Tortuga Cove - Your Source For Gaming and Hacking News

User Rating:  / 0

Category: Wii/WiiU

Published Date

Hits: 824

Share this post

FBZX is a ZX Spectrum emulator for FrameBuffer written by Sergio Costas (http://www.rastersoft.com/fbzx.html) and ported to Wii by Oibaf.

FBZX Wii can be found on google code at fbzx-wii.googlecode.com

The port uses SDL Wii.
Features

The main features are:

Emulates acurately the Original 48Kspectrum (both issue 2 and issue 3), the classic 128K, the Amstrad Plus 2, the Amstrad Plus 2A and the Spanish 128K. This include screen, keyboard and sound (both speaker and AY-3-8912 chip).
Screen emulation is extremely accurate, so it can emulate border effects and even attribute effects.
Supports Z80 snapshots, both loading and saving, and loading .SNA snapshots.
Supports TAP (both read and write) and TZX (only read) tape files, supporting normal speed loading and fast speed loading.
Emulates up to 2 joysticks: kempston, cursor and sinclair1 and sinclair2.
All the wiimote, nunchuck and classic controller buttons and joypad are fully configurable.
Virtual keyboard support.
Emulates the Interface I and Microdrive.
Emulates the ULAPlus
Based in a new, fully free, Z80 emulator (Z80Free).

Installation

Untar the binary release on your SD card, which gives you a structure as follows:

/fbzx-wii/fbzx
/fbzx-wii/spectrum-roms
/fbzx-wii/tapes
/fbzx-wii/snapshots
/fbzx-wii/microdrives
/fbzx-wii/scr
/apps/fbzx-wii

Put .z80 and .sna files in /fbzx-wii/snapshots or .tap and .tzx files in /fbzx-wii/tapes on your SD card.

The rom are in /fbzx-wii/spectrum-roms. Although Amstrad is the current proprietary of the copyright of the original ZX Spectrum ROMs, they have kindly given their permission for its redistribution with Spectrum emulators.
Usage

FBZX wii has 2 GUIs. One is accessible from the keyboard through the Function Keys (F1 for help) and one from the wiimote pressing the home button.

From the wiimote press 1 to select an item and 2 to escape. Press the "+" button to access the virtual keyboard.

The in-game menu allows you to insert tapes, load them and configure the display, joysticks etc. The easiest way to play a game is load a snapshot (.z80 and .sna files). You can also insert a tape file (.tap and .tzx) and then load the file in the tape menu (it simulates the command Load "").

Snapshots and scr files will be stored on the SD card.

The preferences are saved (joystick type, machine, etc.) from the main in-game menu and they are loaded on start-up.

If rumble is enabled, the wiimote rumbles each time the fire button is pressed