RETRO EMULATION

The Linux Format team all have their favourite retro memories, and Jonni Bidwell is here to regale y’all with them.

We’re not saying our readership is old, but we’re pretty sure everyone reading this has at least one fond memory of computing in some past era. Maybe it was playing the classic platformer Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation, maybe it was discovering the SAY() and TRANSLATE$() functions in Amiga Basic. Perhaps it was even reverse engineering a printer driver for a PDP-11 microcomputer. Whatever your rose-tinted memories of bygone computing eras are, it’s often fun to indulge them. There are thousands of open source emulators and other tools that can help us on this journey into nostalgic reverie. Of course, retro gaming has been popular ever since the first games were able to be classed as retro. The first version of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) appeared in 1996, and enabled PC users to relive those hours in front of the arcade cabinets. More than a quarter of a century later, MAME is better than ever and can now play over 7,000 titles. For the ultimate experience, we’ll show you how to build your own mini arcade cabinet with Pimoroni’s Picade Emulators abound for the machines which defined home computing too: Clive Sinclair’s various ZX Spectrums (spectra?), the BBC Micro and the Commodore 64. Moving on to the 16-bit generation we find the Amiga (our favourite) and its rival the Atari ST (complete with its ugly mouse and, okay, maybe better sound).

These machines had their great games, which of course we’ll show you how to play (on the aforementioned arcade cabinet if you like). But they also had great operating systems and applications too, so we’ll relive some of those histories, too.