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Not sure if this topic will survive very long, but I would like to start some discussion of the various emulators out there, their state of development, user experience, and so forth.

*THIS IS NOT THE PLACE TO REQUEST/TRADE ROMs, ISOs, OR BIOSes! THIS IS ABOUT THE EMULATORS THEMSELVES! REQUESTS AND/OR LINKING TO SITES THAT OFFER ROMs and ISOs WILL PROBABLY RESULT IN THE THREAD BEING NUKED!*

Let's face it, more than a few of us probably have either used, or still use some type of emulator to play games from consoles, arcades, or PC systems past. I myself use ScummVM and DOSBOX to play a lot of the older games that got me started out as a PC Gamer. I'm also guilty of playing Sega Genesis games that I used to own, but sold ages ago, the SNES games I played at my friends house, but never had the money to buy on my own. I also emulate fairly newer console I no longer have, like Dreamcast, Playstation One and Two, and my Gamecube. I even emulate the arcade games I loved to play as a kid, back when arcades where actually a thing in the US. In my defense, I still own the floppy disc and CD versions of the MS-DOS games I emulate, as well as the PS1 and PS2 games. The Dreamcast, I'll admit, is a bear, since the GD-ROM isn't PC readable, and you need the programmer cable, and the Gamecube discs are a strange bird in their own right. I don't own any of the Arcade Boards or Cabinets that I emulate, but someday I would love to. That would be cooler than just using a MAME machine.

Anyway, here are the Emulators I use, and some Pros and Cons for each:

GENS - No complaints here. It emulates the Genesis and Sega CD perfectly. I've yet to try any 32X gaes with it, though. I have heard that the FM synth isn't an exact match, but that was true even across Genesis models sold in the US.

Magic Engine - Turbografx 16 emulator. You have to pay for it, and it emulates HuCard games well. I've yet to get any CD working with it, and I've tried both Daemon Tools and PowerISO.

SNES9x - The quintessential SNES emulator, I've never had an issue running any of the games I was interested in, and it supports some of the custom chips found on cartridges like Starfox, Yoshi's Island, etc..

ePSXe - Nice little PS1 emulator. Takes a little setup work, but I've been able to run all of the CD-based games I have on it. The only ISO I've tried it with was the fan translation of Policenauts, and due to an issue, I had to switch to pSX to finish it

NeoRAGE - Great little NEOGEO emulator. Plays all the arcade games, lots of configuration options. Doesn't play Neo-Geo CD games to my knowledge

WinKawaks - A great little emulator that supports not only Neo-Geo games, but also CPS1 and CPS2 games, as well as offering the ability to play these games online via HAMACHI. Playing Metal Slug or Last Blade with a buddy remotely is a blast!

Nebula - Technically a CPS1/CPS2 emulator, they also have a CPS3 emulator, for those few Arcade games made for the system.

PCSX2 - Allows you to play ISOs or Original DVDs of PS2 games. Great way to keep playing the games you love, long after your physical console bites the dust. Requires beefy hardware, and not every game runs at 100% yet. The team is slow to
update, preferring to drop a release with major changes, not just incremental releases.

Dolphin - This is a Gamecube/Wii emulator, but in order to play Wii games, you need a Wiimote, sensor bar, nunchuck, etc... I love using it to play the Gamecube games I have sitting in the closet, as I have no console to play them on. It's also quite nice to be able to use a 360 controller, instead of the Wavebird or Native Gamecube controller. There are a few glitches here and there, but otherwise, it's a rock solid emulator.

SSF - a wonky little Sega Saturn emulator, it requires original discs, or ISOs mounted into virtual drives, and region appropriate BIOSes. It isn't complete, and there are graphical problems with it (some could be video driver based), but on the whole, it will let you run a good portion of the Saturn library.

nullDC - Probably the furthest along Dreamcast emulator, but that isn't saying much. It's a pain to get configured and running, and glitches abound when playing games on it. There is also a NAOMI specific version, but I've never tested it. It's a shame, because there are so many wonderful, quirky games that would be a joy to revisit, if the emulator could be improved.

