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

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As much as I have nostalgic memories of my Sega Mega Drive, there's no fucking way I'm spending hundreds of dollars on a physical enhanced replica over just booting up some emulator that is probably 20% accurate and brute forcing the games I like on my gaming PC.

Which reminds me, has emulation progress pretty much stopped for n64 and below? Like has anyone said 'fuck it' and started a Duckstation tier remake of a SNES emulator? Or have we pretty much established that right now we've got it good and there's no point putting years of progress into making something that is 4% more efficient yet doesn't make a slight bit of difference while actually playing the games?
 
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Tom Nook's Gloryhole said:
As much as I have nostalgic memories of my Sega Mega Drive, there's no fucking way I'm spending hundreds of dollars on a physical enhanced replica over just booting up some emulator that is probably 20% accurate and brute forcing the games I like on my gaming PC.

Which reminds me, has emulation progress pretty much stopped for n64 and below? Like has anyone said 'fuck it' and started a Duckstation tier remake of a SNES emulator? Or have we pretty much established that right now we've got it good and there's no point putting years of progress into making something that is 4% more efficient yet doesn't make a slight bit of difference while actually playing the games?
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Unfortunately, it seems a lot of development on that front has moved to libretro cores 🤷‍♂️
 
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TL:DW: A new SD card reader that fits into the memory card slot of a PS2 (or a firmware update for certain old ones) allows you to soft mod a PS2 with no hassle. No more messing around with USB drives and weird hacks. Just format the SD card, drag your roms on to it, and you're good to go.

The title makes me wonder if there's any homebrew PS2 games.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
(Give clocks if late)
TL:DW: A new SD card reader that fits into the memory card slot of a PS2 (or a firmware update for certain old ones) allows you to soft mod a PS2 with no hassle. No more messing around with USB drives and weird hacks. Just format the SD card, drag your roms on to it, and you're good to go.

The title makes me wonder if there's any homebrew PS2 games.
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I don't think you'd want to use this. The memory card bus is a lot slower than the IDE hard drive interface or using a network attached storage option. It makes for some annoying compatibility issues, FMV choppiness, crashes etc.

USB 1.1 for OPL has always been a joke but this isn't really good enough to rely on.
 
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Baraka Obama said:
I don't think you'd want to use this. The memory card bus is a lot slower than the IDE hard drive interface or using a network attached storage option. It makes for some annoying compatibility issues, FMV choppiness, crashes etc.

USB 1.1 for OPL has always been a joke but this isn't really good enough to rely on.
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Judge Dredd said:
(Give clocks if late)
TL:DW: A new SD card reader that fits into the memory card slot of a PS2 (or a firmware update for certain old ones) allows you to soft mod a PS2 with no hassle. No more messing around with USB drives and weird hacks. Just format the SD card, drag your roms on to it, and you're good to go.

The title makes me wonder if there's any homebrew PS2 games.
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MX4SIO, which is what MMCE is using, is a far better boot option than USB drive. It has far better compatibility and faster loading than USB. It still doesn't beat loading off of a HDD or the disc, but it is by far the best option for the PS2 slim.

I'll probably do some further testing though I really don't have the microSD space on my MCP2 like I do on my old hard drive.

Speaking of the MCP2, the WiFi abilities and cloud saving are spotty on my end though that might be to shitty internet.
 
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Being better than absolute trash, aka trying to use USB 1.1 (max ~1.5mb/s) to emulate a 4x DVD drive (max ~5mb/s) isn't really an accomplishment.

There are very good self contained NAS options using a raspberry pi if you're allergic to using an original size PS2 for a hard drive and refuse to burn discs.

Maybe this gets better eventually, the SD card loading over memory card on GameCube via Swiss eventually became near perfect, but I don't see the utility in bothering with it today.
 
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Tom Nook's Gloryhole said:
As much as I have nostalgic memories of my Sega Mega Drive, there's no fucking way I'm spending hundreds of dollars on a physical enhanced replica over just booting up some emulator that is probably 20% accurate and brute forcing the games I like on my gaming PC.
Click to expand...

