until 3D printers get good enough to allow anyone to make a whole new VIC-20 at the push of a button!

Emulation is important. Gamebase20 is one reason for preserving games for the future, and VICE is key to that. But I do also ensure all the games can be run on a real Vic20 too, for those who wish to play that way.

Emulators are valuable; your caretaker work is priceless, Mayhem.

Mayhem wrote:Emulation is important. Gamebase20 is one reason for preserving games for the future, and VICE is key to that. But I do also ensure all the games can be run on a real Vic20 too, for those who wish to play that way.

Same thing on most other different computer platforms too, that's why many games has different dumps and image formats, to keep the whole thing autentic for both real hardware and emulators. For Atari ST you mostly use MSA, ST and STX (pasti) for exemple. On Atari 8bit it's a huge range of different image formats available.

You're doing a great job updating Gamebase Vic-20.

3d printed Vic 20. That would be impressive. I think we'll have to wait for a star trek style replicator

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beamrider wrote:True - eventually there will be no working Vic's left.

This is my worst nightmare, and an old issue between VIC enthusiasts . Anyway, it may be tomorrow, but seems like the lifespan of those old machines is way longer than expected if they are kept in a safe place and fired up from time to time. Moreover, faulty components can often be replaced by new ones, or working parts cannibalized from other VICs.

Then many retro people use both real hardware and emulators side by side. I know several people in the Atari ST forum that uses both real ST's and ST emulators for different tasks. Then Vic-20 emulators it's a great thing saving your real Vic-20 from being worn out and make it live longer, as you say.

Then many people uses emulators when writing programs.

Another good thing about emulators is the possibility to play online, a feature that several emulators contains.

I use...

VICE - C64, Vic-20, PET
Stella - Atari 2600
STeem - Atari ST
Hatari - Atari ST
WinUAE - Amiga
Jnes - Nintendo NES
Zsnes - Supernintendo
Snes9x - Supernintendo
Gens - Sega Megadrive
MESS - Vectrex, Fairchild Channel F, ZX-81 (and more)
Altirra - Atari 8bit, Atari 5200
Prosystem - Atari 7800
Spectaculator - Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Project 64 - Nintendo 64
ePSXe - Sony Playstation
MAME - Arcade games (including neo geo)
Fusion - Sega Master system
blueMSX - MSX, MSX 2, Colecovision
Satourne - Sega Saturn
Oswan - Wonderswan
Visual Boy Advance - Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance
Magic Engine - PC Engine

And more

I use VICE + PRG Starter (of course).

(and WinUAE about once a year, here you can see how fast that is: http://www.boray.se/commodore/aa/wsmb.png ).

The only reason why I don't use a real Vic-20 more often is lack of space though and nothing else. I think more problems with old computers comes from not using them in a long time than from using them.

Boray wrote:The only reason why I don't use a real Vic-20 more often is lack of space though and nothing else. I think more problems with old computers comes from not using them in a long time than from using them.

Same thing for me. I have an Atari 1040 STE standing here but i rather boot up STeem or Hatari emulators instead. Just to be able to fast forward past boring waiting parts is a releif. Then to transfer perhaps 50.000 or more image files to real diskettes or a harddrive isn't that fun.

Emulators allow me to study to code 6502 assembly much quicker than I could have learned on real hardware.
And give me access to the VIC and C128 even now my real Commodores are in storage until we get a bigger house

I feel happy like a kid at christmas eve everytime an emulator gets updated with new features and old bugs is removed. I always reading the update file to see what's new and improved.

There's plenty of great emulators to download on the net but i miss a few.

* A good Magnavox Odyssey II (Philips Videopac G-7000) emulator.
* A good Fairchild Channel F emulator.
* A good Vectrec emulator

The few available emulators for these systems is very old or so so. MESS the multi-emulator emulates all three consoles but it would be great to see new or updated stand alone emulators for these classic game consoles.