MAME - the grandaddy of them all. MAME is actually comprised of multiple emulators, which attempt to be machine accurate as a way to preserve arcade games that would otherwise vanish from the face of the earth. I'd love to own a few genuine arcade cabinets with actual PCBs, JAMMA harnesses and controllers (TMNT, XMEN, Simpsons), but a few MAME cabinets would be awesome to have in any den/game room/man cave

ScummVM - Named for the Script creation utility used by LucasArts to create many of their iconic games, this emulator is actually a virtual machine that was originally designed to run games powered by the SCUMM engine (Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Day of the Tentacle, etc...). The project has now expanded beyond that scope, and now also supports many of Sierra's AGI and SCI adventure games, as well as other companies, Like Humongous Entertainments childrens games, Adventuresofts Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, Revolutions Broken Sword 1 & 2, Discworld 1 & 2, and many more. If you grew up playing adventure games on your PC, and would love to either revisit them, or even expose your children to the favorite games of your childhood, ScummVM is the emulator of choice.

DOSBox - A nice little virtual machine that allows you to use almost any MS-DOS game you wish to play. For example, you could install and play Strike Commander, Tie-Fighter, Crusader: No Remorse, Altered Destiny, Excalibur, Betrayal at Krondor, and The Last Express just to name a few. Basically, if it ran on MS-DOS, you can run it DOSBox. You *will* have to do some setup work (you didn't think you'd ever be fiddling with config.sys and autoexec.bat again, did you?), but you will be rewarded with an almost fully functional DOS machine that runs on modern hardware.

So, What about everybody else? What do you folk run? Amiga-in-a-Box? Some kind of Commodore64 emulator? An FM-Towns or PC88 emu? I'd like to here about it.

Also, posts about the respective hardware would be welcome. I'm still in awe of the longevity of the NEO-GEO AES system boards, and I like what Capcom did with their CPS1,2,3 systems, and what Sega tried with NAOMI.

Applewin - nice little emulator for the 8-bit Apple ][ series. Can't think of anything I wish it did.
WinVICE - same for the C=64.
Nestopia - nicest extras of the NES emulators I've tried.
higan - formerly bsnes, now emulates the NES, Game Boy, and GBA as well. It trades on obsessive accuracy; the accuracy profile can bring a non-OC'd i5-2500k to its knees.
Stella - the best Atari 2600 emulator. I wish it had some of Nestopia's extra features, like hq4x filtering and fast-forward/rewind.
dbgl - my favored interface for DOSBox. Java-based, so cross-platform.
Bliss - Mattel Intellivison emulator. For when I want my B-17 Bomber or Space Spartans fix.

I have a few others that are mainly "because I wanted to experience the emulated system" and are rarely used:
pom1 - Apple I emulator. Pretty basic, but so is the original.
VirtualT - for the Tandy 100 family.
kegs - The only Apple IIgs emulator I'm aware of. Its mouse handling is pretty sucky - it won't grab your mouse pointer and so you'll pop back out to Windows easily.
Mini vMac - early 68K Macs, typically emulates a Mac Plus with System 7.0x.

I've fiddled a little bit with SimH, mainly emulating a VAX running the 4.3BSD-quasijarus distribution.

The few times I've tried MAME it was more troublesome to get working than I was willing to mess with.

bthylafh wrote:

Applewin - nice little emulator for the 8-bit Apple ][ series. Can't think of anything I wish it did.
WinVICE - same for the C=64.
Nestopia - nicest extras of the NES emulators I've tried.
higan - formerly bsnes, now emulates the NES, Game Boy, and GBA as well. It trades on obsessive accuracy; the accuracy profile can bring a non-OC'd i5-2500k to its knees.
Stella - the best Atari 2600 emulator. I wish it had some of Nestopia's extra features, like hq4x filtering and fast-forward/rewind.
dbgl - my favored interface for DOSBox. Java-based, so cross-platform.
Bliss - Mattel Intellivison emulator. For when I want my B-17 Bomber or Space Spartans fix.

