Emulation Megathread

[slightlyflightyone]

Thanks to emulation, your computer, smartphone, modded console, or even television set can play video games not intended for them. Whether it’s MAME, Mednafen, mGBA, or VICE, it seems like everything can run on everything these days.

This is the place to suggest your favorite emulators, ask what options are out there to play your game of choice on your device of choice, share opinions on commercial emulation platforms like the Virtual Console and PS Classics, give your review of emulation microconsoles like the Sega Genesis Mini and Classic Editions, and show off your Retroid handheld or custom emulation build!

[Enbyeon]

I got introduced to emulation when a friend of mine gifted me a CD called "256 games on one disc!" in the early 2000s. It was full of Mega Drive and TG16 games running off of DOS-based emulators and it opened a whole new world to me. I could catch up on SO MANY games I missed as a kid!

My current go to approach for emulation on PC is using dedicated emulators for PS2 era and later systems, Duckstation for PS1 and BizHawk for most of everything else. The BizHawk approach is primarily there because it's easiest to switch between games during a stream, but I'm upgrading to a MiSTer this month (very excited for it).

Oh and since you mentioned it, I do own a NES and Mega Drive mini and while they're primarily display pieces right now, I loved playing them and thought they were an excellent package, especially the MD one.

Also, fuck RetroArch. All my homies hate RetroArch

[slightlyflightyone]

My current go to approach for emulation on PC is using dedicated emulators for PS2 era and later systems, Duckstation for PS1 and BizHawk for most of everything else. The BizHawk approach is primarily there because it's easiest to switch between games during a stream, but I'm upgrading to a MiSTer this month (very excited for it).

I love emulation on PC, but it’s shockingly good on smartphones now too. My 7-year-old Pixel 3 can even emulate PS2, GameCube, Wii, and 3DS games without a hitch.

Oh and since you mentioned it, I do own a NES and Mega Drive mini and while they're primarily display pieces right now, I loved playing them and thought they were an excellent package, especially the MD one.

if you wanna give it a go… https://modmyclassic.com/

Also, fuck RetroArch. All my homies hate RetroArch

I have such a complicated relationship with libretro. The original API was designed by a late friend of mine who has since passed away, and the duo who turned that into libretro is horribly toxic and constantly causes problems in the emudev community. That said, it is a really convenient way to port several emulators at once to a new platform with minimal hassle, and the shader chain and retroachievements integration are hard to balk at.

I definitely agree with the core sentiment of disapproval regardless.

[Enbyeon]

Yeah I don't want to take away from anyone enjoying RetroArch, and I know it's the best option for things like Retro Achievements (BizHawk's support is pretty not great), but I definitely avoid using it whenever I can for various reasons.

You know mentally I'm still completely out of the loop with some things. How is 3DS emulation on PC? I haven't ever tried it.

I also know people play games on phones and I saw someone playing Pokemon on the cover screen of a Motorola Razr, so I might look into it as well since I've never used Android emulators.

[slightlyflightyone]

You know mentally I'm still completely out of the loop with some things. How is 3DS emulation on PC? I haven't ever tried it.

You may have heard about the Yuzu emulator getting legal harassment from Nintendo? The result of that was them settling out of court instead of spending all the time and money required to fight it and risking the new pro-corpo Supreme Court overturning existing precedent that establishes emulators as clearly legal.

Well, the other project of the team behind that was a 3DS emulator called Citra and the settlement included an agreement to immediately shut down all their emulator projects and never contribute to another emulator again.

All of this is a long way of saying that 3DS emulation is great today and what used to be Citra is now Azahar. I just want to emphasize that while OpenSauce and PabloMK7 maintain it today, it’s entirely possible it wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is today without the initial work by Tropic Haze.

[JarylGaren]

I got so many Virtual Console games on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS when those were still going on, holy fuck...
the NSO stuff isn't really a suitable replacement for me, because I don't like having to pay a subscription to play those.

so two days ago, I've set up RetroDECK on my Steam Deck, and I absolutely agree with Enbyeon's take about RetroArch

Also, fuck RetroArch. All my homies hate RetroArch

I hope to do as little as possible in RetroArch's settings, because it's so needlessly convoluted and complicated. The UI is also Not Good At All.

other than that, RetroDeck's been working pretty fine for me so far, though I feel like the default controls for Wii games do need a bit of work. Or I'm just stupid, but I kinda couldn't set up the controls for Virtual Console stuff like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood within Dolphin there properly, everything was set to Turbo for some reason.
Also, does the "Swap A/B and X/Y" Option that RetroDeck has for the emulators even do anything? I swear it didn't do anything when I tried it for the Gameboy, Gameboy Color and GBA games...

