With home hardware finally up to the task of replicating vintage coin-ops at the full original speed, nostalgics, historians and the merely curious lapped up ports of even the dodgiest of first- and second-generation coin-ops. A whole clutch of bedroom PC programmers, though, (a breed thought long-since extinct) couldn't wait for their personal favourites to be converted, and embarked upon a remarkable philanthropic crusade to bring the games to the world.

The PC arcade emulation scene is now one of the most dynamic areas of activity in the whole world of videogames, with a new emulator springing up practically every day. Most, however, concentrate on a single game, or a small family of related ones (like the Mr Do series). Dave Spicer's Sparcade is different, using a small core program to emulate the basic generic workings of coin-op hardware, which then enables dozens of tiny driver files to run a whole range of games via copies of the original coin-op code downloaded from the genuine ROM boards.

At the moment, there's some uncertainty as to the future of the full release of Sparcade, which runs over 70 different games, but anyone can download the current public version, which plays around 20 titles, including Space Invaders, Galaxian, Phoenix, Pleiades, Pengo, Pacman, Ms Pacman, Zaxxon, Amidar, Centipede, Scramble, Lunar Rescue, Galaxy Wars, Turtles, War Of The Bugs and several official and unofficial variations on said games (eg Super Galaxian and Space Invaders Part 2). Lurking in the wings waiting for release are the likes of Bomb Jack, Tutankam, Starforce, Super Cobra, Moon Cresta, Millipede, Tron and Donkey Kong.