I have a few others that are mainly "because I wanted to experience the emulated system" and are rarely used:
pom1 - Apple I emulator. Pretty basic, but so is the original.
VirtualT - for the Tandy 100 family.
kegs - The only Apple IIgs emulator I'm aware of.
Mini vMac - early 68K Macs, typically emulates a Mac Plus with System 7.0x.

I've fiddled a little bit with SimH, mainly emulating a VAX running the 4.3BSD-quasijarus distribution.

The few times I've tried MAME it was more troublesome to get working than I was willing to mess with.

I've never tried dbgl, but to be frank, with all the security hullaballoo about Java, that's probably why I never noticed it. I need to check out Stella. The Atari 2600 was my first video game system ever, and I 've got fond memories of waking up super early to play Pitfall and River Raid before school. Does Applewin support that AppleBASIC, or whatever it was they would use in schools to teach very basic programming, word processing, and spreadsheets with?

I agree about MAME being a pain. Once you've got everything ironed out, it's rock solid, and frankly there a loads of great multiplayer beat 'em ups, Shmups, and fighting games that make it worth the effort.

I've never heard of somebody emulating a VAX before. Full Disclosure: the few times I touched a VAX terminal was for a programming class that I hated and dropped out off.

Does anybody emulate OS/400? Or would IBMs legions of lawyers swoop in and destroy anybody that tried to make such a thing public? The only reason I ask, is because I saw an AS/400 get carted away one day from a bank, and have been curious about the system ever since.

Hz so good wrote:

I've never tried dbgl, but to be frank, with all the security hullaballoo about Java, that's probably why I never noticed it.

Java's deservedly bad reputation is mainly from the browser plugin. Disable that and you won't have much to worry about; dbgl doesn't need that anyway.

Does Applewin support that AppleBASIC, or whatever it was they would use in schools to teach very basic programming, word processing, and spreadsheets with?

Yes, it's got an implementation of Applesoft BASIC. It can also emulate an "Uthernet" Ethernet NIC[1] in Apple //e mode, and with the right software you can even take it out on the Internet.

[1] which is a real thing that you can buy for a //e.

bthylafh wrote:

Yes, it's got an implementation of Applesoft BASIC. It can also emulate an "Uthernet" Ethernet NIC[1] in Apple //e mode, and with the right software you can even take it out on the Internet.

[1] which is a real thing that you can buy for a //e.

Oh that's awesome! At my primary, middle, and high schools, Apple IIe was the only thing available for any kind of computer courses (and of course the obligatory Oregon Trail and other edutainment software). I might play around with that, just for nostalgia sake.

Hz so good, you're using a lot of really old emulators that have glitches on more than a few games. I hope I can steer you on towards the path of less glitchyness.

For Genesis, use either Regen or Kega Fusion. Both are about the same, but Regen does not support SCD. I've noticed a ton of sound emulation differences between them and Gens, plus less buggy games as well. Kega was developed by an old Genesis and SNES developer, so that helps. His emulation efforts are long running, and even occasionally licensed by Sega themselves for various Genesis compilations.

SNES9x is a good solution for a low end system, but for something that's roughly Athlon II speed or higher, you should use an older verison of bsnes if you can track it down. Why older? I'm pretty sure the author of it had a mental episode and it began to effect his work years ago. For 99.8% of snes games, version 0.060 will be good enough. That one should support the Super FX and SA-1 add-on chips, which were the only ones to get significant usage. As a side note, even the best Super FX emulation in any emulator is still a bit off to this day. Star Fox will not run at the proper speed on any emulator, even Nintendo's own. bsnes/Higen run it a lot closer to accurate, but if you're a super hard core Star Fox 1 fan, might want to just buy the cart and an SNES if you do not have both on hand.

