“Vinegar” is supposed to emulate older arcade games. It's supposed to give the experience of a classic arcade. It doesn't.

Overall, the games it comes with have graphics ranging from very bad to very good. The games are also very similar to their classic counterparts. So why was I dissapointed?

The controls.

I was so happy to see that a “Double Dragon” clone had been made, called “Single Dragon”. When I started it up, I saw that the readme stated that the controls were (in a non square-like pattern) numbers and the plus sign. These controls hindered gameplay so much that it was unplayable. “Double Dragon” was not the only one. Many of the controls made gameplay confusing and you had to constantly look at the keys you are pressing instead of the screen.

Stability is less than perfect, (crashed within ten minutes upon exiting); the graphics are terrible in most games; the controls make it unplayable, and “Vinegar” makes two large programs that I think have to reside in RAM for it to work. (it wasn't explained in the readme).

Graphics: 1/10 - 9/10 Some good, some bad. “Vinegar” itself is a shell-like program, so the graphics are good enough.

Speed: 11/10 The thing about “Vinegar” I do like it its ability to change the speed ever so slightly, or dramatically.

Size: 4/10 5500 bites, so when the shell it is run out of unarchives it, you may only have 16,000 bites of RAM to run programs within “Vinegar”.

Controls: -8/10 terrible

A step into emulation on the calculator, "Vinegar" is simply astounding.

Visuals: 9/10
The menu is visually appealing, yet still very quick. The in-game graphics are exactly as they were on the CHIP-8. The one visual problem is the SCHIP graphics. Because of the wider S-CHIP screen, the sprites must be "squashed" to fit the 83/83+/84+ screen, leading to missing pixels and sometimes a crashing ROM.

Controls: 9/10
The controls are a 4x4 grid of buttons on the calculator, which may be difficult to get used to at first. The grid makes it very easy to play two-player games, and the Quick-save and Quick-load features work wonderfully. Each ROM has a different set of controls, so some sort of on-calc key definition would make it perfect.

Speed: 10/10!
Vinegar includes one of the most useful settings in the history of emulators - frame skip! With frame skip enabled, as many games need it, the speed is tremendous. Even games with sound will run full speed.

Sound: 9/10
Although the emulated sound is really only one pitch, this is the first attempt to use audio and graphics together with key-input to produce a calculator game like none other thus far!

This program is incredible. The SCHIP, if you haven't read the readme, was mainly used to program games, and was used in old computers in the 90s. CHIP-8 was used in the 70s. Even though the games are old, they are still awesome. This program gives you some previously unreleased calc games, and some pretty amazing ones at that. Among these games are "Joust" and "Single Dragon" - both are great games. The CHIP-8/SCHIP converter is also included, so you can convert any programs you find into .83/.8xp games that are used through the "Vinegar" program.