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

[Never Scored]

Kirkzz apparently has the Everdrive working on Analouge 3D already. If you order a new one, it will ship with the new firmware, but existing carts will require an actual N64 to upgrade it.

The newest versions of the Everdrive 64 have an FPGA in them themselves, and Kirkzz developed a super accurate NES core for it. I wonder if that will work on the Analogue 3D. Then you'd have an FPGA NES running on an FPGA N64.

It would be interesting to know how FPGA stands up to emulation, because that was another piece of curiosity that led me towards wanting a 3D. If you've had any time testing that out yet, I'd love to know.

I was a very young child when I owned my N64 initially and it's kinda difficult for me to tell where the accuracy ends and emulation issues begin, especially as some of the emulation issues have been smoothed out over recent years. If you do end up testing it out at all, I'd like to know how the Ares emulator stacks up, considering its whole premise is high accuracy.

Trigger Warning: Autism

I only notice it on games I know really well. Like, I cannot play Mario World in a shitty emulator. Whenever I do Yoshi's Island 1 for example, I always hang onto the shell you can boot up to get the 1-up, jump between the boxes a screen or two over, kick the shell upwards as I jump between them to get the fire flower out, grab the fire flower, boot the shell and then shoot the shell and get a coin when it ricochets back. I can do that 100% of the time on an actual SNES or GBA or a really accurate emulator like bsnes, but it's hit or miss on the emulator in the SNES classic.

If I was playing Glover or Iggy's Wrecking Balls for N64, I probably wouldn't know the difference if there was input delay, but if I was playing something I've played to death on an actual N64 like one of the AKI wrestling titles, Mario Kart or Mario 64, I bet I'd notice the lag. Especially with the wrestling games requiring perfect timing for reversals and stuff.

*Edit* The Ganondorf and Phantom Ganondorf fights in Ocarina of Time where you hit the magic balls back and fourth is another good example of something that gets harder to do when the emulator has a lot of input lag.

 

[Pissmaster]

He still claimed that new games make old games obsolete, and that "video content" in contrast endures forever

He's right, just look at this obsolete piece of trash literally no one has cared about since it became obsolete just a year later, in 1991:


Meanwhile, this 1990 masterpiece is still widely beloved to this day:

I only notice it on games I know really well. Like, I cannot play Mario World in a shitty emulator.

I know that feeling. NES Mega Man games have a lot of frame-perfect timing needed to play fast and well, so I can only play them on original hardware or Mesen with two frames of run-ahead. The official rereleases all have a bit of input lag that makes it frustrating.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I only notice it on games I know really well. Like, I cannot play Mario World in a shitty emulator. Whenever I do Yoshi's Island 1 for example, I always hang onto the shell you can boot up to get the 1-up, jump between the boxes a screen or two over, kick the shell upwards as I jump between them to get the fire flower out, grab the fire flower, boot the shell and then shoot the shell and get a coin when it ricochets back. I can do that 100% of the time on an actual SNES or GBA or a really accurate emulator like bsnes, but it's hit or miss on the emulator in the SNES classic.

Is this a problem of accuracy or lag?

I make a point of playing games on real deal hardware for the most part but if you run notoriously not cycle accurate hyper perfect emulator SNES9X on a Wii, specifically the snes9x-rx version, it somehow has seemingly no lag vs a real snes, can natively output 240p to a CRT, easily hook up an SNES classic controller (or Super Famicom Club Nintendo controller if you're OG), all with better video quality than a real SNES. Super Mario World feels just right with this setup.

 

[Never Scored]

Is this a problem of accuracy or lag?

I make a point of playing games on real deal hardware for the most part but if you run notoriously not cycle accurate hyper perfect emulator SNES9X on a Wii, specifically the snes9x-rx version, it somehow has seemingly no lag vs a real snes, can natively output 240p to a CRT, easily hook up an SNES classic controller (or Super Famicom Club Nintendo controller if you're OG), all with better video quality than a real SNES. Super Mario World feels just right with this setup.

Oh it's definitely a lag thing. Being cycle accurate can help mitigate input delay because it handles input correctly within the CPU cycle.

