Author: Stone (host213-123-72-109.dialup.lineone.co.uk)
Date: 11-01-2001 18:56
Atari did actually start developing a 2600 emulator for the Jag, which is known as Virtual VCS. Only one or two prototypes exist, one of which is currently in the hands of Carl Forhan of Songbird Productions (http://songbird.atari.net). He plans to finish and optimise it at some later date (it was quite slow and lack some useful features, like collision detection).
Other than that, no emulators have afaik been considered for porting to the Jag. It could probably manage the Game Boy, but MAME would probably be pushing it. I know it was designed to be easily portable, but I doubt whether the amount of optimisation required to get it to run on the Jag would be worthwhile, especially since it would only manage the older games (NEO*GEO would be nice, but not even the DC can do that ;-) ).
So to finally answer your question: you aren't wrong, but 'only' is usually the wrong word to use when translating programs to a new system, with (for example) a completely different screen setup and so on. You'd have to re-write all the display code for a start.
The usual way to get old Atari games on the Jag is for someone to program a copy of them, which may or may not happen depending on whether there are any Jag programmers in need of a project right now. There are plenty of games in the works though, so stay tuned for more developments.
Stone
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