Console Emulation Thread

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Lately I've been spending most of my gameplay time on various console emulators, playing games that I either missed or enjoying the effects of high resolution/texture packs for games I played in the past. I don't see much discussion about emulators here, so I figured it would be nice to have a thread where people can discuss various emulators, texture packs, romhacks, etc. and ask questions.

 

I'm about to start Majora's Mask 3D on Citra with an HD texture pack/controller-friendly HUD and a re-orchestrated music mod. I think it's really cool that you can use gyroscopic controls for aiming. First I'm going to finish Ocarina of Time via Ship of Harkinian, what an amazing port that is. Every feature you could ever ask for is there. What are some cool emulation-related things you guys have been doing? Obviously, don't share links to illegal files.

Edited October 31, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[OliveTree]

I meticulously set up a comfortable single controller setup for the 3ds remake of Samus Returns with an xbox controller (three of the four directions on the right analog stick corresponded to three tappable buttons on the touchscreen, and clicking the stick tapped the middle (turned samus into a ball)). Then I set up a custom visual set up where the bottom screen showed on the main screen roughly where the automap would normally appear (very small =v=). It's my preferred way to play that game now. If I ever find a way to recreate the visual set up for the steam deck's resolution I might migrate to playing it on there (where i emulate most things these days)

Edited October 31, 2023 by OliveTree

[LexiMax]

Funny that you bring this up.  I actually found out a month or two ago that there is a cottage industry of handhelds made in China that are basically designed for playing emulators.

 

 

After doing some research, I actually bought a Retroid Pocket 3+ and filled it with my own ROM collection, and from there started to catch up on playing various Mystery Dungeon games like Shiren the Wanderer.  And yes, it runs Doom.  The official Bethesda port made for Android, in fact.

Edited October 31, 2023 by LexiMax

[vyruss]

I love emulation.

Spoiler

 

 

Besides being a million times better than having a billion little logic probes everywhere on some no longer manufactured piece of hardware, it is just a ton more convenient than having to have a bunch of cartridges laying around.  I remember getting into emulation back in around 1998 or 1999, playing Megaman 4 on a 486.  Good times.

[Lila Feuer]

My BF is hugely into emulation since about 2019 or 2020, it's how I got to revisit a buncha classics and play stuff I missed out on, but he loves and breathes it, more so than modern games but I can't blame him lol. He was heavily into RetroArch earlier on but since switched to ares in the past year or so.

[Guff dotD]

Using Mac Emulators on my laptop when I'm away from my desktop PC: OpenEmu is a neat little package that organizes my roms, and I mostly use it for NES, SNES, and Game Boy roms. So far, I haven't found any downsides. I don't really Emulate 3D games that much.

[OniriA]

Duckstation has been great for me in rekindling with some PS1 childhood classics.

 

[Metal_Slayer]

Nah, I prefer to use original hardware, unless there's a native port, but then it's not considered emulation. It's not like I own every single console though, I only own the ones that I like and have something that emulation doesn't do well, like PSG and FM synthesis, complex controllers setups or responsive controls.

The 3DS, the N64 and the PS2 have very unique characteristics for me, the double screen scheme is the whole point of the console, it improves games by letting you interact with the menu without the need to pause. And both the PS2 and the N64 have pressure sensitive buttons and extremely precise analog sticks, more precise than the PS5 controller even.

With even older consoles I particularly like the audio, which is hard to replicate, in the Doom Unity port they could have used an emulated SC-55 for the music, but instead they recorded it directly from the original, and it makes it sound much better than a lot of source ports.

[Nikku4211]

I use emulation as a fast way to test the games I develop but it does make me miss real hardware.

 

I tend to only prefer the most accurate emulators out there, like Mesen for NES, Ares for SNES, Sameboy for Game Boy(and GBC), mGBA for Game Boy Advance, BlastEm for Mega Drive, Emulicious for Master System(and Game Gear). Sadly, some of these accurate emulators have poor or no debuggers, so sometimes I'm stuck with debugging my games on inaccurate emulators, which rubs me the wrong way.

[taufan99]

I first got into emulation way back in 2010, and that's also how I got into DOOM in the first place.

 

Lately I've been into emulation of pocket computers/programmable calculators, such as the Sharp PC-G850 and Casio FX-870P/VX-4. Most, if not all the relevant resources are in Japanese, but they're worth checking out and tinkering with. (Make sure to check out Inufuto's stuff if you're into really old, obscure Z80-based consoles/computers and love some arcadey original titles as well!)

