Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

[ZipDisk]

Yup, that was actually one of the more popular ways of defeating the CIC.

here's a video on it.

I'm glad you were able to head off that Sega issue, losing a console and a 32x would have STUNG.

 

[Manimal House]

Happened upon this cool little site:

https://snes.party/

It's a browser emulator that lets you form a lobby and play snes titles with multiplayer capabilities. Gamepad functions are a bit wonky right now, I recommend getting Joy2Key to map a controller to keyboard keys and configure the controllers based on that.
(also, if you go to the upper right and click 'snes party' dropdown after starting a lobby, stop the app, then go to the games section and scroll down, you'll see the NES, SNES and PS1 emulators that you can play on there as well).
Only gripes I have is that the game list is a bit unorganized, especially for PS1. And the gamepad configuration is kind of a pain, and multiplayer is a bit laggy. But it's a work in progress, and it's not that bad so far.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Happened upon this cool little site:

https://snes.party/

It's a browser emulator that lets you form a lobby and play snes titles with multiplayer capabilities. Gamepad functions are a bit wonky right now, I recommend getting Joy2Key to map a controller to keyboard keys and configure the controllers based on that.
(also, if you go to the upper right and click 'snes party' dropdown after starting a lobby, stop the app, then go to the games section and scroll down, you'll see the NES, SNES and PS1 emulators that you can play on there as well).
Only gripes I have is that the game list is a bit unorganized, especially for PS1. And the gamepad configuration is kind of a pain, and multiplayer is a bit laggy. But it's a work in progress, and it's not that bad so far.

Sounds good for turn-based multiplayer games at least for now. I'll check it out.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

fightcade can play snes games online with rollback netcode. unless your friends are dummies who can't do anything beyond a web browser, it's worth setting that up instead imo. i believe they're also working on getting ps1 with rollback working

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Recently, I’ve been playing old school N64 games that were rom based cartridges from China and surprisingly they play pretty well and the sounds are not grating to the ears.

Next on the list, though, will possibly be an Anbernic or Retroid Pocket handheld. For now, this one looks pretty cool:

The emulation on here, from what I can gather from other vids that talk about this, runs pretty smoothly. Plus, I read somewhere that it can play certain GameCube games on here, but with most things, it’s not that perfect.

Either way, it would be nice to play some more handhelds again.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Either way, it would be nice to play some more handhelds again.

I'm waiting for something tiny and strong, no bigger than a PSP Go and able to play systems up to Wii. All the handhelds these days seem relatively big, aside from gimmicky stuff that's too small like the FunKey S.

 

[X Prime]

fightcade can play snes games online with rollback netcode. unless your friends are dummies who can't do anything beyond a web browser, it's worth setting that up instead imo. i believe they're also working on getting ps1 with rollback working

Retroarch is supposed to have that, but if I recall a technical limitation is that the states they would need to use are simply too large in many cases?

Or at least that was the explanation why it didn't work well.

 

[ZipDisk]

All of the anbernics suffer from that shit design syndrome, it's like how all generic controllers used to be malformed to avoid patents. Why do they do that now? They could jam a fucking IPISS (I know it's IPS) on a PS3 pad with hot glue and have a better design than these fucking identiclones.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Retroarch is supposed to have that, but if I recall a technical limitation is that the states they would need to use are simply too large in many cases?

Or at least that was the explanation why it didn't work well.

How does Nintendo make it work so well on Switch?

 

[skykiii]

Sounds good for turn-based multiplayer games at least for now. I'll check it out.

There's one game series I always wanted to get a massive group together for: the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, which allowed up to 8 players (depending on the scenario you chose) and each one ran their own kingdom.

The issue is that those aren't exactly games you would finish in a single evening, so I'm wondering how fun it would be in practice.

 

[X Prime]

How does Nintendo make it work so well on Switch?

If memory serves regarding how this works, if you have Generic Emulated Game A, you implement rollback by sending savestates back and forth.

You see how this becomes increasingly difficult the more complex the emulated system, as the savestates get larger.

This doesn't apply to games with custom solutions that only save certain portions of the game state.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

Retroarch is supposed to have that, but if I recall a technical limitation is that the states they would need to use are simply too large in many cases?

Or at least that was the explanation why it didn't work well.

after looking it up, i found out that someone actually managed to get rollback working in the duckstation emulator a few months ago. now it's just a matter of getting that integrated into fightcade i guess.

