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Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

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aweigh

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thanks to TigerKnee for informing that isozone database was moved to retrozone.co

I made sure to grab wizardry chronicle, empire 1, empire 2, gameboy versions of empire 1 and 2 (completely different from the PC versions), and prisoner of the battles and wizardry asterisk and the ps1 remakes of wiz 1-5. oh, also the gameboy (not color) wizardry gaiden 1-3 games. I've actually never bothered to play through them.

i recommend grabbing whatever obscure shit you're not sure you'll be able to easily download when/if retrozone goes down too.

EDIT: speaking of also need to go download the Sega Saturn version of wiz 1-3 remakes, as supposedly the Saturn versions have an extra dungeon floor and I've never played that content. the gameboy color ports of Wiz 1-3 feature additional items, around 15 new items, and also feature an extra floor. I don't know whether the extra floor on any of these ports is 1 single floor added to each title or if it's one secret floor hidden inside only one of the 3 titles; i only know that such extra content exists due to reading japanese wikis.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
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YES!
thanks to TigerKnee for informing that isozone database was moved to retrozone.co

I made sure to grab wizardry chronicle, empire 1, empire 2, gameboy versions of empire 1 and 2 (completely different from the PC versions), and prisoner of the battles and wizardry asterisk and the ps1 remakes of wiz 1-5. oh, also the gameboy (not color) wizardry gaiden 1-3 games. I've actually never bothered to play through them.

i recommend grabbing whatever obscure shit you're not sure you'll be able to easily download when/if retrozone goes down too.

EDIT: speaking of also need to go download the Sega Saturn version of wiz 1-3 remakes, as supposedly the Saturn versions have an extra dungeon floor and I've never played that content. the gameboy color ports of Wiz 1-3 feature additional items, around 15 new items, and also feature an extra floor. I don't know whether the extra floor on any of these ports is 1 single floor added to each title or if it's one secret floor hidden inside only one of the 3 titles; i only know that such extra content exists due to reading japanese wikis.


Aweigh - Is there a way to for me to get the PlayStation Wizardry game that you can only get through and download from the PlayStation store thing for on a PlayStation console? I'm not buying a console for one fucking game. I have no issue paying for the game itself, so if I can play it some other way I have no issue buying a key for it online - I just have a huge issue buying a filthy console for one fucking game. We have an old PS1 and PS2, just not the newer ones. MY kids use the Xbox for new consoles.
 
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aweigh

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If you mean Wiz: Labyrinth of Lost Souls, for PS3/PSN, then you can just buy/download it off the PSN service from any working PS3 or PS4. (however this particular game isn't very good... it's a servicable Wizardry crawler, sure, but it could've been much better).

If you mean the PS1 ports of the classic scenarios then those never got a release outside of japan, even though they offer English language option in the menus. You'd have to eBay/yesAsia/etc and buy them over from Nippon to play on your (modded) PS1. In this case I would recommend simply downloading the ISO's and burning them to CD-RW and playing them on your (modded-so-it-accepts-CDR) PS1 console.

For PS2 the only Wiz game made in english was Tale of the Forsaken Land, which did get localized, so you would be able to buy it anywhere that sells PS2 games (I imagine).
 
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Any idea how to make GBA games don't look/sound like utter shit? I've never touch original hardware so dunno if that horrible, messy colour palette and awfully compressed sound are native or just connected with emulation issues. I used Visual Boy Advance emulator.

It wasn't horrible at all, most GB/GBA games look amazing for the hardware.

http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Game_Boy/Game_Boy_Color_emulators#Oversaturation

http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Game_Boy_Advance_emulators#Oversaturation

fake edit:

https://warosu.org/vr/thread/1840573

KCiv3OO.png


(edit: "real colors" is a slightly misleading name, it means the colors the emulator normally puts out on the screen, "gameboy colors" is the emulator trying to...emulate what a real gameboy would look like)

pV6wBRA.png


suxVxpa.png
 
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aweigh

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wait, so what does one do to get the good color scheme? what emu do I use for GBC games?
 
