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

[I Love Beef]

Pretty late of myself, but Seiken Densetsu 3 VS Trials of Mana: which one is better?

 

[Marissa Moira]

Pretty late of myself, but Seiken Densetsu 3 VS Trials of Mana: which one is better?

Trails of Mana has more quality of life improvements and you can fully explore the world in a 3d environment. While the graphics may be budget compared to the original which was considered high end 2d graphics for it's time, Trails of Mana is probably going to be the most accessible out of the whole Mana series. Going back and playing the original might be worth it after you complete TOM.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

It really is obnoxious how autistic those sets can be when 99% of their users just want to actually play the game, yet there's never just one big zipped folder with only roms labeled (U) (!).

Like why those romsets include bad dumps, and even have them labeled [b#] is something I've never, ever heard a reason for.

There is a complete set over on the torrent sites. It's called "Nintendo Super NES/Famicom Roms (2.04)" where everything is split up like that.

This is USA.zip with the rest of the categories in the background. The only dupes are different version of the same game which seems fair, maybe Donkey Kong Country 1.1 is someones favorite.


It's from 2004 so the translation packs isn't the freshest.

 

[Mongo0o]

I'm still waiting for this to go back in stock. It's a disc emulator for the Dreamcast and certain versions of the Saturn that allows booting up from an SD card or an SSD. Very expensive but it's a necessity to someone who wants to run games off OEM hardware. Having one installed along with plugging the console into an OSSC would be a match made in heaven

Went to a locally owned play-and-trade for the first time in a while this evening. Had some time to kill while I'm out of town for a conference this week. Was actually pretty based, they had a bunch of Switch games that were exclusive to Play-Asia. Ended up picking up a copy of Atelier Mysterious.

Prices on retro are still out of fucking control. They had a copy of Panzer Saga locked up behind the counter and I asked the guy how much he was asking for it. $1,500. It looked nice condition wise, but wasn't even sealed. He asked me if I was interested and I told him I already had one and was just curious. We ended up talking about my collection and he gave me his card and said if I ever wanted to sell he would pay me up to 80% of whatever they are tracking on pricecharting.com. I guess they are getting what they are asking for some of that stuff, but good lord. Gen 2 Pokemon CIB for $500, $200 for a Lynx, first-party Gamecube stuff for $150 - $200. I don't get it. It's nuts. I remember thinking back in 2016 that the bubble was going to burst, but it hasn't.

Anyway, got a couple of Master System games for $10 a piece and the Atelier pack.

View attachment 2336984

I miss PnT. They were maybe the only good gaming franchise to ever exist.

The bubble won't burst anytime soon but it will transition. What's your story on getting PDGS?

 

[ForgedBlades]

What's your story on getting PDGS?

No real story, just bought a copy on eBay about a decade ago.

 

[Marissa Moira]

If you want to own a physical copy of PDS and play it in english, buy a Japanese copy and follow these steps:

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Mildly interesting: there's a site I've never heard of that has a lot of stuff. It's not the artistic ones, these tend to be on the useful side.
The Legend of Kyrandia one shows how rooms fit together(there's more of them)


This Battletoads one show the snake paths in order.

Category:Video Game Maps - TheAlmightyGuru

www.thealmightyguru.com

It's got other stuff as well, pages on game that includes all covers, scans of manuals, relevant maps and links to longplays.
Like Ninja Gaiden here.

Ninja Gaiden - TheAlmightyGuru

www.thealmightyguru.com

For years I remember there being a cover of Shadowgate with a rounded tail but I could never find it.


On that side I did find it, it's real and I'm not insane! After all these years it's such a weird relief to see it.

 

[Dread First]

So my decision to back AMD for the last 4-5 years in terms of hardware finally bit me in the ass when I decided to take up 3DS emulation. I tried to run Soul Hackers and the game ran like absolute dogshit. I mean, the game runs like dogshit on actual 3DS hardware since it's a port of a Sega Saturn game but hey, at least it was fucking playable on a 3DS. On Citra using Windows, I'm lucky if I get a semi-playable 15-20fps in dungeons and about 45-50fps in cutscenes and the overworld. Apparently, the reason why is because AMD's OpenGL drivers are so atrocious that they abandoned it for Vulkan on Windows. The Citra devs for whatever reason have some autistic stance against adopting Vulkan on Windows, going so far as to tell everyone with AMD hardware to stop bitching and either run it on Linux or switch hardware altogether.

Being equally autistic myself, I just decided to install Linux Mint on a spare external hard drive I have knocking around and then copy all my decrypted 3DS games over to the Linux install. I swear, I just feel so fucking torn about this situation. On the one hand, I do adore the fact that Citra runs everything that I play at full speed on the Linux install. On the other hand... I fucking detest AMD for maintaining perfect OpenGL support on Linux while atrophying it on Windows. I also fucking hate the autists at Citra for refusing to modernise and adopt Vulkan. All I wanna do is stream my shitty gameplay to my friends over Discord so we can all laugh and have a good time. I didn't ask for all of this.

 

[Stasi]

I've been seeing a lot of stuff online about duckstation recently so decided to give it a try.

