Alcazar - The Forgotten Fortress
(Activision, 1985; ColecoVision)
via Retro UprisingI'd like to provide the latest update to my list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable play directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. This is the "July 2010" edition of the list and, naturally, I'd love to keep adding to it, so suggest away. Here goes:

* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* Another World (aka, Out of this World; 1991)
* Atari.com - Play select Atari 2600 and Atari arcade favorites
* BBC Micro News - Parrot - News stories and a speech synthesizer directly from a cluster of BBC Micros
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* First-Person Tetris (NES version)
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* Google Pac-Man - The popular browser-based re-imagining of the classic arcade game
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80, and Sinclair ZX81
* JSVecX - Play GCE/Milton Bradley Vectrex games in your browser
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* The Gallery of Zork - Play the Infocom games online
* Retro Uprising - Play a wide range of videogame and computer systems (arcade, Atari, Coleco, Nintendo, Sega, etc.) in your browser and through a custom software interface
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* Timex/Sinclair 1000 Emulator
* Virtual Apple 2 - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* Virtual Atari - Play Atari 2600 games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* ZX81 Software, Books and Hardware Collection - Play ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000 games

RetrodeJust a quick bit of breaking news that the Retrode (formerly: snega2usb), a USB adapter for playing Super Nintendo/Famicom and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis cartridges legally on your PC, smartphone, laptop, network router, Wii, Pandora, etc., will soon have N64/GB/GBC combi and Atari 2600 plug-in adapters. Great news for a product with an ever expanding feature-set.

Check the official update below for more details or simply visit the Website:

Tass Times in Tone Town (Activision, 1986; Apple IIGS): From Virtual Apple 2I'd like to provide the latest update to my list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable play directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. This is the "May 2010" edition of the list and, naturally, I'd love to keep adding to it, so suggest away. Here goes:

* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* Another World (aka, Out of this World; 1991)
* Atari.com - Play select Atari 2600 and Atari arcade favorites
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* First-Person Tetris (NES version)
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80, and Sinclair ZX81
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* The Gallery of Zork - Infocom museum and plenty of games to play (click on "The Canon")
* Virtual Apple 2 - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* Virtual Atari - Play Atari 2600 games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* ZX81 Software, Books and Hardware Collection - Play ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000 games

Bill Martens of Virtual Apple (Apple II and IIgs) fame sent word that his latest project, Virtual Atari, is now open. There are currently over 550 Atari 2600 VCS games on the site, all running in the JStella emulator in Java. Another great site to add to the master browser emulator list!

In this video I revisit the Gp2x Wiz handheld Linux device and show the improvements in the software that have been made since the summer of 2009. It is filmed in 720p HD footage so make sure you watch the fully encoded version to get a good idea of the picture quality the Wiz has to offer. I think the HD video really shows off the quality of the screen. Be sure to select the HD option from within the player.

In the interest of sharing, I'd like to provide my current list of working emulator sites for various platforms. All of these enable gameplay directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. I'm dubbing this the "November 2009" edition of the list and would love to keep adding to it, so suggest away and when I do the next edition, I'll expand it. Here goes:

* 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
* c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
* Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
* JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80 and Siclair ZX81
* nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
* Play Infocom Adventures Online
* The Gallery of Zork - Infocom museum and plenty of games to play
* Sandy White's Ant Attack
* Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
* SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
* Virtual Apple ][ - Play Apple II and IIGS games
* vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games

Finally, don't forget the Games section right here on Armchair Arcade. Enjoy!

Willy Byte in the Digital DimensionFacebook friend and Virtual Apple ][ guy himself, Bill Martens, sent word that the site, which allows anyone to play a large range of Apple ][ and Apple IIgs games in your browser, has been updated to version 4.4, and now supports both PC and Macintosh. This has been an Armchair Arcade favorite for a long time now, so this is welcome news.

To play a game, select the disk from the menu. Click on Yes to automatically download the ActiveGS emulator and disk images in Internet Explorer. Click on Install Add-Ons when prompted in Mozilla's Firefox Browser or Safari. The new ActiveGS plugin is compatible with most browsers on both Mac OS X 10.5.x and PC Windows 2K and newer (you will need to install the plugin in order to use the games on the site). Joystick control is through the mouse/touchpad. All of the games on the Virtual Apple ][ website are playable offline as well as online. You can download the disk images to your favorite game right from the website, fire up an emulator on your machine and play them right there on your local PC or Mac (or any other OS that supports an offline emulator for that matter). More news is promised in the coming weeks, but be sure to check it out now!

One of my favorite Web-based emulators for the Apple II and IIgs has received an engine update, allowing it work on any platform with a Web browser that supports Java. Exciting stuff and I highly recommend you check it out at http://www.virtualapple.org. Press release follows:

This might be old news--I actually just found this in my email dated September 5th!!!