Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[spekkio]

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

PC gaming from the 1980-1995 era (DOS / Win 3.1)

1) DOSBox Staging

The most advanced and accurate continuation of grandpa DOSBox. For more info check the link above or dedicated post by resident Staging's developer - Rincewind.

2) DOSBox-X

Another modern continuation of the original. You can check the list of its features here.

3) Retroarch - DOSBox Pure core <-convenience

Fork of DOSBox, built for RetroArch/Libretro aiming for simplicity and ease of use.

4) Daum's SVN builds

First and (for a long time) best "feature-rich" fork of DOSBox. GUI, Quicksaves, V-Sync, Direct3D & OpenglHQ Output, Glide emulation, moar peripherals, MT-32 and more. Sadly, not updated since 2015 and superseded by Staging & X.

PC gaming from the 1995-2001 era (Win9x + DirectX 7.0 + Pentium MMX + VooDoo graphics)

1) PCem <-convenience

Pcem is much more convenient and easier on the performance.

BIOS/ROM packs:

• modern one
• old one (June 2016)

2) 86Box <-accuracy

86 box is pure accuracy with heavy performance hits because of it.

BIOS/ROM packs:

• modern one
• old one (September 2017)

3) Extensive turorials by TheOligopolist:

• New 86Box (2023)
• Old PCem (2017)

Commodore 64 / 128

1) Vice

2) Denise

Bonus: JiffyDOS (Disk Operating System Enhancement)

Commodore Amiga / CD32

1) FS-UAE <-convenience

2) WinUAE <-accuracy

BIOS/ROM packs:

• FS-UAE
• WinUAE

Atari 8-bit

1) Altirra <-convenience

2) Atari800 <-accuracy

Atari ST

1) Steem SSE <-convenience

2) Hatari <-accuracy

Nintendo Entertainment System

1) Retroarch - Mesen or Nestopia UE cores <-convenience

2) Mesen2 <-accuracy

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

1) Retroarch - bsnes cores (more info) <-convenience

2) bsnes <-accuracy

3) Retroarch - Snes9x cores (for rom hacks that work only on emulators)

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Nintendo 64

1) Retroarch - Mupen64Plus-Next core <-convenience

Heavily modified fork of Mupen64Plus, developed as a libretro core.

2) simple64

A fork of Mupen64Plus with a custom-made Qt GUI. This is probably the easiest "just works out of the box" solution for Nintendo 64 emulation, as it comes bundled with ParaLLEl-RDP and ParaLLEl-RSP, ensuring excellent compatibility and good speed without needing to mess with plugins or settings, provided your hardware supports Vulkan. However, unlike other emulators, it does not allow you to use other plugins.

3) RMG

Rosalie's Mupen GUI aims to close the gap between Project64 and Mupen64Plus in terms of user experience. Its interface is about on par with simple64's in terms of cleanliness and ease of use, but unlike simple64, it remains a shallow fork of upstream Mupen64Plus and allows you to use other plugins.

4) Ares <-accuracy

An open-source multi-system emulator and successor to Near's higan project, with a mostly original N64 core. Unlike most other N64 emulators, it aims for high accuracy and does not employ HLE RSP or RDP emulation of any kind, nor does it use game-specific hacks. It uses Themaister's ParaLLEl-RDP Vulkan renderer (with the MAME renderer as a software-based fallback) for pixel-perfect LLE graphics. It currently passes several stringent accuracy tests the other emulators do not, also CPU & RSP timings are really, really good based on real hardware tests. But system requirements more demanding than other popular N64 emulators.

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Nintendo Gamecube / Wii

1) Dolphin

2) PrimeHack + guide

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

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Nintendo Wii U

Cemu

Useful things:

• Cemu Graphic Packs
• Graphic Packs explained

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Nintendo Switch

1) Ryujinx

Murdered by Nintendo.

Nevar forget.

Latest builds (01.10.2024):

• Windows x64
• Linux x64
• mirror / other versions

2) Yuzu

Gangraped by Nintendo.

Goodnight Sweet Prince.

Latest builds (04.03.2024):

• Windows mainline-537296095
• Linux mainline-537296095
• Windows EA-4176
• Linux EA-4176

Other things:

• Shared Data
• Switch Firmwares
• Switch Mods (mostly FPS and AR related)

Nintendo Game Boy / Game Boy Color

1) Retroarch - SameBoy core <-convenience

2) SameBoy <-accuracy

Consider using shaders to improve graphical output:

Nintendo Game Boy Advance

1) Retroarch - mGBA or VBA-M cores <-convenience

2) mGBA <-accuracy

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Consider using shaders to reduce oversaturation in some games* and improve graphical output:



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

Nintendo Dual Screen

1) Retroarch - melonDS DS or DeSmuME cores <-convenience

melonDS DS: an enhanced remake of the melonDS core for libretro that prioritizes standalone parity, reliability, and usability.

2) melonDS <-accuracy

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Nintendo 3DS

Citra

Teabagged by Nintendo.

RIP in peace, yellow friend.

Latest builds (04.03.2024):

• Windows nigthly-2104
• Linux nigthly-2104
• Windows canary-2798
• Linux canary-2798

Other stuff:

• Keys (equip the ring if necessary)
• 60 FPS patches / cheats

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

1) Retroarch - Genesis Plus GX core <-convenience

2) Kega Fusion

Old but still good + emulates 32X.

BIOS/ROM packs:

• Genesis Plus GX
• Kega Fusion

Sega Saturn

1) Retroarch - Beetle Saturn core <-convenience

2) Mednafen <-accuracy

BIOS/ROM packs:

• Beetle / Mednafen
• Older emus (SSF, Yabause)

Sega Dreamcast

1) Retroarch - Flycast core <-convenience

2) DEmul

As of 2022, you're better off with Flycast or redream for Dreamcast emulation as they are multi-platform and have higher compatibility with Windows CE games. Having said that, DEmul is still highly recommended for SEGA NAOMI and variants.

BIOS/ROM packs:

• Flycast
• DEmul

NEC TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine

1) Retroarch - Beetle PCE Fast core <-convenience

2) Mednafen <-accuracy

Bios

Sony Playstation

1) Retroarch - Swanstation or Beetle PSX HW cores <-convenience

2) DuckStation

3) Mednafen <-accuracy

Bios pack

Consult the EmuGen Wiki in case of trouble.

Sony Playstation 2

Pcsx2

Bios

Bonus read: Improving PS2 games' graphical output via cheat codes

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Sony Playstation 3

RPCS3

Firmwares

Consult the Compatibility list in case of trouble.

Sony Playstation Portable

PPSSPP

Other stuff:

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

Sony Playstation Vita

Vita3K

Firmwares

Microsoft Xbox

xemu

Microsoft Xbox 360

Xenia (daily builds, github ones are obsolete)

Bonus:

• EmuGen's certified bios packs for various systems
• Tical's recommendations for Acorn BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad GX4000, Apple II, Nintendo Super Game Boy & Watara Supervision (2017)
• Morpheus Kitami's recommendations for Acorn 32-bit and various japanese computers (2024)

Day of latest decline: 26.10.2024

 

[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.