[slightlyflightyone]

the NSO stuff isn't really a suitable replacement for me, because I don't like having to pay a subscription to play those.

I hear you there. I wouldn’t have it if my polycule wasn’t already on a family plan.

Also, fuck RetroArch. All my homies hate RetroArch

I hope to do as little as possible in RetroArch's settings, because it's so needlessly convoluted and complicated. The UI is also Not Good At All.

if your main problem with libretro is the RetroArch UI, maybe Ludo is more your speed?

it won’t run anything that requires GPU acceleration (so no GameCube/Wii), but it’s supposed to be way more plug & play than RetroArch while otherwise using most of the same libretro cores on the backend :3

[NovaSquirrel]

I use https://mesen.ca/ for any console that it supports (which includes NES, SNES (including Super Game Boy), Game Boy (and Color), GBA, ColecoVision, SG-1000, Sega Master System, Game Gear, WonderSwan (and Color), PC Engine. Genesis support is in development.) It's very strongly focused around cycle accuracy while trying to stay fast if possible, and the author actually actively works with people doing new research on consoles to incorporate new findings. It has very thorough debugging tools, and on Super Game Boy you can even debug the SNES and Game Boy portions separately.

I think emulation is at the point where further increases in accuracy mean a lot more for people developing new software than for just playing the licensed game library, but if you want/need the cutting edge of accuracy, for many consoles it's right here.

There's also features like rewind, scripting, HD packs for NES games, and the history viewer which lets you view your recent gameplay on a timeline and save inputs and savestates from it to let you play back that bit of gameplay later on, or just go back to a point you were previously at like on Switch.

[Loosf]

Are emulation devices ok to discuss in this thread? Because if so

I first heard of them a couple of years ago when I saw posts talking about the retroid pocket 2

I thought that it looked really cool and fun
So then I decided to get one when one could run ps2 and gamecube games under 200 bucks.

Last year that happened! I got me an anbernic rg556
It can run ps2! It can run gamecube! Hell, configured it can run fzero gx at 2x upscale pretty decently. Of course, the PAL version but still! Basically full speed.


So now I have two dedicated emulation handhelds, the rg556, and an r36s. I am playing fft psp on the 556, and the r36s is mainly used for gameboy tetris OR soul calibur dreamcast

[slightlyflightyone]

Are emulation devices ok to discuss in this thread?

You’re using them to emulate, so this seems like a fitting place to talk about them, yeah c:

[JarylGaren]

Last year that happened! I got me an anbernic rg556
It can run ps2! It can run gamecube! Hell, configured it can run fzero gx at 2x upscale pretty decently. Of course, the PAL version but still! Basically full speed.

to be fair, the PAL version of F-Zero GX is one of those games that let you choose between 50 or 60 Hz upon starting the game, so I don't think there would be a downside of playing the PAL version there.

We in Europe did have it kinda rough, where we had 50 Hz TVs, so games a lot of the time were slightly slower for us compared to american and japanese versions. 60 Hz Options were starting to become a thing with GameCube and PS2 here, iirc, and by the PS3 and Wii time, flatscreen TVs with support for 60 Hz were starting to become ubiquitous, so games in Europe had complete parity with other regions in that regard from then on

[Loosf]

Last year that happened! I got me an anbernic rg556
It can run ps2! It can run gamecube! Hell, configured it can run fzero gx at 2x upscale pretty decently. Of course, the PAL version but still! Basically full speed.

to be fair, the PAL version of F-Zero GX is one of those games that let you choose between 50 or 60 Hz upon starting the game, so I don't think there would be a downside of playing the PAL version there.

We in Europe did have it kinda rough, where we had 50 Hz TVs, so games a lot of the time were slightly slower for us compared to american and japanese versions. 60 Hz Options were starting to become a thing with GameCube and PS2 here, iirc, and by the PS3 and Wii time, flatscreen TVs with support for 60 Hz were starting to become ubiquitous, so games in Europe had complete parity with other regions in that regard from then on

Yeah I run it on 50HZ mode, widescreen, 2x upscale.

The only issue is that the 556 has crummy analog stick handling. It has really bad cardinal snapping so the game is even harder lol

[JarylGaren]

Yeah I run it on 50HZ mode, widescreen, 2x upscale.

