Many of you OS/2 game players will probably be at least remotely familiar with M.A.M.E. This is the popular cross platform Arcade Emulator that allows you to play the Arcade classics of the last 20 some years. Now Marty Amodeo, the prolific programmer who ported MAME to OS/2, has ported another emulator to our favorite operating system (that would be OS/2, kids) The name of this slick little number is Retrocade.

Installing Retrocade

First thing you need to do is click on over to the M.A.M.E. for OS/2 page click on the downloads link and get the Retrocade for OS/2 executable and to get the full experience of the emulator's interface the library of PAK files. Once you have these just unzip them into their own directory (like c:\retro) and you can start the program. (On a side-note; isn't nice not to have to run some bloated install program, reboot your system and then worry about what kinds of stuff the application did to your registry or what files it hid away in a system sub folder?)

A little tweaking

The read me for Retrocade for OS/2 says that you can put the PAK files in a sub folder of the retrocade directory but I couldn't make it work unless they were all in the same directory (c:\retro) The documentation also explains how to tell the app where to find the game ROMS (those are zip files that hold the various games; pacman.zip, you get the picture) Since I run the game from the WPS I right clicked into the program properties of retro.exe and put -romdir c:\mame\roms in the parameters field. Since I also have Mame on my system and they occasionally can both run the same ROM, I saved needless file duplication by pointing retrocade to the same folder as Mame uses.

Okay let's run the thing!

Starting retrocade displays a splash screen of a voluptuous female while Retrocade goes through its checklist. Right off you know this isn't another boring looking interface. After the checklist we come to the main menu which is drawn out to look like a portable video game system like Game Gear or NeoGeo Pocket. In one window is a list of the games that Retrocade supports and the other is a snapshot of the game. (watch the control pad push up and down while you scroll the list. Neat, huh?) The games you have available are in bright green just hit the space bar to start one.

The games

Control in the games is similar to M.A.M.E., here's a quick run down to get you started. 3 for one player coin insert 4 for 2 player coin insert, 1 for one player start, 2 for two player start. Ctrl and Alt are the primary action buttons and the arrows control movement. Hit escape to toggle back to the main Retrocade screen. One of the primary differences between Retrocade and M.A.M.E is the speed. Important portions of Retrocade were written in Assembly so they would run faster (just like the OS/2 kernel, kiddies) This allows even "newer" games like Snow Bros. Nick & Tom to run fairly smooth on my AMD K6-2 300.

In summation...

Retrocade for OS/2 is nifty little application that is still in the Alpha phase, but nevertheless runs very well. There is no joystick support as of yet, just keyboard and the sound isn't quite up to snuff on some of the games. All in all it is very much worth the download and a great way to waste countless hours in front of your OS/2 computer.

Retrocade for OS/2 by Marty Amodeo

Retrocade for OS/2 home page
Official Retrocade home page

Freeware.

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