[Johnny B. Getgoode (The Guy)]

I generally play on actual hardware, but I also emulate every now and then. As long as I get to play cool games, I really don't care, :P 

One thing I personally like is hardware carts with ROMs that you can load into a console. I have a GBC flash cart with the Crystal Clear Pokemon ROMhack written to it, and I also have a multi game cart for DS that takes an SD card and has a bunch of DS ROMS and emulators for other consoles. Ever played Shining Force for the Genesis on a 3DS? It's lit, man. 

 

[Fonze]

Emulation is great to be able to casually play old games. It makes them more accessible to all and eliminates the stress of finding working hardware. It is also a great way to enjoy randomizers for old games that give a ton of replayability to them. Can def recommend a link to the past rando for zelda fans, or really any of the other zelda randos. Basically all, if not flat out all, have them at this point and they have a lot of settings to tailor the experience to your desired difficulty level, map/logic tracker tools to help find what areas you can check with your current load out, and spoiler logs for when you've otherwise given up or feel stumped. Lotta accessibility options available. I know many of the pokemon games have randos at this point too, as well as many other games.

[DNSKILL5]

I use everdrives or equivalent on all of my original cart-based hardware with a CRT tv. I used to be a collector but when you get older and find other hobbies you have to decide what to take up all your space with, and game cartridges aren’t one of those things for me personally. 

Edited October 31, 2023 by DNSKILL5

[banjiepixel]

I am pretty big emulation enthusiast, especially on dedicated hardware instead of just running emulator on my everyday pc. My first dedicated hardware for emulation was Raspberry Pi 3 with RetroPie that was able to handle PS1 and pretty much anything lighter. Couple years ago I upgraded to old Dell Optiplex so I was able to also play N64 and Dreamcast. I am pretty heavily focused on arcade emulation because I play mostly arcade ports on consoles anyway.

 

I do have a collection of older consoles but trying to hook them up to modern tv just isn't worth the time or money for me. It is also nice that one device can play some many different consoles and have so many games without taking extra space. There is also the huge selection of controllers that I can use, including those that need an adapter.

[OpenRift]

While not a console, I tried at one point to get into Commodore Amiga emulation. Like, I got stuff to work thanks to the launcher that lets you do stuff easily, but I still don't know how to launch games via the command line, because I wanna make bat files so I can launch games through GOG Galaxy. What further complicates things is that certain games are best played on certain Amgiga models/roms (A500, A1000, A600, A1200, etc.), and it just feels harder to manage compared to DOSBox. Though that's probably just because I've had a LOT more experience with DOSBox than FS-UAE. Still, great games on the Amiga.

 

As for consoles, I'd been playing around with Mednafen for Playstation (and Powerslave on Saturn) stuff when I realized that you could play the PSX version of Quake II with a mouse. So I've been playing that recently, along with Alien Resurrection.

 

Also shoutout to simple64, probably the best and most faithful N64 emulator out there right now.

[Devalaous]

I have Mesen for NES/SNES/TG16/GB, Duckstation for PS1, PCSX2 for PS2, PPSSPP for PSP, Dolphin for GC and Wii, mGBA for GBA, melonDS for DS, Citra for 3DS, and a couple of barebones or defunct emulators for N64 and Sega stuff. My girlfriend on the otherhand is a massive hardware collector, and has an impossibly huge collection of every system known to man. We, uh, conflict a bit there, but we both love retro games to death, just differing in the means to play them.

 

For me, the main draw is that my saves are futureproof on computer, and can be played with my favourite type of controller, with all kinds of enhancements if needed, like fastforwarding, CRT filters, savestates, and in some cases, you can even link up to this one site and get achievements for classic games if your into that kind of thing (PS1 Doom and Final Doom have complete sets on Duckstation for example)

 

The key thing for me with emulators though, is being user friendly. Xenia is ass for that, and there is no modern Megadrive/Master System/Gamegear emulator that I know of thats close to how userfriendly Kega Fusion was. N64 is also in a bad place last I knew, with the only accurate emulator I know of having rudimentary half-broken UI stuff. Emulators like Duckstation, Dolphin and PCSX2 are the gold standard for UIs, wish more emulators took an approach like those

[TasAcri]

I'm into emulation since 1999.

