Emulators? Anyone play about with them?

[LHutton]

Just wondered how many people have looked at the freeware emulators out there? Some great stuff about, not just for old consoles but also old arcade games.

I've been able to amass everything from:

MAMEUI64 v0.164/MAME v0.165 - All arcade games from the '70s to mid-'90s, Missile Command to Tekken 3 (>1000 in total).
ePSXe - PS1.
PCSX2 - PS2.
Nebula - Sega Model 2 arcade emulator (Gunblade NY, Virtua Cop 1/2, Daytona USA, Sega Touring Car Championship etc.).
Supermodel - Sega Model 3 arcade emulator (LA Machine Guns, Virtua Fighter 3, Daytona USA 2 etc.).
Demul - Emulates Dreamcast and Sega Naomi/Naomi 2/Hikaru/System SP, Sammy Atomiswave, Gaelco and Cave CV1000 arcade system boards (House of the Dead 2, NASCAR Arcade, Ranger Mission, Cyber Trooper VOF etc.).

All games are free.

[Tom Servo]

Every few years I start to fiddle around with emulators and then get frustrated when I can't get things to work right. The last time I tried was getting Shenmue on a Dreamcast emulator, only to find it had a bug where it'd randomly corrupt your savegames. Maybe it's better these days.

[LHutton]

Must admit, I haven't tried saving anything on Dreamcast, only played Mortal Kombat to see if it worked but Demul is an amazing emulator, it covers 7 arcade platforms from the '00s and hundreds of games.

I've actually just been playing Crime Fighters and Vendetta on the MAME though, still good.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS-9gsS65dU


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX4Rf_DghKg

[Rare White Ape]

I love playing older Nintendo games from my childhood in 1080p widescreen. GameCube-era games look especially fantastic.

[LHutton]

This was one of my favourite arcade games from early '00s, and now it's free.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh-MUKpCY4A

[Reynard]

Every few years I start to fiddle around with emulators and then get frustrated when I can't get things to work right.

Similar experience here. However I decided recently that seeing as I still have my perfectly good Xbox (because Steel Battalion of course ;)), this winter I'm going to gut it, install bigger HDD, mod chip, XBMC and turn it into an emulator machine. :cool:

[LHutton]

Using an XBox as an emulator? So are you basically turning an XBox into a PC and then installing an emulator?

[tigeraid]

I've used NES and SNES emulators for years on PC, but always grew frustrated when trying to run PSX-or-greater emus. Not worth the hassle in my opinion. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of getting back into nostalgia gaming now, and plan to buy a few consoles anyway. There's just something nice about holding the old controller and sitting in front of the TV.

[LHutton]

For PS1 and 2, ePSXe and PCSX2 are the ones to go for. I have them working perfectly. Here's the best place for the PS2 emulator because it sets up all the plugins automatically:

http://buildbot.orphis.net/

ePSXe is far easier to setup.

[Rare White Ape]

I finally - finally - went back and finished Twilight Princess a second time.

I guess the HD remake that just came out on WiiU spurned me on to complete it, as I had progressed up to the Arbiter's Grounds almost a year ago but never went back to finish it. Getting a new laptop last year helped, because the game runs so nicely on my setup in 1080p, save for a few stuttery glitches when the emulated CPU starts to chug.

You know what's funny? I absolutely have no recollection of most of the shit in the game past the point where you find the mirror chamber, so the last week for me has been a delightful exploration of TP's end game, as if I had never seen it before. Contrast this to Ocarina of Time, I could probably play that game blindfolded because I spent dayzzzzzz playing it as a kiddo - I've got like three legit copies of it including Master Quest and a copy of it for Project 64. I've finished OoT multiple times on three different types of hardware.

Another thing might be that I originally played it in 2006 on Wii with right-handed Hyrule and never played it on Gamecube with left-handed Hyrule. This time on the Dolphin emulator I played the 'Cube version with original-style left-handed Hyrule and a PS4 controller. So good! Motion controls can go suck a dick.

Speaking of motion controls, I'm tossing up whether to buy a 2nd-hand Wii and a copy of Skyward Sword or just buy a new Wiimote and see if it can work with Bluetooth on the 'pooter. I've never played it.

But that comes after I revisit both Majora's Mask (tried twice but never finished it on N64 or GC) and The Wind Waker (finished it once, never went back) as soon as I decide which game I want to play first.

