The UKFF Retro Gaming Thread

[Jazzy G]

I have the Chaos Engine on Megadrive. The Amiga versions are definitely the superior versions. You have to have an AI partner on the Megadrive version for some reason. 

Picked up Super Double Dragon on Switch. I've got a few other retro and retro style brawlers on there recently. Hamster have been churning them out for the Arcade Archives series recently. I've also been playing Wild West Cow Boys of Moo Mesa on my Anbernic. It's as close to a Sunset Riders sequel as we'll ever get from Konami. 

[FLips]

3 minutes ago, Jazzy G said:

I have the Chaos Engine on Megadrive. The Amiga versions are definitely the superior versions. You have to have an AI partner on the Megadrive version for some reason. 

Picked up Super Double Dragon on Switch. I've got a few other retro and retro style brawlers on there recently. Hamster have been churning them out for the Arcade Archives series recently. I've also been playing Wild West Cow Boys of Moo Mesa on my Anbernic. It's as close to a Sunset Riders sequel as we'll ever get from Konami. 

You have to have an AI partner on every version, it's either 1P & CPU or 1P & 2P. There's no 1P only option.

[Jazzy G]

Ah, ok. I sit corrected. 

[FLips]

13 minutes ago, Jazzy G said:

Ah, ok. I sit corrected. 

No worries. It's actually an interesting mechanic in the game where some characters have better AI than others (I think it's down as the Wisdom stat or something similarly named). Higher wisdom AI will be more likely to do things like pick up currency and shoot on target. The manual describes it as "their ability to play".
As part of your between stage leveling up you can pump money into the Wisdom stat to essentially improve the overall quality of your AI partner.

A 1P option only would be nice, but you'd lose so much currency on the ground without the extra pair of hands.

[FLips]

Fell off the deep end a bit last night, which probably won't shock many of you.

Was looking for a way to best emulate the Amiga on my CRT and was looking into the A500 Mini after a few mentions in here, but as great as that would be for a more authentic look and keyboard/mouse, it would still require the same HDMI-AV adapter use and wouldn't be massively different to using my current setup.
I did briefly scoure the marketplace for an actual Amiga and while it's easy (but expensive) to find the system and add-ons, finding the monitor (because I'd obviously need the proper monitor) seemed to bring it from expensive to extortionate.
Then I remembered, I have a Raspberry Pi I don't use anymore because I've ended up getting the actual systems, so I went and dug under the bed and pulled that out. I need a new power adapter because I've no idea where it went, so currently I'm running it underpowered but working on a phone charger.

I wiped the entire thing which was filled with PS1 roms, and looked into fitting it with an Amiga. With the built-in USB ports it would be a good start for mouse/keyboard use, possibly a USB joystick at some point. Then I found out you can get a board to fit into the top of it that replaces the HDMI port with a Scart port. Perfect.
Unfortunately I found at this stage the Amiga OS I was going to install on it wasn't compatible with my outdated Pi (I have a 3 but it uses 4 upwards), similarly the Scart add-on uses 4 onwards too. Bummer.
So I re-fitted it with RetroPie/Retroarch and added a standard Amiga emulator that uses a compact version of WinUAE. It's not exactly what I was going for, and I still have to use my HDMI adapter, but the second I booted up Magic Pockets I was content. It's running fine, it runs A500/AGA stuff absolutely fine, has KB&M input and is easier than moving my TV over to my PC every time I want to play it.

But I couldn't let it go.

After a bit more searching and scouring forums, I found mentions of Pi 3 hiding a little secret nobody really spoke about because nobody really needed it. The headphone jack.

It turns out that you can use a 3.5mm headphone to composite cable, usually meant for old camcorders and it will work as the display port instead of the HDMI if you code it into the system's files. So at 00:04am this morning I ordered that exact cable for delivery today. If what I see and read is true, it should display perfectly on my CRT.

If it works I'll be thrilled, but I'll be honest I was quite excited to run a full Amiga OS rather than just a front-end emulator, but that's a project for another time.

[RedTwoster]

The Amiga is surprisingly hard to emulate. It takes far more effort than it’s worth to get it up-and-running on a Steam Deck - more so than pretty much any other system.

[FLips]

8 minutes ago, RedTwoster said:

The Amiga is surprisingly hard to emulate. It takes far more effort than it’s worth to get it up-and-running on a Steam Deck - more so than pretty much any other system.

