[General Topics] Menneisyys:
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.

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.

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.