Emulation on the Amiga
 

What are the best emulators for the various platforms on the Amiga?
And what kind of Amiga is required to get the best out of them?

Master System/Game Gear
Emulator: AmiMaster Gear
Emulation quality: Excellent
Recommended minimum system: A1200 030/40MHz

Game Boy
Emulator: Either AmiGB (fast) or Wzonka-Lad (accurate and compatible)
Emulation quality: Good
Recommended minimum system: A1200 030/40MHz

Mega Drive
Emulator: AmiGenerator (the only non-PPC emulator)
Emulation quality: Very slow; not worth the download time
Recommended minimum system: A1200 060/66MHz

Amiga
Emulator: UAE
Emulation quality: Slow; curiosity value only
Recommended system: A4000 060/66MHz, Zorro III/PCI gfx card
Other requirements: Kickstart ROM

Spectrum 48K
Emulator: ZXAM
Emulation quality: Excellent
Recommended minimum system: A1200 020 with fast RAM

Spectrum 128K
Emulator: ASp
Emulation quality: Excellent
Recommended minimum system: A1200 030/50MHz

Mac Classic (68K)
Emulator: Fusion or Shapeshifter
Emulation quality: Excellent
Recommended minimum system: Any 030/50MHz Amiga, MMU, graphics card
Other requirements: Mac ROM (512K or 1MB); Mac OS 6-8.1

IBM PC
Emulator: PC-Task or PCx
Emulation quality: Accurate but very, very slow
Recommended minimum system: A1200/A4000 060/66MHz
Other requirements: MS-DOS or compatible

Arcade
Emulator: MAME
Emulation quality: Accurate but most games unusably slow
Recommended minimum system: Any 060/66MHz Amiga, graphics card

NES
Emulator: CoolNESs
Emulation quality: Fairly accurate and compatible; may have problems with an 060
Recommended minimum system: A1200 030/50MHz

C64
Emulator: MagiC64
Emulation quality: Reasonably compatible; slow but altering settings can boost this
Recommended minimum system: Any 060/66MHz Amiga

MSX
Emulator: fMSX or AmiMSX
Emulator quality: Both are fast and compatible
Recommended minimum system: A1200 030/50MHz

Dragon 32
Emulator: DReAM
Emulator quality: Sound is a bit ropey; speed varies
Recommended minimum system: A1200 030/50MHz

There are many more emulators available, both of the systems outlined above and others. These are the ones I use more than the others.

Whoo!

Thanks ant

Also try Frodo for C64. Unlike that other one, it's free.

I'll post some real-life reports on these:

AmiMasterGear : works great on my 030@50
AmiGB : works great on my 030@50
Shapeshifter : coul;dn't get it to run on my 030@50
MagiC64 : runs like shit on my 030@50, never knew why as it's supposed to be a good specc for this emu.
fMSX : excellent on my 030@50!

It is a bit strage with emulators. I did install PC-Task on my A1200/030@50 and windows 3.1 with a 16 colour config. Although it is a bit slow, it's usable. I've even installed Word and Excel and used it to make some work with it.


MagiC64 also run really well on the above A1200. LNinja2 run like a dream. When I used a 4000/040, everything worked much better, but my A1200 didn't let me down. The only laughable performance came from MAME. 3-5 frames in the A1200 and 7-8 on the A4000 with games like Asteroids.

Usable on an 030?! I tried it on my A1200 060/66MHz with a CV64/3D, and Windows 3.1 is not quite fast enough to be usable. Managed to get Word 6 and IE3 installed on it, but both are too slow. Maybe you're more patient than me?

You absolutely must have a graphics card to run Mac emulation on an Amiga, otherwise the emulator has to run the usual chunky-to-planar conversion, you're stuck on a two-colour screen, and it is much too slow to be usable. If you have the Mac ROM, you'll get a "?" symbol on the screen, but the emulator won't do anything until you've got Mac OS installed. System 7.5.0 (or .3, not sure which) is freely available from Apple's website, but you have to dig around in order to find it.

