Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[spekkio]

Newb-friendly list of recommended emulators + required files + other thingies.

PC gaming from the 1980-1990 era (DOS / Win 3.1)

DosBox

Official releases
Unofficial builds
Daum SVN Builds (GUI, Quicksaves, V-Sync, Direct3D & OpenglHQ Output, Glide emulation, moar peripherals, MT-32 and more).

PC gaming from the 1990-2000 era (Win9x + DirectX 7.0 + Pentium MMX + VooDoo graphics)

86box

Regular and Optimized builds

Bios pack (September 2017)

Fork of PCem. One hardware profile, supposed to be faster than original.

PCem

Official releases

Bios pack (June 2016)

Multiple hardware profiles, supposed to be slower than 86box.

Turorial for old PCem, 86box and new Pcem have slightly different UI

Commodore 64 / 128

Vice

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Commodore Amiga / CD32

WinUAE

Official releases
Unofficial builds
Bios pack - WinUAE

FS-UAE

Official releases
Bios pack - FS-UAE

Atari XL/XE

Atari800

Official releases

Altirra

Official releases

Atari ST

Hatari

Official releases
Unofficial builds

Nintendo Entertainment System

Mesen

Official releases

RA - Nestopia UE core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

RA - bsnes-hd (casual use) or RA - bsnes (most accurate) or RA - Snes9x (for rom hacks which work only on emulators) cores

Official releases & Unofficial builds

bsnes-hd is a newer fork of bsnes, released in 2019 by DerKoun, that adds HD video features, such as:
- HD Mode 7 – Rendering the rotated, scaled or pseudo perspective backgrounds at higher resolutions. This does not involve new custom imagery or upscaling algorithms. It is a higher resolution version of the process the SNES uses.
- Widescreen – Extending the scenes to the left and right, without distorting them. Works for most Mode 7 scenes, but also for some other scenes/games, after some setting tweaking.
- Some non-HD related features – Like the ability to disable background layers, sprites and window effects for screenshots for wallpapers or soft crop to zoom in, leaving maps or static art off the sides of the screen.

Some of the features of this fork are or will be included in official bsnes. The difference is that official bsnes only has slight visual improvements but with mostly perfect compatibility. bsnes-hd has more hacks that give true HD in mode 7 SNES games and widescreen in other games.

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Nintendo 64

RA - ParaLLEl 64 core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

A heavily-modified fork of Mupen64Plus, developed as a libretro core. It introduces many features and optimizations not present in mainline alongside RetroArch's general features, including Project64-style overclocking for faster frame rates, 3-point texture filtering, superior A/V sync and latency, and even an exclusive LLE Vulkan renderer based on Angrylion's pixel-perfect RDP plugin, making it a better alternative to the standalone version in some cases, especially if accuracy is the goal. ParaLLEl has a special "Super VI Mode" option which, if used, can make the visuals of N64 games look less blurry with fairly mitigated jaggies even at their native resolutions. Although, it may need a powerful GPU. It also offers native high resolution rendering, only available in integer scales of the original N64 resolution.

RA - Mupen64Plus-Next core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Mupen64Plus-Next is a N64 emulation library for the libretro API, based on Mupen64Plus

Project64

Official releases

Windows only. Old and still somehow gold.

Quality oldshit:

N64 All-in-One pack by Phantasmal

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Nintendo Gamecube / Wii

Dolphin

Official releases & Unofficial builds
Unofficial Ishiiruka builds (better speed, can be less compatible)

Primehack

Mod of Dolphin, implementing proper M+K controls for Metroid Prime - Trilogy

Official releases
Guide

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Nintendo Wii U

Cemu

Official releases

Useful things:

CemuHook (extension)
Cemu Graphic Packs (enhancement) Graphic Packs explained

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Nintendo Switch

Yuzu

Regular builds
EA builds

Ryujinx

Official releases

Grab Shared Data here

Firmware

Switch Mods (mostly 60/120 FPS and shit)

Nintendo Game Boy / Game Boy Color

RA - Gambatte core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Nintendo Game Boy Advance

RA - mGBA (the best ATM) or RA - VBA-M (still 2nd-best) cores

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Using shaders to reduce oversaturation is recommended for some games.

mGBA deals with this problem with special "Color Correction" core option.

Nintendo Dual Screen

RA - DeSmuME (the best ATM) or RA - melonDS (more experimental) cores

Official releases & Unofficial builds

DeSmuME works out of the the box. The most developed emulators for regular DS games.

melonDS can use Wifi and run DSiWare games. The latest version can now boot into the firmware and load some DSiWare through the NAND, but full "DSi mode" support for retail games is still unsupported.