[Jason]

Installed Wii and SNES emulators on my SurfaceBook for gaming on the road :up:

Trying to figure more... Maybe MAME?

[LHutton]

MAME is awesome, it plays pretty much any arcade game up to 1995 and some after. I lost it and many others when my last PC expired. The Nebula Sega Model 2 emulator and Demul emulator are other good picks, they fill in a lot of the gaps from 1995-2005 and the latter also plays Dreamcast games.

[Rare White Ape]

I have just finished The Wind Waker for the second time in my life. Some parts of the end of the game were brutal. Like throw-your-controller hard.

To celebrate, here's a screenshot of Ganondorf with the Master Sword sticking out of his head.

https://c5.staticflickr.com/8/7291/27466709180_9f27650e8b_o.jpg

[MR2 Fan]

Found a good Killer Instinct 1&2 Arcade emulator online, super easy to use...I loved KI Arcade and it's still awesome

[Rare White Ape]

Dolphin 5.0 is out now!

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2016/06/24/dolphin-50-release/

Now it is easily the greatest emulator out there.

[tigeraid]

On a whim, I set up an old box I had lying around with the big LCD I had lying around for the man cave at the Ranch.

And then installed emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, N64 and PSX. I dunno if I'll have time to play them worth a shit, but it's a pretty cool little setup. Even found an adapter cable for my PS2 controller!

Time to see what all the fuss is about with Seiken Densetsu 3....

Dolphin sounds neat. I wonder if this old box can run that at all....

[Rare White Ape]

Any half decent GPU can do it, as long as you've got a half-decent dual core CPU running the show.

The beauty of emulators is they don't need much in the way of grunt to run them. Any slowdown is mostly down to the software itself, since it's trying to make a virtual games console inside a real PC environment.

I installed Citra (3DS emulator) a few weeks ago and... erm... 'found' some games lying around for it. It's slow as fuck, and I have an i7 with a Radeon R9 M200 and 16GB of RAM, whereas a 3DS seems to be powered by a hamster on a wheel.

[Yw-slayer]

Checking it. Given that the server is hooked up to the screen, this could be cool. I even have a spare Wii controller wand and joypad lying around (gathering dust as I bought them to use with my Android tablets, which have now been sold).

[tigeraid]

Full disclosure: the only Zelda game I've ever played, period, was Link to the Past. So I'm looking forward to trying others.

[MR2 Fan]

Full disclosure: the only Zelda game I've ever played, period, was Link to the Past. So I'm looking forward to trying others.

I played a little bit of the original Zelda, liked Zelda 2 (apparently a lot of people hated it, but I enjoyed it more than the first one) and I played A Link to the Past MANY times on 3 different systems. In fact, I just bought a wii (again) and that had that game on it, and I'm playing through it again...such a classic.

I've never played any of the newer ones either, but I want to.

[Rare White Ape]

Haha! Fun times ahead!

For those of you who are literal links to the past and have never played a newer Zelda game, you're in for a treat.

And all you need is to source yourself four games:

Zelda Collectors Edition for GameCube (includes emulated (so you're emulating within an emulator (emuception, much like this bracketing stack))) Zelda I and II, as well as Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask)
The Wind Waker (GC)
Twilight Princess (Wii or GC - I recommend GC because fuck motion controls)
Skyward Sword

That's all five 3D Zelda games so far.

Speaking of emuception, did you know that the original Goldeneye for the N64 included an experimental emulator within its code, which Rareware used to test whether or not the N64 could emulate games? This eventually became a feature in Donkey Kong 64 where you could unlock the original Donkey Kong arcade game and Jetpak from the ZX Spectrum console. Goldeneye actually has 10 games buried within, which can only be unlocked through modding the game.

And here's another one; if you know what you're doing, you can replace the files for Ocarina of Time in the Master Quest bonus disc (https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Ti me_Master_Quest) for an entirely different N64 game, since all the disc really is, is an N64 emulator running on GameCube which has two titles loaded onto it.

So.

If you get the ROM for Goldeneye, mod it to unlock the ZX Spectrum games, swap it for one of the titles in the Master Quest bonus disc, then run it in Dolphin on your PC... It's emulators all the way down.

[Rare White Ape]

So hey, here's something I have been looking at this week.