 

My latest ongoing project is the "perfect couch setup" which is basically a big 80+ systems setup made by me from scratch, starting from Channel-F up to the Gamecube/PS2, using a nice fronted similar to Batocera/Retrobat, along with a few secondary frontends for desktop usage.

 

The list of games is what i consider a "full, curated library". Every single game must have all it's assets (snapshot/video/box-art). No gaps allowed. If some assets for some obscure games don't exist, i make my own. The whole setup must be fully operated via a gamepad so i mostly use RetroArch except for a handful of systems. All cores/emulators must be the most accurate available. Everything is setup for the lowest input lag possible. Each system must have the best screen/CRT/handheld shader tailor-made for it. And if i use a 16:9 screen, each one has it's own themed bezel.

 

The whole project must be 100% portable and easy to backup. Copy the whole thing to a 6TB external HDD, change the drive letter for the correct paths and play without changing or re-configuring anything. Which i have achieved.

 

It took me a couple of years so far but it's 90% complete.

 

 

2 hours ago, Devalaous said:

N64 is also in a bad place last I knew, with the only accurate emulator I know of having rudimentary half-broken UI stuff.

 

Which emulator are you using?

 

The most accurate one atm is Ares. It uses an original core and for graphics it uses Parallel RDP, which means the graphics are pretty much perfect. It's not complete, but i think it's 90% there. It's the only emulator accurate enough to play most N64 game at the correct speed. And the UI is fine and very easy to use, even though Ares is a multi-system emulator with more system cores.

 

You could also use Simple 64. It's based on Mupen (and also uses Parallel RDP for perfect graphics) but the author tries to fix timing issues so it's more accurate. It's name also suggests how simple it is to use, not much configuration is required.

 

[Lippeth]

I don't have a tv or couch and have no plans to buy them, so emulation on my computer has replaced all console gaming for me, and though I've spent years hand selecting individual roms and isos that I want to play, and staying up to date with a varied collection of emulators, the convenience, variety and flexibility of Retroarch, No-Intro romsets and RomCenter have replaced almost all of it, save for special cases, or emulators like PCSX2, RPCS3, Xenia, etc .

 

Aside from the convenience of having almost everything in one front end, the crt shaders are a big part of why I like Retroarch so much. I like trying new presets that people make and tweaking them is really fun as well.

 

I have a usb converter for virtually all controllers and still have all my old controllers so between those and a modern XBox controller it feels like there's no game I can't play (I'm suddenly thinking about how my Wii controller would work with an emulator on my computer, something I now want to look into).

 

One of the best controllers I've bought for Sega emulation in recent years is a Retrobit Sega Saturn wireless controller, I always had a hard time feeling comfortable with the six button Genesis controller and the XBox and Nintendo button layouts seem to always need to be customized per game, but the Retrobit simplifies it and makes it much more fun for me.

 

A computer illiterate friend of mine sent me a SNES mini so I could add games, and I had a lot of fun using Hakchi with it and getting it all set up for him.

 

I'm not exactly sure if this constitutes emulation or not (decompilation?), but the Perfect Dark pc port currently being developed is excellent.

[Panzermann11]

I don't have a single console, so like Lippeth, emulation has always been my go-to choice for playing console games. I've been doing this kind of stuff since circa 2013. Back then, I had crappy PCs that could run PC ports of PS2-era games like San Andreas, but not in PCSX2 in a reasonable frame rate.

 

Even way more back, emulators for 7th generation consoles like Xenia and RPCS3 and Citra were virtually non-existent. I used to stumble across fake emulators on YouTube for Xbox 360, PS3 and 3DS that required me to download BIOS from some sketchy site that required me to fill out a survey that's impossible to complete.

 

I even barely noticed the warning signs such as the UI for these "emulators" being the same, their names being generic ([Console] Emulator, no unique names) and the dislikes and comments, saying things like "It worked! The dislike button worked!".

Edited November 8, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Devalaous]

19 hours ago, TasAcri said:

Which emulator are you using?

 

You could also use Simple 64.

