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

[Pissmaster]

Let's be real, almost nobody with an actual legit Earthbound cartridge is playing the game with it. They have it displayed carefully somewhere and only play Earthbound on a SNES Mini, or lying about having a SNES Mini because they don't want to admit to playing just a ROM. If they're even actually playing it and not just watching YouTube videos instead, that's a real possibility.

Mine just sits on my shelf alongside my other childhood SNES RPGs. I got to keep the majority of my childhood games, including my old RPGs, and I have my working SNES with the power, A/V cables, and controllers needed to play it.

I always emulate. My favorite way to play SNES games is through Snes9X on the Wii, with a Classic Controller Pro. SNES RPGs were temperamental even when I was little over my saved games getting deleted, and that is crushing when it comes to those long, long RPGs. Every bit of progress could be gone because of a bit of dust getting on the wrong pin, and you cannot back those saves up without some kind of exotic cartridge dumping hardware. Plus, those games are designed to be very slow and last a long time, which is great when you're a kid and you only get a couple of games a year, but horrible when you're an adult. The biggest boon to emulators that nobody ever brings up is the sheer amount of time you get to save. Grinding becomes a breeze, and save states let you work past bullshit parts that become long in the tooth almost immediately.

There is absolutely no benefit to owning the original cartridge and real hardware if you just want to enjoy some old RPGs. SNES might just be the most thoroughly emulated console out there, and you are getting a much better experience by being able to speed things up and save right before bosses. You're an adult, your time is valuable, and anyone who acts like you didn't really beat it because you didn't burn hours and hours on repetitive nothingness is an elitist fagstick.

Oh, and newer controllers like the Wii's Classic Controller Pro, the DualShock 4 and the Xbox Series X controllers are better than the SNES controller, for SNES games. Game controllers have come a long way in terms of comfort and tactile feedback over the past few decades.

Add to that mental gymnastics about the morality of emulation. I remember talking to a Nintendo fan who was adamant emulation is evil and it's actually stealing (lol) but when pressed admitted to playing emulators. "Oh but I only do it with obscure Japanese games that were never released in the west so it's ok in those specific circumstances" Yeh ok buddy whatever you say. I bet you totally never masturbate because you've only ever done it with your left hand.

Come to think of it, I've only ever seen sperging like this about emulators from Nintendo fans. Why anyone feels the need to defend a billion $ corporation or debate the ethics of playing 30 year old games is beyond me but there we are.

Nintendo's also the only one with a weird widespread cult surrounding the company. Sega practically encourages emulation, and from what I've seen, most fans of obscure consoles like the TG16 will outright say you should just emulate their games, because scarcity + prices.

Plus, there's that cognitive dissonance the anti-emulation crowd has surrounding the deal with used games, where they act like emulation is depriving the developers of cash flow, despite being okay with buying used cartridges, which still means you get to enjoy it without giving Nintendo money. None of their logic makes sense, but that's cultlike thinking for you.

 

[Trashfire Garbagefuck]

Come to think of it, I've only ever seen sperging like this about emulators from Nintendo fans. Why anyone feels the need to defend a billion $ corporation or debate the ethics of playing 30 year old games is beyond me but there we are.

I used to see it a lot on Nintendo Life's comments section. They would even get bitchy over fan translations and QoL rom hacks. Yeah you go back to your switch online expansion pack and eBay scalpers. I'm sure daddy Nintendo appreciates you not downloading copies of Duck Hunt and Little Samson.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Nintendo's also the only one with a weird widespread cult surrounding the company. Sega practically encourages emulation, and from what I've seen, most fans of obscure consoles like the TG16 will outright say you should just emulate their games, because scarcity + prices.

You'd think the retro dudes buying expensive games would encourage emulation to get people to play the games and get some of them interested in buying a copy which drives up prices. Emulation is pretty much the reason Earthbound is worth so much now.

And savestates, fast-forward and rewind is so nice in certain games. In other games I don't think it's appropriate, abusing savestates in a short game like Ghosts'n'Goblins removes the point of the game(which is getting massively fucked over every other second).

I used to see it a lot on Nintendo Life's comments section. They would even get bitchy over fan translations and QoL rom hacks. Yeah you go back to your switch online expansion pack and eBay scalpers. I'm sure daddy Nintendo appreciates you not downloading copies of Duck Hunt and Little Samson.

