 Arcade Emulation |
| Arcade Emulation |
Welcome To JROK's Emulation Page
Development History
Firstly a quick history to the development of the Jrok's Arcade Emulator.
After seeing the PATHETIC effort Namco made in
emulating Mappy for the PC, running under winslows'95, I decided
it was about time someone wrote a decent Namco emulation ( for
purely educational uses by owners of the original game boards ).
Having already learned 6809 assembly programming, through another
project, I figured that writing a simulator in x86 assembler
wouldn't be a big deal, well the 6809's hardly got any registers
and only a small number of instructions ( I think it's like 79
total).
So after a little coding, and a lot of debuggering, the 6809
simulator lived, a few days after that 'hey presto' the Mappy
emulator was born! Unlike the official Namco release, which when
run on a Pentium Pro @233MHz ( yes I overclock ) only manages 96%
original game speed ( or only 31% if the screen is maximized ),
mine achieves 100% speed of the original, even on an old Pentium
90 !! Maybee I need MMX, hah hah hah....
The emulator was coded over a period of about 6 weeks, during the months of May to June. I was looking for something else to do rather than actually complete PC*Bert. Anyone notice I changed the release date to August'97 (???).
The Emulator
Currently the emulator core supports 4 games completely, these are Dig Dug 2, Mappy, Super PacMan and an unfinished emulation of Pac&Pal. The emulator completely simulates the original game board, its twin 6809E cpu's, all custom IC's and sound. It's totally encapsulated and contains no code of the original, all graphics, sound and program are read from the game ROMs and converted into more manageable formats for emulation 'on-the-fly'.
The 6809E emulation, screen, redraw and mixing is 100% assembler, everything else is in 'C'. Mappy & Super Pac should work on everything from a 486DX2-66 with PCI video upwards. Dig Dug 2 required a bit more CPU power so you'll need a p90 or better to run that game.
Video Modes, the emulator uses a custom video mode. Like the PacPc games the screen resolution is 224x228. THIS VIDEO MODE WILL NOT WORK ON SOME MONITORS. Sorry but that's just the way it is and I have ZERO intention of writing patches for monitor/video cards that can't support it.
Sound support for Soundblaster, Gravis
Ultrasound/Interwave based card, AWE/SB32. So that should cover
all the most popular sound cards. With the Gravis/Interwave and
AWE/SB32 cards you do need RAM as I upload the waveform ROM to
the card.
The emulator is also Windows'95 friendly. It won't trash windows
lock up, require you to download some obsure DPMI driver, add
EMM386 to your config.sys or any crap like that.
Future Projects
The other game in the process of being emulated is Pac'&'Pal, this uses very similar hardware to Super PacMan. I'm just fixing the colors and tweaking the performance right now, despite being terrible it'll be released shortly.
This is release 0.01 of the simulator, definite future enhancements will be:
Download
This link leads to the download page, please READ THE INSTRUCTIONS before attempting to download the emulator. If you don't know how to use DOS or PKZIP, or are only familiar with point a click windows applications don't download as I won't be providing technical support.
Screen Shots
Mappy - One of my favorites.. 
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Dig Dug 2 - Rare and Excellent
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Pac'&'Pal
The almost unknown, and very strange ! . The little green guy is your 'pal' who helps clear the maze.
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Technical Specifications
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Important Information
| Disclaimer This emulator is supplied 'as-is' it has no warranty, JROK accepts no responsibilities for it's use or distribution, it is intended as purely an educational tool by owners of the original game boards and/or the ROMs sets. This program is supplied as freeware NO CHARGE should be made for it's distribution, it should not be sold or paid for in ANY way shape or form. |
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