JSSpeccy: A ZX Spectrum Emulator in JavaScript
A little bit of Friday JavaScript-craziness for you.
Matt Wescott has created a ZX Spectrum emulator in JavaScript. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was an old-skool PC from the 80s.
Details:
- Readme file
- Run JSSpeccy online (includes 10 classic games!)
- Download JSSpeccy (644Kb)
- JSSpeccy Subversion repository
I especially like how Matt describes himself:
I’m really typecasting myself here. If there were an international “Person most likely to write a Spectrum emulator in Javascript” award, I’d have taken it for the last five years running.
If you crack this thing open, you’ll see Matt is using the Canvas tag to do some interesting things:
The rest is just creative abuse of the element, as usual… it’ll take advantage of the putImageData interface to do the pixel pushing if available (on my machine Firefox has it, Safari doesn’t) and fall back on drawing 1×1 pixel rectangles otherwise. This time I’ve thrown in Google’s ExplorerCanvas as a nod to those poor unfortunates still stuck with Internet Explorer. Incidentally, I’d be curious to know how it rates on Google Chrome (I don’t have an XP/Vista box to test on) – if the hype is true (and it implements the putImageData interface like all good up-to-date browsers should) then I’d expect it to comfortably reach 100% Spectrum speed on modest hardware.