How does Nintendo make it work so well on Switch?

i think you're confusing the switch's save state feature with the save states used for rollback netcode. it works by comparing save states back and forth and then if there's a desync it can rewind the game back to the last matching state. it can be difficult for emulation of more powerful systems because you're having to make save states constantly

 

[X Prime]

There are Switch games with rollback netcode, but I want to say those are either individual games with custom solutions where they don't need to save the entirety of the gamestate, or relatively simple emulated games.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

There are Switch games with rollback netcode, but I want to say those are either individual games with custom solutions where they don't need to save the entirety of the gamestate, or relatively simple emulated games.

i wasn't aware that there were any. that seems kind of like a wasted effort on a console where nearly everyone is on wifi

 

[Two Dollars]

I'm waiting for something tiny and strong, no bigger than a PSP Go and able to play systems up to Wii. All the handhelds these days seem relatively big, aside from gimmicky stuff that's too small like the FunKey S.

Your best best at that form factor right now is the Retroid Pocket 2S. It just released so detailed benchmark videos aren’t out yet, but it’s expected to be as powerful as the 3+, meaning some Gamecube and a tiny amount of Wii will play at full speed.

But what I want more is a dual screen handheld. Two 768x576 screens would provide perfect or near-perfect scaling for all handhelds except 3DS and PSP, while still providing good scaling for 240p/480p consoles. And the total number of pixels between both screens would still be less than, say, the Retroid Pocket 3+.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Your best best at that form factor right now is the Retroid Pocket 2S. It just released so detailed benchmark videos aren’t out yet, but it’s expected to be as powerful as the 3+, meaning some Gamecube and a tiny amount of Wii will play at full speed.

But what I want more is a dual screen handheld. Two 768x576 screens would provide perfect or near-perfect scaling for all handhelds except 3DS and PSP, while still providing good scaling for 240p/480p consoles. And the total number of pixels between both screens would still be less than, say, the Retroid Pocket 3+.

That's a little weaker than I'd like but worth looking at.

Are there any dual screen devices at all? I've never seen one. That'd be nice.

 

[Two Dollars]

That's a little weaker than I'd like but worth looking at.

There are more powerful devices out there, but they’re bigger and more expensive. I guess if you have a good Android phone, you could just get one of those controller grips for that.

Are there any dual screen devices at all? I've never seen one. That'd be nice.

There are a few clamshell devices, but they only have one screen.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Super Mario World and Super Metroid have super noticable layer problems. The first time I loaded up Super Metroid I actually laughed at the graphics fuckery.

I remember that there would be some layer problems with Super Mario World but that was...like 20+ years ago.

I grew up with Snes9x and by 2004 SNES emulation was generally fine except for Super FX games and obscure shit.

 

[Stasi]

What are people's experience of rpcs3? Not really used it much until recently, decided to finally play some PS3 games and it has randomly wiped my game saves for no reason. That's pretty fucking bad as far as emulator bugs go, especially if you are playing Persona or some other long RPG.

I thought I was smart for keeping a backup of the saves but trying them on a different install of rpcs3 and on other devices I get the same thing - once the game boots it does a save game check and creates a fresh save, wiping the old ones in the process.

Needless to say I'm not very impressed with rpcs3.

 

[HexFag]

What are people's experience of rpcs3? Not really used it much until recently, decided to finally play some PS3 games and it has randomly wiped my game saves for no reason. That's pretty fucking bad as far as emulator bugs go, especially if you are playing Persona or some other long RPG.

I thought I was smart for keeping a backup of the saves but trying them on a different install of rpcs3 and on other devices I get the same thing - once the game boots it does a save game check and creates a fresh save, wiping the old ones in the process.

Needless to say I'm not very impressed with rpcs3.

Haven't had a hard time with the emulator other than my PC being too shit to run MGS3 years ago but what else is new. Games like Armored Core 4 / For Answer, Zone of the Enders, Asura's Wrath, and Peace Walker ran like a dream for me though. Persona 5 has a crazy amount of mod support for the RPCS3 version but at this point I'd just go with Royal as it has more content (just wait for somebody to crack it).

That sucks that RPCS3 fucked you over like that though, I've never had an issue with saves but RPCS3 might do what other emulators do and store saves in AppData or Documents rather than in the actual emulator folder itself. In some case the solution ranges from something simple as putting "portable.txt" in the actual install folder to make the emulator TRULY portable, or something a little more complex like pointing the save folder to where you have everything backed up. I'd check the forums or the GitHub page for more information about it because I'm almost certain there's a solution to your problem like that.

Something unrelated; Does anybody know how to get switch emulated games to run directly off of Steam? I've been using Steam ROM Manager to put emulated games on Steam for ease of access but in the case of emulators like Yuzu/Ryujinx or Citra, the Steam game just started the actual emulator itself instead of the game running off the emulator. It's not a major issue, I'm just too lazy to start the game when I'm playing games on the couch.