From the same game developer who brought us the popular Cauldron Remake, comes a JavaCPC Emulator by DevilMarkus. The Amstrad CPC was a home computer popular in Europe and that came out about the same time as the Commodore 64. You can find out more about the Amstrad CPC at Wikipedia.

Note that you have to always press the reset button located under each game when changing or leaving a page to avoid sound issues.

You can also download a portable version of the Amstrad CPC emulator from the same developer. It can be downloaded here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/javacpc.

PortableApps.com has released a portable version of the DOSBox Emulator at just 1.5 MB!

Here are two places to get some DOS games for your DOSBox Emulator:

DOSGames.com

Abandonia.com

For Commodore 64 fans, there is another emulator to try out called CCS64 – make sure to download the no installer version for your USB flash drive!

Here’s a portable GameBoy emulator called Visual Boy Advance at only 1.72 MB:

Visual Boy Advance

And here’s where you can get some free (yes, they’re legal, too) GBA to play:

http://www.gameboy-advance-roms.com/free_gba_roms.htm

This isn’t a portable game (but you can bookmark this site in your portable FireFox browser!), but in case there are others out there like me who love the old arcade games the most, I thought I’d pass on this site that has about 300 classic online games from Nintendo:

updated: http://www.virtualnes.com/.

There is nothing to download; both the NES emulator and the ROMS are online. Lots of memories here and lots of games to choose from!

Emulators (programs that imitate other computer platforms) open up a whole new world of portable gaming for your flash drive. Games that I once thought I’d never be able to play again (like Aztec Challenge for the Commodore 64 which I tried to find for months on a PC platform) are all available and most are all small single files that are easy to carry around with you wherever your go! The emulators required to run them also usually require no installation.

I’ll be checking out several emulators for different platforms over the next few months with links to games for each of them. This week, we’ll start with my true love: The Commodore 64!!

I’ve tried a few C64 emulators but my favorite to date has to be VICE. One of my favorite features is that it allows you to define your keys for joystick control for both game ports 1 & 2 – very helpful when playing on a laptop in which the numeric keypad is impossible to play a game with! All you need to do is unzip the files and it’s ready to go.

Now for C64 games for your emulator: one of my favorite sites is: http://c64g.com/. This site has tons of games for various platforms as well as several emulators (including VICE). Everything is free!

Here are a few C64 games that I’ve really enjoyed in the past, to get you started (you can find them all and many more at http://c64g.com/.):

• Aztec Challenge
• GhostBusters!
• JumpMan
• Missile Command
• PacMan
• QBert
• 1942
• SpyHunter
• Mario Brothers
• Donkey Kong

Update August 23: Here’s another great source of Commodore 64 games for you: http://www.c64.com.