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[potatohead]

Yesterday evening I enjoyed the following games with my 13 year old cousin.

By his preference, we started off with some local co-operative and competitive multiplayer in Star Wars Battlefront on his PS4, which was quite fun and the first time I played it, was happy it was so easy to set up and just start playing.

We also played classic games, thanks to emulation! I brought my capable laptop over and it gave us instant access to a full library of wonderful games through emulation (and a couple that weren't).

These are the games we enjoyed in a few hours until 1 am this morning, in order after playing Battlefront together locally.

Super Mario Kart (SNES, SNES9x)
Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES, SNES9x)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PC)
Halo: Combat Evolved (PC)
Timesplitters 2 (GameCube, Dolphin)
Goldeneye (N64, 1964 PG 60 fps)

There was tons more to play too, emulated games from all platforms and whatever games I had on my computer as well, but it was already 1 am and I was more tired than he was so that was it for the night!

In particular... oh my how hectic Timesplitters 2 can be in Arena mode and co-op, what a game

Unfortunately I could not get 2 controllers (DS4s) to work properly during the night with puNES or NEStopia for some reason, so we did not get to play Battletoads or original Contra and we just jumped to SNES.

The young ones, I shall show them the way.

So thank you, emulation. Thank you for a grea time. You're wonderful and I love you and that was a hell of a lot of fun, and we'll be doing it again in the near future, game recommendations are welcome!

 

[Jrs3000]

Emulation is great. I'm building my own collection of ROMs of the games I grew up playing so I can share them with my kid when hes old enough. I recommend toy commander, and power stone for the Dreamcast.

 

[Sapiens]

It's a shame that the only way to experience Daytona 2E is on an emulator nowadays.

Smegma should be doing a better job of preserving it's classics.

 

[butman]

Emulation is great. I'm building my own collection of ROMs of the games I grew up playing so I can share them with my kid when hes old enough. I recommend toy commander, and power stone for the Dreamcast.

This! The only way to preserve classic gaming in the future whatever purists say.

 

[JSR_Cube]

I have had more fun playing Space Taxi, M.U.L.E., Xmen vs. Street Fighter, etc. with my friends lately on my Retropie than I have on any of my modern systems.

 

[LOUD915]

I never played Terranigma before 2006 and I was the biggest fan of the SNES.

(it was never released in the USA)

Thanks to emulation, I now play through that game once a year and its one of my all-time favorite games.

I will buy it on VC if they ever release it.

 

[DarkConfidant]

It's useful at times. Not always preferable, but definitely useful.

Glad you had fun.

 

[Joey Ravn]

It's a shame that the only way to experience Daytona 2E is on an emulator nowadays.

Smegma should be doing a better job of preserving it's classics.

Am I missing something here?

 

[Sapiens]

Am I missing something here?

Source Management Errors Garners Much Anger

 

[MGrant]

Careful, OP. One day, you're just enjoying some games from your childhood with your cousin through emulation, the next you're modding an RGB-out into your NES so you can hook it up to your mid-1990s crt studio monitor that weighs a hundred pounds. You will know you're lost to the siren's call, but there'll be nothing you can do.

 

[Griss]

Recently found my tiny Gamecube Disc Holder with about 25 games inside. No Gamecube handy, so I decided to see if I could emulate them on my laptop.

Damn, I was amazed at how the visuals held up when upres'd. Plugged a DS4 into my laptop and was happily playing Double Dash, Mario Sunshine, F-Zero GX, Wave Race etc.

Was better than going back and getting the Gamecube out for sure.

 

[TriAceJP]

Just waiting on those generic but guaranteed shit posts:

'You rip those ROMs yourself?!'

And

'Emulation ruins the original intended design of playing those games on their original hardware!'

We get that out of our system? We good?

Emulation is great and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

[Sorcerer]

I remembered when I first discovered emulation and was so excited I could emulate the first Phantasy Star, at the time not available anywhere.

Then discovering these wonderful, Nes, and Snes, JRPGs, that never made it to Amercia, but were thankfully translated.
I was particularly fond of the Sailor Moon RPG for the Snes.