Magic Engine is payware and doesn't support a lot of things properly or run on modern OSes a lot of the time in my experience. Instead, try pcejin. This one is fairly obscure as it's basically the TG-16 emulation core from a command line driven emulator named mednafen stripped out and given an UI. Due to its obscurity, I'm gonna straight up link it http://code.google.com/p/pcejin/

ePSXe is still the best psx emulator, sadly. It got a really nice update a ways back that made the sound far more accurate(Which to someone who is picky as hell about this sort of thing, this is a very nice thing). The latest version is the only PSX emulator, to my knowledge, that gets a lot of the little battle sounds in Xenogears correct. latest is 1.8.0. unless you're using the android version. It's still got issues in a lot of stuff though... PSX emulation stagnated over ten years ago. Most popular games run well, though.

Neorage was good back in the day, but it for the most part only runs rom dumps that were later found to not be 100% correct or in some cases, far far off. It was a pain in the neck. MAME32UI or WinKawaks is best here.

IIRC, demul is a better emulator for DC but i've never messed around with DC emulation so I wouldn't know. As far as I know, the interface is in Russian so if anyone here can read it, y'all might want to try it. Otherwise, nullDC is the way to go. Compatibility is passable but it is a pain in the neck to set up. An IRC channel I hang out with has one of the former devs of it. Towards the end of nullDC's development life he wasn't too happy with it. Gee, I wonder why?

for NES, you'll want to use either NEStopia, or if you're wanting to play one of those weird NES chinese games, FCEUX. In some cases, NEStopia can have sound latency issues with Vista and 7 PCs, as the last official version was released just before Vista came out or not long after. If you're getting that, try FCEUX. NEStopia should be the first thing you try though. It really is a gem.

Higen, the modern bsnes was pointed out but I feel some info needs to be stated aobut it before you choose between using it or bsnes. Higen forces you to convert your roms into a bizarre folder set up that, if you liek to apply fan translations or bug fix patches or whatever, prevents unless you already patched it before you converted it. After conversion, you cannot use your stuff in a different emulator if you wish to try them in something else, forcing you to play Juggle The Files if you're just trying stuff out for the first time. Higen is basically an emulator by an emulation expert for emulation experts and thus, IMO, not worth recommending in most cases.

For GBA emulation, you really only have two choices. Whatever the latest version of VBA-M is, or no$gba. no$gba works well but the interface is very very sparse and sometimes hard to use. It doesn't allow you to set the resolution, but you can drag the corner to scale it up and keep the aspect ratio of the GBA games intact. It also has a custom save format for reasons known only to ancient demons who's names have been forgotten by every tongue of Man. It's not as far to the expert side of things as Higen is by any means, but it's not super duper simple either. VBA-M is pretty good, but it's not entirely known how accurate sound emulation and stuff is. All games appear to work well, but until someone comes up with a better emulator and does a comprehensive comparison, we won't really know. no$GBA's little details emulation is also up in the air, but is more likely to be accurate. Game developer friends of mine have told me he used to contact them whenever his emulator didn't run stuff right, and some of them(Not all) helped out and gave him info.

Still, it's hard enough to use that, so VBA-M, which should be just fine, is best to try first. I only present all this info in the interest of trying to educate folks if they run into an issue with either.

Dolphin is indeed the best GC emulator out there(Not that there were more than three or five), but it sometiems has issues, and is in a rapid state of development. If you try 4.0.2. and a game doesn't work well on it, try one of the development versions. Even though it hasn't been long, there's a significant difference already, enough to where if they really wanted to they could release a version called 4.5 and only insane people would complain about the numbering.

I.S.T. wrote:

Hz so good, you're using a lot of really old emulators that have glitches on more than a few games. I hope I can steer you on towards the path of less glitchyness.

For Genesis, use either Regen or Kega Fusion. Both are about the same, but Regen does not support SCD. I've noticed a ton of sound emulation differences between them and Gens, plus less buggy games as well. Kega was developed by an old Genesis and SNES developer, so that helps. His emulation efforts are long running, and even occasionally licensed by Sega themselves for various Genesis compilations.

You're right. I totally flaked on Kega Fusion. I used it on a different machine a while back, but for some reason, I went back with Gens. Definitely going to remedy that situation. Thanks!

