Bug in the Commodore 64 emulator! (+ more emu stuff)

[ICEknight]

I've just found out that the C64 emu will hang the Wii, and make you have to hold the POWER button for 5 seconds in order to turn it off completely.

How to do it? Quite simple:
Reset the game 12 times (Or rather, don't). It can be done by pressing the reset button or through the Home menu... or both, if you like variety in your lockups.




By the way... where did the C64 emu dude go? We could provide him with some nice feedback from here... And speaking of which, here's my suggestions for a possible update (even though I doubt they'll change anything, but we all have the rights to rant):

Virtual Keyboard
It's nice and all, but I could see in DEMON212's IK review how annoying it was to start a game from it. I personally think that each game should have it's start button mapped somewhere in the controllers, as there's enough buttons even on the wiimote to have separate buttons for "start" and "pause".

Also, making it a bit translucid would be useful to see what's going on behind it. I'd personally just show the letters/numbers/symbols themselves without coloring the keys, although it would lose some of the "retro" factor, I guess.

By the way, I still haven't tried but I hope this is compatible with the USB keyboards just like... almost every other Wii channel now. If not, it won't be possible to try certain key combinations some games might need for codes, etc.

"COMMODORE 64" logo for the Wii channel icon
It can barely be read, at least on standard televisions, and you can't certainly see the tiny "C=" logo properly. The icon used for the saved data looks much better!

Screen resolution/borders
I'm all against borders in the "bigger" consoles, but this system sometimes (e.g.,Uridium) used an even lower resolution than a NES, so removing the borders completely gives some significantly bigger (and blockier) graphics than the real thing. Since no filters are being used, this could make things a bit more difficult to see than they should (almost like when you run the Game Gear games fullscreen in some Sonic compilations).

I certainly don't encourage putting an ugly Eagle filter like SEGA did with their MegaDrive releases for Xbox Live Arcade, but a simple smoothing filter (like that one in the VC's TurboGrafx emu) could work nicely.

Also, some games would change the border colors to give the game window a frame of sorts (think Nintendo's own Super Game Boy or Game Boy Player), and others actually used those borders to show some stuff going on in them, so it would be nice to have an option to turn the borders on.

This would make the resolutions a bit more bearable while making things more faithful, plus it would fix the next point...

Aspect ratio
It just seems to be wrong, possibly due to wanting to fill the TV screen by completely removing the borders. Now squares look like tall rectangles, when they shouldn't (it looks more correct when using a widescreen).

This is like the opposite of the excessive PAL NES borders that squish the image too much...

Color palette
I don't remember the PAL C64 having these (sometimes too vivid) colors, the emu programmers should put some real hardware running side to side with the emulator and tweak them a little, since they don't look right.

A quick way to compare them would be Uridium's title screen, which shows a lot of colors for the logos and high scores.

Interlace mode
Somebody please find a way to disable it. The graphics don't look as sharp as they should in non-HD displays, plus you can plainly see the odd and even lines "moving" up and down constantly (you can barely notice this in 60Hz, but we're talking about 50Hz here).

I liked it more when you could choose between the two modes.

Title screen
I remember reading that these would be missing from the VC versions. I'd really suggest adding the title screens for a few skippable seconds before starting the emulation for the first time (I mean, not counting when continuing a saved state).

After all, you always got to see them before the game started, unless they just didn't exist.

Game cover
Also, since Japanese companies just seem not to care much about it, the Commodore guys could be the first to add the proper games' covers somewhere as well, if Nintendo allows them to.

For example, by replacing that tiny title screenshot from the Wii menu selection, where you sometimes can barely read a thing. That would rock, and could even make the games more appealing in the Wii shop.

Else, games with similar title screens (for example, those that are just text-based) would be difficult to tell from each other from the Wii menu.


Other conversions
The guys at Amstrad have already given permission for using their ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC ROMs freely, so I'm sure they could be reached for a deal regarding the inclusion of some CPC or Speccy ports of certain games.

While the C64 got some cool classics (Uridium or Auf Wiedersehen Monty come to mind), it sometimes got the ugliests ports. For example, the C64 version of Ranarama has some of the ugliest graphics and horrid music, so I wouldn't buy it. On the other hand, the CPC version was an improvement over the Speccy original and sounds better than those other two versions, while showing some pleasing graphics with a nice resolution and no strange color clashes going on... So I'd buy the CPC version as soon as it was released. Other examples of "best versions" would be The Trap Door for ZX Spectrum, Head Over Heels for CPC, Thing Bounces Back for MSX or Barbarian for the Commodore Amiga.

In other words, games from that era could have their best versions in any of the following formats: Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore 64/128, MSX, Atari ST, Amiga. We already have the C64, and here's also hope for the Amiga versions of Turrican 1 & 2 being released some day instead of their C64 counterparts, but somebody should also speak with Amstrad about publishing some Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions on VC.



I must say that, speaking of countries such as Spain and I guess the UK, the ZX Spectrum was way more popular in there than the C64 was. Sadly, I'm afraid that few people over here will buy these versions out of nostalgia, but I know of many people who would get some of the Spectrum or CPC classics. Most Amiga games just don't need the nostalgia value to sell, so it might be a good idea to include it on the VC lineup as soon as possible (given that it's a Commodore machine).

[Joxe]

About Thehive...it seems like he disappeared somewhere, I just hope they didn't find out who it was that leaked the information of the C64, I guess Nintendo wouldn't tolerate that...

I agree with you on all subjects that you have discussed, I didn't play C64 back in the days (probably because I wasn't even planned back then, aka not born) but I guess the emulation is a bit different, I've noticed the border issue myself by comparing to a C64 emulator. The SID emulation is perfect though Can't wait to start IK again to hear Rob Hubbard's tune.

What I really would want them to do is to release a real Joystick for the C64 games, the Wiimote isn't really the same thing as a joystick, if they did it right it could be used for Atari games aswell if they plan to release them.

[kawaiipikachu]

What they removed the boaders ?
Think of it the boarders wernt removed on my c64 dtv (plug'n'play style device) so they shouldn't be removed from virtual console .
But still i will wait the day the c64 games are released here in Australia .