[General Topics] Menneisyys:
3. Windows Mobile Standard (MS Smartphone) emulators

Unfortunately, none of the Pocket PC emulators can be hacked into Smartphone. See the “MS Smartphone compliance?” row in the Chart for more info on my hacking attempts.

There is only one native C64 emulator for the MS Smartphone, PocketHobbitSP2003. Fortunately, it’s pretty nice.

3.1 PocketHobbitSP2003 Alpha 11

This emulator works flawlessly on both low(er)-end, 176*220 Smartphones and high(er)-end QVGA ones. Note that if you plan to use the latter, you will need to “hack” the main executable of the emulator as described in HERE. Should you be afraid of this, I’ve made the hacked, high-resolution emulator HERE. That is, if you have a QVGA Portrait device like the HTC Vox, get THIS instead of the official version.

If you’ve used to the Pocket PC version, you’ll find the usage of this emulator a bit strange at first. Fortunately, after a bit getting used to, it will turn out to be REALLY easy-to-use. If you are unsure about getting started with loading programs off D64 / T64 files, just make sure you read my mini-tutorial in section “1.3.1 Loading programs into the emulators”.

It runs pretty well even on low-end, “slow”, 201 MHz TI OMAP-based Smartphones. I’ve tested it on the 176*220 HTC Oxygen / s310 and the QVGA HTC Vox / s710 (with the hacked QVGA version on the latter). Worked flawlessly; highly recommended.

4. Desktop emus

Finally, I’ve also included two desktop C64 emulators in the Chart so that you can see what the differences are between Windows Mobile and desktop emulators. I also provide some tangible information on the compatibility rate of these emulators, should you want to get the most compatible emulator for your desktop Windows computer.

Note that there are (were) several other emulator projects; for example, JaC64 1.0 (a brand new, 1.0 version of this Java-based emulator has just been released); Frodo 4.1b (download HERE and NOT at the original link!), Comeback64 b4 (no longer existing at the original page; desktop Windows version HERE); Hoxs64 v1.0.4.22 (a new, actively developed project with a current, 7 June 2007 version), Miha Peternel’s long-abandoned C64S and, finally, ED64, a Pascal-based “toy” emulator.

4.1 CCS64 3.2

This commercial emulator is no doubt the BEST emulator, compatibility-wise. It is not only able to run many new, high quality C64 demos, but also a lot of other, otherwise “problematic” titles (for example, the Blast! loader) the other desktop C64 emulator, VICE, isn’t capable of running.

What is more, the 3.x series even supports Internet multiplay, of which I’ve also made some screenshots (of the client joining a game 1 2). Of the multiplayer mode, should you be interested in playing, for example, Archon, Archon II (Adept), International Karate or Wizard of Wor through the Internet, there are some additional tutorials and forums; for example, this German language, OLD (beta-stage) tutorial and this official CCS64 subforum.

4.2 VICE 1.21

This emulator is the most known, free C64 emulator, boasting several ports.

While it does have its advantages (most importantly, being free and having considerably less CPU usage than CCS64), it’s clearly less compatible. This means you shouldn’t use it as the first alternative to watch demos – use CCS64 for the latter. The same stands for “tricky” stuff VICE is unable to run, while CSS64 still is.

5. The comparison & feature chart

It’s HERE. DO CLICK THE LINK!

As I’ve already explained most of the rows and tests I’ve elaborated on in the chart, I don’t think further explanation is necessary.

It’s very important that you thoroughly scrutinize the chart and do check out the screenshots – they really make my point much straighter. Needless to say, as with all my other comparison / feature charts, there are a lot of mini-tutorials & additional explanations & tips in there. You DO lose a LOT if you don’t spend at least some minutes scrutinizing it.

Note that with some games (for example, Impossible Mission and Guild of Thieves), I’ve tested more than one versions (“cracks”) to find out which versions are playable. You may also want to look for cracker notes / nicks in either the directory list of the disk or the cracker intro starting the game to safely identify the given version, should you run into a non-working title.

Also, I’ve tested the ten most popular C64 demos, mostly to find out what demos can be run under Windows Mobile. As can clearly be seen, most demos just won’t work – the one that did start under PocketCommodore64 did crash later. In this regard, PocketHobbit behaved a bit better. This, however, doesn’t mean PocketCommodore64 is bad, not in the least – demos are VERY hard to correctly emulate. No wonder not even the best desktop emulator, CSS64 can’t run some of them. Needless to say, VICE is considerably worse in this respect than CSS64.

It's very important to point out that the Blast! disks all have a main menu on them, which is incompatible with most emulators out there (except for the desktop-based CCS64). This means you will NOT want to play the games on these disk images with the traditional load"*",8 command, which loads the menu, letting the user select the game to play. Except for the desktop Windows-only CCS64, this won't work. The solution to this problem is looking up the number of the game you plan to play in the loader once (in an emulator compatible with at least the main menu - the desktop-based and, as opposed to the commercial CCS64, free VICE is one of them) and loading the individual title using the load"X",8 command, where X should be the number of the game to be loaded. With the games I've tested of the Blast! collection, in the comparison & feature chart, I've also stated this number with each tested game so that you don't need to look them up yourself.

In addition to the Blast! Collection, there are a lot of other pages to download games from. You'll want to prefer them when, for example, you look for some strictly disk-based (non-one-file) games - with them, the Blast! version (if it does contain the given game at all - it's mostly with one-file games that the Blast! collection excels at), generally, is inferior to disk images found elsewhere.

You may also find some games at this generic desktop emulator overview, which has some gaming-related pages & downloads.

As far as demos are concerned, c64.ch will be your best friend. It contains all the remarkable C64 demos. While most emulators (particularly on Windows Mobile; in there, the, in this regard, most compatible emulator is PocketHobbit) will have a hard time running them, if you do find a compatible emulator (which, in most cases, means the desktop-based CCS64 - it's the most demo-friendly emulator available), they may be well worth checking if you want to see what the C64 is really capable of and why even today there are some people developing demos for it.