 

[Ultima_5]

I really need to get retro arch set up on my pc

 

[Tain]

I've used emulation slightly less these past few years since I got a dedicated old console space set up but it's hugely important and will always be so.

 

[Danneee]

Not really emulation but I had a blast (hah) playing some really great Bomberman clone we downloaded from sourceforge with my 14y/o sister the other day.

 

[DarkChronic]

I've always wanted to get into emulation, but I don't know where to start. Seems like it's not allowed to be discussed anywhere and all websites are super shady.

 

[RayearthRob]

I remembered when I first discovered emulation and was so excited I could emulate the first Phantasy Star, at the time not available anywhere.

Then discovering these wonderful, Nes, and Snes, JRPGs, that never made it to Amercia, but were thankfully translated.
I was particularly fond of the Sailor Moon RPG for the Snes.

Sailor Moon Another Story

THIS GAME IS AMAZING!!!!

 

[Chucker]

Am I missing something here?

It's the year 2016 and this is a try at being clever on the internet.

I love my RetroPie. I've been letting my 5 year old select games based off of box art alone, like we had to when I was growing up.

The reactions have been pretty good.

 

[Peru]

One thing I think is undercommunicated in gaming is that for all the racing towards the most powerful console/graphics card etc it's never been less essential to have cutting edge 3D graphics to reach players. Steam, indies, smart phones and other factors mean kidz of today are perfectly used to playing 2D games, spartan-looking 3D games, stylized games, retro-styled games. Which also means, if a game holds up, it holds up, and it will hold up for the youth of today. Is it fun? Good, then it doesn't matter if it looks like the 90s.

 

[TriAceJP]

I've always wanted to get into emulation, but I don't know where to start. Seems like it's not allowed to be discussed anywhere and all websites are super shady.

This site is a great reference: http://emulation-general.wikia.com/wiki/Emulation_General_Wiki

ROMs and BIOS are on you, however you decide to go about it.

Pair the emulators up with Launch Box (https://www.launchbox-app.com) for a great front end experience.

My recommended all-purpose controller is the Xbox One controller, but if you are really into the emulation, grab a MayFlash USB converter and use original hardware. I've never found a single USB clone controller worth using.

I almost always use a SNES and Saturn controller for their respective games.

 

[Lothar]

Contra 3 never fails if you're looking for a game to play together with someone.

Other 2-P games to try: Super Bomberman 2, Double Dragon 2, Super Monkey Ball, Battletoads, Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, TMNT: Turtles in Time, Life Force, Killer Instinct, Lemmings 2 player mode on SNES.

Also show him Conker's bad fur day. Perfect age for it.

 

[Megalosaro]

Oh man. 1999-2002 was hype as fuck because of my discovery of emulation.

Too many games at that time. If I hadn't discovered emulation, I wouldn't have played:

Super Metroid
Earthbound zero
Dragon quest v
Dragon quest vi
Final fantasy iv
Final fantasy vi
Terranigma
Chrono Trigger
Any of the mega man's
Ogre battle
Mother 3 (in English. I imported it day one)

I haven't down loaded any illegal roms in a while. The virtual console kind of met that need. But even so, I'd like even more gems on the

 

[petran79]

indeed, it is amazing playing games like Metal Slug 3 from the original Neo Geo cart instead of a mobile phone port on Steam.

 

[Tain]

My recommended all-purpose controller is the Xbox One controller, but if you are really into the emulation, grab a MayFlash USB converter and use original hardware. I've never found a single USB clone controller worth using.

In my experience 2D action games tear up the Xbox One controller's d-pad after like 10 hours of play, though. :/

 

[Zero-ELEC]

Sailor Moon Another Story

THIS GAME IS AMAZING!!!!

It's really not. It's actually super bad. The shoddy fan translation also doesn't do it any favours.

 

[RealityCheque]

Just waiting on those generic but guaranteed shit posts:

'You rip those ROMs yourself?!'

And

'Emulation ruins the original intended design of playing those games on their original hardware!'

We get that out of our system? We good?

Emulation is great and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Those guys are fantastic at parties.

And yes OP, emulation is one of the very finest things about PC gaming today.

