Frodo - Commodore 64 Emulator

[frolik]

There hasn't been a lot said of C64 emulation for a while now, I have heard people say that they bought a gp32 on the basis of playing C64 games but it's being left behind with all the new developments happening.

Frodo is the main thing I use my GP32 for, so I thought of giving a run down on the emulator and some of the games which are well worth a butchers.

Frodo beta 9

The most pleasing thing about this emulator is when you fire it up, you are greeted by the classic blue operating system prompt which we all know and love (well, most of us). All you will need is disk image files in one of three formats; D64, T64, or PRG (PRG is a new feature in beta 9) . It all takes a few goes to get the feel for the interface but it is very user friendly once you do, all the functions can be remapped if you are using the latest version.

Compatibility

My estimation of compatibility is probably around 75% of the available games work. Often there are several versions of the same game and some work, some don't. The more recent games tend to use some kind of fastloader which will usually not work - if there is an option to disable this, disable it. Another feature is the 1541 cpu emulation which slows things up drastically - a little reminder of the old days! I have had some good results using this with some games that crash during loading. If you want to load some parts with this enabled, then you can disable during the parts that don't need it (if you know where they are) to speed things up. The emulation will sometimes crash, but games like Flimbo's quest you can just turn it on once the game has loaded and the levels will then load fine.

Features

The virtual keyboard works very well, and you can position it anywhere on the screen by dragging it. The downside is that it will slow the emulation down severly, in fact using any function other than the info line (right shoulder button) will do this. Any of these keys can be mapped to any of the gp32's buttons including joystick and ui functions - very useful especially to map UP to button B for jumping in platformers.

Some other features include contrast, which is probably the best implementation I have seen in any emulator on the gp32, however, it's not often used because the C64 display is bright enough anyway. Frame limiter is a useful function as without it the emulation will run up to 200% speed in some cases (try this on driller or other 3D games!), it can be interesting playing some games at a faster speed than originally intended. Frame skipping works fine but isn't really needed as I haven't found anything that runs too slow at 0fs!

Sound

Sound emulation is not perfect, often you will hear crackles or some strange grinding noises, other times it will be perfectly acceptable. This is a bit of a shame because the sid player on the gp32 reproduces the sounds very well (C64 music player). Also I have found that switching on the 1541 cpu emulation causes some unwanted ticking, usually once you are in the game though it will come through clear.

What Else?

Savestates I hear you holler! This is what most people tend to ask for and would definately add a lot more possibilities, it seems to be a requisite feature in many of todays emulators.

I personally would ask for custom configs that save the button mappings, then you could choose what button config to suit the game type without having to reconfigure it each time. On top of this, menu items to display the keyboard and info bar would be needed for when they aren't mapped to a button.

Lastly, I would like to be able to take screenshots in some graphics format (pcx/gif etc.). The main reason for this is to enter competitions for fun and save the high score table for evidence, sad, I know.

Tips

*if prompted for fast loader, always choose no or disable it

*many of the more recent games require 1541 cpu emulation as the loaders are more complex, if a game stops dead when it should be loading, try this

*if a game does not load by choosing "start first program" you should use the dir browser and choose the letter corresponding to the game file, the "first program" is not always the game file

*if the fire buttons don't respond on a game title screen - you're stuffed - happens on a few games (turrican/mayhem in monsterland)

*don't try to load games using frameskip and/or disabling limit speed - it will often bug out

The Games

I will follow this post up with some of my games reccomendations and mini reviews, if anyone else cares to contribute their C64 gems here, please feel free

Links

Frodo Homepage
Download Frodo beta 9
Lemon 64 - The best C64 site IMO

If anyone care to comment on my reviews, feel free to PM me

To finish off, I would like to thank Mike Dawson profusely for porting this great emulator.

Happy Gaming,

frolik. ^_^

 

[frolik]

Turrican (1990)
-&-
Turrican 2: The Final Fight (1991)

Rainbow Arts

First on my list of 8bit gems is the amazing games from Manfred Trenz. These are landmarks of their day and just go to prove how far you could push the hardware limitations of the Commodore with multidirectional and parralax scrolling, many sprites on screen and some enormous bosses.

I must say now, Turrican 1&2 were programmed for various systems including Amiga, Atari ST, PC Engine, and the other 8bit systems, BUT none of these *feel* the same as the Commodore version. Most who played it will agree that it is the only one worth playing despite other versions with better colour pallettes and cpu power.

