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

[XYZpdq]

I'll be happy if I can get it to run Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door. It just instacrashes Dolphin for me.

iirc I've heard that the Paper Mario series are particularly funky about emulating

 

[Stasi]

Anyone have much luck using switch joycons as a controller on PC? You can pair the joycons individually but I want to use them as one controllers.

I found some third party programs a while ago but couldn't get them working properly. Switch is gathering dust and would be nice to get some use out of the joycons at least.

 

[MysticMisty]

iirc I've heard that the Paper Mario series are particularly funky about emulating

The first one definitely emulates poorly, with some parts worse then others. But at least it works and doesn't instacrash the emulator. I want to meet these people who get it to work and demand how until it works on my end too.

Dolphin is my only option as both my GameCube and my Wii are dead.

Edit: Good news is I finally got it to work. Bad news though:

...Yeah.

Edit edit: Got it working using the Ishiiruka Dolphin fork, but sadly the lag is pretty severe in standard maps and I can't imagine it'll continue to play at normal speeds in battle once the audience shows up. Especially the larger ones.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

The first one definitely emulates poorly, with some parts worse then others. But at least it works and doesn't instacrash the emulator. I want to meet these people who get it to work and demand how until it works on my end too.

Dolphin is my only option as both my GameCube and my Wii are dead.

Edit: Good news is I finally got it to work. Bad news though:
View attachment 1382515
...Yeah.

Edit edit: Got it working using the Ishiiruka Dolphin fork, but sadly the lag is pretty severe in standard maps and I can't imagine it'll continue to play at normal speeds in battle once the audience shows up. Especially the larger ones.

Remember that you can right-click on the game in the list of Dolphin, under properties you can do game-specific tweaks or apply patches. There's also a link that takes you to the wiki for the game, that might have more information about glitches and technical workarounds. I've never had problems with The Thousand Year Door myself, F-Zero GX is my nemesis.

 

[MysticMisty]

Remember that you can right-click on the game in the list of Dolphin, under properties you can do game-specific tweaks or apply patches. There's also a link that takes you to the wiki for the game, that might have more information about glitches and technical workarounds. I've never had problems with The Thousand Year Door myself, F-Zero GX is my nemesis.

Believe me, I spent the better part of two hours tweaking various settings. My problem is very likely because I'm using a laptop from 2013 (yeah, I know). It's my only option right now though.

And I did hit up the specific wiki page, but the most I got out of it is to make sure bounding box is enabled because otherwise the game will break. If I'm missing something or you think of anything else please let me know. I really want to play this game.

 

[Vapewizard]

Is there any particular difference between the SNES emulators out there? Off the top of my head I already knew of Zsnes and Snes9x, but apparently there's also one called retroarch? I want to play Secret of mana and patch it with the relocalised hack.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Retroarch is a massive pain in the ass to use.

 

[XYZpdq]

Is there any particular difference between the SNES emulators out there? Off the top of my head I already knew of Zsnes and Snes9x, but apparently there's also one called retroarch? I want to play Secret of mana and patch it with the relocalised hack.

iirc there's another one that gets down to the chip's clock cycles exact or something and requires several supercomputers to run, but hey you can play those levels in Mario World and the shit jumps up at you at the right time

 

[Vapewizard]

iirc there's another one that gets down to the chip's clock cycles exact or something and requires several supercomputers to run, but hey you can play those levels in Mario World and the shit jumps up at you at the right time

You mean Higan? I just looked around and one of the sites collecting these mentioned that Snes9x is the most commonly used emulator but there's one called Higan that's more accurate but is CPU intensive. I think I'll just roll with Snes9x.

 

[fag0t]

snes9x is fine for most games theres only a few games with problems i think personally i use mednafen because i like to have multiple consoles in one emulator

 

[Linkola's IT Guy]

You mean Higan? I just looked around and one of the sites collecting these mentioned that Snes9x is the most commonly used emulator but there's one called Higan that's more accurate but is CPU intensive. I think I'll just roll with Snes9x.

Yes, higan is the most accurate one but it's a bit harder to use. The author's fork called bsnes is just as accurate but has more traditional features and interface, and is better than Snes9x imo.

 

[Trashfire Garbagefuck]

there's a fork of bsnes that has mode 7 games draw the background in full widescreen, it doesn't just stretch the image. you can even bump up the resolution so the scaled backgrounds aren't as pixelated. I really like it. stuff like f zero and hyper zone look phenomenal.

 

[MysticMisty]

Remember that you can right-click on the game in the list of Dolphin, under properties you can do game-specific tweaks or apply patches. There's also a link that takes you to the wiki for the game, that might have more information about glitches and technical workarounds. I've never had problems with The Thousand Year Door myself, F-Zero GX is my nemesis.

