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- Mark Vergeer
- Matt Barton
The Top Free Browser-based Videogame and Computer Emulator Sites - May 2010 Edition
Tass Times in Tone Town (Activision, 1986; Apple IIGS): From Virtual Apple 2I'd like to provide the latest update to my list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable play directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. This is the "May 2010" edition of the list and, naturally, I'd love to keep adding to it, so suggest away. Here goes:
* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* Another World (aka, Out of this World; 1991)
* Atari.com - Play select Atari 2600 and Atari arcade favorites
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* First-Person Tetris (NES version)
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80, and Sinclair ZX81
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* The Gallery of Zork - Infocom museum and plenty of games to play (click on "The Canon")
* Virtual Apple 2 - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* Virtual Atari - Play Atari 2600 games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* ZX81 Software, Books and Hardware Collection - Play ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000 games
Comments
Made this entry my homepage for awhile. Nice to see a good mixture of online emulator sites.
That's curious. That Ant Attack site claims that Ant Attack was the first 3D isometric game. I can't help but think there must been something earlier than 1983.
That's curious. That Ant Attack site claims that Ant Attack was the first 3D isometric game. I can't help but think there must been something earlier than 1983.
Well, "Zombies", for the Atari 8-bit, which was the self-published predecessor to the EA published, "Realm of Impossibility" (1984), was also 1983, though I have no clue which was first between that and "Ant Attack".
Sega's "Zaxxon" was released in 1982 for the arcade, and that certainly qualifies as 3D isometric. "Congo Bongo" was released the following year.
Assuming there was anything, I'm drawing a blank at the moment for anything prior to "Zaxxon" with a similar perspective...
This doesn't count because of the type of game it is, but 3D Tic-Tac-Toe for the Atari 2600 was 1980, and it at least experimented with the perspective: http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareID=798
The special thing about Ant Attack was that the display could be rotated in steps of 90 degrees. In other words: While games like Realm of Impossibility only had a static isometric display Ant Attack used a real map in memory and rendered it in isometric 3D to the screen according to the viewing angle. *This* was the real innovation.
Interestingly, the programmer of Ant Attack, Sandy White, created a similar successor called "Zombie Zombie" with the same engine. Like Realms of Impossibility one had to flee from zombies...
take care,
Calibrator
http://www.twitchasylum.com/jsvecx/
Used the HTML5 canvas element. Says only playable with Chrome, Opera, or the latest Safari. Works great for me with Chrome.
I haven't ever seen a real Vectrex in action. Is it roughly the same speed as the emulator?
I haven't ever seen a real Vectrex in action. Is it roughly the same speed as the emulator?
A real Vectrex is normal speed. Since I only tried the browser emulator at work, I cannot comment on its performance, but nothing should seem slow (and if it is, it's the emulator). In fact, because of the way the Vectrex is designed, everything is quite smooth on the real machine.
We have to remember to break out my Vectrex collection in July.
I was playing Star Castle. It seemed very slow to me, but I'm comparing it to the arcade version in MAME.