Before you start, you really need to map some vital keys to your fire buttons. I find the best combination is;

Button A - Joystick up
Button B - Joystick fire
Button L - F7
Button R - Space

This will give you jumping with button B and Grenades & Powerlines with L & R.

Story

The game needs no story, just remember "shoot or die"

Weapons

Turrican is a turbocharged plaform game with all mod cons, one standard issue player recieves a gun, several power lines (button R), a directable lightning weapon (hold B and use left/right to aim), and the ability to transform into "gyroscope" mode (Down & R) which is an indestructible rolling wheel to take out some of the weaker foes with or get through narrow passages. T1 also provides you with grenades (L) which act as a smart bomb upon impact and some timed mines (Down & B ), where T2 gives you one super weapon per life (B & R). On top of all this there are powerups to change your standard gun, and other special weapons mods. Phew!

Platforms

If there were ever imaginatively designed levels, then it is right here. The games give you complete freedom over where you want to go, and they sprawl across a huge play area, riddled with secret locations and bonuses.

Worlds

Each world contains two or three levels of the same style envoirnment, and some worlds have shoot-em-up subsections, Turrican 2 has two unbelievably fast shooters - think Katakis in a smaller ship but better! The shootemup levels have some great music to accompany the mayhem and it really makes the game feel like it's taking you somewhere new. The map on the back of the original game box (Turrican 1) actually shows the full path you take through the game worlds.

Click here fore larger image

Baddies

There seem to be no end to the different types on enemies, from the easily destroyed walker droids to the tough-as-nails superbaddies. All are lovingly detailed and have their own characteristics, you will learn how best to vanquish each foe as you the onslaught commences. The bosses are HUGE, and they each have their own weak points and attack patterns in a classic bigboss style. My favourites are, the angry ship that bangs into the wall in frustration when it can't reach you, the big fish and the metal eye thank blinks between attacks.

Secrets

Once you have played the game a few times, you will tend to visit some of the hidden locations which store a cache of extra lives - there are various places to find these but most will have some kind of trick to getting to them. One thing that you must learn early is that all powerups and destructible items will only appear once, if they go off the screen too far then they will dissappear and you will never get them. It pays to visit as many of these places you discover to collect lives for the later levels.

Time

You have a time limit for each level, if this runs out, lose a life. If you run out of lives, you may use a continue to restart the World. Collect the diamonds throughout the game and you will gain more continues.

Loada

Unfortunately, both games aren't straighforward to load, Turrican 2 will work by using the 1541 emulation, this is very slow but once the game has loaded you should be able to turn this off so the levels load quicker. Turrican 1 is a bit more complicated and will not accept input on the title screen. The only way I have found to get this game working is by using an action replay rom dump and creating a savestate on a D64 file using the PC. If anyone needs help doing this - send me a PM on this board. It is well worth it to play Turrican (in case you haven't got the gist already!)

Replay

If you get good at this game, it can last an hour or more before the game ends (so make sure you have fresh batteries), and I'm talking about action all the way through - it's a DAMN big game. There is always something new to find, so replay value is great, the only thing that might stop you coming back is the sheer involvement that the game requires!

Finally

I can't say there's much wrong with these games, I wanted to review them both together because they are effectively the same with different features, each is differently designed but mainly the thing that stands out in Turrican 2 is the bigger, more intricate bosses, the amazing shoot-em-up levels, and a little more polish overall. These are so worth your GP32 time, trust me.

More

Manfred Trenz created a few other games you should check out, namely;

Katakis (aka Denaris)
Hard 'n Heavy
Enforcer: Fullmetal Megablaster

Images are courtesy of Lemon64 & Turrican SETA - My favourite site for everything on Turrican

 

[centrlink]

Re: true drive emulation for Turrican 2, the version I have, which I got from gamebase 64 (gb64.com) works fine without it.

A fine review which inspired me to play it, and aside from some initial frustration in getting the hang of it (again), its a truly remarkable piece of work and well worth some time on your GP32. Its one of those rare games that I fully expect to complete (eventually!).

5 out of 5 from me.

 

[frolik]

Glad to hear someone else playing this wicked game! One thing I find is never start playing it without fresh batteries, some games can last a couple of hours and if the screen starts to flicker, there's no saves states ARRGH!