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Nintendo 3DS

Citra

Official builds

Keys (equip the ring if necessary)

60 FPS patches / cheats

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Sega Master System / Game Gear / Genesis / 32X / Sega CD

RA - Genesis Plus GX core

Official releases & Unofficial builds
Sega CD Bios pack - Genesis Plus GX core

Kega Fusion

Official releases
Sega CD Bios pack - Kega Fusion

Very good and emulates 32X.

Sega Saturn

RA - Beetle Saturn core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Best one ATM.

Bios pack - Beetle Saturn core

SSF

Official builds

The oldest and second-best one.

Bios pack for older emus (SSF, Yabause)

Sega Dreamcast

DEmul

Official releases

Best one ATM.

Bios pack - DEmul

RA - Flycast core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

libretro fork of reicast. libretro collaborators, primarily flyinghead, dramatically improved Reicast in areas such as graphics, input, system clock, and Dreamcast VMU. Atomiswave and NAOMI SH-4-based arcade systems have also been added to great fanfare, along with support for MAME's popular CHD format. Even full MMU support, which is needed to run WinCE-based games such as "Armada", "Half-Life" and "SEGA Rally Championship 2", has recently been tackled through an experimental branch (anyone following Dreamcast emulation over the years understands what a tough nut this is to crack). Aside from some audio stuttering issues in games such as "Looney Toons Space Race" and "Resident Evil: Code Veronica", this is a highly compatible and accurate emulator.

Bios pack - Reicast core

NEC TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine

RA - Beetle PCE Fast core

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Bios

Sony Playstation

RA - Beetle PSX or RA-Beetle PSX HW cores

Official releases & Unofficial builds

Most accurate PSX emu ATM. Regular core is software-only, but internal resolution can be increased. HW core also has two hardware renderers (Vulkan and OpenGL).

Bios pack - Beetle PSX cores

DuckStation

Official builds

New kid on the block. Hardware (D3D11, OpenGL, Vulkan) and software rendering. Upscaling, texture filtering, and true colour (24-bit) in hardware renderers. PGXP for geometry precision and texture correction. And much more.

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Sony Playstation 2

Pcsx2

Official releases
Unofficial builds

Bios

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Improving PS2 games' graphical output via cheat codes

Sony Playstation 3

RPCS3

Official builds

Firmware

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Sony Playstation Portable

PPSSPP

Official releases
Unofficial builds

60 FPS patches list
Original Font (Use when fonts look garbled)

Sony Playstation Vita

EmuGen Wiki

No decent emu yet...

Microsoft Xbox

xemu

Official releases

The only decent one ATM.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Xenia

Unofficial builds

The only one ATM. Win10 recommended (DX12).

Tical's antediluvian computers corner

Certified oldfags only!

Halal bios packs for various systems

(Day of latest decline: 25.07.2021)

 

[spekkio]

Let me start with stating the following:

PPSSPP > Jpcsp



IMO two reasons are crucial: speed (all tested game work at ~100% speed) and quality of graphics (see below).
Of course compatibility is still the most important thingie, so I decided to give some games a go:

a) = PPSSPP 20131002 Win from http://www.emucr.com/
b) = Jpcsp 3402winx86 from http://buildbot.orphis.net/jpcsp/index.php (compilations from emuCR don't work for me - compilation-related crash at startup)

I went with default values for both emus, except x2 window size and filtering (linear for PPSSPP & anisotropic for Jpcsp). It also looks that PPSSPP uses enhanced internal resolution by default (probably that's why the screens look so much better).
Both music and videos work much better in PPSSPP as well (without using external codecs or sth).

1) Fat Princess - Fistful Of Cake (E) (was broken for a long time in Jpcsp)

a)

b) game crashes at mission start



2) Daxter (U)

a)

b) graphical errors:

3) Tekken - Dark Resurrection (U)

a)

b) graphical errors

4) Senjou no Valkyria 3 Extra Edition (J)

a)

b) GUI borked

5) Valkyria Chronicles 2 (U)

a)

b) GUI borked

6) Jeanne D'Arc (U)

a) game no longer crashes in main menu...

But units and some 2D elements are invisible...

b) works fine, except fonts (SCO posted solution to this)

7) Wipeout Pure (U)

a) too much bloom (lighting is broken?)

b) white screen when ingame (even moar bloom?)



8) Final Fantasy Tactics - The War Of The Lions (U)

a)

b) too blurry with filtering on

9) LocoRoco (E)

a) loco dudes are finally round!