SNES9x is a good solution for a low end system, but for something that's roughly Athlon II speed or higher, you should use an older verison of bsnes if you can track it down. Why older? I'm pretty sure the author of it had a mental episode and it began to effect his work years ago. For 99.8% of snes games, version 0.060 will be good enough. That one should support the Super FX and SA-1 add-on chips, which were the only ones to get significant usage. As a side note, even the best Super FX emulation in any emulator is still a bit off to this day. Star Fox will not run at the proper speed on any emulator, even Nintendo's own. bsnes/Higen run it a lot closer to accurate, but if you're a super hard core Star Fox 1 fan, might want to just buy the cart and an SNES if you do not have both on hand.

Huh... Is byuu the guy that did bnses? I vaguely remember something about one of those guys going off the rails, and I reverted back to SNES9x. If bsnes is better in a modern environment, I'm all for it!

Magic Engine is payware and doesn't support a lot of things properly or run on modern OSes a lot of the time in my experience. Instead, try pcejin. This one is fairly obscure as it's basically the TG-16 emulation core from a command line driven emulator named mednafen stripped out and given an UI. Due to its obscurity, I'm gonna straight up link it http://code.google.com/p/pcejin/

Does pcejin support Turbo-CD games as well? I found a few discs at a flea market for literally $.25 and would love to try them out. They're Lords of Thunder, Godzilla, Beyond Shadowgate, and there's a japanese one called Spriggan Mk2

ePSXe is still the best psx emulator, sadly. It got a really nice update a ways back that made the sound far more accurate(Which to someone who is picky as hell about this sort of thing, this is a very nice thing). The latest version is the only PSX emulator, to my knowledge, that gets a lot of the little battle sounds in Xenogears correct. latest is 1.8.0. unless you're using the android version. It's still got issues in a lot of stuff though... PSX emulation stagnated over ten years ago. Most popular games run well, though.

The only issue I had with ePSXe was that it hung when playing the fan translation of Policenauts. That may be fixed now for all I know, but at the time, I had to use a different emulator to complete the game.

Neorage was good back in the day, but it for the most part only runs rom dumps that were later found to not be 100% correct or in some cases, far far off. It was a pain in the neck. MAME32UI or WinKawaks is best here.

Yes, WinKawaks is superior, but lately Neorage tends to be distributed with all the ROMs it supports, so for someone new to it, it comes across as easier.

IIRC, demul is a better emulator for DC but i've never messed around with DC emulation so I wouldn't know. As far as I know, the interface is in Russian so if anyone here can read it, y'all might want to try it. Otherwise, nullDC is the way to go. Compatibility is passable but it is a pain in the neck to set up. An IRC channel I hang out with has one of the former devs of it. Towards the end of nullDC's development life he wasn't too happy with it. Gee, I wonder why?

I'll check out demul, but nullDC is kinda half there, half not. I'm not surprised the former dev is unhappy with it. If you still talk to the dev, can you ask them what difficulties they ran into when creating the emulator? Like, was it the SH4 or the PowerVR chip that gave them fits?

For GBA emulation, you really only have two choices. Whatever the latest version of VBA-M is, or no$gba. no$gba works well but the interface is very very sparse and sometimes hard to use. It doesn't allow you to set the resolution, but you can drag the corner to scale it up and keep the aspect ratio of the GBA games intact. It also has a custom save format for reasons known only to ancient demons who's names have been forgotten by every tongue of Man. It's not as far to the expert side of things as Higen is by any means, but it's not super duper simple either. VBA-M is pretty good, but it's not entirely known how accurate sound emulation and stuff is. All games appear to work well, but until someone comes up with a better emulator and does a comprehensive comparison, we won't really know. no$GBA's little details emulation is also up in the air, but is more likely to be accurate. Game developer friends of mine have told me he used to contact them whenever his emulator didn't run stuff right, and some of them(Not all) helped out and gave him info.

Still, it's hard enough to use that, so VBA-M, which should be just fine, is best to try first. I only present all this info in the interest of trying to educate folks if they run into an issue with either.

