SHALE

A Magnavox Odyssey 2 and Philips Videopac emulator with an Intel 8048 CPU and an 8244/8245 video chip. The video chip is emulated one scanline at a time, following the beam, so games that switch objects off mid-frame to reuse them, and the grid the console draws its playfields with, look as they do on real hardware.

No console ROM is needed. The BIOS is emulated at a high level instead: the routines games call were decompiled and checked against the original before being used, so the copyrighted 1 KB system ROM and its 512-byte character set are never needed and never shipped. Cartridges load as .bin or .rom, including exec-ROM titles that use a second ROM on the external bus.

Both versions of the console are supported. The NTSC Odyssey 2 and the PAL Videopac have different dot clocks and screen timings, and the region is taken from the cartridge or set by hand. Sound is band-limited and generated from the same shift register the hardware uses. The console keyboard is fully mapped, and one controller can drive both ports, which helps with the many games that only read one.

Available on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, and WebAssembly. Shale is written in plain, portable C11 with no unusual dependencies, so porting it to game consoles is straightforward. Contact us if you are interested.

Retro City Skyline

Shale in Action

Unmodified commercial games running on Shale.

K.C. Munchkin! running on Shale
K.C. Munchkin! © 1981 Philips / Magnavox
Killer Bees! running on Shale
Killer Bees! © 1983 Philips / Magnavox
Quest for the Rings running on Shale
Quest for the Rings © 1981 Philips / Magnavox
Turtles running on Shale
Turtles © 1982 Philips / Magnavox

Shale Options

Third-Party Software