ResetEra has a "no emulation" talk policy because it is bad but at the same time they have deified the emulation programmer Byuu.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

I always emulate. My favorite way to play SNES games is through Snes9X on the Wii, with a Classic Controller Pro. SNES RPGs were temperamental even when I was little over my saved games getting deleted, and that is crushing when it comes to those long, long RPGs. Every bit of progress could be gone because of a bit of dust getting on the wrong pin, and you cannot back those saves up without some kind of exotic cartridge dumping hardware. Plus, those games are designed to be very slow and last a long time, which is great when you're a kid and you only get a couple of games a year, but horrible when you're an adult. The biggest boon to emulators that nobody ever brings up is the sheer amount of time you get to save. Grinding becomes a breeze, and save states let you work past bullshit parts that become long in the tooth almost immediately.

Old SNES games are incredibly cozy and straightforward even though they're grindy, which makes rushing through them with turbo speed so fun. Mash through a bunch of encounters in 5 minutes that would take several hours in real time to create a super powerful character that can breeze through the rest of the game? A feeling like none other.

Oh, and newer controllers like the Wii's Classic Controller Pro, the DualShock 4 and the Xbox Series X controllers are better than the SNES controller, for SNES games. Game controllers have come a long way in terms of comfort and tactile feedback over the past few decades.

I straight up cannot understand how anyone would prefer the classic controllers. They were literally a bunch of buttons jammed onto a flat piece of plastic and absolute dogshit for the most part. I was a Mega Drive kid growing up and don't hold a single shred of nostalgia for those fucking controllers compared to a modern one that has had 40 years of progress to create a comfortable design. 8bitdo even created a god tier controller (the SN30 Pro) and for some bizarre reason also created a version of it without handles so you have to hold it like a SNES controller with it digging into your palms because emulation faggots are absolute retards.

ResetEra has a "no emulation" talk policy because it is bad but at the same time they have deified the emulation programmer Byuu.

It's actually tragic Byuu didn't actually die because he absolute deserves to.

 

[Anon88]

You'd think the retro dudes buying expensive games would encourage emulation to get people to play the games and get some of them interested in buying a copy which drives up prices. Emulation is pretty much the reason Earthbound is worth so much now.

The type of people who buy these old games don't want other people to play them. They want to be the only people who have the ability to play them, it's some weird elitist mindset most of them have. I think it's mostly because they spend so much money buying games and systems that you could've easily got for free if you understand how to use the internet and they need a way to cope.

 

[MysticMisty]

I got to keep the majority of my childhood games, including my old RPGs, and I have my working SNES with the power, A/V cables, and controllers needed to play it.

Due to a combination of reasons I never had a SNES; I skipped straight to the N64 from the NES, so spending a couple of hours downloading DirectX and ZSNES through AOL dial-up so I could finally play SNES games was worth every agonizing second of wait time, not including downloading the ROMs themselves (in the dial-up dark ages I easily downloaded enough ROMs that added up to several hours of download time, though obviously not all at once). That was over 22 years ago and I was instantly a fan of emulation.

Really, the one Nintendo console I genuinely avoid emulating, and advise others to do the same, is the N64, and that's because N64 emulation is absolute dogshit. Unless it's changed drastically in the last couple of years (since the source code dropped), which I doubt. I mean, yeah, you can play some games decently enough, but for the most part I give it a hard pass and try to stick to my working N64 and cartridges.

It actually really fucking sucks that N64 emulation really fucking sucks because the control stick on one controller is broken, and the other one is starting to head in that direction and I don't want to deal with the hassle of replacing the parts or the controllers themselves. I'd much rather be able to play them on infinitely more comfortable modern controllers instead of worrying about causing further damage to 25 year old controllers.

 

[Jean Lafitte 1812]

Plus, there's that cognitive dissonance the anti-emulation crowd has surrounding the deal with used games, where they act like emulation is depriving the developers of cash flow, despite being okay with buying used cartridges, which still means you get to enjoy it without giving Nintendo money. None of their logic makes sense, but that's cultlike thinking for you.

As long as a game's available legally people should try to purchase it legally because it proves the continuing value of these games. Back in the Gamecube era anything last gen or older was considered worthless. Ocarina of Time was given as a pre-order bonus and rather than selling a GC disc of NES games Nintendo just shoved a few ROMs in Animal Crossing. Genesis collections were better, but not by much. Then the Wii came around and you had hundreds of classic games available for under $10 each. But that now that retro is popular again, both Nintendo and Sony have told people who want to enjoy their legacy games to fuck off.

Meanwhile you can literally buy Sega ROMs on Steam for $1 each ($5 each for Sonic games), so they get my money and Nintendo doesn't.

