Thirith on 14/12/2015 at 08:37
I'm not sure what the official take here is on emulators (I've been on forums where you're not allowed to talk about them, because they're seen as just a step away from software piracy, I guess) (so if the mods want to lay down some ground rules, I'm not against it). Since I'm just setting up my HTPC, I thought I'd install some emulators for old-school systems (8-bit and 16-bit), just to see how playing them on a big screen feels. I did start my career as a gamer on the Commodore 64, but as a kid I never played the console greats.
What are people's experiences with emulators? Which ones do you like best? How does it feel playing these decade-old games - are they still as much fun, or has something been lost in emulation?
And, most importantly, scan lines: yes or no?
Sulphur on 14/12/2015 at 09:32
I've been dabbling in emulation since I was in college, since we never had easy access to the actual consoles here at the time.
The old greats are fairly well-known quantities by now, so you get to run the golden oldies from the NES/SNES/PSX eras with near-complete accuracy, plus a heap of enhancements on top. The PS2/Gamecube/Wii have some fairly good emulation as well - Metroid and Silent Hill 2 run well, for instance. More complicated stuff like MGS3 doesn't quite get all of its elements filled in just yet.
The one thing that stands out is that games from back then were fairly brutal, at least to my eyes (and hands) after being coddled for the past 10+ years with things like objective markers and... oh, never mind, let's not go there. What I mean is, it's fairly easy to die and get warped back to the beginning of a level (or game[!]) in these things, so if you're used to checkpointing... well, you'll get unused to it fairly quickly after a round of FF4 or Contra.
That brings us to the enhancements: sprite filtering, slapping 16x anisotropic filtering on textures, 8xMSAA, and save states. All good, use 'em. Especially save states, if you like your save scumming.
But no scanlines. Gosh. That's like buying an Ultra HD monitor and smearing it with vaseline so you could return to the Good Ol' Days. Give abysmal's (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146055) thread a look-in if you want that. :D
henke on 14/12/2015 at 10:56
When I first discovered them, about 18 years ago(Jesus I'm old), I got really into them. Downloaded and played every ROM I could find find for the NES, SNES & Genesis. Since then I've barely touched the stuff though.
icemann on 14/12/2015 at 12:45
There are videogame forums out there where you can't even discuss emulators? That's just plain stupid. How else in the hell are communities from say the Commodore 64 days etc supposed to live on? Just utter stupidity.
Yes it does encourage piracy. *Technically*. But if the system in question stopped being mass produced 20 years ago, then how is it still piracy?
Anyways. When it's of more current gen systems then, by all means go for it. I see the link when it comes there.
Emulators like pcsx2 had the option to load from the CD/DVD, which was great.
So yeah. Of the emulation scenes out there, I used to follow the snes community a fair bit since it was the 1st one I sought out an emulator for at around 1998 or 1999. Later I got MAJORLY into the ps2 emulation scene. Still follow it quite heavily really. Been awesome watching the emulator improve bit by bit, allowing more and more games to work. Only this year did support for games which used the Snowblind engine (eg Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance, Fallout Brotherhood of Steel, Champions of Norrath etc) come about. I'd been waiting 10 years for that update.
It seems like certain platforms get more love from programmers, emulation wise. Only this year did I discover a PS3 emulator that's still in it's very early stages, whilst on the other end of the scale I also discovered a PSP emulator, which in the span of this year now runs almost all games quite well (PPSSPP).
I love emulation. With it you have awesome things like save states, the ability to upscale games to better resolutions, play with your own choice of gamepad etc. Just awesome stuff. When it's not PC games I'm playing, 99/100 times it will be via emulation.
Thirith on 14/12/2015 at 12:53
I wonder whether the Xbox/PS2 generation (and platforms like the Wii that were always a bit behind their generational cousins) is the last one that'll be emulated well. The effort that goes into emulating even a PS3 sufficiently well that the games run well strikes me as mindboggling. It might be easier with systems more closely based on PC, mind you.
icemann on 14/12/2015 at 13:09
Quote Posted by Thirith
I wonder whether the Xbox/PS2 generation (and platforms like the Wii that were always a bit behind their generational cousins) is the last one that'll be emulated well. The effort that goes into emulating even a PS3 sufficiently well that the games run well strikes me as mindboggling. It might be easier with systems more closely based on PC, mind you.
Well it's based off many things imo. You have understanding of the base architecture of the console, programming skills, the power of PCs at the point in time (of the emulators development / continued development) etc.
PS2 emulation is so damn good nowadays, both from the continued development of emulation for it as well as the improvements in CPU + GPU from more modern PCs vs the PCs around when development began.
