[General Topics] Menneisyys:
1.1.1 When to stick to emulating another platform?

Of course, not all titles should be played in a C64 emulator. For example, when a particular title also exist for the Nintendo NES, the SNES, NEC’s TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine), the Sega Master System (SMS), Genesis / Mega Drive or Game Gear, going for these emulators may turn out to be a better choice. (Please do click the links for the complete rundown of the Windows Mobile emulation possibilities. Also make sure you follow the other, for example Amiga / Atari ST / Amstrad CPC / IBM PC links to emulating home computers.) With the exception of SNES, the emulators of these systems are also very low-end handheld-friendly and the games, in general, are at least as good as on the C64.

This is particularly important when you don't want to shell out any money for the emulators - the free C64 emulators are WAY worse than many console emulators, compatibility- and controllability-wise. For example, the best free C64 emulator, PocketHobbit, doesn't support redefining fire buttons (let alone providing rapid/auto- or screentap-based firing) and defaults to application buttons traditionally found next to the D-pad. This means you can only play games heavily relying on both the D-pad and the fire button in the not most ideal Portrait orientation. As opposed to this restriction, most of the above-linked, free (!) console emulators either support touchscreen-based firing or, at least, button redefining capabilities so that you can assign the fire functionality to a button much easier accessible with the right hand (assuming you're right-handed and use your left hand to control the D-pad) when in Landscape orientation.

Of course, these issues don't exist with PocketCommodore64, but, as opposed to almost all of the recommended gaming console emulators (even including the otherwise commercial SmartGear, which is freely registered for users that do provide feedback on compatibility issues), it's commercial.

That is, in general, if you plan to play a given title but would like to get the best gaming experience, go to Wikipedia, look up the given title and check out what other platforms it has been ported to (it’s listed in the text box on the right, in the “Platform(s)” row). In general, you can safely ignore the Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and the Commodore Amiga (as long as you want sound) computers. If there is an Atari ST port (another, more advanced home computer with excellent Windows Mobile emulation capabilities), you may want to check it out; as is the case with the NES, SNES, SMS, PC Engine, Genesis and, in cases (only as a last resort – the Game Gear has a low-resolution screen, which you may not particularly like), the Game Gear ports. Most of these games / ROM's are available on the Web. In my past articles, I've explained how you can find these titles and what you will need to play them on your Windows Mobile device.

The same stands for games that have a native Windows Mobile interpreter; for example, Magnetic Scrolls or Lucasarts titles.

Finally, the case is the same with titles that are plain incompatible with the C64 emulators available on Windows Mobile. There are only few of them (and this number will decrease even further when the brand new & completely redesigned version of PocketCommodore64 is released); still, it's good to keep in mind that, with most games, you have alternative platforms like SMS well emulated under Windows Mobile.

An example of titles that belong to this ("you need to find an alternative platform because current C64 emulators are plain incompatible with the title") category is the well-known, famous Impossible Mission. While some people (including the developer of PocketCommodore64) had success with emulating this title on Windows Mobile, I haven't managed to do so, not even after testing four different, independent versions (using the traditional parlance, "cracks") of the original game and, of course, actively trying to make the emulators run in NTSC mode. (The original Impossible Mission, along with some cracked versions, are NTSC.) With this title, the only way of playing turned out to be emulating SMS with, say, SmartGear.

The SMS version of Impossible Mission is of even better quality than the C64 one, with all the goodies like digitized sound. Not so with the ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC versions - they not only lack digitized sound, but are also uglier and have less sophisticated graphics - that is, as has already been pointed out, should be avoided.

1.2 Downloading C64 games / apps / demos off the Web

All emulators are common in that they, generally, read standardized file formats. If you're new to C64 emulation, you need to know about .d64 disk images, .t64 tape images and, finally, directly exported .prg files. (There are some more obscure file formats as well, for example, the cartridge formats.) A decent emulator should handle at least the first, D64, as the vast majority of the titles are in this format. D64 is exclusively used to store the data / dependent / overlay files of programs not available in a one-file (.PRG) version and, generally, can't be converted into a non-D64 format (back in the Golden Age of the C64, when disk drives were really expensive and a lot of C64 users just couldn't afford them, it required a lot of work from crackers to make an initially disk-only application fit into the cassette format, preferably contained in one-file); this means the lack of D64 support means you won't be able to play games arriving exclusively as D64 and containing more than one files.

There are several tools to convert between the different file formats (for example, to extract individual files from a D64 file); I'll elaborate on D64 Editor later.

As long as you don't want to transfer your own disks into files on your PC or Windows Mobile device (which requires a genuine 1541 drive hooked up to a PC and accessed via Star Commander), you can download almost all titles off the Web. One of the best sources to download C64 games / software is the Blast! archive. As it contains some 340 disk images, you will want to consult the alphabetical list of all games to quickly find which image contains the game you’re looking for.

1.3 Using the emulators

After you've downloaded the games you'd like to play and installed the emulator, start the latter. Copy the games to your Windows Mobile device. Check the "ZIP support?" row in the Feature & Comparison Chart (from now on: Chart) to see whether you need to uncompress the ZIP files; if the particular emulator doesn't support compressed ZIP files, then, do this before the transfer. In general, only PocketCommodore64 supports ZIP'ed archives and even it has some restrictions; namely, you can't select individual files inside a ZIP'ed D64 disk image. That is, if you want to do this (and you WILL want it with, say, the Blast! disk images for the incompatibility reasons outlined above), you will need to unZIP these (and ONLY these - for example, d64 files downloaded from HERE can all be auto-started and, therefore, you will not need to go into them from the file manager to select the program to run) d64 files even when played with PocketCommodore64.

If the emulator uses the standard file selector dialog box on Windows Mobile (see the "File dialog box?" row in the Chart), then, you will need to put the files in either in \My Documents or a subfolder of it in the main storage or, with pre-WM5 devices, on the storage card. With a WM5 (or later) device, with a storage card, the files MUST be put in either the root of the card or a direct subfolder of it. Keep this in mind if you don't see the files you've transferred to your PDA, accessed from an emulator relying on the standard file dialog box (that is, PocketHobbit and ComeBack64ce - PocketCommodore64 (Pocket PC) and PocketHobbitSP2003 (Smarthone) both use their own file dialog box). Also, you may want to install a file dialog box replacement like Mad Programmer's File Dialog Changer in order to be able to navigate to any directory. Please see my earlier articles on how it should be installed and used.