Dolphin can emulate the entire Wii system menu. The below video is pretty old, but it still works as described, except in Dolphin 5.0 you can just place the .wad files in the same directory as your games and run them from there, although apparently you still have to install each .wad file via the menu to make them work together properly; it's something I'm still trying out.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsqTChRnXjc

The ironical thing is, I have a real Wii set up and switched on so that I have a sensor bar, yet I'm using my PC connected to the TV to muck about with Wii menus. All I have to do is switch inputs on the TV and I can use an actual Wii.

[Kchrpm]

I see your emulators and I raise you the Classic NES: https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/14/nintendos-classic-mini-is-a-tiny-nes-with-30-games/

https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/dbd816c1b2b7fcd1f9ca7e0329f4b0ca/204078738/download.jpg

https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/9d3a439cd28db0ecee672488c65a879c/204078770/download+%281%29.jpg

This will be Nintendo's big holiday product since the NX won't be out until March.

[stephenb]

Damn there are some very clever people out there :up:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E

[Rare White Ape]

As it happens, Cemu struggles with Wind Waker HD on my PC, and is kinda okay with Super Mario 3D World.

It can run Twilight Princess HD just wonderfully however, which is nice because that's the least illegal WiiU game I would ever allegedly have access to. It's the most expensive amiibo I have ever bought, let me tell you.

[Yeti]

I have PSXE on my computer to play GT1/GT2, and some other games I enjoyed as a kid. Resident Evil 2, Syphon Filter, Jarrett and Labonte Stock Cars, etc.

I also have a Genesis/CD emulator to play the 1991-1994 Sanic (REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE) games when the urge strikes me.

[Rare White Ape]

So the digital version of Breath of the Wild for Wii U has been leaked, essentially stolen from the eShop servers a few days early.

http://kotaku.com/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-gets-pirated-days-b-1792802398

It boots on Cemu but doesn't get past the opening splash screens. The Cemu devs will work on it, but it will be weeks before it's anything close to running. It's nothing to get too excited about yet.

[Rare White Ape]

I was poking about on the Dolphin blog today and I found out that...

Dolphin Emu

Can

Access

The

Real

Wii

Shop

Channel

And buy real games.

Holy shit.

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/03/16/proof-of-purchase/

[animalica]

Nice. :)

This board could need a "Like" option for threads/posts/replies... ;)

[Rare White Ape]

The power of emulation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNZk4ggJkcc

Download links are in the video description on YouTube.

[Random]

Anyone have a reputable, safe source for NES/SNES ROMs that they'd like to share?

[Mr Wonder]

Emuparadise is pretty safe.

Or if you're a torrent-er search for "No-Intro" or "Cylum" romsets in the usual spots.

[Rare White Ape]

+1 for Emuparadise

I also have used http://www.portalroms.com/en without issue.

[dodint]

Had you asked a day sooner I could have gotten you started with mine.

[Random]

:toast:

[dodint]

Yeah, sorry, my NAS software remote tools is kind of rubbish.

[Rare White Ape]

Something big in the emu scene looms on the horizon.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/01/were-getting-closer-to-a-working-switch-emulator/

[Rare White Ape]

:)

https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/04/how-to-play-super-mario-64-ocarina-of-time-before-they-ban-it/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1vvuQ5kVB0

[Rare White Ape]

Xbox 360 emulation development continues apace.

I initially thought that it was un-emulatable, given that it was very securely built by Microsoft back in the day. Or was I confusing this with the original Xbox?


https://youtu.be/1qN62ts4aUQ

[sandydandy]

Last fall my son got me an emulator called Sumosys, which has over 11,000 ROMs. It was a birthday gift and is fantastic. Arcade, NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, PS1, etc.

Got the entire Marvel vs Capcom arcade series at my fingertips (except MvC2 and MvC3, which I already have on PS3 and PS4). Didn’t cost that much, I think it was $150. I’ve used emulators before but only on the computer. This one I could hook up to the TV and even connect PS3 and PS4 controllers. Which is great, cause I’m so used to wireless now.

Legal?? Obviously most likely not. I think the company got pinched, as their website and FB page have disappeared. So much for technical support if you need it, but oh well. I’ve noticed more and more of these retro emulators popping up on FB in recent months. Same price. Probably the same people doing it.

[FaultyMario]

zsnes user here.

[FaultyMario]

Damn there are some very clever people out there :up:

[video]

You mean the SEGA engineers, right?

[Rare White Ape]

This is reasonably mind blowing.

