Pandora''s Emulators - What Will Work And What Won''t

[MonkeyChops]

Original Topic by Prophet found HERE: www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=41897

As more people around the world discover the Pandora, we're likely to get many requests for emulators. This topic is designed to clarify what sort of emulators are likely to work very well on Pandora, what sort probably won't, and what *might* happen (depending on many variables). This list will also begin indicating emulators known to already be in development, and/or being planned by reputable developers.

Last Updated: 04/26/10 (scroll to the bottom of this post to see a detailed list of updates)

THIS LIST IS SEMI-SPECULATIVE
DO NOT expect to see emulators for every system in the list!​

Systems colored in green are known to have emulators already being worked on (i.e. not just planned) using Pandora/Beagleboard hardware. When possible, the name(s) of the developers will be listed.

Systems colored in yellow indicate a well known developer has publically declared intent to emulate, but have not yet received Pandora/Beagleboard hardware. If more than one emulator is planned, each will have its dev(s) listed in separate brackets.

Emulators that COULD or DO work well on Pandora: (full speed emulation, full sound, rare frame skipping)

8bit consoles, computers and other platforms including (but not limited to):

• Adventure Vision
• Atari 2600/7800 [zx-81] [Tinnus->Little John] [Skeezix->Stella *LINK* *VIDEO*]
• Colecovision [zx-81] [Skeezix ->Colem *LINK*]
• Fairchild Channel F
• Gameboy & Gameboy Color [Tinnus->Little John] [Pickle->VisualboyAdvance *Video* *Video2*]
• Intellivision [zx-81] [WizardStan->Jzintv *LINK*]
• Microvision
• NES/Famicom/FDS [Tinnus->Little John]
• Odyssey/2
• Sega Master System & Game Gear [Tinnus->Little John] [Cpasjuste->Psms *LINK*]
• Sega SG-1000 (pre-SMS console in Japan)
• Vectrex [SDW->Vecx]

• Amstrad [zx-81] [hdonk->Caprice32 *LINK*]
• Apple II
• Apple IIGS
• Atari 800/XL/XE/5200 [zx-81]
• Atari 800 [wesbrown18 *LINK*]
• BBC Micro (possible zx-81 port, not confirmed)
• Commodore 64 [Gnostic *LINK*]
• Commodore PET
• Commodore Plus/4 [zx-81]
• Commodore VIC-20
• Dragon 32/64
• MSX [zx-81]
• Oric-1/Atmos [Torpor->Oricutron *LINK*]
• Sam Coupé [zx-81]
• SIMH [SteveM->SIMH *LINK*]
• Sinclair QL
• Sinclair Spectrum [Dio/Firefox->EMU]
• Sinclair ZX-80/81 [zx-81]
• Tandy Color Computer (CoCo) [zx-81]
• Tandy TRS-80
• Thompson TO7-70 [zx-81]
• Z-Machine [SteveM->Frotz *LINK*]
• ZX Spectrum [SteveM->FUSE *LINK*]

• Arcade games from the 70's and 80's [Zodttd->MAME4ALL port]

16bit consoles, computers and other platforms including (but not limited to):

• Amiga CD32
• Atari Lynx
• Genesis/Megadrive/SegaCD [Tinnus->Little John] [Notaz->Picodrive]
• NeoGeo AES/MVS [Squidge->Finalburn Alpha] [Pepone & Cpasjuste->GnGeo *LINK*]
• NeoGeo CD
• NeoGeo Pocket/Color [Tinnus->Little John]
• Philips CDI
• SNES [Squidge ->PandaSNES *LINK*] [Tinnus->Little John]
• Turbografx-16/PC-Engine/CD-ROM (technically an 8bit system but eh...) [Exophase->Temper port *LINK*] [Cpasjuste->Hugo]
• Wonderswan/Color [Tinnus->Little John]

• 286 DOS PC (& 386) [DJWillis->SCUMMVM] [Zodttd->DOSbox] [Pickle->DOSbox *LINK*]
• Amiga [Notaz] [Gnostic] [APerezBIOS->AROS *LINK*]
• Atari ST [Skeezix->OutcaST] [Cpasjuste->Hatari]
• Atari 520 [Cpasjuste->Patari *LINK*]
• MacIntosh (early models i.e. 68000 based)
• TI 99/4A [zx-81]
• X68000 (Japanese computer with arcade quality graphics)

