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

[werbwub]

You know what fucking sucks? Xbox 360 emulation. You need an RTX 2080 ti and an i9 or a Ryzen 9 in order to get acceptable performance in any game and even then graphics are fucked. I tried playing saints row 1 on Xenia and was greeted with 10-20 fps. I then tried fable 2 It so happens that the graphics are so broken that the game is unplayable. The only games that seem to work are the halo games which doesn't mean shit now that MCC is on pc

 

[Pissmaster]

You know what fucking sucks? Xbox 360 emulation. You need an RTX 2080 ti and an i9 or a Ryzen 9 in order to get acceptable performance in any game and even then graphics are fucked. I tried playing saints row 1 on Xenia and was greeted with 10-20 fps. I then tried fable 2 It so happens that the graphics are so broken that the game is unplayable. The only games that seem to work are the halo games which doesn't mean shit now that MCC is on pc

scott pilgrim is sort of playable

Yeah, don't emulate the 360 or the PS3 yet if you want anything serious. We're still in early days.

 

[werbwub]

scott pilgrim is sort of playable

Yeah, don't emulate the 360 or the PS3 yet if you want anything serious. We're still in early days.

Ps3 emulation is quite good for the most part. For a lot of games, you can play them at higher framerates using patches or the vblank feature. Scott Pilgrim vs the world happens to be a game that works with increasing vblank.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Ps3 emulation is quite good for the most part. For a lot of games, you can play them at higher framerates using patches or the vblank feature. Scott Pilgrim vs the world happens to be a game that works with increasing vblank.View attachment 1421003

I tried that one and apparently couldn't unlock it. I can't get Hard Corps Rising to work at all but I may need to play with the options? A real shame these two weren't released on Steam.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

I fucking love Gyruss and Joust and all that 80s Namco shit. Nothing was woke or meant to shape the world, it was just supposed to be fun.
I'm going to see about finding a working Colecovision or just emulate it and go through the classics soon. I know getting a Vectrex is impossible but it was so damn cool.

 

[Fuck Y'all]

You know what fucking sucks? Xbox 360 emulation. You need an RTX 2080 ti and an i9 or a Ryzen 9 in order to get acceptable performance in any game and even then graphics are fucked. I tried playing saints row 1 on Xenia and was greeted with 10-20 fps. I then tried fable 2 It so happens that the graphics are so broken that the game is unplayable. The only games that seem to work are the halo games which doesn't mean shit now that MCC is on pc

still better than first xbox tho

 

[Marissa Moira]

I fucking love Gyruss and Joust and all that 80s Namco shit. Nothing was woke or meant to shape the world, it was just supposed to be fun.
I'm going to see about finding a working Colecovision or just emulate it and go through the classics soon. I know getting a Vectrex is impossible but it was so damn cool.

Why don't you just buy the micro consoles of them?

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

Why don't you just buy the micro consoles of them?

I might but I'm a purist like that, want the crt tv and everything for the authentic experience.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I might but I'm a purist like that, want the crt tv and everything for the authentic experience.

That might cause issues because now you're dealing with consoles who may not even come with modern AV cables because the standard was different. I've got a few machines from the 70's and early 80's and they couldn't be used with a triniton from the 90's. You had some weird RF boxes that wouldn't function unless they had the prongs fully connected.

Basically start looking for TVs with antennas and hand crank dials on them.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

That might cause issues because now you're dealing with consoles who may not even come with modern AV cables because the standard was different. I've got a few machines from the 70's and early 80's and they couldn't be used with a triniton from the 90's. You had some weird RF boxes that wouldn't function unless they had the prongs fully connected.

Basically start looking for TVs with antennas and hand crank dials on them.

There's lots of old people near me who still have that stuff, I'm sure I can nab one in an estate sale.

 

[Marissa Moira]

There's lots of old people near me who still have that stuff, I'm sure I can nab one in an estate sale.

Yeah they're a nice back up to have. I've got one that's black and white but the picture is as crisp as can be.

It's from the era where TVs were closer to a piece of furniture than an electronic device. it's a 10 inch screen but it weighs like 70 pounds.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

That might cause issues because now you're dealing with consoles who may not even come with modern AV cables because the standard was different. I've got a few machines from the 70's and early 80's and they couldn't be used with a triniton from the 90's. You had some weird RF boxes that wouldn't function unless they had the prongs fully connected.

Basically start looking for TVs with antennas and hand crank dials on them.

European variants might be the way to go, in my experience they all seem to have the RF antenna/box and not those things that looks like something the viet cong would hook up to prisoners nipples. The oldest system/thing I have is from 1976 and it uses RF, I don't think I've even seen a PAL tv with a screw in/on video input. The PAL signal shouldn't be a problem on a TV made in the second half of the 90's(same with NTSC on PAL) but a step-down converter to plug it in to will be necessary.

 

[Stasi]

Posted a while back about trying to get my Switch joycons working on PC as a single controller. Came across a little program called Better Joy. Works pretty well, really easy to set up and pair the joycons as a single bluetooth controller on Windows.

Tested it with a handful of emulators and seems to work fine if you need a wireless controller and have a switch. Not great for retro games because of the pathetic excuse for a d-pad the joycons have and the analog sticks aren't the best for FPS games (can't quite put my finger on it but they don't have the same feel as an xbox or ps controller). Otherwise OK for some casual gaming.

 

[Pissmaster]

I fucking love Gyruss and Joust and all that 80s Namco shit. Nothing was woke or meant to shape the world, it was just supposed to be fun.
I'm going to see about finding a working Colecovision or just emulate it and go through the classics soon. I know getting a Vectrex is impossible but it was so damn cool.

