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Amstrad CPC emulators

April 09, 2021 — Nico Cartron

Follow-up of my first article about the Amstrad CPC 6128: this time, we're looking at the top CPC emulators: how they compare and what you can do with them :)

The Method

If you look around on the Internet, you'll see that there are really maaaaany emulators available for the Amstrad CPC family.
Now, a lot of them are not maintained anymore, so when I looked at options, I decided to set a list of "must have" features.

The short-listed emulators must:

  • run on at least Linux or MacOS (I don't have any Windows machine at home),
  • be maintained (meaning active development in the past 3 to 5 years),
  • provide basic features:
    • play games (obviously),
    • sound,
  • have an easy user interface.
  • and ideally be Open-source,

Shortlist

I looked at different websites to gather a list of CPC Emulators, but this one (from the Gametechwiki) and this one (from CPCWiki) are pretty complete.

Shortlist

  1. Clock Signal
  2. ZEsarUX
  3. DSP Emulator
  4. Retro Virtual Machine

Disqualified

  • Arnold - it looked great initially, as I saw it mentioned in a lot of articles and forums, but finding it for MacOS proved challenging, as the only DMG file I could find was on a forum.

Testing on MacOS

Clock Signal

Pros:

  • Super simple to use: run the app, select a ROM, and off you go!
  • Emulates other platforms (Atari ST, Atari 2600, Sega Master System, ...)

Cons:

  • Really minimalistic interface
    • Personally that doesn't bother me, as I like it and prefer this simplicity over too many icons/options.

ZEsarUX - ZX Second-Emulator And Released for UniX

Pros:

  • Supports a wide variety of systems (too many to list them all here!), such as ZX Spectrum/80/81, Amstrad CPC, and even Sega SG1000!

Cons:

  • The interface is mimicking the Sinclair one, so interacting with the system is done with the mouse and Sinclair menus, which I found not super intuitive, or at least less pleasant than other emulators:
  • I spent quite some time trying to make it work with CPC 6128 roms, but everytime I'm getting an error about rom lenght.
    I think that's because ZEsarUX supports Amstrad CPC 464 and a weird 4128, and when looking at the BASIC screen, it indeeds report 64KB and (v1), so looks like it's a modified 464?
    If you've managed to make it work, let me know and I'll update this article.

DSP Emulator

Pros:

  • Provides a .app directly

Cons:

Retro Virtual Machine

Pros:

  • Super nice UI
  • Easy to use
  • Works straight out of the box
  • Also compatible with ZX Spectrum ROMs
  • User manual available: https://www.retrovirtualmachine.org/book/usermanual/en/
  • Ability to save/load state of a game
  • Lot of options available - e.g. change screen type (CRT, Flat, ...) or Colour/Monochrome, screen curvature, ...

Cons:

  • Not open-source
  • Having more options make it slightly more complex to use initially, but there's a user guide and the UI is relatively intuitive

Testing on Linux

I did not test the 4 emulators on Linux, but rather limited myself to Clock Signal and Retro Virtual Machine.

Clock Signal

  • Where to get it: using Snap, so sudo snap install clock-signal
  • Version tested: 26 March 2021
  • Tested on: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Verdict:

  • Need to install 3 ROMs: Disk Operating Sytem, CPC 6128 Firmware, and BASIC Roms.
  • I couldn't make it work on my Ubuntu PC - it launches, I can see the window with the .dsk in the title, but nothing happens.

Retro Virtual Machine

  • Where to get it: directly from RVM website, as a .deb package
  • Version tested: v2.0 BETA-1 R7
  • Tested on: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Verdict:

  • Works well on Linux, nothing to complain about

Conclusion

Again - disclaimer: this short list is mine, meaning this conclusion will likely be different than others.
Out of the 4 emulators I've tested, only 2 worked: Clock Signal and Retro Virtual Machine.

If I were to rank them, I would pick Clock Signal first, and then Retro Virtual Machine:

  • Clock Signal is super simple to use: just load a rom and use it, and additionally it's Open Source.
  • Retro Virtual Machine has a much nicer UI and more options, but is not Open Source - it's still a super good emulator, especially if you like being able to tweak your system and save/load the state of your games.

With that, let me know on Twitter if you are using another CPC emulator, especially if you find it better than the ones I listed here!

In my next article about Amstrad CPC emulation, I'll be making a short-list of the games I most enjoyed when I was a child, and then I'll (re)test some of them as follow-up posts!

Tags: Amstrad, Geek, Emulation

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