• Arcade games from late 80's - 90's (i.e. M68000 based hardware etc.) [Squidge->Finalburn Alpha port] [Zodttd->MAME4ALL port]
• TI-92 Calculator [zx-81]

32bit consoles, computers and other platforms including (but not limited to):

• Atari Jaguar [Firefox *LINK*]
• Gameboy Advance [Exophase]
• Nintendo 64 [Ari64->Mupen64Plus *LINK*]
• Playstation [ZodTTD & Tinnus *LINK*]
• Virtual Boy

• 386 DOS PC (& 286) [DJWillis->SCUMMVM] [Zodttd->DOSbox]
• Arcade games (i.e. PSX based hardware) [MAME - not sure these would run at good speeds on Pandora though]

Emulators that MIGHT work decently on Pandora (these are all speculative!): (playable w/frame skipping and/or no sound etc.)

• 3DO
• Dreamcast [drkIIRaziel->nullDC *LINK*]
• NEC PC-FX (CD based JPN-only system with mostly FMV games)
• PSP [JayFoxRox->Pandora-PSP *LINK*]
• Sega 32X [Notaz->Picodrive]

• MacIntosh (later generations i.e. PowerPC based)

Emulators that probably will NOT work well on Pandora (these are all speculative!): (Debatable but the jury is still out)

• Nintendo DS (might eventually move into the "work decently" tier, time will tell.)
• Sega Saturn (altho 32bit, it's very messy hardware to emulate)
• Low end 486 based PC's

Emulators that will NOT work on Pandora (these are all speculative!): (just plain impossible or proof of concept only)

• Playstation 2
• XBox
• Gamecube
• High end 486 based PC's and newer
• Current mainstream consoles (Wii, PS3, 360 etc.)

These lists are preliminary and semi-speculative. But hopefully they give some idea of what Pandora's emulation furture will hold. As always in emulation, you never know what some brilliant dev will do in the future, but it's good to have a sense of proportion. Remember, Pandora is very powerful (easily surpassing all current handheld game devices) but it's not a miracle machine. So don't hold your breathe for things like Dreamcast or PS2 emulation - you'll only end up dying! wink.gif

Any mistakes or suggestions for additions/changes, please post below!

And remember:

THIS LIST IS SEMI-SPECULATIVE
DO NOT expect to see emulators for every system in the list!​