Just look at these chubby motherfuckers in high res:

b) yellow dudes are still square

10) Silent Hill - Origins (U)

a) graphics are totally broken

b) works, but is unplayable due to heavy flickering and slowdowns

11) Tactics Ogre - Let Us Cling Together (U)

a) looks tight as fuck

b) right part of the screen is broken (flickering)

tl;dr

PPSSPP wins.



[/objectivejournalism]

 

[funkadelik]

Can you play Patapon?

 

[spekkio]

AFAIR it worked on older versions of PPSSPP. Will check tomorrow.

 

[Hellraiser]

Trying to play Advance Wars: Days of Ruin in DESUDESUEMU DeSmuME, running on my not that good laptop:

A (probably autistic) hot chick is found. She's probably jailbait though.

Rubinelle shells in the night.

Manboon machete rape gangs lurk after ITZ. Storyline has strong parallels with Cleveology, manboons roam world after ITZ rapin' lootin' and killin', sociopathic faction of hyperinteligent hominids plot something sinister bearing parallels to melonheads, only Captain Blakemore Brenner and his followers don't act like manboons and can resist the manipulation.

No fancy filters, just 2,5x magnification. Still experiencing major slowdown at times which is why I'll probably stop playing around chapter 10. I may continue on my more powerful desktop. Hopefully the slowdown can be solved with just raw CPU power rather than the developer optimizing his emulator.

Also playing a few SNES games lately, making use of a gamepad that has recently become available to me (I also use it for DESE DESU DEE ESSU), analog sticks are actually quite good in emulated 2D titles:

F-Zero in ZSNES with 25% scanlines and interpolation, upscaled to whatever the res in this shot is, hi-res mode 7 is on. Doesn't look all that great on screenshots (I think the only F-Zero game to look good on those is GX/AX), but it's still quite fun and feels rather fast. US NTSC version of F-Zero of course as that one ran at a higher framerate.

Super Castlevania IV on same settings, looks much prettier.

Super Metroid, pretty nice.

Biggest advantage of using 25% scanlines and interpolation over HQ, super eagle or other filters when upscaling is that text and other shapes are accurate without looking too low res. Not ideal but text doesn't look funky. It also IMO more or less matches the NTSC filter without the "fuzzyness" or "noise" of a TV screen that makes text unreadable and causing eye-strain (at least for me). I found it to be the optimal solution, close enough to what you would see on an actual TV if you had an actual SNES hooked up, while still being upscaled and not pixelated as fuck on an LCD monitor with resolution far superior to that which the SNES did output. Looks very good even on my desktop's 21 inch (or 22 inch? I forgot) widescreen LCD monitor. Of course it would be better to just use TV-out and hook up the PC to a CRT TV to get the closest to authentic visuals, but both TV-out and CRT are pretty much dead tech as of a few years ago.

Here's a comparison of ZSNES filters using Chrono Trigger, settings other than filters were unchanged, scanlines set to none in all but the interpolation+25% scanline shot:

No filters, no scanlines:

Interpolation and Scanlines 25%:

2xSai Engine:

2xSuper Sai:

NTSC filter:

Super eagle:

HQ filter:

Other than interpolation and NTSC the filters have trouble with correct representation of curved shapes. In some games it isn't noticeable, but in games that use text some fonts, menus and dialog boxes may look really funky. I had this problem with Front Mission's text which is why I originally experimented with filter settings other than HQ.

I also have Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 screenshots but they're on the desktop so I can't access them at the moment. DKC looks really fucking good since Rare pushed the SNES to the limit without using any fancy chips inside the cartridge IIRC. It's not just that everything was pre-rendered CGI, they managed to fit all those highly-detailed animated in sprites within just a few megabytes due to some fancy compression without chopping down animation frames.

 

[Athelas]

I've found that Scale is the best filter. The other ones like HQ, Sai and Eagle have too much of a smushing or blurry effect.

 

[dnf]

Does PSP emulation have good peformance with Core 2 Duo or not like the PS2 and gamecube?

 

[SCO]

It's a simpler machine, sure. Even my craptop from 2006 does it. Besides, it's all high level emulation here. Sound occasionally will not work outside of windows for now - which versions are cheating by downloading a compiled dll from sony for it; without a license - (it will soon, the reversed codec is about to be merged in ffmpeg).

On both emulators you need the official PSP fonts to play some games, so if your fonts are broken somehow, you know what to do.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

i tried locoroco but have some shitty graphic artifacts on half of my screen and tactics ogre freezes after first battle where you can command your hole team

that was always my fear with emulation. that i invest 20+hours in playing some old shit and than encounter game breaking bug or some other shit

 

[Gragt]

Heh, zsnes …

 

[SCO]

i tried locoroco but have some shitty graphic artifacts on half of my screen and tactics ogre freezes after first battle where you can command your hole team

that was always my fear with emulation. that i invest 20+hours in playing some old shit and than encounter game breaking bug or some other shit

The git version of PPSSPP has a better splines/bezier options that 'fixes' those artifacts at the cost of speed, speed baby.