I used the no cash GBA and VBA-M, just so I could play the Phoenix Wright series and Mother 3. They were pretty tight little emus. My then wife preferred using the GBA adapter to plug her games up to the gamecube.

Dolphin is indeed the best GC emulator out there(Not that there were more than three or five), but it sometiems has issues, and is in a rapid state of development. If you try 4.0.2. and a game doesn't work well on it, try one of the development versions. Even though it hasn't been long, there's a significant difference already, enough to where if they really wanted to they could release a version called 4.5 and only insane people would complain about the numbering.

The only problem I have with Dolphin is that more effort is spent on the Wii side of things, instead of tightening up and bug fixing the Gamecube side, which is what I'm really after.

The GC side nowadays is getting as much effort if you look at the commits they do.

PCEjin does support PCE-CD games.

and yes byuu is the higen/bsnes guy. He's a genius but also a wacko(and when someone who occasionally halucinates is calling someone a wacko, things are bad). Don't read his forum. Ever. His actual work is fine if you keep to before he started doing his ROM cartridge folder nonsense.

In an effort to give this thread a little educational value, here are some relevant links:

System16 Arcade Museum has information on many system boards from companies like Capcom, Konami, Sega, Namco, Sammy, etc...

NEO-GEO.com - For all things SNK NEO-GEO, including their Home and Arcade Systems

ScummVM - The VM that lets you play classic DOS adventure games within a modern OS. Support for more games is ongoing, and there are lively discussions in the forums.

DosBox - Have an old DOS game that you loved to play, but ScummVM doesn't support it? Try DOSBox.

Wikipedia's list of Video Game Emulators - This isn't an all-inclusive list, but it should give you a general idea of some of the projects that are out there.

I.S.T. wrote:

The GC side nowadays is getting as much effort if you look at the commits they do.

Heck yeah! That's good to hear!

PCEjin does support PCE-CD games.

Awesomesauce! I'm definitely going to fire it up this weekend!

and yes byuu is the higen/bsnes guy. He's a genius but also a wacko(and when someone who occasionally halucinates is calling someone a wacko, things are bad). Don't read his forum. Ever. His actual work is fine if you keep to before he started doing his ROM cartridge folder nonsense.

I think i looked at byuu's forum once. It was one of those "back away slowly, then turn and run" moments. I'll grab bsnes and use it instead of SNES9x.

Have you heard anything about Supermodel3? I tinkered with it a bit, but there were lots of audio cutouts, graphic tears, etc...

A little after v060, we were finally able to extract the firmware contained in SNES coprocessors located inside of game carts, such as the DSP-1. Ever since day one, I had always stressed that accuracy was my primary objective. So it was no surprise that I wanted to utilize this firmware. Problem is, it's copyrighted. It needs to be distributed with the games that use them, and not with the emulator itself.

I tried to suggest that we combine the SNES image with the firmware appended. Everyone went nuclear on me. Apparently, prepending copier headers for compatibility with a mid-90s Hong Kong device is fine (and daring to not support them made me "worse than Hitler", actual quote), but appending essential firmware is crazy talk.

So I needed some other way to store the firmware. We were also dealing with an increasingly growing "Paths" selection window. One for ROMs, one for save RAM, one for save states, one for cheat codes, one for movie recordings, one for screenshots, one for BIOS and firmware files, etc etc. So I decided, rather than group data by file extension, what if we group data by game? So, you have Mario Kart. Put the game image, and the save RAM for it, and the coprocessor firmware for it, in the same folder. Now I could even do cool stuff like store a manifest that has the native-language title for a game (eg スーパーマリオカート), exact board mappings, default controllers a game uses, etc stored in there. Want to move a game onto another PC? Just copy the folder for it. No need to dig through seven folders for all the pieces. I even tried to make it as easy as possible. You can load in your SMC image with the copier header stored inside a ZIP archive directly inside higan and play it. It even tries to figure out if your IPS patch was made on a headered or unheadered ROM, and applies it for you. You don't have to think about folders at all. Unfortunately, this makes me **** insane, moreso than a guy who hallucinates, apparently. Yet when OpenEmu did exactly the same thing, it received heaps of praise from everyone for its innovation in game organization.

