EMULATOR REVIEW - Pacifist v0.49b
Rob now brings you the lowdown on ST emulation for the PC. In the form of Pacifist. I know that this is an old release but ST emulation isn't exactly regular. Especially for games. Read on.... |
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Name: Pacifist v0.49b The Atari ST is a strange beast. It was one of the first 16-bit computers made. Based on a Motorola 68000, the ST at the time positively stuffed the C64 and Spectrum (or did it? answers to the usual address) in terms of graphics and sound (I actually preferred C64 sound but the ST had more memory for sampled music e.g.. Captain Blood/Starglider). The original ST had Half a megabyte of memory and an external 360K (single sided!) floppy but was soon replaced with an internal 720k drive. It was also the owner of the worst placed joystick ports in history (under the keyboard in a little recess in the moulding!).
PacifiST for the PC attempts to emulate this beast which is still in use today quite a bit. The emulator itself is getting on a bit (last update 1998!) but it is the best one. As with most of the older emulators, this is DOS based (no complaints here though). Real ST disks can be used but it isn't recommended. Instead, as with the Amiga emulators, disk images are used. Starting the emulator is a little bit fiddly but the same each time so you get used to it. The procedure is:-
Once started the emulator behaves almost identically to a real ST. There are three ways of drawing the ST screen.
This is very handy as there are three chances for the game to work. Well, show up anyway!. The speed sacrifice on all the modes isn't too bad though even on a 486. Yes, that’s right, PacifiST works well on a 486 DX4/100 (about 86% ST speed, full when lowering frame rate to every other frame!) and you could probably get away with it on a DX2/66. This means lots of brownie points earned. There is a lack of documentation on how to use the ST either for GEM (it's OS) or things like resetting the ST (Ctrl-Brk) I would be lying a little if I said that this emulator was perfect. Random crashes, which often take Windows with it, occur at least once per session. Sometimes the emulator temporarily ruins the keyboard mapping. But then again, this is a DOS emulator. I shouldn't even be running it in Windows anyway. A nice feature that often crashes the PC totally is the MAX SPEED setting. This is brill. Outrun on the ST isn't a bad version but with MAX speed on it really flies. The music stays the same speed which is nice. I get 384% speed on my P200. God knows what a PII could do. Golly! The emulation of normal ST sound is just about perfect. Sadly though, sampled sounds are very distorted and fluctuate up and down as if being constantly retuned. This is a shame as there was some brilliant sampled music on the ST like Captain Blood and Turrican II. Speech is affected also but is understandable although it does sound like they're trying to talk while on a rollercoaster. Midi out is emulated at the expense of internal sound but there is no midi in. Joysticks/gamepads are supported well, in fact, the old ST four player adapter can be used in the parallel port if you have some real joysticks lying around. Mouse responds well as does the keyboard. Obviously, you'll only like this emulator if you liked/wanted the ST. There is one exception though. If you love(d) the Amiga and only have a fairly speedy 486 (although around six or seven years ago I'd have been stoned for blasphemy by the warring factions for saying this), you should use this emulator. A lot of the Amiga's most famous games (Turrican, Speedball II, Populous, Defender of the Crown, Gods) came out on the ST also and to be fair it doesn't do a bad job at all. Amiga emulators crawl on a low end PC so this could be your saviour. If you own or like the ST anyway, it probably already is. 7/10 The best ST emulator there is for the PC but not as good as a real ST. Very fast but Loses points for samples, timing of screen updates and compatibility. And I wish they'd update it more often. |