I wouldn't imagine there's a lot of crap interfering with the emulator's ability to communicate with the controller on a Wii, so that reduces input delay. The CRT would help too, I would imagine, though a lot of TVs and monitors have gotten better in this regard in recent years.

I kind of like the SupaRetroN more than emulation despite the colors and sound being a little off for this very reason.

 

[TheJelqster]

Earlier this year I managed to get my hands on the AYN Odin 2 Portal, as well as a Retroid Pocket 5. Some thoughts for both systems:

• Retroid Pocket 5 is really good at making you feel like you're getting a quality PSP experience, down to your hands feeling cramped after a couple of hours (if you have big hands). You can offset this by swapping out the thumbstick & getting the grip though. Some people said it here and I agree, it can do PS2/Gamecube & below at 2x pretty well. It's a great media player as well; throw some movies on a microSD card and install VLC and you can have a good time.
• AYN Portal 2 is more fascinating, though for entirely different reasons. While it's bigger and has a more 'premium' feel, it feels flatter despite the Pocket 5 being flatter; as well as the ABXY buttons being loud & clacky feeling. Grip is definitely needed, as well as larger thumbsticks. The saving grace of the Portal though is the performance, as you can run alot of games easily at 4x scaling, no matter the platform. PC games fare pretty well too, especially with Valve introducing better support w/Proton for ARM. However, there are now a ton of 8 Gen 2 devices out there, and there will be a Retroid Pocket 6 w/ the same chipset and a smaller battery. I can only see the Portal being a device that is awesome for trips, but I can't even say that in my own experience as I bought a Pocket 5 and my Steam Deck out on vacation.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

It would be interesting to know how FPGA stands up to emulation, because that was another piece of curiosity that led me towards wanting a 3D. If you've had any time testing that out yet, I'd love to know.

I was a very young child when I owned my N64 initially and it's kinda difficult for me to tell where the accuracy ends and emulation issues begin, especially as some of the emulation issues have been smoothed out over recent years. If you do end up testing it out at all, I'd like to know how the Ares emulator stacks up, considering its whole premise is high accuracy.

FPGA is emulation, just at a different level.

Instead of just trying to replicate how the game code runs, like software emulation does, and FPGA emulates how the chip logic worked underneath the game code. That is why FPGA is more efficient and often more accurate overall than software emulation.

That said, software emulation allows for per-game hacks in the emulator and other trickery that can make individual games work or run better in ways FPGA can't do as easily, but FPGA systems also don't usually need that kind of fuckery due to duplicating how the hardware works more accurately.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

I only notice it on games I know really well. Like, I cannot play Mario World in a shitty emulator

I know that feeling. NES Mega Man games have a lot of frame-perfect timing needed to play fast and well, so I can only play them on original hardware or Mesen with two frames of run-ahead. The official rereleases all have a bit of input lag that makes it frustrating.

Music games are the worst when it comes to this. If you're lucky, depending on the game it will have a setting in the options where you can adjust the timing of the song and things that appear on the screen to factor in that delay that some screens may have, but even then, it's not 100% foolproof. On an actual PS2 hooked up to a CRT on composite cables, I used to EASILY AAA or AA almost all songs on the DDR games, but even with a new gaming rig, that shit rarely ever happens anymore. Like I'm at the point where I've gone and recorded test videos and measured how many frames of lag I'm dealing with so I can adjust in real time, and that STILL doesn't completely fix the problem, and I'm not even sure if the recording itself is adding more lag to the gameplay.

It's gotten to the point where I can't play DeeDeeDee DrumDash Deluxe or any Rhythm Heaven game on emulation because I wind up missing presses even though I know with 200% certainty that I've pressed the button on time.

 

[Twin Addler]

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(cool though)

Also right after I mentioned iiSU being in alpha, they released a video showing off features and announced a (very tentative) Q2 2026 release window. Honestly, I think it looks amazing. It reminds me of when Nintendo and Sony used to actually try for their system menus.

iisu lead dev turned their private friend group discord into the public iisu discord like a retard instead of just making a new server. iisu dev is now cancelled just because he said funny words with his friends. I think the idiots assumed hiding discord channels actually hides them.

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

[Two Dollars]

iisu lead dev turned their private friend group discord into the public iisu discord like a retard instead of just making a new server. iisu dev is now cancelled just because he said funny words with his friends.