IST, I didn't change. Your expectations of me changed when I stopped doing things exactly the way you wanted them done. Rather than show any civility or maturity, you've instead decided to denigrate me at every chance you get. I understand completely if you're dissatisfied with my software, and choose not to use it; but I really wish you wouldn't go around bad-mouthing me everywhere you can (here, RHDN, etc.) But if that's the cost of me spending ten years to give the world completely free open-source software, asking absolutely nothing in return, then I guess it's my cross to bear.

Please keep in mind while you continue to attack me that Snes9X uses my sound core, and dozens of fixes I've provided over the years. And that part of the reason I contribute so much there is so that people like you have alternatives that work the way you want.

My emulation is all done on an OG Xbox running XBMC via n Executer2 chip. Most of my emulation wants are 8-bit and 16-bit games from my youth. The only bummer so far is that I can't find a suitable controller for Genesis games that use the Sega 6-button arcade pad layout (such as Street Fighter II SCE or Mortal Kombat) and I'm not totally in love with the triggers as L and R buttons on the SNES. They do for most uses, though.

Snes9xBox for SNES emulation as it does the sound correctly in Final Fantasy III, and I'm basically stuck with what they give you for just about every other system. Fortunately I can play Shining Force CD (directly from my original SFCD disc!) and it works with an emulated memory cartridge. I never had one for my Genesis/CD in the past so I never got to play the bonus stuff since I didn't have enough save space for both scenarios in the past.

byuu wrote:

A little after v060, we were finally able to extract the firmware contained in SNES coprocessors located inside of game carts, such as the DSP-1. Ever since day one, I had always stressed that accuracy was my primary objective. So it was no surprise that I wanted to utilize this firmware. Problem is, it's copyrighted. It needs to be distributed with the games that use them, and not with the emulator itself.

I tried to suggest that we combine the SNES image with the firmware appended. Everyone went nuclear on me. Apparently, prepending copier headers for compatibility with a mid-90s Hong Kong device is fine (and daring to not support them made me "worse than Hitler", actual quote), but appending essential firmware is crazy talk.

So I needed some other way to store the firmware. We were also dealing with an increasingly growing "Paths" selection window. One for ROMs, one for save RAM, one for save states, one for cheat codes, one for movie recordings, one for screenshots, one for BIOS and firmware files, etc etc. So I decided, rather than group data by file extension, what if we group data by game? So, you have Mario Kart. Put the game image, and the save RAM for it, and the coprocessor firmware for it, in the same folder. Now I could even do cool stuff like store a manifest that has the native-language title for a game (eg スーパーマリオカート), exact board mappings, default controllers a game uses, etc stored in there. Want to move a game onto another PC? Just copy the folder for it. No need to dig through seven folders for all the pieces. I even tried to make it as easy as possible. You can load in your SMC image with the copier header stored inside a ZIP archive directly inside higan and play it. It even tries to figure out if your IPS patch was made on a headered or unheadered ROM, and applies it for you. You don't have to think about folders at all. Unfortunately, this makes me **** insane, moreso than a guy who hallucinates, apparently. Yet when OpenEmu did exactly the same thing, it received heaps of praise from everyone for its innovation in game organization.

IST, I didn't change. Your expectations of me changed when I stopped doing things exactly the way you wanted them done. Rather than show any civility or maturity, you've instead decided to denigrate me at every chance you get. I understand completely if you're dissatisfied with my software, and choose not to use it; but I really wish you wouldn't go around bad-mouthing me everywhere you can (here, RHDN, etc.) But if that's the cost of me spending ten years to give the world completely free open-source software, asking absolutely nothing in return, then I guess it's my cross to bear.

Please keep in mind while you continue to attack me that Snes9X uses my sound core, and dozens of fixes I've provided over the years. And that part of the reason I contribute so much there is so that people like you have alternatives that work the way you want.