 

I already was using Simple64 (albeit a version thats pretty out of date), its currently a bit too basic, I recall being frustrated with a lot of it while trying to get Pokemon Stadium working. Its certainly a lot better than Project 64 though. Thankfully N64 is low down on my emulation priority, the nightmarish controller is ALWAYS a pain to rebind to Xbox/PS4 style controllers, and almost all the games on the system looked terrible to me (I hate, HATE texture filtering, and the N64 was ALL about the filtering), plus I never had access to one as a kid so there's not very much nostalgia going on. Hopefully it grows into a more userfriendly thing thats closer to my tastes along the way.

 

I also have Xemu and RPCS3 installed, which are 'alright', too bad that theres literally nothing exclusive on the Xbox to my tastes though. I only actually have it installed for research on the Xbox Doom ports. The PS3 emulator is keeping my dead PS3's savefiles alive and well though, which is awesome, and I can even play Harmony of Despair again after all this time, and even psuedo-online.

[scalliano]

Emulation has been a staple of my PC gaming experience since first finding a cracked version of Bleem back in 2001 and using it to play Gran Turismo at 640x480 on my S3 ProSavage (yes, my first PC was that terrible). Since those early days, I've used emulation to explore tons of game libraries that I would never have had access to otherwise, the latest of those being the Sharp X68000 via px68k, allowing me to finally play the original version of Thunder Force II and Cho Ren Sha. 

 

I built a new rig at the beginning of this year following a cataclysmic system failure and am now enjoying the delights of Xenia and RPSC3, allowing me to bring games like WipEout HD Fury, Hard Corps Uprising and all of my 360-exclusive CAVE games over.

 

I'm also a sucker for the mini consoles and the Raspberry Pi, although for me most of the fun comes from hacking/building them. Right now I'm pining for the next major hakchi update so I can finally mod my PC Engine Mini - KMFDManiac has apparently been able to engineer his way around the lack of a reset button (previously essential for hacking the minis).

 

As an aside, the WipEout 2097-inspired announcer mod I made for BallisticNG was done with WinUAE. I spent what ended up being several hours getting Workbench set up just so I could install the speech program. Worked out in the end.

[INfront95]

I personally use Duck station for PS1 emulations, easy to manage/set up. The only hassle to get your hands on PS console bios that region compatible. Finally got to play things i missed back in the day like Soul reaver. Aaaaand now i periodically spend my time just chillin in Tony Hawk's pro skater 2.

Also been using CEMU : Wii U emulator, for the sole reason to try some Wii U games, cause no way in hell i will find and buy Wii U in current time and age.

Tried some Xbox 360 emulators with only 1 reason to replay Fable 2 cause microsoft shitstain engineers made XBOX 360 disc drive destroy your disc if you move the console from one position to another. Lost Fable 2 and Halo 3 discs this way before figuring it out.  Buuuut , turns out currently there are no Emulators that can reliably emulate Fable 2.

[mrthejoshmon]

I struggle to find myself captivated by a lot of modern offerings and have found myself really leaning back on my nostalgia for entertainment.

 

Emulators are a godsend, a lot of my old PS1 discs are giving up the ghost and replacements are either rare or scalped to kingdom come, on modern TVs the classic scart/RWY cables just aren't supported without high levels of fuckery.

 

Been playing through the first 3 Spyro titles again, the remaster is fine but the old art style is just much better, had a very goofy look to everything the remaster just loses by trying ro be too "modern morning cartoon"

 

 

They're certainly less primitive but it really loses the charm.

 

I'm also able to catch up on great classics I missed very easily.

Edited November 3, 2023 by mrthejoshmon

[Devalaous]

7 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Emulators are a godsend, a lot of my old PS1 discs are giving up the ghost

 

And if your in PAL regions, you can grab the NTSC version which usually is faster and with no awkward aspect ratios. The only downside is that saves arent compatible, if youve got a tool to read the old memory cards, but thats not usually a problem, most of us would load up an ancient save and be all '??? where am I and what was I doing 20+ years ago?'

[mrthejoshmon]

15 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

And if your in PAL regions, you can grab the NTSC version which usually is faster and with no awkward aspect ratios. The only downside is that saves arent compatible, if youve got a tool to read the old memory cards, but thats not usually a problem, most of us would load up an ancient save and be all '??? where am I and what was I doing 20+ years ago?'

Absolutely, the difference when I moved from my old PAL copies to NTSC was crazy, the size difference is also better (benefits of most NTSC titles not shipping with multiple languages on the disc over PAL's typical inclusion of English, French and Spanish).