So far I'm honestly surprised at how good it is. The UI is really nice and intuitive and more importantly the performance seems really good. I've tested it on a couple of different machines I have and while retroarch and other standalone emulators struggle with even moderate enhancements duckstation runs great. Liking it so far, it's got me pumped to go back to some of my PS1 favourites.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Duckstation is probably my favourite emulation program atm because it just works and I love being able to reconfigure hotkeys while the game is still running rather than having to close the game and add a turbo button or change the save states button etc.

I kinda wanna crank it up to see how powerful I can get it before I start seeing problems but tbh just sticking it at 5x output (for 1080p) and disabling dithering is making games look spectacular.

I just wish something could be done with loading times, it seems to me like a lot of loading times are simply the game going 'wait 20 seconds so we can make sure all the assets are loaded' and hitting turbo blasts through the loading screens.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Hard agree on DuckStation. If only the PGXP depth buffer were more compatible - you never realize how much the polygons fight each other until they stop (Croc 1 is a game that works with only minor glitches if anyone wants to try it).

I just wish something could be done with loading times, it seems to me like a lot of loading times are simply the game going 'wait 20 seconds so we can make sure all the assets are loaded' and hitting turbo blasts through the loading screens.

Have you tried changing the settings under Console Settings->CD-ROM Emulation? I usually have those set as high as I can get away with, adjusting them downwards if games crash. The seek speed has a much greater impact than the read speed. If you can get away with setting that to instantaneous, it's not uncommon to see loading times cut in half.

Because I love jigsaw stickers, I actually timed loading screens. Some things to note:

• All games were tested from main menu to gameplay unless noted
• All games were tested with max speedup (read speed 10x, seek speed instantaneous) unless noted
• This is just me messing around with random games in my collection; it's not meant to be exhaustive. If anyone has suggestions for games to test I'll try it if I have it.

Spoiler: Results

Bushido Blade->Between fights
Normal: 11 seconds
Enhanced: 4 seconds

Croc 1 (Read speed down to 2x)
Normal: 8 seconds
Enhanced: 4 seconds

Die Hard Trilogy->Die Hard with a Vengeance (the longest load times of the three)
Normal: 21 seconds
Enhanced: 9 seconds

Glover->Hub world to level
Normal: 6 seconds
Enhanced: 3 seconds

N-Gen Racing
Normal: 25 seconds
Enhanced: 14 seconds

True Pinball (Read speed down to 7x)
Normal: 12 seconds
Enhanced: 4 seconds

Sorry for the extremely autistic post, but the PSX has some really nice graphics hiding beneath the low resolution and warping textures, and DuckStation really brings it out.

 

[Pissmaster]

Duckstation.org also has this picture on there:

so that's enough to convince me to try it

 

[Marissa Moira]

I wonder how much he paid for this lot.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

I'm looking through n64 emulators and they all say they are "zilmar spec" but it seems nobody actually wrote zilmar's specs down. Does anyone know where I can find them?

 

[Cubanodun]

Duckstation.org also has this picture on there:
View attachment 2542926

so that's enough to convince me to try it

ePSXe is a hot mess, but i stick to Mednafen even when is not exactly user friendly

I'm looking through n64 emulators and they all say they are "zilmar spec" but it seems nobody actually wrote zilmar's specs down. Does anyone know where I can find them?

Never heard of this Zilmar specs, what emulator are you using

 

[NickDigger]

If you want to own a physical copy of PDS and play it in english,

Download it.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Never heard of this Zilmar specs, what emulator are you using

No specific emulator, but I keep seeing references to "Zilmar spec plugins." I just wondered what those specs were. Maybe it's an outdated term?

 

[Jinmen]

I don't have high hopes for help but I've tried everywhere else:

I'm running ppsspp on the latest retroarch and everytime I load a rom/exit the ap it crashes. I can play games in the stand alone just fine but I like the features of RA more plus it has achievements. I've tried different versions of RA but no luck. I'm using a S20 FE Galaxy. Other roms for different system works fine.

 

[Pissmaster]

I don't have high hopes for help but I've tried everywhere else:

I'm running ppsspp on the latest retroarch and everytime I load a rom/exit the ap it crashes. I can play games in the stand alone just fine but I like the features of RA more plus it has achievements. I've tried different versions of RA but no luck. I'm using a S20 FE Galaxy. Other roms for different system works fine.

Retroarch not working and being a frustrating piece of shit is part of the Retroarch experience

You could always try the latest nightly build and see if that fixes it for you http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/android/

 

[Jinmen]

Retroarch not working and being a frustrating piece of shit is part of the Retroarch experience

You could always try the latest nightly build and see if that fixes it for you http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/android/

I tried absolutely everything, even went to both discords to ask for help. Its just not going to work and I've sworn off RA when standalones are so much better.

In other news, if you're like me and enjoy having the option of as many games on your phone as possible then this is something to get moderatly hyped over:

This Free Android PS2 Emulator is AMAZING! - AetherSX2 Alpha Showcase

AetherSX2 is a new PS2 emulator for Android that is currently in alpha testing. In this video, we take a look at the performance of AetherSX2 across a wide r...

www.youtube.com

The ps2 emulation scene on android instantly went from a joke to something to look forward to overnight. It was just a matter of time before a decent team decided to start working on a competent ps2 emulator. I have a SD865 myself so considering how well I run gc, wii and 3ds games I'm excited.

Darkcloud 1 and 2 on handheld are going to be baller.