Switch is 2 years old. Mario Oddyssey is 18 months old.


https://youtu.be/n-fElYfNmYo

Bear in mind the purported “400% increase” doesn’t mean 240FPS, it just means it’s better than 15FPS.

It’s also worth noting that a new-ish PC full of i7s and 1080Tis is slightly larger than half the volume of a DVD case. It’s a good reminder of the power of skilful optimisation versus brute-force performance from a lot of hardware (and part-time emulator development).

[FaultyMario]

Bruno just asked what game I played a lot in my childhood.

Back in the early days, around here there used to be 2600s housed as arcade machines and, you know, we played the classics, Ms. Pacman, Kung-Fu Master, Moon Patrol, Beamrider... but it wasn't until my mom got me a knockoff famicom that I really got lost in one game. So I was trying to remember what its name was, and I think it's Max Warrior - Wakusei Kaigenrei, I think it was ported as Isolated Warrior... anybody know if there were palette changes between the 2 versions? It's not quite like I remember it. I'm going to ask Rob on social media, see if he knows anything.

[sandydandy]

Last fall my son got me an emulator called Sumosys, which has over 11,000 ROMs. It was a birthday gift and is fantastic. Arcade, NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, PS1, etc.

Got the entire Marvel vs Capcom arcade series at my fingertips (except MvC2 and MvC3, which I already have on PS3 and PS4). Didn’t cost that much, I think it was $150. I’ve used emulators before but only on the computer. This one I could hook up to the TV and even connect PS3 and PS4 controllers. Which is great, cause I’m so used to wireless now.

Legal?? Obviously most likely not. I think the company got pinched, as their website and FB page have disappeared. So much for technical support if you need it, but oh well. I’ve noticed more and more of these retro emulators popping up on FB in recent months. Same price. Probably the same people doing it. So I've been playing this a lot more recently. Been learning more about emulators in the past couple of months, and this one is based on a Raspberry Pi or something. Built-in Retroarch menu, which is fantastic. Was getting really pissed off with the input lag until I did some digging and learned about Run Ahead Latency, which solved the problem. Loving this, immensely.

[FaultyMario]

What was that fighting game where gems dropped out every time you punched your opponent? the bigger the combo the larger the gem?

It was pretty similar (graphics) to Rival Schools.

[FaultyMario]

Was the Southpark N64 game good?

[Rare White Ape]

I’ve never played it. I remember it was hyped quite a lot because it was developed by Iguana Entertainment, who were behind the original Turok games.

[Rare White Ape]

GUYS

The Xbox port of Goldeneye 64 is now out in the wild.

You need to install Xenia, the Xbox 360 emulator:
https://xenia.jp/download/

And the ROM files:
https://archive.org/details/007XBLA

Download and extract the .zip archive, and within Zenia look for default.xex in the folder titled 'Bean'. You'll apparently need a wired Xbox controller to play (it works for me) but if you don't have one then there are no doubt ways to fix that.

The game can be a little glitchy while it compiles shaders, but that is normal. Otherwise it feels just like the Goldeneye you remember, but with better graphics. And if you don't like the better graphics just hit the RB button to switch to normal blurry old N64 graphics.

[Zevious Zoquis]

Been playing about with them for more than a decade. When I first learned about MAME, I gave it a try and was completely confused and put it aside. Eventually though, I got to grips with how it all works and from that point on it just became something like a pure delight. I absolutely love classic arcade games and being able to play them wherever I want whenever I want is really amazing. Redream runs Dreamcast games incredibly well on my 6 year old laptop. Firing up Ferrari F355 Challenge again for the first time in 2 decades was just remarkable - it felt EXACTLY familiar. I bought a cheap Amazon Fire HD8 tablet a year ago to stream stuff and e-read while travelling and I set up Retroarch on it and the damned thing runs everything up to PS1 perfectly. Paired with a DS4 from my dead PS4, it's just the most remarkable portable gaming rig I could ever hope for. Robotron 2084 (and SMASH TV) is a dream with the twin sticks on the DS4. Neo Turfmasters is perfection anytime anywhere. Shmups? Oh yes...and for verts just rotate the tablet and you have TATE mode too. Tekken 3 at the campsite? Yup, lol. Wipeout3 also! And you know what? The original DOOM and DOOM II totally hold up to this day...those games are just a blast to play especially with the dualshock controller.

Oh, and I have this in one corner of my kitchen :D...
4168

[Yw-slayer]

Got a Miyoo Mini Plus today. Good fun. Simpler games and times!