 

-

 

Whilst we're on space I've been converting my PS1 ISO files to CHD (which I like to refer to as chuds, because funny). Saved gigabytes of space doing that and I highly recommend it. 

[Devalaous]

 

One of the cools things about Duckstation, PCSX2 and now PPSSPP: They have built-in support for user-made achievements, which can make some old games have a fresh new breath of life when you've been invested in the modern gaming scene for so long. Personally I don't go out of my way to get emulators with this kind of feature, I was just lucky enough to have them added to PCSX2 and PPSSPP officially

 

1 hour ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Absolutely, the difference when I moved from my old PAL copies to NTSC was crazy, the size difference is also better (benefits of most NTSC titles not shipping with multiple languages on the disc over PAL's typical inclusion of English, French and Spanish).

 

-

 

Whilst we're on space I've been converting my PS1 ISO files to CHD (which I like to refer to as chuds, because funny). Saved gigabytes of space doing that and I highly recommend it. 

 

I might look into that if my storage drive gets close to full, currently ive got a lot of .m3u files set up for all those multi-disc games, I feel like that might upset things there.

 

Also on the PAL-> NTSC thing, there ARE some PAL games that are technically better due to having more content or bug fixes, so its generally good to a bit of research there now and then. Its very prevalent with the PS2 especially, with stuff like Zone of the Enders 2, ICO and Final Fantasy X having much more content.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Devalaous

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

On 10/31/2023 at 12:46 AM, OliveTree said:

I meticulously set up a comfortable single controller setup for the 3ds remake of Samus Returns with an xbox controller (three of the four directions on the right analog stick corresponded to three tappable buttons on the touchscreen, and clicking the stick tapped the middle (turned samus into a ball)). Then I set up a custom visual set up where the bottom screen showed on the main screen roughly where the automap would normally appear (very small =v=). It's my preferred way to play that game now. If I ever find a way to recreate the visual set up for the steam deck's resolution I might migrate to playing it on there (where i emulate most things these days)

Thank you for sharing your setup, Metroid is one of the series I'd like to get into. I have Citra set up with the lower screen overlaid on the bottom right of the top screen, it was kind of a pain in the ass to figure it out when editing the config file.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 1:16 AM, LexiMax said:

Funny that you bring this up.  I actually found out a month or two ago that there is a cottage industry of handhelds made in China that are basically designed for playing emulators.

 

 

After doing some research, I actually bought a Retroid Pocket 3+ and filled it with my own ROM collection, and from there started to catch up on playing various Mystery Dungeon games like Shiren the Wanderer.  And yes, it runs Doom.  The official Bethesda port made for Android, in fact.

It's crazy what's out there today, especially at such a low cost. I've been wanting to get a device like that for a while because it's just really cool, but I'm not really into portable gaming these days.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 11:51 AM, OniriA said:

Duckstation has been great for me in rekindling with some PS1 childhood classics.

Duckstation is great, I remember having to use old versions of ePSXe that came bundled with adware. I always hated that emulator anyway for some reason.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 12:11 PM, Metal_Slayer said:

Nah, I prefer to use original hardware, unless there's a native port, but then it's not considered emulation. It's not like I own every single console though, I only own the ones that I like and have something that emulation doesn't do well, like PSG and FM synthesis, complex controllers setups or responsive controls.

The 3DS, the N64 and the PS2 have very unique characteristics for me, the double screen scheme is the whole point of the console, it improves games by letting you interact with the menu without the need to pause. And both the PS2 and the N64 have pressure sensitive buttons and extremely precise analog sticks, more precise than the PS5 controller even.

With even older consoles I particularly like the audio, which is hard to replicate, in the Doom Unity port they could have used an emulated SC-55 for the music, but instead they recorded it directly from the original, and it makes it sound much better than a lot of source ports.