 

[moltonasty]

Just waiting on those generic but guaranteed shit posts:

'You rip those ROMs yourself?!'

And

'Emulation ruins the original intended design of playing those games on their original hardware!'

We get that out of our system? We good?

Emulation is great and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I won't go this far, but playing on original hardware is certainly preferable IMO over emulation in almost all cases. Emulation certainly has it perks though, and it's great that future generations will have an easy way to access all the classics at least.

 

[Lothar]

I would never ever even play the old games I own without emulation. I don't leave 10 systems out around my TV. I'm not going to take my NES out of the attic just because I want to play Battletoads or Castlevania 1 or my Genesis if I want to play Sonic. Most of my PS1 games are scratched up or broken.

Emulation is the only good way to play NES. NES games on the system will just randomly glitch out on you when you're playing it, or your saves will all get deleted, or the games won't even start.

If anyone has a Mac, Openemu is the best thing you could ever decide to download as as a gamer. It emulates everything from Atari to PlayStation 1. You can plug in your PS4 controller and it automatically works for all the systems.

 

[Barrel Cannon]

After reading your list, I have determined that you are an excellent parent

 

[RealityCheque]

I won't go this far, but playing on original hardware is certainly preferable IMO over emulation in almost all cases.

I'd agree with this, with one exception: Dolphin + Mayflash Bar + real wiimote = Super Mario Galaxy (and many others) in 4k/60fps with the controller it was designed for. A real wii falls well short in comparison.

 

[Sorcerer]

It's really not. It's actually super bad. The shoddy fan translation also doesn't do it any favours.

To me it was enough that it strayed from dungeons and dragons, plus I liked how colorful it was. On top of the fact that it featured an all female party.

I think they are some Magic Knight rayearth rpg's on the nes and Snes, I never got around to looking into.

 

[Peltz]

Careful, OP. One day, you're just enjoying some games from your childhood with your cousin through emulation, the next you're modding an RGB-out into your NES so you can hook it up to your mid-1990s crt studio monitor that weighs a hundred pounds. You will know you're lost to the siren's call, but there'll be nothing you can do.

*Raises hand*

This is me. I've literally dropped thousands of dollars on my retro experience in the past 2-3 years or so.

 

[potatohead]

After reading your list, I have determined that you are an excellent parent

Oh God not yet, I'm no parent.

Just the awesome cousin, but I'm basically an uncle with our age difference

Thanks though XD

Thanks for kind words guys, I'm looking at all your suggestions right now!

I really did forget how good Timesplitters 2 is, so I'm glad we played that, my cousin actually suggested it as he played it with my other little bros much more than I did when they were younger on PS2. Strange aiming but damn it's fun.

 

[Peltz]

I'd agree with this, with one exception: Dolphin + Mayflash Bar + real wiimote = Super Mario Galaxy (and many others) in 4k/60fps with the controller it was designed for. A real wii falls well short in comparison.

Have you seen a real Wii on a really good 480p widescreen CRT? It looks better than when emulated at a higher resolution honestly. The backgrounds/skyboxes in the game are really not meant to be stretched to such high resolutions.

SD can look spectacular when done properly.

 

[potatohead]

Careful, OP. One day, you're just enjoying some games from your childhood with your cousin through emulation, the next you're modding an RGB-out into your NES so you can hook it up to your mid-1990s crt studio monitor that weighs a hundred pounds. You will know you're lost to the siren's call, but there'll be nothing you can do.

This sounds incredible

And I forced my parents to keep our old Sony Trinitrons so I can steal them when I'm settled down

 

[TriAceJP]

I won't go this far, but playing on original hardware is certainly preferable IMO over emulation in almost all cases. Emulation certainly has it perks though, and it's great that future generations will have an easy way to access all the classics at least.

Xenoblade, The Last Story and Skyward Sword would like a word with you.

Hell, almost the entire library of Wii/GameCube.

... And PS2.

... And PS1.

Actually, can't really think of many systems that aren't improved by the right emulator.

Dreamcast/Saturn/N64 aren't quite there yet, I'll give you that.