I straight up cannot understand how anyone would prefer the classic controllers. They were literally a bunch of buttons jammed onto a flat piece of plastic and absolute dogshit for the most part. I was a Mega Drive kid growing up and don't hold a single shred of nostalgia for those fucking controllers compared to a modern one that has had 40 years of progress to create a comfortable design. 8bitdo even created a god tier controller (the SN30 Pro) and for some bizarre reason also created a version of it without handles so you have to hold it like a SNES controller with it digging into your palms because emulation faggots are absolute retards.

I prefer 16-bit era controllers for retro and retro styled games. The 8bitdo SN30 is a fantastic modern version of the SNES pad and the official Genesis USB pad is pretty good too. But the beauty of emulation is how you can just use whatever controller with it. This, along with stuff like rewind and savestates and screen readers, are godsends for accessibility. Real accessibility and not just whining about how hard a game is. The reason the XBox accessibility controller was such a big del was that it was modular so people could customize it to their own needs, something that emulation has done for decades.

Due to a combination of reasons I never had a SNES; I skipped straight to the N64 from the NES, so spending a couple of hours downloading DirectX and ZSNES through AOL dial-up so I could finally play SNES games was worth every agonizing second of wait time, not including downloading the ROMs themselves (in the dial-up dark ages I easily downloaded enough ROMs that added up to several hours of download time, though obviously not all at once). That was over 22 years ago and I was instantly a fan of emulation.

Really, the one Nintendo console I genuinely avoid emulating, and advise others to do the same, is the N64, and that's because N64 emulation is absolute dogshit. Unless it's changed drastically in the last couple of years (since the source code dropped), which I doubt. I mean, yeah, you can play some games decently enough, but for the most part I give it a hard pass and try to stick to my working N64 and cartridges.

It actually really fucking sucks that N64 emulation really fucking sucks because the control stick on one controller is broken, and the other one is starting to head in that direction and I don't want to deal with the hassle of replacing the parts or the controllers themselves. I'd much rather be able to play them on infinitely more comfortable modern controllers instead of worrying about causing further damage to 25 year old controllers.

Mupen64Plus works pretty well from my experience. Probably not perfect, but it is a million times better than it used to be. The complete lack of interface is irritating, but it has front ends available for it. m64p has even incorporated the Parallel RDP core from RetroArch and a qt interface, but I haven't messed with N64 emulators in a little while. If you want to stick to original hardware, look at the Brawler 64 modern N64 pad.

And thanks for the dial-up SNES ROM memories, that was my first emulator experience as well. I even remember manipulating the ROM site I used at the time to give me the Nintendo ROMs after they got their C&D, not dissimilar to how I use a script for Emuparadise now.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Really, the one Nintendo console I genuinely avoid emulating, and advise others to do the same, is the N64, and that's because N64 emulation is absolute dogshit. Unless it's changed drastically in the last couple of years (since the source code dropped), which I doubt. I mean, yeah, you can play some games decently enough, but for the most part I give it a hard pass and try to stick to my working N64 and cartridges.

By source code do you mean Project 64? If you restrict your view to PJ64 then yeah the emulation is shit. Using RetroArch or Mupen64Plus isn't a much better experience, but not because of bad emulation.

 

[Stasi]

long as a game's available legally people should try to purchase it legally because it proves the continuing value of these games

lol no

I don't think these companies give two shits about the games whether you buy them or not and they are only being sold because they realised they can milk lazy nostalgia $ off of dead IPs. Half the time they are lazily slapped together using other people's emulators (which they don't credit) and ROMs taken off piracy sites because they lost the originals. Don't give them your money bro, all you are proving is there are suckers out there throwing away money in the name of nostalgia.

Now if it's a well made remaster, or they took time to add extra content that was never released before or something like that then that's a different story.

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

I straight up cannot understand how anyone would prefer the classic controllers. They were literally a bunch of buttons jammed onto a flat piece of plastic and absolute dogshit for the most part. I was a Mega Drive kid growing up and don't hold a single shred of nostalgia for those fucking controllers compared to a modern one that has had 40 years of progress to create a comfortable design.

I still have an OG Genesis gamepad and it's one of the better ones from that era, at least it's big and curvy enough to fit reasonably comfortably in an adult hand, and feels more solid than the SNES dogbone. The 8 and 16 bit console controllers were pretty shit by today's standards, but at the time they were infinitely better than the carpal tunnel inducing one button joysticks popular on the Amiga and Atari ST. Unless you were playing a flight sim, maybe.