Yeah, I'm only using Citra for Ocarina/Majora which were console games to begin with, and with the fullscreen HUD mod. The dual screen layout is fine on an emulator for those games since it's basically only used to show the minimap. I always disliked the PS2's pressure sensitive buttons, it just feels uncomfortable to me. I do think older controllers had better analog sticks. Modern Xbox and PS controllers just feel too airy and they don't snap back into place with the same kind of force. And I miss the weight of old controllers.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 3:42 PM, Fonze said:

Emulation is great to be able to casually play old games. It makes them more accessible to all and eliminates the stress of finding working hardware. It is also a great way to enjoy randomizers for old games that give a ton of replayability to them. Can def recommend a link to the past rando for zelda fans, or really any of the other zelda randos. Basically all, if not flat out all, have them at this point and they have a lot of settings to tailor the experience to your desired difficulty level, map/logic tracker tools to help find what areas you can check with your current load out, and spoiler logs for when you've otherwise given up or feel stumped. Lotta accessibility options available. I know many of the pokemon games have randos at this point too, as well as many other games.

I'm currently playing through the whole Zelda series, Ship of Harkinian is awesome and I'm looking forward to playing OoT again with randomizers (have to do Master Quest first though). How exactly do the spoiler tags work, if you don't mind me asking?

 

On 10/31/2023 at 4:07 PM, DNSKILL5 said:

I use everdrives or equivalent on all of my original cart-based hardware with a CRT tv. I used to be a collector but when you get older and find other hobbies you have to decide what to take up all your space with, and game cartridges aren’t one of those things for me personally. 

I used to have three CRT TV's I kept around for emulation, along with a whole mess of video cables and adapters. I spent more time setting everything up than I did actually playing the games, it sucked lol. Eventually I decided that a CRT shader was good enough and ditched the old TV's.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 4:35 PM, banjiepixel said:

I am pretty big emulation enthusiast, especially on dedicated hardware instead of just running emulator on my everyday pc. My first dedicated hardware for emulation was Raspberry Pi 3 with RetroPie that was able to handle PS1 and pretty much anything lighter. Couple years ago I upgraded to old Dell Optiplex so I was able to also play N64 and Dreamcast. I am pretty heavily focused on arcade emulation because I play mostly arcade ports on consoles anyway.

 

I do have a collection of older consoles but trying to hook them up to modern tv just isn't worth the time or money for me. It is also nice that one device can play some many different consoles and have so many games without taking extra space. There is also the huge selection of controllers that I can use, including those that need an adapter.

I never really bothered hooking up old consoles to anything other than a CRT, at that point I'd rather just emulate. How well does Dreamcast emulation work for you? I have no experience with that console at all.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 5:32 PM, OpenRift said:

While not a console, I tried at one point to get into Commodore Amiga emulation. Like, I got stuff to work thanks to the launcher that lets you do stuff easily, but I still don't know how to launch games via the command line, because I wanna make bat files so I can launch games through GOG Galaxy. What further complicates things is that certain games are best played on certain Amgiga models/roms (A500, A1000, A600, A1200, etc.), and it just feels harder to manage compared to DOSBox. Though that's probably just because I've had a LOT more experience with DOSBox than FS-UAE. Still, great games on the Amiga.

 

As for consoles, I'd been playing around with Mednafen for Playstation (and Powerslave on Saturn) stuff when I realized that you could play the PSX version of Quake II with a mouse. So I've been playing that recently, along with Alien Resurrection.

 

Also shoutout to simple64, probably the best and most faithful N64 emulator out there right now.

Is Saturn emulation good enough in general to get into? That's another console I've never messed with, so I never got to play any of the exclusives.

 

On 11/1/2023 at 1:57 AM, Devalaous said:

I have Mesen for NES/SNES/TG16/GB, Duckstation for PS1, PCSX2 for PS2, PPSSPP for PSP, Dolphin for GC and Wii, mGBA for GBA, melonDS for DS, Citra for 3DS, and a couple of barebones or defunct emulators for N64 and Sega stuff. My girlfriend on the otherhand is a massive hardware collector, and has an impossibly huge collection of every system known to man. We, uh, conflict a bit there, but we both love retro games to death, just differing in the means to play them.

 

For me, the main draw is that my saves are futureproof on computer, and can be played with my favourite type of controller, with all kinds of enhancements if needed, like fastforwarding, CRT filters, savestates, and in some cases, you can even link up to this one site and get achievements for classic games if your into that kind of thing (PS1 Doom and Final Doom have complete sets on Duckstation for example)

 

The key thing for me with emulators though, is being user friendly. Xenia is ass for that, and there is no modern Megadrive/Master System/Gamegear emulator that I know of thats close to how userfriendly Kega Fusion was. N64 is also in a bad place last I knew, with the only accurate emulator I know of having rudimentary half-broken UI stuff. Emulators like Duckstation, Dolphin and PCSX2 are the gold standard for UIs, wish more emulators took an approach like those

I agree completely about ease of use, I fucking hated having to go through 1000 steps in an ugly UI when I first got into emulation. It ruins the experience for me. Also, in regards to your other post, I really liked Harmony of Despair and I'd love to play it again with all the DLC. How well does it emulate, and do you think a GTX 1060 and an i7-3770 is good enough to play it?

