Game emulators, WINE, Linux and other nerdy stuff...

Just tried to get a Windows-based emulator for Atari 7800 to work in WINE and it did. Nice to know how to make that happen for all the other Windows-based emulators I've had sitting on my hard drives for several years. Why have I not been playing these emulators all this time? I knew they were there...

Anyway, all of this got me thinking... (Don't start freaking out yet...) I have that little Netbook running WinXP just sitting there all by its lonesome in a drawer. Why not load all of my emulators on that device? It would make it the ultimate portable retro game machine. Should be better (in some ways) than downloading an old NES game onto my 3DS, if for no other reason that it would be ABSOLUTELY FREE... I'm glad that I'm returning to my old nerdy ways. It's been too long.

Also, I just discovered a Linux-compatible emulator for the ill-fated Atari 5200 console named 'kat5200'. Maybe now I can see if those dozen or so cartridges that I picked up for that system a few months ago (for only 50 cents each) are actually worth keeping around. :)

Anyway, here are a few resources for Atari emulation...

Atari 2600 (I use the emulator named 'stella')

http://www.atariage.com/2600/emulation/

http://atariage.com/system_items.html?SystemID=2600&ItemTypeID=ROM

http://stella.sourceforge.net/faq.php

http://stella.sourceforge.net/docs/

Atari 5200

http://atariage.com/5200/emulation/index.html?SystemID=5200

www.atariage.com/system_items.html?SystemID=5200&ItemTypeID=ROMa

Atari 7800

http://atariage.com/7800/emulation/index.html?SystemID=7800

http://www.atariage.com/system_items.html?SystemID=7800&ItemTypeID=ROM

Atari Lynx

http://atariage.com/Lynx/emulation/index.html

http://www.atariage.com/system_items.html?SystemID=LYNX&ItemTypeID=ROM

Atari Jaguar (Slim-pickin's here...)

http://atariage.com/Jaguar/emulation/index.html?SystemID=JAGUAR

No, using all these emulators does NOT mean that I will stop collecting the physical copies of various old games. If nothing else, I'll use them to try games out before I go looking for them. It also allows me the option to play certain titles that are hard (if not impossible) to find and play a lot of the homebrew games out there for numerous platforms that have been emulated.

- Lord Publius