Wow! It's not often that we get an individual who was heavily involed in the project before . I'm sure there are otheres anxious to pick you brian, but one think I 'd like to know about are the skills that you utilizied to do you work, and how can an up-and-coming hack/developer get into this space? I've always found the subcultures between the different teams intereseting. Would you ever be willing to take part in a reddit AMAT session? HAven you considered teaching online courses to show young people how to hack their games?

And at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, thank you for all your hard work! It has been much appreciated the world over.

byuu did an article for Ars Technica a couple years ago:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/a ... -emulator/

M2 Emulator! -- Sega Model 2 Emulator. If you're playing a Saturn game, chances are the Model2 version was heaps better, and this emulator plays arcade Model2 damn near perfectly (save for some hair clipping issues in the last build I tried). Virtua Fighter, Last Bronx, Bloody Roar, House of the Dead, etc.

IST, I admit I was a bit perturbed to be called a wacko for changing the way I sorted files, my apologies if I came off too harsh. But ... I want to say that I always did enjoy our conversations back in the day, I don't hold any ill will. I do respect your difference of opinion on the matter. I will continue to refine things with time, and hopefully we can come to an amicable armistice in the future. One thought that crosses my mind is using the file name fields to store fully qualified or relative paths to games, so that you can continue to run games with other emulators as well.

Hz so good, it's not a difficult field at all. Very basic math and programming skills will do fine. It's just simply arcane. So you need to have a whole lot of free time, dedication, and a thick skin certainly helps a lot. The most notable thing in my mind was that I didn't think I could actually pull off writing an emulator when I started on one, I just kept going and it eventually worked. So just trust in yourself I suppose.

Doing an AmA seems very vain to me, so I would rather not.

To be honest SNES ROMs are small enough relative to modern hard drives that I don't think it's a big deal to keep two copies if you want to use higan and another emulator. The biggest original ROMs were what, 4 megabytes? That's peanuts. Even a large, possibly complete collection of them (more than I would possibly ever play, cough) is a little under 6 gigabytes.

I even think the way higan does it is pretty sensible when you consider how small the ROMs are. About all I would change from a library-management standpoint is to enable mass-import of a collection, and mass-conversion if higan ever changes its on-disk format again.

Anybody think we'll ever see an original Xbox emulator? I know some of the game were made backwards compatible with the 360, but that came too late for me, as I pitched my 360 after the umpteenth RRoD.

I like how Sega re-released Space Channel 5 Part 2, and Jet Set Radio for the PC, but I would *LOVE* to be able to play Otogi 1&2, Breakdown, Burnout 3, Ninja Gaiden, Jet Set Radio Future, and Panzer Dragoon Orta on my PC with my wireless 360 controller.

I mean, the Xbox was just a PC with a few tweaks by Intel and nvidia. Surely it can't be THAT difficult to emulate. Rumor has it that it ran on a modified Windows 2000, for Pete's sake.

I.S.T. wrote:

The GC side nowadays is getting as much effort if you look at the commits they do.

PCEjin does support PCE-CD games.

and yes byuu is the higen/bsnes guy. He's a genius but also a wacko(and when someone who occasionally halucinates is calling someone a wacko, things are bad). Don't read his forum. Ever. His actual work is fine if you keep to before he started doing his ROM cartridge folder nonsense.

OH.MY.GOD. You were so dead on about PCEjin being awesome. I just finished a session of Lords of Thunder rocking my face, what I want to know now is, WHY DIDN'T ALL OUR FAVORITE GAMES COME WITH A BLARING FAUX-METAL 80's HARD ROCK ANTHEM THAT ROCKS SO HARD IT PROBABLY GOT YOUR MOM PREGNANT JUST LISTENING TO IT?!

A Thousand thanks, my good man! If you're ever in my neck of the woods, I owe you a growler of the finest seasonal beer we have on tap.

I also tried demul, but it kept spitting some error at me about a missing file. It could be because I was trying to test it with Last Hope and Gun Lord. I'll monkey around with it more when I have free time.

No Matter what I tried, I kept getting a "unable to find 'mpr-21931.ic501' in romset 'dc' ". I have no idea what that means, and I'm using the latest demul. Any Ideas?