 

 

On 11/1/2023 at 9:58 AM, Lippeth said:

I don't have a tv or couch and have no plans to buy them, so emulation on my computer has replaced all console gaming for me, and though I've spent years hand selecting individual roms and isos that I want to play, and staying up to date with a varied collection of emulators, the convenience, variety and flexibility of Retroarch, No-Intro romsets and RomCenter have replaced almost all of it, save for special cases, or emulators like PCSX2, RPCS3, Xenia, etc .

 

Aside from the convenience of having almost everything in one front end, the crt shaders are a big part of why I like Retroarch so much. I like trying new presets that people make and tweaking them is really fun as well.

 

I have a usb converter for virtually all controllers and still have all my old controllers so between those and a modern XBox controller it feels like there's no game I can't play (I'm suddenly thinking about how my Wii controller would work with an emulator on my computer, something I now want to look into).

 

One of the best controllers I've bought for Sega emulation in recent years is a Retrobit Sega Saturn wireless controller, I always had a hard time feeling comfortable with the six button Genesis controller and the XBox and Nintendo button layouts seem to always need to be customized per game, but the Retrobit simplifies it and makes it much more fun for me.

 

A computer illiterate friend of mine sent me a SNES mini so I could add games, and I had a lot of fun using Hakchi with it and getting it all set up for him.

 

I'm not exactly sure if this constitutes emulation or not (decompilation?), but the Perfect Dark pc port currently being developed is excellent.

Yeah that PD port seems really nice. I love all the N64 games being decompiled: OoT, Majora sometime in the future, Mario64, and now Perfect Dark, which I've never played.

 

23 hours ago, Panzermann11 said:

I don't have a single console, so like Lippeth, emulation has always been my go-to choice for playing console games. I've been doing this kind of stuff since circa 2013. Back then, I had crappy PCs that could run PS2-era games on PC like San Andreas, but not in PCSX2 in a reasonable frame rate.

 

Even way more back, emulators for 7th generation consoles like Xenia and RPCS3 and Citra were virtually non-existent. I used to stumble across fake emulators on YouTube for Xbox 360, PS3 and 3DS that required me to download BIOS from some sketchy site that required me to fill out a survey that's impossible to complete.

 

I even barely noticed the warning signs such as the UI for these "emulators" being the same and the dislikes and comments, saying things like "It worked! The dislike button worked!".

I can't even tell you how many viruses my computer must have caught from emulation-related shit back around 2005. Those were the days.

 

5 hours ago, scalliano said:

Emulation has been a staple of my PC gaming experience since first finding a cracked version of Bleem back in 2001 and using it to play Gran Turismo at 640x480 on my S3 ProSavage (yes, my first PC was that terrible). Since those early days, I've used emulation to explore tons of game libraries that I would never have had access to otherwise, the latest of those being the Sharp X68000 via px68k, allowing me to finally play the original version of Thunder Force II and Cho Ren Sha. 

 

I built a new rig at the beginning of this year following a cataclysmic system failure and am now enjoying the delights of Xenia and RPSC3, allowing me to bring games like WipEout HD Fury, Hard Corps Uprising and all of my 360-exclusive CAVE games over.

 

I'm also a sucker for the mini consoles and the Raspberry Pi, although for me most of the fun comes from hacking/building them. Right now I'm pining for the next major hakchi update so I can finally mod my PC Engine Mini - KMFDManiac has apparently been able to engineer his way around the lack of a reset button (previously essential for hacking the minis).

 

As an aside, the WipEout 2097-inspired announcer mod I made for BallisticNG was done with WinUAE. I spent what ended up being several hours getting Workbench set up just so I could install the speech program. Worked out in the end.

If you don't mind me asking, what are your specs and how well does Xenia and RPSC3 run on your PC? Hard Corps Uprising was an awesome game, I never got too far in it though.

