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Post by koopa42 on Sept 18, 2022 21:08:22 GMT
Yeah, calm down, it was a joke title before anyone has an aneurism.
It is time, for the first time in probably a decade I'm setting up emulation on my PC (because I have an ace PC now). My question is, what's the current score with emulators? Is there one big chunky one that does everything yet (I know there was on the Pi)? and is it decent to use, I'm too old to fumble blindly till it works (no wife pun intended) like back in the day with MAME
No, I don't need any ROMs, ever.
Cheers
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Post by mattb on Sept 18, 2022 21:27:40 GMT
Retroarch is the one that does it all, MAME included.
It's decent to use for most of the mainstream systems, although for more cutting edge and obscure systems you might still prefer stand alone ones.
If you want everything preconfigured, for an emulation box or arcade cab, it's also used in lot of Linux gaming distros like RetroPie, RecalBox, Batocera and Lakka.
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Post by koopa42 on Sept 18, 2022 21:38:09 GMT
Retroarch is the one that does it all, MAME included. It's decent to use for most of the mainstream systems, although for more cutting edge and obscure systems you might still prefer stand alone ones. If you want everything preconfigured, for an emulation box or arcade cab, it's also used in lot of Linux gaming distros like RetroPie, RecalBox, Batocera and Lakka. Cheers, I googled before asking but there were several that came up, I wanted actual retrogamers thoughts on which is the 'bestest' I thought about individual ones but sheesh, that's a faff. I think I need to do an individual one for the Acorn mind you |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2022 21:58:11 GMT
I had a Raspberry Pi - a lowly 2nd gen model - in my arcade cab for a while. Getting Retropie installed on it was a doddle - just download the microSD card image and off you go. It worked brilliantly with the arcade controls, too.
The only problem was the lack of power. Games like Radiant Silvergun brought it to a crawl. And I needed a more up-to-date version of MAME to get Cave shooters working. So I put an old PC board into the cab and installed Windows 10 so I could get an up-to-date version of MAME and play everything.
Thing is, it’s just not great booting into Windows. The UI in Retropie was far better for getting stuck right in on a keyboard-less system.
So as long as you’re happy with emulating all but the most high-end games MAME can offer, go for a Raspberry Pi with RetroPi.
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Post by kerr9000 on Sept 18, 2022 22:19:11 GMT
Personally I liked having emulators for different stuff, I use Fusion for Megadrive, master system and game gear, Snes 9x for SNES, Final burn for arcade.... I think its just my preference though.
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Post by mattb on Sept 19, 2022 0:20:59 GMT
Cheers, I googled before asking but there were several that came up, I wanted actual retrogamers thoughts on which is the 'bestest' I thought about individual ones but sheesh, that's a faff. I think I need to do an individual one for the Acorn mind you Yeah, there's annoyingly no LibRetro core for the BBC Micro or indeed any of the other Acorn computers. Still, there are plenty of good stand alone emulators. BeebEm is still the pick of the bunch, as it has been since 1994, but it's been developed a fair bit in the intervening years. |
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Post by mattb on Sept 19, 2022 0:42:31 GMT
I had a Raspberry Pi - a lowly 2nd gen model - in my arcade cab for a while. Getting Retropie installed on it was a doddle - just download the microSD card image and off you go. It worked brilliantly with the arcade controls, too. The only problem was the lack of power. Games like Radiant Silvergun brought it to a crawl. And I needed a more up-to-date version of MAME to get Cave shooters working. So I put an old PC board into the cab and installed Windows 10 so I could get an up-to-date version of MAME and play everything. Thing is, it’s just not great booting into Windows. The UI in Retropie was far better for getting stuck right in on a keyboard-less system. So as long as you’re happy with emulating all but the most high-end games MAME can offer, go for a Raspberry Pi with RetroPi. The 4th Generation Raspberry Pi is a lot more powerful. They're a bit hard to come by at the moment due to chip shortages, although you can get the all-in-one Pi 400 more easily and it's about the same in terms of performance. It costs a bit more but the built in keyboard makes it an especially good platform for emulating home computers. That's probably not what you want for an arcade cab, mind you.
