amiga emulator for the nintendo DS

[freddix]

Hi,

@Jesus 666 : Heh !! You probably know Amiga 500 too few ... Technically Amiga 500 is more powerful than Sega Megadrive ... It can handle 64 colors EHB ( 32 + 32 Half Brite ) Special 4096 Colors HAM Mode, handle resolution up to 640x512 ( PAL, 640x480 NTSC) in 16 colors ... Far more than the Sega Megadrive can More to this, Amiga 500 own 4 separate audio channel and games like Turrican II uses 7 simulated audio channel with the same quality than full 4 channels ... Amiga 500 is really more powerful than Megadrive ... Also take in consideration games that exist on both platform ... take a look at "Shadow of the beast" for example ... Amiga 500 version is 100.000 times more beautiful than Megadrive one .. it's due to another Amiga 500 specialty ... The "Raster" that allow it to use in fact 64 colors EHB per raster lines .... That mean that technically, if you games run in 320x192 pixels that Amiga 500 can display 192 * 32 colors ( *2 using EHB modes, in fact, it display 32 colors per line ) ... Can Megadrive do that ? .... no !

In fact the main problem emulating Amiga on the Nintendo DS will probably be these points :
- Amiga is builded like a game console, CPU 68000 7Mhz, Co-pro for Audio, Co-pro for blitting memory and graphics, Co-pro for displaying sprites, co-pro for color/bitmaps and raster .... That mean that Amiga 500 is not only a 7mhz CPU ... but a more complex "machine" to emulate
- Many old amiga 500 games are not system friendly. That mean that these games directly uses internal register modifying instead of calling OS functions .. that makes emulation more difficult. You can see for examples games like Shadow of the beast that in the copper list (small program that control the display) call registers that are not officially defined by Commodore on the Amiga SDKs...
However, it can maybe be possible but I doubt that games will run on full speed on Nintendo DS ...

[jesus 666]

Hi,

@Jesus 666 : Heh !! You probably know Amiga 500 too few ... Technically Amiga 500 is more powerful than Sega Megadrive

Also take in consideration games that exist on both platform ... take a look at "Shadow of the beast" for example ... Amiga 500 version is 100.000 times more beautiful than Megadrive one .

Yeah, but....Shadow of the Beast.... has awful graphics on both systems, it looks like a joke in comparison to Sonic 3, Gunstar Heroes, Ranger X, Alien Soldier, Dynamite Heady, Thunder Force 4, heck I could list hundreds of games on the Mega Drive that look better than Shadow of the Beast.

Also when looking at multi-format games what about Golden Axe? that was worse on the Amiga, Mercs?, Ghouls N' Ghosts? Strider?

I'm sure I heard somewhere that Turrican 3 and The Lion King both had to be downgraded from the Mega Drive to fit on the Amiga too.

[crookedmouth]

There have been a lot of arguments like this especially since the NeoGeo emulator was released. Many people have said "well if this can be emulated why not this 'weaker' system", but it just isn't that cut and dry with things like custom chips and more samples in audio and what not.

I have been wondering though about the possibility of the Sharp X68000, but I think it is more close to the Atari ST. I wonder if anyone has been looking into it?