We’re sure everyone reading this has at least one fond memory of computing in a past era. Maybe it was playing the classic platform game Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation, or was it discovering the SAY() and TRANSLATE$() functions in Amiga Basic? Perhaps it was even reverse engineering a printer driver for a PDP-11 microcomputer. Whatever your rose-tinted memories of bygone computing eras, it’s fun to indulge them.
There are thousands of open-source emulators and tools to help us on this trip into nostalgic reverie. Retro gaming isn’t new – the first version of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) appeared in 1996 and enabled PC users to relive hours in the arcade. MAME is better than ever and can now play over 7,000 titles. For the ultimate experience, we’ll show you how to build your own mini arcade cabinet with Pimoroni’s Picade.
Emulators abound for the machines that defined home computing, such as the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, and the Commodore 64. Moving on to the 16-bit generation, the Amiga and its rival the Atari ST complete with its ugly mouse.
These machines had some great games, which we’ll show you how to play. But they also had great operating systems and applications, so we’ll relive some of those histories, too.
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Retro gaming has long been a popular activity on Raspberry Pi. Soon after its 2012 release, coders worked to get the popular MAME running and other emulators followed suit. The Fuse emulator for the ZX Spectrum series was another early arrival, and Fuse development is alive and well today.
Anyone wanting to recreate the BBC Micro experience, which was particularly popular in the UK in the 1980s, should look at BeebEm (http://beebem-unix.bbcmicro.com). It’s one of the oldest emulators, having been around since 1994, and will have you reliving your galactic trading days in Elite in no time. You can even run it from a web browser at https://beeb.webassembly.link.
C64 on a Pi
One of the best-selling home computers of all time was the Commodore 64, which sold somewhere between 10 and 17 million units between its launch in 1982 and its discontinuation in 1994. Official numbers for the Pi family state that over 45 million units had been sold by March 2022, usurping the C64 and becoming the best-selling computer family in history. And if you want to emulate the C64 on a Pi (or a PC), then look no further than VICE (Versatile Commodore Emulator).
After the C64 came the Amiga. According to Amiberry developer Dimitris Panokostas, Amiga emulation on the Pi began in earnest in 2015, when UAE4ARM was ported to it. Dimitris started work on Amiberry a
