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!!!

Lxdream is a Linux-based emulator for the Sega Dreamcast system that is currently under active development. The version number indicates that it is still a little ways to go until a 1.0 version but quite a number of demos and even some games are running. The latest versions boasts OSX support!

For those interested in the obscure, but very intriguing Sinclair QL from the mid-80's, you can now get a type of turn-key QL environment for use with a modern Windows PC that can be transferred to a USB memory stick (minimum 128MB). This is a great idea and I'd like to see implementations of this for other systems. I personally own a very robust real Sinclair QL setup, but I think this would also make a fine companion for that, particularly in regards to data exchange. More information here.

Hardball on the Apple IIgsBill Martens, who runs the superb "Virtual Apple 2 - Online disk archive" has informed me that the site now supports Firefox. Previously the Website only supported Internet Explorer. For those not familiar with the Website, it allows you to play Apple II and IIgs games directly in your browser. No fuss, no muss, and it's fairly configurable to boot. As a bonus, the site also gives you access to the ROM images for use in another emulator or for transfer to your real Apple system. While my preferred way is to of course play these games on the real hardware, nothing beats the immediacy of a well functioning browser-based emulator that already has the ROMs, as it's invaluable for quick reference and screenshot captures. Check it out at http://www.virtualapple.org/.