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

[Celebrate Nite]

because there's always another hidden gem to discover that you've overlooked a billion times

Even with the 3DS and now Switch, this still holds true.

Out of the abundance of shovelware, if you actually take your time to dig through the coalmines, there's a few diamonds that shine bright.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

there's always another hidden gem to discover that you've overlooked a billion times.

Sometimes I'll just boot through a bunch of ROMs in alphabetical order and give them a tiny demo, under a minute, just to see what seems neat. If I like it then I'll add it to a play list.

It works really well for finding 3rd & 4th gen gems because 90% of the time they get right into the gameplay and you can tell pretty quickly whether or not you like it. It also shows how much trash there is lol

 

[Computer Guardian]

Good idea, though archive.org actually has an established ruling where they're able to host roms without issue. (Of course, that could just go away someday)


I think PS1 is about a terabyte and Gamecube USA is in the 400gb range. Still a hell of a lot, but doable. Plus you can delete revisions and the dozens of yearly sports games if you wanna save space. Good luck with PS2 though, lmao. And I don't even wanna think about PS3.

Your best bet with PS2 is to convert every PS2 iso you get your hands on to CHDs with MAME's chdman tool to ensure you get as much space saved as you can. with the original Xbox you can get away with installing them to the virtual HDD you use with Xemu if you know how to hack together homebrew on it.

 

[3deadniggers]

Some emulation fronts have a screensaver mode you can set to display your scraped videos. One of the best ways to find hidden gems is to let the screensaver play and play any games that catch your eye.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Some emulation fronts have a screensaver mode you can set to display your scraped videos. One of the best ways to find hidden gems is to let the screensaver play and play any games that catch your eye.

That's really damn neat.

 

[Calandrino]

Why would you need to archive hundreds of games?

To have a small fraction of my to-do list available at a moment's notice

 

[Two Dollars]

with the original Xbox you can get away with installing them to the virtual HDD you use with Xemu if you know how to hack together homebrew on it.

If you’re using Xemu anyway, you can just convert your games to XISO and play them that way. I generally like to keep all my games in some sort of lossless format so I can convert them back to the originals if needed (CHD for most disc-based systems, RVZ for GC/Wii, etc) but Xbox is a weird case since in addition to standard unscrubbed ISOs being much bigger at around 8GB per game, both a real system and emulator can’t play them directly to my knowledge.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

It will all end up on telegram like all the other piracy things are now.

Why would you need to archive hundreds of games? Even if Nintendo takes down a site tomorrow reddit will have links to a new rom site. There will always be rom sites and when one closes two more open. You don't need to stop pile every game yourself. Download the games that matter to you and games you want to try so when your internet is down you have something to play.

I've found that downloading individual games is rather inefficient, especially with all the captchas these days.

Plus there's the fact that your hard drive and Internet speed are much better than they were years ago. Twenty years ago you could play most SNES games but you probably didn't have a complete collection. A complete No-Intro set is only 3GB.

 

[3deadniggers]

I've found that downloading individual games is rather inefficient, especially with all the captchas these days.

Plus there's the fact that your hard drive and Internet speed are much better than they were years ago. Twenty years ago you could play most SNES games but you probably didn't have a complete collection. A complete No-Intro set is only 3GB.

CDromance doesn't have captchas or my adblock is stopping them.

3 gig of roms is a lot to dig into to find what you want to play. Reddit has complete rom sets and I think I lost my SNES one because it was just annoying to deal with. I loaded it onto my portable emulator and any time I had a specific game I wanted to play I ended up taking forever to scroll through titles and never touched most of them. Arcade games were the one exception since they're all pick up and play so you can find a random game quick and hop in.

 

[Pissmaster]

To this day I still don't understand why those big complete rom sets retain bad dumps. Isn't that just literally where some dude somewhere messed up, or his copier messed up, and for some reason the No Intro spergs insist we keep his screwups?

 

[Tomboy Tuti]

There are people that will buy a NES/SNES/PS1 mini, nothing surprises me anymore.

To be fair though, the GameBoy library is pretty hefty... both regular and color combined. Not like you'd run out of content quickly.

Im very surprised by people investing in retro consoles in general, theyre not worth it unless youre studying the hardware. For retro games, PC is always the best option and technically increases the PC game library by 15 fold compared to other consoles. Consolefags seethe, PC master race. Plus you cant even get some stuff like the Neo Geo Mini and the various arcade games like stuff for the CPS. I really like AVSP but you cant play AVSP without a MAME.

Update on the Vimm's Lair debacle:

They got hit by multiple companies and the ESA in the span of a few hours, and forced to take down most of their back-catalogue. I've been doing some research into what happened, and why there's a sudden interest after about two fucking decades of not giving a shit, and as it turns out, we can once again blame Instagram and Tiktok for this shit:

1. Emulators allowed on IOS. Delta takes off like crazy.
2. Retards seeking clout make fucking dozens of videos discussing where to get ROMs and spam that shit on the aforementioned sites.
3. Every idiot can see these fucktards revealing every fucking existing ROM site they can find.
4. Vimm's gets hit by Sega, Nintendo, Lego, the ESA, and more.
5. Vimm's is like the third or fourth site these clout-chasing tards fucking murdered this way.
6. Have it once again driven home that iPhones were the worst fucking thing to ever happen to the internet.