This is kind of my opinion too, though I didn't have consoles in my house growing up (except for the GameCube and PlayStation, which my brother had, later I had a Wii). But as much as I enjoy a bunch of console games, I've never had the serious urge to get a replica not-SNES (or whatever) to sit in front of the television.

I'd like to figure out a way to get my PC + emulated games on my TV without lag and without a giant cord snaking its way through the house, but that's not a high priority right now.
 
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Xarpho's Return said:
I'd like to figure out a way to get my PC + emulated games on my TV without lag and without a giant cord snaking its way through the house, but that's not a high priority right now.
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You could try dealing with Moonlight/Sunshine if your PC is powerful enough, but a not-SNES is probably your best bet. Either a Raspberry Pi 5 with Batocera or, better yet, a mini PC with Batocera.
 
HexFag said:
Speaking of the MCP2, the WiFi abilities and cloud saving are spotty on my end though that might be to shitty internet.
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You have to update the firmware. The newest update improves cloud saving.

Does anyone have experiences with pvm's? I snagged one from a hospital and the picture looks good. However, conflicting info on how to care for them. Do I really have to recap and degauss them often? I'm not comfortable opening that thing.
 
am i retarded or does retroarch kind of suck. now that i realized i can put links to the emulators directly into steam im seeing less and less of a need for it. not to mention it never remembers where my directory for the games are and it crashes every time i try to get it to log all my games. im also having specific issues with running a game that i wonder is just specific to retroarch or something because no one is reporting the problem on the doplhin wiki

Xarpho's Return said:
I'd like to figure out a way to get my PC + emulated games on my TV without lag and without a giant cord snaking its way through the house, but that's not a high priority right now.
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steam link is pretty good.
 
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Agreeably4263 said:
am i retarded or does retroarch kind of suck
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It's like a flavor of Linux that requires a very specific corresponding flavor of tism, and a lot of people don't have it

I'm feeling more and more like I want to get away from it, especially since I've been using EmuDeck on my Steam Deck and it works so much fucking better for the most part
 
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Friendly Primarina said:
I was going to install the RetroArch
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The I Scream Man said:
I'm feeling more and more like I want to get away from it
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ill just say that star wars rouge squadron 2 rogue leader will not run with the recommended settings on retroarch at all, it crashes on load, but works just fine with default settings with the regular non libretrotarded dolphin. i had no issues running the standard nintendobabby stuff that i tried but i will just figure out regular dolphin from here on out
 
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Agreeably4263 said:
am i retarded or does retroarch kind of suck. now that i realized i can put links to the emulators directly into steam im seeing less and less of a need for it. not to mention it never remembers where my directory for the games are and it crashes every time i try to get it to log all my games. im also having specific issues with running a game that i wonder is just specific to retroarch or something because no one is reporting the problem on the doplhin wiki
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RetroArch is great for most anything it supports, but the Dolphin and PSP cores in particular are outdated and a pain to use, so you’re better off using standalone for those systems specifically. DS and PS2 used to be the same way but recently got new cores that make them significantly better in RA, so maybe the same will happen for Dolphin someday.
 
I refuse to use RetroArch.

On another front, I'm still trying to see if I can get Star Wars Episode I Racer to work with me, with the bad experience I had with Peixoto's stuff. Maybe I should try again...
 
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Agreeably4263 said:
am i retarded or does retroarch kind of suck. now that i realized i can put links to the emulators directly into steam im seeing less and less of a need for it. not to mention it never remembers where my directory for the games are and it crashes every time i try to get it to log all my games. im also having specific issues with running a game that i wonder is just specific to retroarch or something because no one is reporting the problem on the doplhin wiki


steam link is pretty good.
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Retroarch's worst feature by far is the menus. If you're on PC, use something like Steam Rom Manager to just have the steam games as shortcuts that you can start from instead of having to use the actual app itself. The only thing you have to do is intall the core for whatever console youre playing and provide the bios if needed.

Also use standalone for:
Dolphin
PCSX2
Citra
Duckstation
PPSSPP

as they are all in a better spot than the RA core.
 
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