 

[spindashing]

Retro Arch is wonderful but I cannot, for the life of me, get Network Play to work.

 

[Zero-ELEC]

To me it was enough that it strayed from dungeons and dragons, plus I liked how colorful it was. On top of the fact that it featured an all female party.

I think they are some Magic Knight rayearth rpg's on the nes and Snes, I never got around to looking into.

I'm actually super sad that there's no other Sailor Moon RPG.

 

[potatohead]

Have you seen a real Wii on a really good 480p widescreen CRT? It looks better than when emulated at a higher resolution honestly. The backgrounds/skyboxes in the game are really not meant to be stretched to such high resolutions.

SD can look spectacular when done properly.

When he comes to my place we hook up my SNES, PS1, and PS2 to my Sony CRT, it does look great

His actual favourite PS2 game is GTA SA co-op mode, it's horrible but awesome fun ^^

 

[Santar]

Emulation really is awesome. I still remember trying out my very first emulator which I think was SNES96 and having Contra 3 run really slow and without most of the graphics.
Then emulation started getting better really quickly and before too long we had zsnes and so on and son on.
It's so great to have been there to experience the growth of emulation

 

[TriAceJP]

Have you seen a real Wii on a really good 480p widescreen CRT? It looks better than when emulated at a higher resolution honestly. The backgrounds/skyboxes in the game are really not meant to be stretched to such high resolutions.

SD can look spectacular when done properly.

This is factually incorrect.

Firstly, the images aren't stretched. They are rendered at a higher resolution.

Secondly, the processing is at a higher fidelity.

I mean, you may like your 480p murky Wii games, but to say they are 'better' is purely preference.

Emulation really is awesome. I still remember trying out my very first emulator which I think was SNES96 and having Contra 3 run really slow and without most of the graphics.
Then emulation started getting better really quickly and before too long we had zsnes and so on and son on.
It's so great to have been there to experience the growth of emulation

I remember back in 1998ish, my friends from school and I would swap 3.5" floppies with our Pokemon saves on them so we could trade Pokemon with the No$GB link feature. Good times.

 

[eso76]

I remember discovering emulators with Callus. Had no idea emulators were a thing before 1998.

Back then i would have killed to have room for a real Strider arcade cabinet and learning i could play a 100% perfect version on my weak ass PC blew my mind. That and all CPS1 games, it was like my wildest dreams came true.

The ROM didn't weight much at all, it was either 1.6 or 3.0 MB i think.
But I was on dial up 33.3k and it was hosted on a crappy server on top of that.
Told me it would take almost 2 days to download, which seemed entirely fair for the privilege of playing Strider at home.
I waited.

Emulators are awesome.
I don't really play old games (in fact, i don't even play new games) but i like to collect roms and even entire libraries, just to fire up that game i read about on magazines 20 years ago but for some reason was never able to see for myself, or the coin op i was dying to try that never came to arcades nearby.

Edit:
Ah, well, yeah, also to finally beat those C64 or Amiga games i couldn't complete when i was younger.
Not that i'm better at them now (quite the opposite, in fact) just because most emulators come with a cheat engine

 

[hydragonwarrior]

Emulation is good, but the audio just is never the same (at least for the 16 bit games I've found).

 

[Tain]

Xenoblade, The Last Story and Skyward Sword would like a word with you.

Hell, almost the entire library of Wii/GameCube.

... And PS2.

... And PS1.

Actually, can't really think of many systems that aren't improved by the right emulator.

Dreamcast/Saturn/N64 aren't quite there yet, I'll give you that.

I find HD PS1 and N64 games to be pretty repulsive and jittery (cohesion being thrown out the window in the name of resolution), and PCSX2 and Dolphin don't seem to be universally issue-free enough for me to trust the emulators when playing a new game for the first time.

 

[potatohead]

I find HD PS1 and N64 games to be pretty repulsive and jittery (cohesion being thrown out the window in the name of resolution), and PCSX2 and Dolphin don't seem to be universally issue-free enough for me to trust the emulators when playing a new game for the first time.