In the years I've been following the scene, it's gone from emulation of basic demo's all the way up to full on near complete emulation of the entire systems libray. That said, numerous games still need work to work better. And the same is the case across emulation of most systems. If you look at DOS game emulation via Dosbox, that's been going for years but still isn't perfect. Also last I checked they hadn't added save states to that, and not due to any technical limitations but more on the opinions of the developers themselves that save states promote "cheating".
WingedKagouti on 14/12/2015 at 13:26
Quote Posted by icemann
There are videogame forums out there where you can't even discuss emulators? That's just plain stupid. How else in the hell are communities from say the Commodore 64 days etc supposed to live on? Just utter stupidity.
Fan run forums with official high profile developer involvement tend to have fairly strict policies on what is accepted when it comes to piracy. Simply because those who run the forum want to keep the developers involved and the developers themselves can't afford to be seen associating with anything resembling piracy.
Quote:
Yes it does encourage piracy. *Technically*. But if the system in question stopped being mass produced 20 years ago, then how is it still piracy?
Whether something is readily available or not has no bearing on the legality of copying it without consent. Technically, if you own a legal copy of a game you're most likely allowed to emulate it (depending on local laws) as long as the emulator itself does not infringe upon any rights (see Amiga and Kickstart). If you don't own a legal copy of a game, then it's still piracy even if the company that made it went under and no one picked up the rights. Software is copyright protected as literary works in most of the western world, meaning that there's a 70+ year duration before it expires in most western countries.
The actual amount of "legal grey area" when it comes to emulation is minescule. Nobody is entitled to play a game they don't own legally, classic or not.
icemann on 14/12/2015 at 14:29
But at the same time the big companies (except for Sony in the ps1 era) don't often do much to stop it. For now anyway.
TannisRoot on 14/12/2015 at 14:32
Beat Ocarina of Time in HS with a Microsoft Sidewinder on Project 64. Surprisingly fun that!
Also remember my neighbor bringing me over to show off his PC running Pokemon Red/Blue back in the late 90s. Blew my mind!
Manwe on 14/12/2015 at 16:05
Quote Posted by Sulphur
That brings us to the enhancements: sprite filtering, slapping 16x anisotropic filtering on textures, 8xMSAA, and save states. All good, use 'em. Especially save states, if you like your save scumming.
One of my favourite enhancement with SNES emulation is the skip frames button that essentially let's you fast-forward. It's an absolute must for games with shitty gameplay and unskippable cutscenes like the Final Fantasy series. If you cut out all the bullshit from FF6 for example, you get a game that's barely 10 hours long. Considering the combat essentially amounts to pressing A repeatedly (while waiting for the game to slowly move along at its glacial pace), all you have to do is set A to turbo mode and fast forward, while occasionally stopping in-between fights to heal your characters. Tells you a lot about the broken design of the game when 90% of the encounters in the game can be won by spamming the basic attack of your characters, and 90% of the game consists in these encounters.
Anyway, FF apart, some of my favourite games were discovered through emulation. If you've never played them, check out Chrono Trigger and Super Metroid on the SNES. They are some of the most finely crafted games of of all time, and they haven't aged a day. They essentially look and feel like modern indie games. Tales of Phantasia is also pretty fucking fantastic (unlike FF6, no need to skip encounters here, the fighting system is really engaging), although the story is slightly puerile. I don't know how much of it is due to the fan translation, and how much is due to pervy Japanese culture. Beware if you intend to play the original Star Ocean though. While the graphics, presentation and sounds are amazing, and the mechanics interesting (if a tad broken) there is essentially no game in it. It's about as long as the first 2-3 hours of Tales of Phantasia and then it abruptly ends. In fact the story barely even has time to start.
Of course you can add all the Zelda and Mario titles ever released to your list of must-plays. Also any Rare title from the SNES onward. As for difficulty, your mileage may vary. Personally I find the top-down Zelda games of the SNES/GBA era really accessible and easy. Same with the Metroid/Castlevanias (from Symphony of the Night onward). But I simply can't get back into the side-scrolling Mario games. I recently tried to finish Super Mario World and I found it so unfair that I eventually gave up (I tried to play without save states ). This game is either hard as fuck, or there's something I'm not doing right.
Concerning PSX games, as I mentioned in other threads I find most of them have aged terribly and are not very fun to play today (except for a few rare exceptions, like MGS). But I'm sure some people will argue to the contrary.
As for tips, when I was in China for 6 months and got an itch to play games, I plugged my shitty no-name Android tablet into the TV we had in the room using the mini HDMI port, plugged in a USB controller in the micro USB port, and used that as a makeshift console. Worked pretty great. You can emulate anything up to PSX/N64 on Android really easily.