I really don't miss this hand-crippling torture device:

 

[THEY STOLE MY FORESKIN]

By source code do you mean Project 64? If you restrict your view to PJ64 then yeah the emulation is shit. Using RetroArch or Mupen64Plus isn't a much better experience, but not because of bad emulation.

He's referring to the Verilog source code for some of the 64's chips that came from the gigaleak in 2020. In case you don't know what Verilog is, it's a hardware description language and pretty much every company that produces hardware uses it or VHDL, another similar language, to specify how they want their chips to work. The code for some of the Wii chips also leaked, I haven't looked at them yet but apparently it's much less substantial than the 64 ones.

 

[Coolio55]

So I was trying out Ares and to no surprise the stereotype is true. This thing eats up resources like it was coded entirely in javascript.
100 mb of ram and 30% CPU for famicom! 1.5GB of ram and 50% CPU for N64!

...but don't worry! After the SNESticle Liberation Project, Icer Addis decided to just release verbaitim the SNESticle source code!
BYUU eternally BTFO ...again.

 

[Pissmaster]

Due to a combination of reasons I never had a SNES; I skipped straight to the N64 from the NES, so spending a couple of hours downloading DirectX and ZSNES through AOL dial-up so I could finally play SNES games was worth every agonizing second of wait time, not including downloading the ROMs themselves (in the dial-up dark ages I easily downloaded enough ROMs that added up to several hours of download time, though obviously not all at once). That was over 22 years ago and I was instantly a fan of emulation.

Really, the one Nintendo console I genuinely avoid emulating, and advise others to do the same, is the N64, and that's because N64 emulation is absolute dogshit. Unless it's changed drastically in the last couple of years (since the source code dropped), which I doubt. I mean, yeah, you can play some games decently enough, but for the most part I give it a hard pass and try to stick to my working N64 and cartridges.

It actually really fucking sucks that N64 emulation really fucking sucks because the control stick on one controller is broken, and the other one is starting to head in that direction and I don't want to deal with the hassle of replacing the parts or the controllers themselves. I'd much rather be able to play them on infinitely more comfortable modern controllers instead of worrying about causing further damage to 25 year old controllers.

N64 emulation via Mupen64Plus is pretty good now, even on phones, but has the unfixable problem of its controller being unconventional, so it's very awkward to map to a modern controller.

• Menus rarely work with the D-pad, instead having you scroll by tapping the stick up and down, which no other console did.
• There are 6 face buttons, and games use these differently: some for the camera, some as action buttons, so you can't just map them all to the right stick and call it a day.
• The L/R/Z situation's another awkward one, especially for shooters, with how the Z button's on your left hand, so the N64's the only console with FPSes where you fire them with your left pointer finger. You could just map both triggers to Z, but then you might feel like R should be on RT instead of RB, and it's all a mess

So it's the one emulation console I've considered just giving up and buying a special controller for, like one of these:

also because after I grew up my big adult man hands are too big for the N64 controller and it just doesn't fit like a glove anymore

As long as a game's available legally people should try to purchase it legally because it proves the continuing value of these games.

Only for small enough studios where you could actually write the developer an email and get a nice personalized reply. Otherwise, only pay for software if you're getting a better experience than what the pirates can provide. That goes for all software & media across the board, games or not.

 

[XYZpdq]

yeah as much as I respect the real hardware enough that I bought one of the last waves of new A/V Famicoms even though by then I could just jam most NES/FC roms into IMBNES (which was also really fucking great for dicking around on The Crappy Old TV Everybody At Work Used For Video Games), yeah fuck real hardware
I do my everything on some Short Bus HDTV plugged into my computer. I've grown long past being able to have a single thing on my TV years ago.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

lol no

I don't think these companies give two shits about the games whether you buy them or not and they are only being sold because they realised they can milk lazy nostalgia $ off of dead IPs. Half the time they are lazily slapped together using other people's emulators (which they don't credit) and ROMs taken off piracy sites because they lost the originals. Don't give them your money bro, all you are proving is there are suckers out there throwing away money in the name of nostalgia.

Now if it's a well made remaster, or they took time to add extra content that was never released before or something like that then that's a different story.

That's what always bothered me about emulation vs Big Vidya. People wanted to play old(er) games so they turned to emulation, the companies like Nintendo then tried to shut that down while offering no alternative. They were no longer selling the games on their current systems or producing new cartridges, buying used was the only legal option and they wouldn't see a dime from that just like they wouldn't lose anything from emulation*.

Then they eventually figured out that people wanted to play old cartridge based games and they had to resort to emulation themselves to have anything to sell, at least they had a more legit financial reason to call it piracy at that point. But they wouldn't just sell you any and every game available on a system, most games were still only playable via eBay auctions and roms from the internet which yet again doesn't take money out of their pockets.