 

2 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

I struggle to find myself captivated by a lot of modern offerings and have found myself really leaning back on my nostalgia for entertainment.

 

Emulators are a godsend, a lot of my old PS1 discs are giving up the ghost and replacements are either rare or scalped to kingdom come, on modern TVs the classic scart/RWY cables just aren't supported without high levels of fuckery.

 

Been playing through the first 3 Spyro titles again, the remaster is fine but the old art style is just much better, had a very goofy look to everything the remaster just loses by trying ro be too "modern morning cartoon"

 

 

They're certainly less primitive but it really loses the charm.

 

I'm also able to catch up on great classics I missed very easily.

I agree completely, although I think the Spyro remasters are some of the best. I think Crash was more accurate and translated better to HD, though. The MediEvil remake/remaster fucking sucks. MediEvil is my favorite game of all time, and the remaster is a choppy mess with an uncapped framerate fluctuating from 20-60fps, the new music sucks with no option to use the old soundtrack, the controls and combat feel nothing like the original, the gothic atmosphere was made into a Disney cartoon, the gore was removed, the new content is filler and sucks donkey dick, none of the cut content from the original was implemented, the camera sucks, the lighting sucks, they didn't even attempt to recreate the color schemes of the original levels most of the time, and they just totally ignored MediEvil 2. Fuck that shit. Supposedly a MediEvil TV series/movie is in production though. It's probably going to suck.

[OpenRift]

Just now, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Is Saturn emulation good enough in general to get into? That's another console I've never messed with, so I never got to play any of the exclusives.

Couldn't really tell you, since Powerslave is the only Saturn game I've played, and even then I haven't played much of it.

[Devalaous]

26 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I agree completely about ease of use, I fucking hated having to go through 1000 steps in an ugly UI when I first got into emulation. It ruins the experience for me. Also, in regards to your other post, I really liked Harmony of Despair and I'd love to play it again with all the DLC. How well does it emulate, and do you think a GTX 1060 and an i7-3770 is good enough to play it?

 

I have an RTX 2060 Super and i9-9900k myself, it runs well enough for me, but there is a big issue with RPCS3 having to build files for games when loaded, and with Harmony of Despair, it takes forever as it seems to build files for each DLC and character, it takes so long infact you might think its frozen, and I had to load each DLC stage and character to build the files for each before I finally got a stable game. Once its all working though, you can play splitscreen and play online with other emulator users if you know what your doing (its not very userfriendly, like always)

 

26 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

they just totally ignored MediEvil 2. Fuck that shit. Supposedly a MediEvil TV series/movie is in production though. It's probably going to suck.

 

To be fair, Medievil 2 has historically been ignored. Never added to PS1 classics, never remade, and the series was killed by it. I'm honesty shocked we got the modern remake at ALL, especially since its the SECOND time its been remade! Because it was so hard to get a hold of, it was actually my very FIRST PS1 emulated game, and its performance on Duckstation is what sold me on the emulator. It was magical seeing the texture warping fixed and the game running in 1080p. Its got a full set of acheivements too, so I have a good reason to try to 100% it, I never could on the original due to the daft idea to make healing fountains never recover.

[banjiepixel]

7 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

How well does Dreamcast emulation work for you? I have no experience with that console at all.

 

I was really surprised how it doesn't really require very beefy hardware. I use Lakka OS on old office pc from 2009 with low profile GPU from 2010 and Flycast core can run almost any Dreamcast and related Arcade game just fine. Usually if some game doesn't work, it seem to be more of an emulation issue as Flycast isn't very accuracy focused emulator. My Lakka OS setup has some minor issues with Flycast, mainly the core doesn't close itself properly (nothing a quick RetroArch reload can't fix) and some games do have some graphical glitches that I assume to be caused of the ancient GPU that my machine has, but these are specific to my setup.

 

It's kinda funny how Dreamcast works well on this hardware but Saturn doesn't. Also to me atleast, Dreamcast is the point where filesizes of games start to get too large, especially for the 120 gig SSD that my emulation machine has. My Dreamcast games are currently on external drive because of this.

 

Flycast does require a bios files but outside of that, I feel like the experience isn't too far from using Dolphin to run Gamecube games. I have not tried other Dreamcast emulators but DC emulation seems to be in very good state, to me it feels like N64 emulation still has more issues these days, atleast what comes to emulators that have RetroArch core versions.