Thanks for the tip about the GB64 version, I'll be checking that out

More reviews coming up, hope they are useful to people :rolleyes:

 

[frolik]

Flimbo's Quest (1990)

System 3

Review number two is a game which has split many C64 gamers, it seems either you love it, or you hate it. For me, I love it, it feels well polished from seeing the box artwork right down to the the game itself.

The Game:

When I first played this game I thought it had 16bit quality graphics, they just looked so colourful and characteristic, along the vein of the cutesy sprites that were doing the rounds on the consoles back then. The sprites are very well animated and each level has it's own distinct style of monsters and scenery to match - some of the beasties even look a bit deformed and scary! Another thing that was impressive for it's day was the parralax scrolling, the landscape and the foreground move at different speeds and produce a really nice effect.

Just listen to the music that accompanies the game and the title screen,... what?... you don't like it? well it's an aquired taste maybe, but fits the style of the game perfectly. Those German guys knew how to make a decent cheesy tune for games like this, and I recently saw the German band 'Press Play on Tape' and one of the tunes they played was the Flimbo's Quest title theme, suffice to say that my nostalgic side was aroused.

The game consists of running back and forth shooting meanies, collecting the credits they drop and finding the scrolls and returning them to the shop to complete the level. Along the way you will find rooms of treasure (pickup the pink ones first for extra credits), potions, hearts, and you can gear yourself up at the shop at any time.

The Criticism:

As I said at the start, some hate it. I will try to see it from this point of view to cover the downsides to this game.

So it's simplistic, there's not a hell of a lot of originality here, and the levels don't offer much different to the last which could get boring. The difficulty level gets pretty heavy around level 4, and the time limit set is very unfairly, you must remember to buy more time from the shop.

The Emulation:

You want to play it on your GP32? No problem, however, the versions I've tried don't want to load the following levels unless you turn on 1541 cpu emulation, it's easy to load up the game normally then turn it on when you get to the title screen. I tend to remap one of the buttons to 'up' on the joystick to make it easier to jump accurately.

The Last Word(s):

Playing this game on my GP32 has allowed me to get into this game properly, I used to have the tape version on my C64 which often didn't load levels and really put me off and I never got very far in the game, now I can play it as it should be played and using a button to jump is ideal.

If nothing more, you should load it up and give it your best shot, if you don't like it, you probably didn't have a C64!

 

[Fishbong]

In Turrican, i always get stuck on the title screen!! The fire buttons don`t respond, i can`t start the game! :angry: What shall i do ??? And in Turrican II, after the intro, when the game`s loading, the game hangs forever (playing music, tough) May someone help me ??? Pleeeeeez Of course, i have turned on the 1541CPU-Emulation, there`s gotta be another error....

 

[JaseDaMase]

Cant belive no one has mentioned armalyte, it works like a dream on frodo and is by far the best shmup on the c64

 

[WolverineDK]

frolik: Press Play On Tape are not Germans, they are Danes. Just like me from the Country Denmark with the capital Copenhagen in Scandinavia.So it is a little offending to call the Danes Germans, and well our language is Danish(not the pastry),but anyway cool review

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Would you like me to add Frodo to the Compatibility lists?

We will need someone to add games to the Emu tho, you up for it ?

 

[moz]

Would you like me to add Frodo to the Compatibility lists?

We will need someone to add games to the Emu tho, you up for it ?

​

yes please, i dont mind doing a couple each night

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Would you like me to add Frodo to the Compatibility lists?

We will need someone to add games to the Emu tho, you up for it    ?

​

yes please, i dont mind doing a couple each night

​

Hia,

Okey doke, gpFrodo is now on the lists, to add games simply log onto the site, click on gpFrodo and click the "Add Games or Apps" button.

Byee for now,
Clare.

Edit:

I have added a load of games from the official gpFrodo site.

 

[moz]

Would you like me to add Frodo to the Compatibility lists?

We will need someone to add games to the Emu tho, you up for it ?

​

yes please, i dont mind doing a couple each night

​

Hia,

Okey doke, gpFrodo is now on the lists, to add games simply log onto the site, click on gpFrodo and click the "Add Games or Apps" button.

Byee for now,
Clare.

Edit:

I have added a load of games from the official gpFrodo site.

​

will do! thanks