You do know how to compile don't you

Anyway, playing Phantom Brave now... cute. Game has nice ideas, but movement precision/ease of use is one of the worst i've ever seen in a TJRPG. Especially since characters can jump on top of objects/enemies then need to attack and can't
edit: wtf, you're encouraged to kill neutral characters in this game apparently with no consequence whatsoever.


BTW, this is probably the last generation, except possibly NDS that will be easily emulated, all subsequent ones are DRM'd up the ass, so their proprietary hardware will not be friendly to reverse engineering.

 

[yes plz]

I've found that Scale is the best filter. The other ones like HQ, Sai and Eagle have too much of a smushing or blurry effect.

Yeah, I've never liked those filters either. I'd much rather my game look pixelated than look like someone redrew the graphics with smudgy watercolors.

Also, how's Dolphin these days? I've never been able to run most Wii games on it at high, stable speeds and my computer is fairly decent.

 

[ghostdog]

People still bother with zsnes ? snes9x is much better. Normal scaling filter is the best IMO. snes9x has up to 4x normal scaling filter, but 3x is enough for 1080p :

And if you want the old TV experience:

 

[SCO]

A retard troll at the debian maintainers 'deprecated' snes9x for zsnes even though if anything had to be deprecated it was zsnes since at least snes9x has a recent linux release that is actually ABI portable.

Result: no snes9x on official ubuntu repositories.

 

[spekkio]

Still experiencing major slowdown at times which is why I'll probably stop playing around chapter 10. I may continue on my more powerful desktop. Hopefully the slowdown can be solved with just raw CPU power rather than the developer optimizing his emulator..

You have dynamic recompiler enabled?

The git version of PPSSPP has a better splines/bezier options that 'fixes' those artifacts at the cost of speed, speed baby.
You do know how to compile don't you?

http://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/index.php

BTW, this is probably the last generation, except possibly NDS that will be easily emulated, all subsequent ones are DRM'd up the ass...

You mean 3DS? And how about WiiU (not that it has any games) - is it really that different when comapred to itz predecessor?

 

[Lerk]

My GF wants to play The Last of Us and since my PS3 got bricked last year, I really don't want to shell out for another (especially since nextgen is right around the corner)

You bros know is there a functional PS3 emu out there that would allow this game to be played? Last time I dicked around with emus was to get Zelda OoT and MM running, which was like...10 years ago, maybe

 

[spekkio]

You bros know is there a functional PS3 emu out there.

No, and chances of an PS3 emu appearing in the near future are close to 0. Various reasons, but mostly what SCO wrote above.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

You bros know is there a functional PS3 emu

it will come out short after first xbox emulator

 

[Lerk]

Figures, but cheers for the info.

 

[spekkio]

Pata Pata Pata?

Pon.

Works great on PPSSPP, including sound during FMVs (missing on Jpcsp):

On Jpcsp the game works fine as well:

 

[Hellraiser]

You have dynamic recompiler enabled?

I tried both with on and off, it's an issue either with the CPU (Intel Core i3-380M) or Intel's crap integrated graphics.

Anyway yes, I know Snes9x has better compatibility. Yes I know it has better sound. Yes I know it emulates the SNES more accurately. Issue is I get weird shit on my laptop if I even dare to press ESC to bring up the top menu once, probably due to lol intel integrated graphics:

Screen goes black at first, I move a bit and most of the image reappears but a lot of the stuff is missing as seen above. I'm guessing all the elements that don't change frame or position and thus are not redrawn. So don't hate on me for using zsnes bros, it's intel's fault.

Also I think interpolation+25% scanlines in zsnes looks better than TV mode+scanlines in snes9x. Probably because I can't change the ammount of scanlines, but that could just be my brain and eyes failing me.

 

[Krraloth]

PSP emulator looks good but I sadly don't meet the reqs.

 

[spekkio]

^
Really? That's too bad, Soldier.
I don't think there are steep.

My specs:

 

[Krraloth]

Eh commander, the laptop has not dedicated video card and not even an HD to boot.
Need to get a better laptop but I need money but I need a job.

edit let's try again:

My laptop has a shitty integrated video card. Awesome to play old classics, but I can emulate at best a psx.

 

[SCO]

Lololol, buy a android phone, PPSSPP works there.