UPDATES:
5/26 - started indicating systems that are actually in development using Pandora dev hardware
5/27 - indicated that PSP emulation is being considered *LINK*-link is dead 4/11
5/27 - started yellow lighting declared emulators by well known devs who don't have Pandora hardware yet; added NeoGeo CD to list
5/28 - yellow lighted various classic systems since zx-81 announced intent to adapt his many emu ports for Pandora (including ZX-80/81, MSX, Intellivision, Thompson TO7-70, Amstrad, Atari 2600 & 7800, Sam Coupé, Commodore Plus/4, Colecovision, Atari 800/XL/5200, TI 92 calculator)
5/28 - moved Atari Jaguar to "work well" category and yellow lighted Firefox for intent to emulate smile.gif (Tempest 2000 on a handheld, yum!)
5/28 - semi-alphabetized "work well" & "work decently" lists in this order: consoles,computers,arcades,others
5/28 - removed "defining terms" section since this info is repeated in the list headers
5/28 - yellow lighted Pepone for a GnGeo (NeoGeo) port, and Tinnus for a Little John (NES, SNES, GB/C, SMS/GG, Genesis, NGP, Wonderswan/Color and Atari 2600 + possibly others!) port
5/28 - yellow lighted Genesis/Megadrive/SegaCD for Notaz' intended port of Picodrive
5/29 - yellow lighted Amiga having found this post: *LINK* by Gnostic
6/3 - yellow lighted all arcade sections in regards to the inevitable MAME port to Pandora
6/3 - yellow lighted TG16/PCE/CD in regards to Exophase indicating a port of Temper
6/4 - yellow lighted 286 & 386 PC in regards to SCUMMVM (it's an interpreter really but eh...) DOSbox is also likely but awaiting confirmation
6/5 - indicated DOSbox for x86
6/11 - yellow lighted TI-994A & Tandy Color Computer for zx-81, added MacIntosh, BBC Micro and NEC PC-FX to the list
6/11 - readded Gameboy & GB Color, must've accidentally deleted them when I alphabetized parts of the list
6/13 - added Sega SG-1000 to the list, there are still a few more obscure/unusual things to possibly add (i.e. PalmOS)... wondering if I should add GP32?
6/13 - moved NEC PC-FX from "work well" to "work decently" group in light of Exophase's comments on emulating it on Pandora, adjusted list format a little for clarity
6/20 - added Oric 1, TRS-80, Apple IIGS Commodore Vic and Commodore PET. NOTE: generally I will only add platforms that had software uniquely written for them (i.e. won't list every version of a particular computer platform; like Amiga for example), and which were reasonably popular and/or well known in their day and/or historically significant to some degree
6/20 - added Adventure Vision, Microvision, Fairchild Channel F, Dragon 32/64 and Virtual Boy
6/21 - added Sinclair QL and later gen Macs (i.e. PowerPC based)
7/19 - Atari Jaguar green lighted since Firefox successfully ported his emulator, and it's running very, very fast!
7/24 - added link to Firefox's PandaSNES thread *LINK* (note PandaSNES is by Squidge, not Firefox) for SNES
7/27 - green lighted Genesis/SegaCD since Picodrive is now confirmed to be ported and running on Pandora hardware
7/29 - yellow lighted Vectrex (SDW) and Dreamcast (drkIIRaziel) - personally I'm not expecting DC to ever run well, but you don't know until you know, ya know? Good luck devs!
7/31 - yellow lighted Sega 32X, since Notaz has said he will add it to Picodrive _after_ Pandora is released
9/14 - Amiga greened for Notaz, GB/GBC yellowed for Tinnus, greened Speccy for Dio/Firefox, added Amiga CD32 to list
9/17 - N64 blackened. Zod backed out.
9/23 - Added DOSbox port by Pickle with board link
9/27 - yellowed Commodore 64 for Gnostic, and added him as an Amiga dev
10/18 - arcades green lighted and noted for Zodttd's port of MAME4ALL *LINK*
4/11/09 - This Great list reposted so I can update it, psp green lighted and moved with link, dreamcast green lighted and moved with link, Green lighted: atari 520,atari 800, SMS, Neo Geo, turbografx-16, ZX Spectrum, Frotz Z-Machine, & SIMH (thx ESN),
4/16 - New category added; 486 split in 2; ps2, gc, xbox, high end 486, & current systems moved to new category.
4/20 - Added AROS port by APerezBIOS to Amiga With link
5/29 - Green lighted Intellivision (Jzintv by WizardStan) with link, fixed gutted links from the forum upgrade.
6/04 - Green lighted Amstrad (Caprice32 by hdonk) with gp32 board link. Caprice32 homepage found HERE: www.caprice32.cybercube.com ; Changed green/yellow light rules to include Beagleboard hardware.
8/31 - Green lighted N64!! (Mupen64Plus by Ari64)
10/29 - fixed colors, changed "could work" category to "could or do work" and moved N64 to it in light of the most recent video *LINK*
04/26/10 - Removed redundant links, added bullets, Green lighted: Stella by Skeezix with Link and Video ; Temper by Exophase with Link ; ColecoVision (Colem by Skeezix) with Link ; oric-1/Atmos (Oricutron by Torpor) with Link ; Gameboy/Gameboy Color (VisualboyAdvance by Pickle) with Video , Video2

 

[Raz]

Awesome

Itz nice to have a list that might get updated

 

[Username]

Ooh nice to have a new list.

 

[gruso]

Yes, very good work. Of course if you lose interest and stop maintaining it, we'll hunt you down and kill you.

 

[Esn]

Thanks MonkeyChops, it's a worthy endeavor.

I'll copy my list of missed updates (posted on March 18) from the old thread here, just so that people know when the news actually happened:

(YY/MM/DD)

08/11/12 - wesbrown18 announces in this thread that he'll work on porting the atari800 emulator to the Pandora
08/11/18 - SteveM has 29 emulators ready for testing, "27 of these are command line-based emulators of some rather ancient systems from SIMH (stuff like the PDP-11 and old IBM mainframes).", "Next I have the Frotz Infocom/Z-Machine interpreter", "Finally I have a "port" (just a very slightly modified recompile, really) of FUSE, the Free Unix (ZX) Spectrum Emulator." (www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45327)
08/12/09 - Atari520 emulator by Cpasjuste (www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45660)
08/12/09 - SMS - green (cpasjuste)" (www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45659)
08/12/03 - Atari ST - green for both OutcaST (skeezix) and Hatari (cpasjuste)
Turbographx 16 - green for Hugo (cpasjuste)
08/12/22 - not quite "news", but interesting: DOSBox with no optimizations runs WarCraft 2 nearly fullspeed (www.codejedi.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi/2008/12/index.blog)
09/01/21 - fullspeed NeoGeo emulator by Cpasjuste (www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=46269)
09/03/16 - Dreamcast should be moved from "probably will not work" to "might work decently"; Youtube video of emulator by ZeZu and DrkIIRaziel (www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=47065&st=90)