It's certainly the faffiest of the systems I've emulated. A lot of it is due to compatibility when it comes to games and controllers. Something like the Mega Drive emulator is built in to also run Mega CD and 32X if you have the BIOS, and it will run based on the ROM you pick. Amiga needs me, depending on the game, to go back into the system menu with F12 to change the drives, change the controller type, change the system type.
It would be lovely if you could just click a ROM file and the system knows what it's running. Takes a bit to get your head around.

I saw this Sonic port for Commodore 64 the other day and quite fancy having a go of that. Also I remember from the last time Amiga was being spoken about in this thread there were talks of Turrican on the C64 being class too.

 

[Merzbow]

If you're on a PC I can't recommend FS-UAE enough, it takes a lot of the hassle from WinUAE away while still using the same brilliant base emulator. The biggest issues is finding the right bios files as there's so many but people have packaged entire packs online, or you can actually buy official ones for a few quid.

[FLips]

1 hour ago, Merzbow said:

If you're on a PC I can't recommend FS-UAE enough, it takes a lot of the hassle from WinUAE away while still using the same brilliant base emulator. The biggest issues is finding the right bios files as there's so many but people have packaged entire packs online, or you can actually buy official ones for a few quid.

Gave this a go this morning but having nothing but trouble with it. Won't recognise my Xbox controller being plugged in at all, and any time I try to run a WHDLoad game it says "could not find fs-uae executable". Seems others have the same issues but there's not much support for it compared to WinUAE so I've found no solutions to either problem sadly.

Edited March 2, 2025 by FLips

[Merzbow]

Ah shit, I wonder if it's an issue with a new build of the emulator as mines pretty old and I've not updated it in ages. But if WinUAE still works then stick with that as it's still solid as hell.

[johnnyboy]

Treat yourselves to Amiga Forever.
<Bill Gates Peasants.gif>

[FLips]

Aye, had a bit of an Amiga nightmare today.

I never managed to get FS-UAE working, which is a shame because it was fairly simple to install and set up watching quick 5 minute guide. I just could never get it to work for whatever reason and couldn't find any help on forums or the usual places. I tried different guides and faffed on for a couple of hours and got nowhere.

Next idea was to install WHDLOAD onto my existing WinUAE build but that also seems to be (currently) a no-go as it seems you need to run Workbench through UAE and install it with that, which I have no idea what I'm doing with. Something I'll go back to as I followed all the steps up to loading workbench, so stick a pin in it.

My 3.5mm cable turned up and didn't work. A deeper look seems like it's determined by the build of the cable itself so word on the street is if you get stuck, order one from a reputable Raspberry Pi site and not Amazon and you'll have more luck, so that's what I've done.

So as it stands I'm back at square one. WINUAE on my PC, and my Pi emulating through an adapter. I'll get there I'm sure, and this certainly isn't the universe telling me to give up emulation and buy a physical Amiga. Absolutely not. No way.

 

Edited March 2, 2025 by FLips

[Jazzy G]

I still need to figure out how to stick ROMs on my Anbernic things so I can crack on with more PC Engine stuff. Also to see whether I can do something with the emulator/power bank thing I picked up on Aliexpress. It's a weird one as it'll emulate arcade games fine, but struggles with SNES emulation. I guess that's what you get if you want something to do more than one thing though. 

[FLips]

Right this will be the last of the Amiga spam from me as I fear I'm clogging the thread up.

I went back to the WHDLoad on WinUAE idea and as expected I have spent the better part of the day installing Amiga Workbench 3.1 from scratch onto my PC. It's been a slog but actually rather interesting. Not enough thanks can go to MikeyGRetro's Youtube channel for walking me through it step by step. I even donated a few bob to his Ko-Fi. Here's a link to his channel for anyone interested in old home computer stuff. https://youtube.com/@mikeygretro?si=KDf-C9edaBpcbpM0

Anyway, Workbench is installed, after a lot of searching I found the customised kickstart roms you need for it to run, and I've got a bunch of games there ready to play. It's not without flaws it seems, as CD32 games have no sound as the WHDLoad versions are missing the music tracks, so CD32 stuff will stay emulated directly through WinUAE.
This will mostly be useful for the AGA games and multi-floppy games like Monkey Island and Beneath a Steel Sky as now it's all one file and with no need to swap. Quite the day I've had, I'm starving!

 

Next order of business will be messing with the Display/Filter settings to tighten those graphics up on the desktop.

Edited March 2, 2025 by FLips

[DavidB6937]

@FLips You're not clogging up! Do continue. Genuinely enjoy reading everyones posts in this topic.