Until I discovered ASp, ZXAM was my favourite Amiga Speccy emulator.

A lot of Spectrum games may be classed as being '128K' versions but this is different from a 128K-only game. Quite often, the 128K version is simply the 48K version without the multi-loading levels. And with some re-mixed music. which only work with the AY sound chip. ZXAM can play most (if not all) of these type of 128K games. This is one of the main reasons to use ZXAM. It still can't play true 128K games, such as RoboCop 2, St.Dragon, Rodland etc, as it's still only a 48K Spectrum emulator.

All that said, ZXAM is a fine program. The emulator package comes in a few flavours, with optimised versions for speed, Amiga other 680x0 processors or accuracy of emulation. It's refreshing to see this kind of thoughtfulness in a shareware program (I'd expect it in a commercial application).

To be honest, even using the 'slowest' version, ZXAM still runs 48K games at 100percent speed, providing your Amiga is at least a 50MHz '030 machine with the AGA chipset. This is really good for those Amiga users who haven't been able to buy a faster 680x0 processor or a PPC machine and I class this as one of ZXAM's strengths.

Controls options include several joystick interface types (Kempston, Sinclair 1 & 2, Cursor), but no keys or support for multibutton controllers. Even before the CD32 controller was released, the Amiga could handle multibutton controllers, so this feature would have been very useful. Still, it just means that you have to lean over to your keyboard to activate that smart bomb (etc).

The version I have reviewed (v2.0b) loads and saves .z80 and .sna filetypes. With saving, you can get choose a variety of sub-formats, all of which are shown on the control panel. By today's standards, it's not really that much of a big thing being able to save in PC Mirage format, but it was when ZXAM was written. Had development continued, I would have expected v3.0 (or greater) to include internal handling of .tap and possibly .tzx formats.

That's not to say that ZXAM is unable to load (or save) .tap files. You can, via the AREXX port. Handily, there's an AREXX script included with the package that performs this task for you. This means that instead of loading (or saving) via disk, you do it via the AREXX port. It may sound a bit odd, but it works reasonably well. There are also another 93 other AREXX commands for you to try out, including saving the screen as an IFF image and running a disassembler (should you need to). Ninety-three seems like quite a lot and as there were only a dozen or so in my archive ZXAM package from Aminet, I imagine that the over 70-odd are thirdparty ones.

Instead of loading .tap files like a 'real' Spectrum does, ZXAM brings the Spectrum screen to the front for an instant as a new block is loading. This is a bit surprising the first time it happens, but you get used to it. Once the emulated Spectrum has loaded enough data to allow you to access the program (or game), the Spectrum screen appears. One downside of the way ZXAM handles .tap games is that you don't really get to see the loading screen of the game. It may sound like a trivial point, but some people may like to view the loading screen. I know I do...

The alternative to having the game screen quickly flash at you when loading a .tap file is to run the emulation in a window. Like ASp and Speculator, ZXAM can be run on any public window, even RTG ones. As the program has been built for efficiency of the OS, hardware and CPU power, this is entirely possible even on AGA screens. However, on an AGA-only system, the performance suffers. To be honest, the screen size of the window is not really big enough to enjoy the Spectrum experience, so stick to the full screen version ;-)

ZXAM is a good emulator. The (very) easy way of adding MultiFace POKEs is also a bonus, for all Spec-Chums who find some games too hard. Overall, it's a solid and decent program. It's a shame development has stopped, as a 128K-compatible version would have been tops. As such, I'd recommend ZXAM to Amigans who have an '030 (or at a push '020 for BASIC programs) and who are happy playing 48K games. Otherwise, I'd go for ASp.