Spoiler: Screenshots

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Lmao nice, hopefully he doesn’t let the inevitable accusations get to him.

 

[Jason_Cruiser]

iisu lead dev turned their private friend group discord into the public iisu discord like a retard instead of just making a new server. iisu dev is now cancelled just because he said funny words with his friends. I think the idiots assumed hiding discord channels actually hides them.

Is he really cancelled, or is it just a few retards bitching? I'm checking some Reddit communities like r/emulation and r/retroarch and i'm seeing no word of this. Most of the discourse seems to be on Twitter where the usual pronoun people are making accusations of transphobia and bigotry, normal people don't seem to care though.

 

[Twin Addler]

Update: UsagiShade has now privated all his videos, shorts and community posts about iiSU

Dunno what happened he seemed like the type of guy that can just ignore all his cancellers but apparently not?

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

Meanwhile, this 1990 masterpiece is still widely beloved to this day:

I unironically love that film

 

[Twin Addler]

Lmao nice, hopefully he doesn’t let the inevitable accusations get to him.

rip looks like he let it get to him

 

[Wujime]

I got an ayn thor 2 days ago, this shit is great but it's taking ages to charge and especially if you are upscaling 3d games drains battery fast
Dunno what I'm doing wrong, according to the benchmarks I shouldn't be getting this stuff.

 

[Two Dollars]

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rip looks like he let it get to him

We really can’t have nice things, can we? At least he’s not apologizing for anything, his message reads more like “I don’t wanna deal with this many retards whining at me about Discord posts, I’m out”. Very disappointing though.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

I know this is going to sound completely retarded here, but I'm curious how much AI coding is going to help with optimising emulators in the future.

It might legit become a good venture for someone to create a Duckstation quality N64 emulator from scratch in a few years time.

 

[Never Scored]

I know this is going to sound completely retarded here, but I'm curious how much AI coding is going to help with optimising emulators in the future.

It might legit become a good venture for someone to create a Duckstation quality N64 emulator from scratch in a few years time.

I don't know all the technical ins and outs of of it, but apparently there's this complex, custom microcode in most N64 games which basically makes a good universal emulator impossible, so emulators are explicitly written with specific games in mind. I'd bet more on source ports becoming the norm for N64 games. Even popular games like Mario Kart 64 and Mario Tennis are filled with graphical glitches in emulators after all these years. There are 60FPS source ports for Mario 64, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Ocarina of Time and Majoria's Mask, and they're all really really fucking good.

Sucks if you're a fan for something that will never get ported like Gauntlet Legends, or Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, though.

 

[Smoking King]

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rip looks like he let it get to him

It's kinda crazy how quickly this drama ballooned, makes me scared for the future of the project if drama is enough to have your main guy leave the team. I really want to support IISU cause it's a good idea, but I'm just concerned that these guys are gonna be unable to do it. Should have just never had a discord in the first place, especially not one that was originally a private friend group

 

[Blue Screen of Death]

This may be a sign for me to invest in an upscaler of some kind rather than an FPGA console though, especially since something like the RetroTINK 5X Pro is priced in a similar ballpark.

I decided to bite the bullet and pay the extra cash for one of these later that day after posting this, and I received it a couple days ago. It's actually pretty amazing how good my N64 looks through it with just S-Video alone.
I'm still annoyed at missing out on the 3D, but this a satisfying alternative that I'll be able to use with my GameCube as well once I get the component cables for that. I haven't had a chance to try F-Zero GX in 480p before, and I intend on that being the first thing I play when those come in.

 

[analrapist]

I know this is going to sound completely retarded here, but I'm curious how much AI coding is going to help with optimising emulators in the future.

It might legit become a good venture for someone to create a Duckstation quality N64 emulator from scratch in a few years time.

The more difficult the design, the harder LLMs fail at the moment. They really don't appear to scale past a certain complexity threshold. Emulators are some of the most complicated tech products out there. You're literally reproducing the function of an entire CPU in software. Now scaling appears to be resolving ever more of my issues, but code quality remains in the ball park of the autistic/determined first or second year undergrad. In short, not at the current state of "AI" tech, but things continually evolve, so who knows.