Chopperbomb wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 1:01 pm
What is Home Brew?
Every month I look at these pages and see ‘new’ games for computers I used to love and I have no idea how this all works. I’m assuming they’re not being made available on the old bits of kit and that you need some sort of emulator? For example, I would absolutely love to play these Spectrum, Amstrad or Amiga games but what do I need? Can i play them on my iPad or on my basic laptop or even on my DS?
How about doing an idiots guide to emulators and home brew?
Cheers.
Sounds like a good idea for the mag, although they'd have to be careful not to tread on the toes of companies who frown upon emulators due to their widespread use in piracy.
Anyway... Most homebrew just gets released as downloads, but some still get physical releases on cassette, disk or even sometimes cartridges.
It's also possible to play downloads on original hardware as well as emulators, as you can get interfaces for most of them that'll allow you to load games from a USB thumb drive or SD card. Playing audio from an emulator can usually also be used to simulate tape loading without the need for any extra hardware.
You can run emulators on all the systems you mention, although your laptop is most likely to give you the best experience. Good emulators to get started with are Fuse (Spectrum) and Arnold (CPC). You're probably best off giving the Amiga a miss for now as, although there's a very good emulator in WinUAE, it's a bit tricker to set up and you'll need a copy of the Kickstart ROMs which aren't free.