Took me hours fighting with the emulator (Ishiiruka fork) all week but I finally got it to fucking work. With the HD mod no less. I'm so happy.

Aside: since I just got a new phone (one of last year's models) I decided to try the Dolphin Android app for shits and giggles. I have to say I'm surprised at how good it works, even though the touch controls are a bit of a pain in the ass. It's surreal yet cool to be able to play Gamecube games on my phone at work on my lunch break.

 

[Max Mustermann]

I know this is a fool's errand at this point, but I have to ask anyway: Does anyone here know if someone's found a way to bypass the PlayStation 3's hard drive encryption? I've read enough documentation to know that brute forcing it would literally take a billion billion years, but I'm always hopeful that there might be new developments on that front someday.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I know this is a fool's errand at this point, but I have to ask anyway: Does anyone here know if someone's found a way to bypass the PlayStation 3's hard drive encryption? I've read enough documentation to know that brute forcing it would literally take a billion billion years, but I'm always hopeful that there might be new developments on that front someday.

With a softmod and custom firmware can't you access it through LAN?

 

[Jean Lafitte 1812]

I know this is a fool's errand at this point, but I have to ask anyway: Does anyone here know if someone's found a way to bypass the PlayStation 3's hard drive encryption? I've read enough documentation to know that brute forcing it would literally take a billion billion years, but I'm always hopeful that there might be new developments on that front someday.

The PS3 is hacked wide open, but the scene is a mishmash of different hacks depending on how old the system is. Figure out which setup you need and follow a guide. These are what I used but mine is full CFW. I don't know how good /r/ps3hombrew's guides are for "non-hackable" systems that need something like PS3 Homebrew Enabler.

There's also some way to access a backup on a PC, but it requires the system ID that's only available if you hack the system anyway. Useful as an archive, not so much for one-time retrieval.

 

[Pissmaster]

If you want to just play SNES games just use SNES9X. If it doesn't work on SNES9X then just use ZSNES.

Higan was developed by an insane person who spent his best years making an absolutely perfect SNES emulator and constructed it to work differently than any other emulator, considering the incredibly vast scope he put into the project. Setting up most emulators just involves you setting your controls, loading a rom, and playing. Higan needs a small guide to explain how you import roms and then the emulator itself keeps them in its special snowflake folder and how you need to click through several submenus to do anything because autists don't make GUIs for normal people and it's all a mess. Higan is best used for if you're developing your own SNES game and you need the best emulation available, or you're trying to run something obscure as all hell, like Exertainment Mountain Bike Rally which came with an entire exercise bike you plug into your SNES, because what the fuck else supports that? SNES9X does 99.9% of what anyone would want a SNES emulator to do, and Higan is for the 0.1% out there who need cycle accuracy or support for crazy shit that's unique to one game. Byuu even wrote up a really interesting article about the emulator's scope. So if you don't absolutely need Higan, don't use it. Just use SNES9X.

Retroarch has its own share of autism, but turned up to 11, and half the shit you'll run into perplexingly doesn't work right and even setting controls is a pain in the ass and sometimes breaks shit. Hope you like accidentally flipping one switch in the options and having the entire emulator softlock, only for you to spend the next hour skimming through config files and googling what the fuck could have happened before you just say "fuck it" and delete/reinstall the whole fucking thing. Don't use Retroarch.

 

[Max Mustermann]

With a softmod and custom firmware can't you access it through LAN?

The PS3 is hacked wide open, but the scene is a mishmash of different hacks depending on how old the system is. Figure out which setup you need and follow a guide. These are what I used but mine is full CFW. I don't know how good /r/ps3hombrew's guides are for "non-hackable" systems that need something like PS3 Homebrew Enabler.

There's also some way to access a backup on a PC, but it requires the system ID that's only available if you hack the system anyway. Useful as an archive, not so much for one-time retrieval.

To clarify the situation: A hard drive with a bit of gaming history on it was rescued from a dying PS3. Instructions on how to hack the system and retrieve the system ID were followed to the letter but were unsuccessful. The PS3 is now inaccessible and is most likely dead and junked, but the hard drive was rescued and an optical backup made. This, I fully understand from having read the relevant material, makes recovering the data nigh impossible because of the missing encryption/decryption keys. My colleagues and I still hope that someone will figure out a way someday, though, however much of a long shot it might be.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Retroarch is a massive pain in the ass to use.

I haven't tried it since they added a real UI, but having to go through some PS3 bootleg menu on a PC should be a warcrime. I also like that they don't tell you, in any way whatsoever, that you need the BIOS for some emulators.

An all in one emulator should not be that difficult honestly. All I want is to press a button to set what system I want, then set up the settings for that specific one.

 

[Bread Fetishist]

I finally went through with hacking my 3DS. Been having a blast with a bunch of DS games, like Elite Beat Agents, Bowser’s Inside Story, Super Scribblenauts etc.