I've found that Fusion performs better on 040 and 060 Amigas, and Shapeshifter is better for 030s.

MagiC64 is slow even on an 060. You really need to alter the settings and settle for less accurate emulation (frame skipping, etc) to really play any games with it. Still, it's faster than Frodo.

Actually the last time i use the mac emulation was on basillisk II (very stable and quicker sometimes than the pc!!! The actual earliest os system is version 7.5.5 from apple.

Yours ever pathetic servant

Grassden

Basilisk II is great on the PC, but I've never managed to get it running properly on the Amiga. Setting up the hard drive partitions is too fiddly, and it doesn't work with Fusion partitions anyway (Fusion and Shapeshifter/Basilisk use slightly different methods of formatting the drive, and attempting to interchange dedicated partitions between them can screw up both the Mac partition and Amiga partitions too - I discovered this the hard way).

Thanks for the Mac OS info. I recommend 7.5.5 for slower machines, and 8.1 for high-end 040/060 machines. You can even get IE4 and Netscape 4.76 running in 8.1.

Concerning MagiC64:

Actually, i got this beauty running at full speed with FS0 with sound on most games. It was only more complex games like Ikari Warriors that requiered FS1. It depends on how you configure it. I use 6581sid for music (rather than the slow PlaySID). Oh, and my setup is A1200/060/AGA/64MB RAM/4G HD.

Best Regards,

On the Macintosh system software: 7.5.3 (and an updater to 7.5.5), 7.0 (and an updater to 7.0.1), and 6.0.x are available from Apple. The general rule is that older versions use less RAM, less disk space, and are faster. If you want to run generic Mac software 6.0.8 is fine for older games, back when they still developed games for the Mac. System 7.1 is the minimum for most applications, though you may get away with 7.0.1, simply because the system 7 era lasted the longest and application development was done throughout.

Question: are there any good Apple II emulators for the Amiga?

Here is a good Apple ][ emulator, i had no idea about it until recnetly. Seems to run every game i through at it.

http://it.aminet.net/pub/aminet/misc/emu/apple2000e.lha

On another subject. Would it be possible to run a NES emulator on a Mac emu on Amiga and what speeds would it run at? (060 AGA)

Best Regards,

I've got Shapeshifter running on my A500 (33Mhz 020, no graphics card), and it's pretty fast in two-colour mode. I was playing a 3D driving game called "Vette" and it looked like it was going nearly full speed. Clarisworks and some other applications were also very usable. It's only when you pick a screenmode with more than 2 colours that it gets butt-numbingly slow.

Do SNES emulators exist for Amiga?

Yes, it's called SNES9x, or another is WarpSNES. Nice to play Super Punch-Out :). The "Nostalgia"-frontend for many emulators is a good idea but it just doesn't work in most cases. So i'd rather use PC for console emulation, altough i don't like it too much. C64 emulation in Magic64 is good.

Rubbish! I have a 256 colour screen running pretty smooth on my A1200/060/AGA. Infact, Sim City 2000 is supposed to run faster in Mac emu than Amiga version! Again, to achieve good Mac speeds, it comes down to configuring it. I use both Fusion and Shapeshifter, and get similar speeds in both. Obviously a graphics card is better than native chipset, but AGA can be made to run fast, especially if you use external video drivers.

Regards,

Hmm. I was about to rubbish this post, but I thought I should really test it first. Turns out that (under Fusion, with MacOS 8.1), I get roughly 3/4 the speed with an AGA display (hires laced, 256 colours) that I get with my graphics card (16-bit, 800x600, CV64/3D in a Zorro II slot). Not too bad. It's certainly not smooth (with a graphics card, you'd never guess that the computer was anything other than a Mac, except it runs a little faster), but it's definitely worth trying if you've got the OS and can hunt down a ROM.

On another note: If possible, give the Mac a dedicated partition - it's much, much faster than using a hard drive file. Never try to use a Fusion partition with Shapeshifter (or vice versa), though, as it will screw up the entire drive - the two use the partitions differently.