 

[PoisonedV]

Nice list, glad someone has taken the initiative again. i trust you wont dissapear without a trace

 

[Prophet]

Just for the record, I disappeared WITH A TRACE, thank you very much. ;-)

But seriously, I gave Monkey my blessings to do this, I really don't have time or enthusiasm for it these days.

 

[danielliu88888]

omg prophet's back.

 

[amf66]

I hope someone eventually makes (or ports) an N64 emulator to the Pandora. The thought of Goldeneye on a Pandora makes me drool XD

 

[danielliu88888]

I hope someone eventually makes (or ports) an N64 emulator to the Pandora. The thought of Goldeneye on a Pandora makes me drool XD

i'm sure we all want an emulator, but no one wants to do it. that's the problem.

 

[MrBlais]

I hope someone eventually makes (or ports) an N64 emulator to the Pandora. The thought of Goldeneye on a Pandora makes me drool XD

i'm sure we all want an emulator, but no one wants to do it. that's the problem.

Why don't you do it?

Yeah, but I agree. I wish the same. Whom would be up to the task? Zodttd?

 

[RajTakhar]

Good work MonkeyChops!!!

 

[Reyhn]

Why is the NDS in the category "Emulators that probably will NOT work well on Pandora (these are all speculative!): (unplayable or just plain impossible)" ? :unsure:

 

[bzar]

Why is the NDS in the category "Emulators that probably will NOT work well on Pandora (these are all speculative!): (unplayable or just plain impossible)" ? :unsure:

You DID read the following comment, did you?
QUOTE
might eventually move into the "work decently" tier, time will tell.

No one is currently developing a DS emulator for the pandora. Even current PC DS emulators have performance issues. Until someone makes a DS emulator that either runs well on an average PC or Pandora, it's a pipe dream. For now, because of lack of knowledge, the DS emulator should IMO remain where it is (just as the PSP was until the emulator was announced). If someone takes up the task and provides encouraging results, it can be changed.

EDIT: typo

 

[gruso]

When this list was first created it seemed like too huge a leap. The PSP was in that category too until very recently.

As it says though, "might eventually move into the "work decently" tier, time will tell." I'd say it's best to leave it where it is until someone takes the project on shows some significant progress, as JayFoxRox has with PSP.

[edit] Yeah, what B-Zar said. *shakes fist*

 

[Reyhn]

Of course I did, I just wanted to know why it is actually unplayable or plain impossible.
Thanks for informations.

 

[Patrick R Ludvigsen]

PSP could run better than DS because as far as I understand the PSP emulator would actually emulate(?) the base which games run on with the PSP (thus homebrew games wouldn't work or would work very slowly, but many commercial games might even run full-speed)

 

[MonkeyChops]

I was thinking that NDS should be moved also. In light of dc and psp showing progress, it would seem at a surface level that NDS should be very possible. However, I will wait till I see actual progress or some qualified devs express their confidence in the possiblity before I move it.

Thanks for the possitive comments everyone, I rarly miss more than a couple of days on the forum so keeping this list updated should not be a problem. Please just post updates that I miss here and I will add them to the list.

 

[borgqueenx]

why would a ds be possible? the pandora is about times as powerful then a psp. but the psp can only run 2 ds games that run on about 1 frame a second.
i dont know, but i hope someone will try to make a DS emulator

 

[Exophase]

why would a ds be possible? the pandora is about times as powerful then a psp. but the psp can only run 2 ds games that run on about 1 frame a second.
i dont know, but i hope someone will try to make a DS emulator



The DS emulator which has been ported to PSP should not be used as a guide for how DS emulation could run on a hanheld :/ I also think it's kind of funny that PSP has a higher likelihood rating on this list than DS does but that's not surprising given that the former has a dev claiming it (a little prematurely IMO) and the latter doesn't.