Android retro goodness?

[Gryzor]

Sooo, my girlfriend wife me got me a Desire HD for Xmas, and I had to say it's the sleekest gadget I've touched since the GX days...
So I wanted to ask, what retro goodness is out there?

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

There's a Spectrum emulator or two (Marvin, Xpectroid), a C64 emulator (Frodo), Z Machine (Infocom adventures) interpreters...


UAE4Droid, if you can get it working, for some Amiga goodness.


Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid emulators.


I can't find a CPC emulator in the Android store though :-( - maybe DevilMarcus could port his Java emulator to Android for us :-)

[Gryzor]

Oooh! Z-machine!!! Didn't think of that... I do have most of the rest, though I haven't had the chance to test them out just yet.

Yeah, a CPC or an Atari ST emulator would be so great....

[Devilmarkus]

I can't find a CPC emulator in the Android store though :-( - maybe DevilMar(c)kus could port his Java emulator to Android for us :-)

No, I can't. (Android and also cellphone Java is quite different to the SDK I am using.)
And no, I will not port it
But JavaCPC / WebCPC is freeware with available sources. (Like JEMU, too!) So feel free to modify it for your cellphone / Android

[Gryzor]

It'd be really sweet... I wonder how fast JavaCPC runs on my DHD. Not very, I suppose, but still, I'll try it.

[Charlie]

I recently took a punt on a SuperPad (WowPad) as a present for my wife - best buy I've made in ages.
A 10'' Chinese iPad knock-off running Android 2.1 for 100.00 pounds...
...5x less good than an iPad..? No - an excellent device with a decent (resistive) touch screen.
The only downside seems to be the lack of multi-touch which is a pain for on-screen joypads in emulators - but with USB ports that hopefully won't be an issue.


It's been nice to see how many emulators are available for Android - a CPC one would be a most welcome addition.


P.S.
The SuperPad (WowPad) comes in a few versions and I'm told some are pretty sh*t. If anyone's interested a bit of careful investigation could save tears.

[Octoate]

It's been nice to see how many emulators are available for Android - a CPC one would be a most welcome addition.

A CPC emulator for Android was already released at the beginning of the year. But you currently need a physical keyboard to work with it. I installed it on my tablet (Flytouch epad), but it is to slow to run it in real-time. If you are interested, you can find more information about it here: http://www.octoate.de/wp/2010/12/31/cpc-emulator-for-android/

[Charlie]

Excellent! Thank you.

[Gryzor]

This emu has been discussed elsewhere here... unfortunately, even if I disregard the physical kb limitation, on my Desire HD it won't run - it just practically freezes the device...

@charlie: any links for the tablet you bought???

[Charlie]

The version I got was a SuperPad:



eBay auction: 170588916914 - Very helpful.

I'd suggest if anybody buys one they check the version. As I understand it WowPad (China) make these for different suppliers and some versions are very poorly made using bad components. The SuperPad seems to be one of the 'good' ones.

Ups:
-How can you complain for 100 quid?
-Surprisingly well made - not amazingly robust
-microSD and USB ports, among others
-Pretty good screen given it's resistive rather than capacitive
-Quite quick

Downs:
-Android 2.1 - fine but will there be an upgrade?
-Watch out for the inferior versions
-Internal storage isn't vast
-No multi-touch..?
-CPU not currently supported by overclocking/underclocking utilities

[Gryzor]

Chinagrabber has a Superpad with 2.2, but why does it matter anyway?

Also, I think that auction is not a BuyNow one, but simply bidding starts at a hundred quid?

Still, wow.

[Charlie]

The sum-total of my Android experience is my wife's SuperPad...


To my knowledge Android uses a Java interpreter of sorts to abstract code from hardware for CPU portability. This slows things up a bit. 2.2 I'm told has a JIT-compiler instead - much faster code execution.

[MacDeath]

Are some of you familiar with Java on Androids ?

My brother is quite into this at the moment, he's designing some engine for 2D games...

If some of you are good at that, it would be interesting to set some chat then.

[Gryzor]

From what I've seen Java games are a no-no on Android... even flash sucks in terms of scalability and interface. Better go native...

[Gryzor]

Hey, here's something nice:


magical cannon girls.avi

From the dev's description (prepare for laughs):

Games description: The vertical scrolling shooter game that combines orthodox acter and story.
The vertical scrolling shooter game that combines elements of orthodox magical girl acter and story.
Leave a crisp exhilaration defeat the enemy!
· Orthodox type vertical scrolling shooter.
· Cute acters have magical girl.
· Beauty graphics.
· Conversation with the beautiful girl acters and story arcs.
· MOE acters have come a variety of attacking magic.
· Various stage configurations magical space.
• The power-up weapons and items to take, a powerful magic attack.
• The four levels of difficulty from Easy to Very Hard.
• Touch screen operation.
· Shooting crisp defeat the enemy orthodox type.
-All your base are belong to us (not really D )