*I can understand why they were freaked out by UltraHLE and PSX emulators existing side by side with the PSX and N64.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I take that back, teletext was the greatest.

They didn't have teletext? How did they turn on subtitles ( 888 ) or see really blocky asci art on the advent calendar?

In terms of library I've already got my eye on the obvious ones (both Sonic Adventures, Shenmue, SoulCalibur, I hear the fishing games are great), and the ports it got are basically the definitive way to play (Spider-Man, Rayman 2, etc.). Are there any other hidden gems to look out for?

Not sure if it's in your list. The DC version of Resident Evil 2 is arguably one of the definitive versions. 18 Wheeler, Zombie Revenge, and Dynamite Cop (a port of Die Hard Arcade) are a good too. I heard Fighting Vipers 2 was fantastic, but good luck finding it. That was rare even when it was new.

As for non-ports. Toy Commander is great if you can handle the jank (it's the reason I bought the system). If you're into cheesy horror games. Blue Stinger is ...well, it's not good, but it is memorable.

Actually come to think of it, I wonder if the 'need' for 1:1 emulation is being pushed by retro gaming collectors, under no way do they suddenly want their entire collection to become worthless overnight as their Earthbound cartridge they spent $500 on is being ignored over playing it in ZSNES on some hacked together shitbox.

I'm a bit of a stickler for accuracy. For me, it's about experiencing the game as intended, as close to what is reasonably possible. Reasonable being the key word here. I like having a sharp image, but if that comes at the cost of game effects, then I might sacrifice it.

Older consoles are good enough I think, but anything Playstation and up has serious problems. When I'm playing a game and everything to the side of the screen doesn't render, shadows are missing, or things are visible through walls, that's a deal breaker for me.

Another benefit is that hardware is slowly dying, and people forget how these games actually were. eg. Some people are so used to playing Goldeneye at 60fps, 1080p, with mouse controls that they think people overstate the framerate problems.

So it's the one emulation console I've considered just giving up and buying a special controller for, like one of these

Go for it. I have a Tribute64. It has it's problems, but it's far better than trying to map stuff to an Xbox controller.

 

[Pissmaster]

Another benefit is that hardware is slowly dying, and people forget how these games actually were. eg. Some people are so used to playing Goldeneye at 60fps, 1080p, with mouse controls that they think people overstate the framerate problems.

Yeah, that's something that's easy to forget about the N64, just how low framerates could dip in some games. Perceptions over the years have drastically changed, too, like how there are 240hz monitors out there for people who think 120fps isn't fast enough, yet when Goldeneye dropped down to 10fps it was seen as a good thing, because WOAHOAHOAH THE GAME IS SO EXTREME THE SYSTEM CAN'T HANDLE IT!!!!!

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

lol no

I don't think these companies give two shits about the games whether you buy them or not and they are only being sold because they realised they can milk lazy nostalgia $ off of dead IPs. Half the time they are lazily slapped together using other people's emulators (which they don't credit) and ROMs taken off piracy sites because they lost the originals. Don't give them your money bro, all you are proving is there are suckers out there throwing away money in the name of nostalgia.

Now if it's a well made remaster, or they took time to add extra content that was never released before or something like that then that's a different story.

If you want to support a particular franchise or something I can see doing it. Companies sometimes cite lack of interest as a reason to not make more games, like with Chrono Trigger DS, for example.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

When it comes to OG hardware vs. emulation I always have a thought in my head that always comes up:

You're not playing the developer's intended vision, you're playing the publisher's.

Developers have deadlines and technical limitations to deal with with. Often times they're forced to put out a project that they aren't happy with. Goldeneye is a great example. There's a fun game there at it's core, but it plays like complete shit and my glasses aren't rose tinted enough to enjoy it. There's no harm in making that bitch run at 108060

Personally, I just try to play whatever version gives me the best experience with the core gameplay intact. I have a bunch of controllers from days past so if I the game's controls don't work well on a modern pad I can swap to it. Since I'm playing PS3 games these days I'm using an 8bitdo Pro 2 (Good enough controller and I'm not spending $70 on a fucking dualsense)

 

[Celebrate Nite]

So it's the one emulation console I've considered just giving up and buying a special controller for, like one of these:

View attachment 2895410

That's a fucking nice controller! Could definitely use that for my PC.

I'm currently using a PS2 controller for everything (I just love th way it feels, especially the D-Pad) and I have the C-Buttons mapped to the right analog stick