The only issue is that the 556 has crummy analog stick handling. It has really bad cardinal snapping so the game is even harder lol
fzero.jpg

Oooooh, gotcha!
Why are you running it in 50 Hz mode, though? Does the thing's screen only go up to 50?

[Beancatte]

I have a huge soft spot for extremely early DOS era emulators, so im going to subject everyone here to how early versions of Genecyst sounded:

[slightlyflightyone]

I have a huge soft spot for extremely early DOS era emulators

the speedup hacks were always as hilarious as the names of the emulators were unfortunate Cx

[Loosf]

Yeah I run it on 50HZ mode, widescreen, 2x upscale.

The only issue is that the 556 has crummy analog stick handling. It has really bad cardinal snapping so the game is even harder lol
fzero.jpg

Oooooh, gotcha!
Why are you running it in 50 Hz mode, though? Does the thing's screen only go up to 50?

Nah the screen is a 60Hz OLED

Just that getting to stable 50Hz is much easier for the SOC for GX than the stable 60. It **cannot** do stable 60.

I think the next iteration of the device, the rg557 CAN handle NTSC Fzero GX but that was a year later and like 100bux more expensive.

Anyways, over 200 bucks does not fit my price point requirement

[JarylGaren]

Yeah I run it on 50HZ mode, widescreen, 2x upscale.

The only issue is that the 556 has crummy analog stick handling. It has really bad cardinal snapping so the game is even harder lol
fzero.jpg

Oooooh, gotcha!
Why are you running it in 50 Hz mode, though? Does the thing's screen only go up to 50?

Nah the screen is a 60Hz OLED

Just that getting to stable 50Hz is much easier for the SOC for GX than the stable 60. It **cannot** do stable 60.

I think the next iteration of the device, the rg557 CAN handle NTSC Fzero GX but that was a year later and like 100bux more expensive.

Anyways, over 200 bucks does not fit my price point requirement

Ah, gotcha!
Yeah, that's fair! And F-Zero GX is one of those games where you *really* want to have a stable performance, because it gets *very* spicy. Story Mode in particular is infamous for being really difficult

[Loosf]

Oooooh, gotcha!
Why are you running it in 50 Hz mode, though? Does the thing's screen only go up to 50?

Nah the screen is a 60Hz OLED

Just that getting to stable 50Hz is much easier for the SOC for GX than the stable 60. It **cannot** do stable 60.

I think the next iteration of the device, the rg557 CAN handle NTSC Fzero GX but that was a year later and like 100bux more expensive.

Anyways, over 200 bucks does not fit my price point requirement

Ah, gotcha!
Yeah, that's fair! And F-Zero GX is one of those games where you *really* want to have a stable performance, because it gets *very* spicy. Story Mode in particular is infamous for being really difficult

Yeah I do not think I am gonna touch story mode with THIS device because of the aforementioned stick issues.
They are hall effect sticks! Just that the software handling them sucks.

Yeah I could install a custom firmware/Gamma OS that fixes them, but I would lose all configs and whatnot, so I will not.

[JarylGaren]

Yeah I do not think I am gonna touch story mode with THIS device because of the aforementioned stick issues.
They are hall effect sticks! Just that the software handling them sucks.

Yeah I could install a custom firmware/Gamma OS that fixes them, but I would lose all configs and whatnot, so I will not.

Fair enough!


so I've been setting up RETROdeck on my Steam Deck these last couple of days, and I'm kinda starting to believe that Nintendo also partially made these weirdass controllers and controls for Wii and Wii U games to make emulating those games way more of a hassle. Because even with RETROdeck, playing games from both systems isn't really as plug and play as I would've preferred. for Wii stuff, it reads inputs for both the Gamecube controller and a Wiimote+Nunchuck at the same time because that's just how Dolphin sets it up, and the Wii U has the whole entire Gamepad nonsense going on too, where shit is split up between both screens at times.
I know if I hop into the RETROdeck options I could probably fix that, but I'm absolutely not feeling up to that at the moment xD

at least stuff like Gamecube, PS1 and PS2 is piss-easy to set up.

[Ja'aran]

Here's some of the ones I've used:

NES - FCEUX 2.2.0
GB - bgb
SNES - SNES9x 1.53
GBA - VBA 1.7.2
N64 - Project64 v1.7
NGC - Dolphin
DS - DeSmuME 0.9.13
3DS - Citra Nightly