I fell in love with the Vectrex after seeing one at a retro gaming convention once, but they already cost a fortune online. And considering CRT production is completely dead worldwide, we'll probably never see another one. Not even an OLED high refresh rate screen can emulate the smoothness and contrast of a real Vectrex, and it pains me that without unbelievable luck, I'll never actually own one.

It's just gutting to think about how games that use specialized mechanical devices to display their games are all but dead, because Sunli ARM shitboxes attached to LCD screens cost peanuts and most people don't know or care that things other than raster graphics exist. At least there are still a few new pinball tables coming out each year.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I fell in love with the Vectrex after seeing one at a retro gaming convention once, but they already cost a fortune online. And considering CRT production is completely dead worldwide, we'll probably never see another one. Not even an OLED high refresh rate screen can emulate the smoothness and contrast of a real Vectrex, and it pains me that without unbelievable luck, I'll never actually own one.

Yeah, people can read descriptions about the screen but until they see it they will not understand. I bought mine for 10-15 bucks, in original box with 4-5 games in their boxes with overlays and manuals and even an extra controller, it was just an unbelievable lucky deal. It had sat untouched and forgotten in the back of an old fashioned TV/radio repair shop for 20 years, then the owner of the place died and it was up to his daughters to clean up and clear out the shop. They had no idea what they had and neither did I, if I did I would have offered them more money.

Later on I sold it for much more money but when I check what all that sells for now, in the same condition as what I had, I cry a little.

 

[Pissmaster]

Yeah, people can read descriptions about the screen but until they see it they will not understand.

Yeah, no fucking kidding dude. Like, I get the draw of collecting original hardware and all, it's nice to not have to deal with the ugly aspects of emulators, but when it comes to platforms like the SNES that have had every single last excruciating quirk and detail of the hardware figured out, I'd rather just hook up a Wii or a PC to an old TV set and use that. Plus, I get the perk of not waking up to my saves being deleted because the cart contacts were dirty. It's just a better experience overall to emulate the SNES at this point.

But Vectrex? Since it used a vector monitor, it had direct control over the cathode ray that drew the screen, so you got these really strong lights for graphics that felt like they were just floating there. Everything was super smooth and just felt so good to play. The Vectrex really did feel like the future, which was surreal considering it came out in 1982 and I didn't get to play one until I think 2018. Like I even remember looking at my super high-res phone with a bright OLED screen and thinking how it's about the closest thing I've ever used to a Vectrex display, but still doesn't cut it as far as looking amazing for what it was made for. OLED and vector monitors both do the thing where only parts of the display having content drawn to them are technically turned off, but you could feel the difference between a Vectrex's cathode ray drawing those bright vectors to the screen and an OLED screen just displaying a series of bright pixels.

(sorry if this twists the knife of you selling your vectrex)

 

[Stasi]

I decided to pick up a fat PS2 at a nearby market to mess around with and I can't believe how simple modding one of these with a HDD is. Probably a bit more effort if you want to load all the software on a memory card yourself but all I got was a SATA ethernet connector and a memory card pre loaded with freemcboot off ebay and followed a 10 minute tutorial. Between this and the Wii I modded a while back I have basically infinity games.

As cool as PCSX2 is this is amazing playing all these games off a HDD on my TV.

 

[Pissmaster]

I decided to pick up a fat PS2 at a nearby market to mess around with and I can't believe how simple modding one of these with a HDD is. Probably a bit more effort if you want to load all the software on a memory card yourself but all I got was a SATA ethernet connector and a memory card pre loaded with freemcboot off ebay and followed a 10 minute tutorial. Between this and the Wii I modded a while back I have basically infinity games.

As cool as PCSX2 is this is amazing playing all these games off a HDD on my TV.

Playing games that were originally printed on CDs can be kind of a bitch and don't usually work on HDLoader (at least, when I used it). Fortunately, there aren't that many, but I got around it using some kind of USB drive loader. Can't remember exactly what, but that's what you could use if you ever wanna play any CD games.

edit: wait

but all I got was a SATA ethernet connector and

I didn't know they made those, I thought PS2 ethernet adapters only supported PATA drives. Awesome, I can finally have one over 300gb.

 

[Stasi]

I didn't know they made those, I thought PS2 ethernet adapters only supported PATA drives. Awesome, I can finally have one over 300gb.

Yep, they are Chinese knock offs and don't actually support internet connection (no actual ethernet plug) but have a SATA connector which is much more useful in this day and age. You can get them on Amazon and ebay. I've got a 1TB western digital drive and works fine. Build quality is really good too, think they probably got their hands on the original molds or something.

Official ones were PATA only as far as I know and I'm not sure when they started making these knock offs but assume its fairly recent as I found some guides from about 2017 that talk about complicated PATA to SATA mods for the original ethernet adapter.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

I decided to pick up a fat PS2 at a nearby market to mess around with and I can't believe how simple modding one of these with a HDD is. Probably a bit more effort if you want to load all the software on a memory card yourself but all I got was a SATA ethernet connector and a memory card pre loaded with freemcboot off ebay and followed a 10 minute tutorial. Between this and the Wii I modded a while back I have basically infinity games.

As cool as PCSX2 is this is amazing playing all these games off a HDD on my TV.

I have to recommend the network port-equipped HDD adapters. The vendor I got mine from wasn’t clear in the description, so I ended up with one sans port, and it’s a pain to pull the drive, put it in an old enclosure, fire up the transfer utility on the PC and move the files around, then reverse the whole process again. OPL has FTP transfer capability baked in, and the ability to grab cover art and manuals, so not having a port really blows!