FUCK I see they removed the Sonic and Lego shit. Im old enough to remember Loveroms and Emuparadise, why does this have to happen to every site I like. Total Normie Death. Fuck these niggers.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Im very surprised by people investing in retro consoles in general, theyre not worth it unless youre studying the hardware.

I've been learning that the hard way as the years go by. I had a N64 and a Saturn die on me. The former just kept giving me the BSoD and the latter had it's controller ports refuse to work on any game I put in it.

 

[Pissmaster]

Im very surprised by people investing in retro consoles in general, theyre not worth it unless youre studying the hardware.

They're getting very old, and capacitors from all kinds of computers from the 80s are starting to leak and go bad. That's gonna continue onwards over time. All of this hardware was never intended to be used forever, of course, so you really need to know your shit inside and out if you wanna own retro hardware. Even my lifelong dedicated self considers it a little too much of a hassle to deal with, when emulation has just come so far. Hell, with all these N64 recompilation efforts, we're drawing closer to completely obsoleting the N64 itself.

 

[Baraka Obama]

It's a better experience using the real thing, IMO. Specifically things like N64 just hook it up to a CRT and you have a golden result.

Most stuff capacitors are fine. I have a midi sound module with bad caps I need to fix and I have an Xbox I repaired with a handful of leaky caps but everything else has been like a rock. Issue is overblown.

To this day I still don't understand why those big complete rom sets retain bad dumps. Isn't that just literally where some dude somewhere messed up, or his copier messed up, and for some reason the No Intro spergs insist we keep his screwups?

Romhacks need a very specific rom variant and will often say which CRC to look for. usually that's a proper dump of some variant or another but in some cases, especially for really old ROM hacks that can be a bad dump that otherwise works fine but has some weird content. that's why these rom sets include a few bad dumps.

 

[Pissmaster]

It's a better experience using the real thing, IMO. Specifically things like N64 just hook it up to a CRT and you have a golden result.

That is true, though with the high prices and iffy hardware, even I'm starting to become dubious about them. I've even got a couple of childhood NES carts I can't start up anymore, and I think it's because the pins are just too worn down. (Do you know how to fix that?) Its made me really lean towards emulation these past few years.

Most stuff capacitors are fine. I have a midi sound module with bad caps I need to fix and I have an Xbox I repaired with a handful of leaky caps but everything else has been like a rock. Issue is overblown.

Vintage Macs are getting hit hard with such problems, on top of how much of a bitch it is to source particular parts for shit that's not a problem on PC. Caps aside, one of my Macs needs a new hard drive. It takes SCSI, of all things, and replacement drives on eBay are all over the place in price, but this is the second cheapest I found from a quick search:


And I don't even know if that'd be enough. I'm good with just running Sheepshaver and hoping whatever I wanna run works in it. Old Mac emulation is not great. It's a shame, too, because there's a plethora of very obscure games and software only on Mac, when the rest of the world was using DOS/Windows/Commodore.

Romhacks need a very specific rom variant and will often say which CRC to look for. usually that's a proper dump of some variant or another but in some cases, especially for really old ROM hacks that can be a bad dump that otherwise works fine but has some weird content. that's why these rom sets include a few bad dumps.

Ohhh, okay. So they're more or less just obsolete dumps kept around for compatibility reasons. That's a 20-year question of mine now answered, thank you.

 

[Dynamite Bean]

It's that time of year again for banjo fans and I have to ask is this the right thread to post the inevitable angry reactions and posts when a new banjo game is very likely not announced tomorrow
banjo kazooie is retro after all

 

[Judge Dredd]

Romhacks need a very specific rom variant and will often say which CRC to look for. usually that's a proper dump of some variant or another but in some cases, especially for really old ROM hacks that can be a bad dump that otherwise works fine but has some weird content. that's why these rom sets include a few bad dumps.

I know GT4 mods use the beta because, even though it has bugs, that version of the game was made for a single layer DVD and can be modded easily, whereas the duel layer versions can't be modded easily. I don't know the specifics, but I've heard that.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

One thing about NES romsets is that, unless the emulator has a database of the CRCs of all commercial roms, 1:1 dumps of NES carts won't work.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I've even got a couple of childhood NES carts I can't start up anymore, and I think it's because the pins are just too worn down. (Do you know how to fix that?)

Have you tried taking it apart and using a white pencil eraser on the pins? Just keep erasing until the eraser cruft comes off clean. That usually works for me, I have a one famicom game I can't boot (a Tiny Tunes game) otherwise that alone has revived a ton of games.

one of my Macs needs a new hard drive. It takes SCSI,

Look into SCSI to SD card adapters. I've heard BlueSCSI is good though all my old macs are G3/G4 era and don't need SCSI.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

Out of the abundance of shovelware, if you actually take your time to dig through the coalmines, there's a few diamonds that shine bright.

Like Zero Escape on 3DS, Hotel Dusk on DS, Power Stone on Dreamcast, Chibi Robo on Gamecube, Wario Land 4 on GBA, Comix Zone on Genesis, Vagrant Story on PS1, SMT3 on PS2, Odin Sphere on PS3, and Tactics Ogre on SNES... to name a few.

FUCK I see they removed the Sonic and Lego shit. Im old enough to remember Loveroms and Emuparadise, why does this have to happen to every site I like. Total Normie Death. Fuck these niggers.

Try out CDromance mentioned above, that site might help you out. It also has entire DLC downloads for shit like dissidea on PSP, quite obscure.