So there's different tiers of emulator accuracy.

ePSXe and plugin based emulators are *generally* poor with their jitteriness (doesn't apply to N64, not sure what you're talking about there). You can fix this by using PCSXR with PGXP though. See a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-TcsKuUVqU

Compared to the original PlayStation, the most accurate of all emulators, including official ones on Sony consoles, is actually Mednafen, which is on computer.

It's up to or higher than 99% accurate on audio and visuals, and this is significantly higher than even PS2, PS3, or PSP and Vita emulation of PS1 games. It's basically like the BSNES of PS1 emulation, but it also runs much smoother.

As far as using emulators for stuff like NES or SNES, using emulators like puNES or SNES9x is essentially and for all intents and purposes of most players, pretty much exactly like on original hardware.

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

Careful, OP. One day, you're just enjoying some games from your childhood with your cousin through emulation, the next you're modding an RGB-out into your NES so you can hook it up to your mid-1990s crt studio monitor that weighs a hundred pounds. You will know you're lost to the siren's call, but there'll be nothing you can do.

While I was never particularly into emulation, I did recently buy an old CRT and have been slowly building a small collection of NES and Famicom titles.

Doubt I'll ever go as far as RGB modding though.

 

[Khrno]

There was a time in the late 90s early 00s where I also enjoyed emulation because I didn't know any better.

Now I enjoy the Virtual Console or the PS1 classics on Vita, and wish some games would reach those services instead of going back to emulation.

 

[Tain]

So there's different tiers of emulator accuracy.

ePSXe and plugin based emulators are *generally* poor with their jitteriness (doesn't apply to N64, not sure what you're talking about there). You can fix this by using PCSXR with PGXP though. See a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-TcsKuUVqU

Compared to the original PlayStation, the most accurate of all emulators, including official ones on Sony consoles, is actually Mednafen, which is on computer.

It's up to or higher than 99% accurate on audio and visuals, and this is significantly higher than even PS2, PS3, or PSP and Vita emulation of PS1 games. It's basically like the BSNES of PS1 emulation, but it also runs much smoother.

As far as using emulators for stuff like NES or SNES, using emulators like puNES or SNES9x is essentially and for all intents and purposes of most players, pretty much exactly like on original hardware.

When it comes to jitter, I was referring to PSX emulation, yeah. I tried PCSXR+PGXP about a year ago, and while that MML footage is pretty stable, I had far less luck with Tobal 2 and MGS (the image seemed more stable but there were still strange polygon culling issues). The jitter is only part of the issue for me, though. N64 emulation has no vertex jitter or texture warping, but the look of, say, Mario 64 running in 1440p or whatever very much diminishes the game's visuals to me when compared to the fairly benign blur of the game on a CRT. Playing in the original resolution won't give me stretched UI elements, sprites that are insanely out-of-place, and polygonal seams on tiled surfaces. The discrepancy between texture resolution and display resolution won't be as big of an issue.

When I do PSX emulation, I generally use ye olde psx_emulator. Mednafen probably is better but I haven't messed with it as much. Both of these lower-level emulators give me a more pleasing result than rendering PSX games at higher resolutions.

And yeah, I mostly agree when it comes to emulators of older, 2D-based hardware. If you have a standard modern computer monitor, you're still getting an experience that is acceptably good for the vast majority of people and certainly one that is better than hooking up real hardware directly to a modern display. If you have Gsync, you're essentially getting the same experience as the real hardware combined with a dedicated upscaler (if not a better one).

I still put a nice SD CRT display combined with the real hardware as being the best general option, but it isn't feasible for many and it's totally understandable that emulation is good enough.

 

[moltonasty]

Xenoblade, The Last Story and Skyward Sword would like a word with you.

Hell, almost the entire library of Wii/GameCube.

... And PS2.

... And PS1.

Actually, can't really think of many systems that aren't improved by the right emulator.

Dreamcast/Saturn/N64 aren't quite there yet, I'll give you that.

I'd rather play PS1 and PS2 games on my CRT in native res TBH. They just look "right" in 240p, the authentic scanlines help the visuals greatly IMO, better than any scanline filters out there that I've seen.

But yeah, GC and Wii games do look and play mighty fine in Dolphin!