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Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator


israelg

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Hi,

 

Why there is no Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator yet ?

 

since the release of the Activision Anthology a few yeas ago (Stella port)

 

No one created a new emulator...

 

and there are many emulators for the gameboy like nes, coleco, pce, spectrum and many more...

 

since it it possible (Activision Anthology) why doesn't the stella team release and official version ?

 

I.G

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Hi,

 

Why there is no Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator yet ?

 

since the release of the Activision Anthology a few yeas ago (Stella port)

 

No one created a new emulator...

 

and there are many emulators for the gameboy like nes, coleco, pce, spectrum and many more...

 

since it it possible (Activision Anthology) why doesn't the stella team release and official version ?

 

I.G

Speaking as one of the main Stella developers; lack of time, lack of hardware, and since I already act as maintainer for Linux, OSX, and Win32, lack of interest and energy :) Seriously, such a project would need 'new blood' in the team. Everyone involved is very busy, and probably doesn't have the hardware either. I can offer technical help/knowledge of the codebase to whoever steps up to create such a port, but someone will have to make the first move.

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Why there is no Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator yet ?

I don't think it's feasible. The Gameboy Advance has a screen resolution of 240x160, whereas the Atari 2600 has a screen resolution of perhaps 160x210, with most games having a screen size of about 160x192. The difference in the pixel shapes and screen reolutions would make it impossible to create a decent emulated display. And I own a Gameboy Advance, so believe me, I thought it would have been cool, too. :(

 

Michael

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Why there is no Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator yet ?

I don't think it's feasible. The Gameboy Advance has a screen resolution of 240x160, whereas the Atari 2600 has a screen resolution of perhaps 160x210, with most games having a screen size of about 160x192. The difference in the pixel shapes and screen reolutions would make it impossible to create a decent emulated display. And I own a Gameboy Advance, so believe me, I thought it would have been cool, too. :(

I dunno. When you consider some of the other emulators for the GBA, it seems that is not really an issue.

 

AGI Interpreter

Chip-8 Interpreter

Colecovision

GameBoy

NES

SMS

Sharp X-1 Turbo

SNES

Spectrum

TG16/PC Engine

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Why there is no Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator yet ?

I don't think it's feasible. The Gameboy Advance has a screen resolution of 240x160, whereas the Atari 2600 has a screen resolution of perhaps 160x210, with most games having a screen size of about 160x192. The difference in the pixel shapes and screen reolutions would make it impossible to create a decent emulated display. And I own a Gameboy Advance, so believe me, I thought it would have been cool, too. :(

 

Michael

Just display the screen sideways :)

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Why there is no Atari 2600 Gameboy advance emulator yet ?

I don't think it's feasible. The Gameboy Advance has a screen resolution of 240x160, whereas the Atari 2600 has a screen resolution of perhaps 160x210, with most games having a screen size of about 160x192. The difference in the pixel shapes and screen reolutions would make it impossible to create a decent emulated display. And I own a Gameboy Advance, so believe me, I thought it would have been cool, too. :(

 

Michael

Just display the screen sideways :)

Yep, I had thought of that, too. But the pixel shapes would still be wrong, so the game screens would look very distorted. Also, having to turn the GBA sideways would mean the controls would have to be read accordingly. I just don't think it would be very feasible-- doable, perhaps, but not very good-looking, and probably too awkward to hold and play.

 

Michael

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Do we not remember this from our own Andrew Davie in 2001 :)

There are missing pixels here and there, but overall it looks good.

 

I wonder if (in theory, anyway) some anti-aliasing could be done to the output to make the games look a little better? Then the missing pixels wouldn't be needed. This would of course depend on the quality of GBA hardware (you'd probably need at least 16-bit color.)

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Most GBA/DS emulators use a flicker trick to simulate anti-aliasing (though DS also has a native scaling mode, but it's a little softer). It'll take two frames of the screen scaled slightly differently and flicker them fast enough to create a pretty convincing illusion. That emulator probably does have flicker, but you can't tell because you're only seeing one frame in that shot.

 

It's not half bad to look at (depending on the game), but most of the time, I prefer to go with a cropped pan-and-scan setup.

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  • 1 month later...
It's noticable, but it depends on the game. The FPS counter doesn't work, so I can't give you an exact number, but I would guess maybe 75% for most games. Pitfall II, maybe 40%.

 

Well. I considered to buy a DS lite for this.... but now I will wait until the emulation will be better...

 

10X

 

I.G

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  • 2 weeks later...

-->I don't think it's feasible. The Gameboy Advance has a screen resolution of 240x160, whereas the Atari 2600 has a

-->screen resolution of perhaps 160x210, with most games having a screen size of about 160x192. The difference in the

-->pixel shapes and screen reolutions would make it impossible to create a decent emulated display. And I own a

-->Gameboy Advance, so believe me, I thought it would have been cool, too.

 

-->Yep, I had thought of that, too. But the pixel shapes would still be wrong, so the game screens would look very

-->distorted. Also, having to turn the GBA sideways would mean the controls would have to be read accordingly. I just

-->don't think it would be very feasible-- doable, perhaps, but not very good-looking, and probably too awkward to hold

-->and play.

 

 

 

You guys have seen the 2600 games on GBA Activision Classics, right?

 

If those look as good as they do, couldn't any?

Edited by wood_jl
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Do we not remember this from our own Andrew Davie in 2001 :)

 

Yes, Pitfall is running with 270% !!!

 

What ever happend to this project ?

 

I.G

 

That was a crash project I did for a particular Activision guy I knew from these forums, to prove to his bosses that it was in fact possible to do a reasonable Atari 2600 emulator on GBA. I got it working with something like 20 Activision games installed and running at reasonable speed, and delivered it to this guy to show at an Activision meeting. I worked on this for weeks, busting my gut, and not only did he NOT even thank me for the work (of course I wasn't paid), the project was approved and given to another developer without me even being told.

 

After that particular kick in the teeth, I dropped the project and lost all respect for the person in question.

 

The bottom line is that yes, it is possible to do a pretty good Atari 2600 emulator on the GBA. I did it. It wasn't perfect, and it slowed down here and there... but I only spent a month or two on it and I'm confident it could have been optimised to achieve better speed. But it was pretty good, and pretty damn neat playing Atari 2600 on my handheld.

 

Cheers

A

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The screen distortion reminds me of playing NES games on the GBA. The GBA must have a really weird resolution when comparing it to other systems.

 

DS's screen is 256x192 (each), NES is ~256x256. Dunno GBA's dimensions off the top of my head...8 pixels are cut off the right and left sides, but most NES games don't show anything there anyway.

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