If you want an instant emulation setup for a PC, consider putting Batocera on it rather than Windows. It's a Linux distro that comes with RetroArch and a bunch of other emulators pre-configured, so all you've got to do is supply the game and BIOS files. RetroPie is available as a distro for x86 PCs too these days, although it's nowhere near as well supported as the Pi version.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2022 6:18:40 GMT
Thanks Matt - I’ve not come across Batocera before. I did try Lakka, but again I had issues trying to get it working with the more modern MAME cores. It’s been a while since I tried it so I can’t quite remember what the issue was. I’ll have a look at batocera though. The YouTube video on their front page looks encouraging to say the least!
I’d thought about a RPi4 but from what I could gather, even that wouldn’t have the power to run the really complex machines. I often looked at other SBCs such as the ODroid range, but I wasn’t sure if they’d be any better. The old PC mobo carries an i7-3700k - not many gamers would be running one of those any more to play modern stuff, but it is quite formidable for emulation.
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Post by koopa42 on Sept 19, 2022 8:54:50 GMT
The raspberry Pi is ace, I used the 2 and 3 versions for both emulating and KODI (I miss KODI). I'm only doing it on my PC because it'll (well it had better) chew through the emulating.
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Post by learnedrobb on Sept 19, 2022 10:17:37 GMT
Personally I liked having emulators for different stuff, I use Fusion for Megadrive, master system and game gear, Snes 9x for SNES, Final burn for arcade.... I think its just my preference though. Same here. Fusion, Phoenix, etc. Just my personal preferences. Also, I heartily recommend ReDream the Dreamcast emulator. Only one I've ever paid for. Totally worth it. |
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Post by koopa42 on Sept 19, 2022 11:46:03 GMT
Personally I liked having emulators for different stuff, I use Fusion for Megadrive, master system and game gear, Snes 9x for SNES, Final burn for arcade.... I think its just my preference though. Same here. Fusion, Phoenix, etc. Just my personal preferences. Also, I heartily recommend ReDream the Dreamcast emulator. Only one I've ever paid for. Totally worth it. I hadn't considered the amount of time that has passed since I last tried this stuff, have they managed to emu the more difficult stuff then? Last time I tried, things like the Saturn/DC were a bit sketchy. The PS1 was meant to be doable but it never seemed any good even on retropie. |
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Post by learnedrobb on Sept 19, 2022 18:25:31 GMT
Same here. Fusion, Phoenix, etc. Just my personal preferences. Also, I heartily recommend ReDream the Dreamcast emulator. Only one I've ever paid for. Totally worth it. I hadn't considered the amount of time that has passed since I last tried this stuff, have they managed to emu the more difficult stuff then? Last time I tried, things like the Saturn/DC were a bit sketchy. The PS1 was meant to be doable but it never seemed any good even on retropie. Saturn emulation is much better than it used to be. ReDream is pretty much perfect, even allows for upscaling of games to fill HD. PS1 emulation is again pretty much perfect. Even GC/Wii and Switch can be emulated fairly well with the right hardware. |
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Post by Antiriad2097 on Sept 19, 2022 20:12:48 GMT
I thought we'd moved beyond that to PS3 emulation as the sort of upper limit for now.
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Post by koopa42 on Sept 19, 2022 21:19:54 GMT
I thought we'd moved beyond that to PS3 emulation as the sort of upper limit for now. No need to emulate a media player though |
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Post by mrjenzie on Sept 19, 2022 21:36:36 GMT
retroarch is far more convoluted to set up, rather than separate emulators, and it did kinda put me off it you still need to have BIOS for them though ... those are highly illegal  but pretty simple to find and beware 'cos the emus for the newish machines need to be constantly updated or downloaded, as it may affect the running of games ... CEMU did that to me and i don't use it anymore ... CITRA it asks you to update regularly though i still use PCSX2 1.6.0 for my games on it |
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but pretty simple to find
Its just some interesting potential opportunities for AI and automation to help and free humans in the future, rather than enslave us. We need General Zod to implement it.