Arcade emulator

An arcade emulator is a program that emulates one or more arcade games on a different computer, such as a PC.

The first known arcade emulation available publicly was the Williams Digital Arcade series from Digital Eclipse Software, released for the Macintosh in 1994. This series featured the Williams Electronics' arcade classics Joust,^[1] Defender and Robotron: 2084. In 1995, it was repackaged and expanded upon as Williams Arcade Classics for the PC.^[2]

DASArcade (written by David Alan Spicer) was arguably the first PC-based multiple arcade game emulator. This was distinct from Digital Eclipse's release in that only one program was required to emulate more than one arcade game, rather than one program per game. The first version of DASArcade was released later in 1995 and emulated a few titles including Pac-Man and Frogger (two years before MAME which now dominates arcade emulation). DASArcade evolved into Sparcade which emulates over 70 games.^[3]

See the List of video game console emulators for examples of arcade emulators.

External links

• Sparcade
• Videogames and other media
• Spectrum FAQ: Where is ...? re David Spicer, writer of Sparcade

References

1. ^ Joust Release Information for Macintosh
2. ^ Jeff Vavasour's VIDEO AND COMPUTER GAME Page
3. ^ http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/thumbs.aloft/wos/world/edge/sparcade.htm