Possible on a CPC or....?

[the KING]

We have quite a few superb CPC emulators for a variety of platforms, but would it be possible to go the other way, and take a bit of emulation and a bit of something else(!) and run original arcade games on the CPC? The hardware should be quite similar to the arcade games of the early 80's.

I came across this very nice project that runs a rewritten original Donkey Kong code (Z80 3MHz) on a Tandy CoCo III (6809 1.79 MHz):
http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/dk/

If it's possible on a 6809 based system, shouldn't it be "easy" (notice the "s surrounding the word easy) to make a game like that run on the CPC? After all the CPC uses the same processor. I know a lot of the graphic and sound routines would have to be rewritten, but are the CPC up for the task at all?

Would any of you coders out there care to take a stand as to how this approach would work on a CPC? I just found the idea interresting, and seeing all the new stuff being released for the CPC, I understand there are quite a few very capable coders around.

......just to give you guys a few thoughts to bring with you in to the weekend ;-)

Take care,
Tom

[Gryzor]

Certainly an intriguing idea, I think it has popped up in one form or another every now and then over the years.

The thing is that, as I understand it, you have to build a super-cpc in software that will, among other things, run arcade titles of the era. I think it'd be very time-consuming to just translate a machine's logic into Z80 functions just to run one single game...

But then again it'd probably be less fuss than writing a new game from scratch...?

[the KING]

My initial thought was that if it's do-able on a computer with a different cpu, it should be even "easier" if the computer shared the same cpu and instruction set as the original arcade hardware. My programming experience is rather limited, but I believe the hardest part would be to adapt the graphics/sound routines, and maybe memory handling? The game logic should run "out of the box", shouldn't it?

Tom

[Gryzor]

Mmmm so and so. If it has any other dedicated chips, the it becomes much trickier even though there's a Z80 coordinating it all... I/O calls are tricky, too.

[Ygdrazil]

Hi King

Interesting idea! I am sure it could be done somehow.. But it would be a large undertaking. I remember many moons back that a friend and I tried to emulate a C64. Needles to say that we didnt get much past emulating the 6510 CPU of the C64 - we learned a lot about the 6510 and never looked back! 

But for the programmer made of the right stuff this would be a challange!

/Ygdrazil

We have quite a few superb CPC emulators for a variety of platforms, but would it be possible to go the other way, and take a bit of emulation and a bit of something else(!) and run original arcade games on the CPC? The hardware should be quite similar to the arcade games of the early 80's.

I came across this very nice project that runs a rewritten original Donkey Kong code (Z80 3MHz) on a Tandy CoCo III (6809 1.79 MHz):
http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/dk/

If it's possible on a 6809 based system, shouldn't it be "easy" (notice the "s surrounding the word easy) to make a game like that run on the CPC? After all the CPC uses the same processor. I know a lot of the graphic and sound routines would have to be rewritten, but are the CPC up for the task at all?

Would any of you coders out there care to take a stand as to how this approach would work on a CPC? I just found the idea interresting, and seeing all the new stuff being released for the CPC, I understand there are quite a few very capable coders around.

......just to give you guys a few thoughts to bring with you in to the weekend ;-)

Take care,
Tom

[Executioner]

It may be possible to add some better (than the CPC Plus) sprite handling facilities in an emulator, and run the original code, patched to suit the emulator hardware. I've even thought of doing this for a couple of simple arcade games, but in the end, the biggest job is decompiling the original code in order to determine what all the I/O ports and address accesses actually do. It would help if there was a better debugger for MAME.