Joined
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Gambatte is the most accurate one for GB/GBC as far as I know, but VBA will do nicely as long as you fiddle with the graphics settings a little. The wiki links provide detailed instructions. (i.e., go to Options and turn desaturation off)
 

deuxhero

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chances are that many of these ROMs will reappear in their overpriced virtual market at some point.
Which hasn't been even introduced for their most recent platform, Switch (I mean their Virtual Console service), and Nintendo Switch Online subscription is going to give you only NES games at this point... There are also NES mini and SNES mini retro consoles, but I'm not sure if they can run games other than those they're supplied with. Sad, there were quite a few good old games for ps1 and ps2 and snes I wanted to play (and EmuParadise was such a convenient place to get those), fortunately there are other sites that continue to provide downloads for them. Probably should already start (should have started, long time ago) collecting roms and isos of older games for myself before it's too late.

I've read the SNES mini emulation, besides the games it comes bundled with, is hit or miss.

People could grab a fullset for 16bit era consoles, SNES one is around 3gb, not much if you consider games these days are 30gb+.

2.94 GB, including bios, unlicensed games and a few prototypes. That's not even giving it a meta-zip.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
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Like someone said this is a far problem bigger problem for future archival more than just "I can't pirate my old games anymore". If there was ever a time to get a 1TB external HDD and store them games you care about from torrents out there it's now. At least until you get to PS2 and upwards.
 

Rahdulan

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Is there still any PS2 dump torrent alive out there? There's no way I'm downloading individual games when we're talking hundreds of titles.
 
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aweigh

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thank gawd i downloaded all the wizardry roms/isos i wanted off retrozone before they too went down.

EDIT: Rahdulan i dunno about an 'archive' but i was downloading PS2 iso's a few days ago off c o o l r o m s no problem. for PSP, NDS, 3DS and PS1 and PS2 you should also try p o r t a l r o m s, they have a smaller selection of stuff for each system but all the stuff they do have is hosted on t o r r e n t s instead of being direct downloads.
 

lightbane

Arcane
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Dec 27, 2008
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And Retrozone is now dead too :negative:

Damn, Nintendo is working overtime to kill the emulation sector. :decline:
Not that they'll re-sell a fraction of those ROMs anyway, if at all.

Is there still any PS2 dump torrent alive out there? There's no way I'm downloading individual games when we're talking hundreds of titles.

I hope so, I won't have time to start saving up stuff before Friday.
 

Tse Tse Fly

Savant
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Dec 26, 2017
Messages
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And I purchased an external HDD for storing roms just two days ago... With retrozone though, it looks more like a temporary shutdown. Is there any news about what has happened?

Not that they'll re-sell a fraction of those ROMs anyway, if at all.
This is a point I've been struggling to understand myself lately... If they don't port old games for their most recent platforms, it may well be that there just isn't high demand for these games nowadays, like they aren't going to make huge profits off these games and it doesn't seem like they care about it much. If so, why wouldn't they just leave us emulator enthusiasts alone?

OR maybe they just want to make extra money from selling their retro-consoles (NES mini etc) and think emulators pose danger to their business, only then it makes some sense to me.
 
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Tse Tse Fly

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Dec 26, 2017
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LEMME EDIT THAT POST-

They want to show that they really care about retrogaming, but it's not true. What they are doing is outright vandalism, they deliberately cripple our ability to experience good old games and don't do anything to equally compensate for it.
 
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I think it's overreacting to think that these databases will be lost in time indefinitely. They can just be moved from server to server, the hardest step has already been accomplished (archival), if one particular site drops or is taken down something else will just crop up awhile later, indefinitely.

Don't buy into this doomsday shit. However, emuparadise was very convenient (mainly because speeds were very quick), not gonna lie.
 
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aweigh

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of course these type of sites won't go away, but it is problematic for the niche-within-a-niche ones like tokugawa forums (they're not a rom site but rather a specialty forum concerning rare japanese products in which SOMETIMES roms float around) can or may become scared enough to go down or lock out discussion/trade.
 
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thank gawd i downloaded all the wizardry roms/isos i wanted off retrozone before they too went down.

EDIT: Rahdulan i dunno about an 'archive' but i was downloading PS2 iso's a few days ago off c o o l r o m s no problem. for PSP, NDS, 3DS and PS1 and PS2 you should also try p o r t a l r o m s, they have a smaller selection of stuff for each system but all the stuff they do have is hosted on t o r r e n t s instead of being direct downloads.
r o m h u s t l e r is worth a try too
 
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aweigh

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Oh, that seems a good site. Sadly they don't have windows PC native games.
 

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