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

[Never Scored]

Over the last year or so I've moved away from original systems and flash carts to just emulating shit. I have a 256 gig Arcade Punks image on a harddrive connected to a Playstation Classic, and one of those Retroflag GPi cases which has rapidly become the thing I use the most to play games, I stuck a front end from Arcade Punks on that too.

I put a raspberry pi in one of those Arcade 1-Up Street Fighter cabinets last year. Someone who didn't want it traded it to me in exchange for building them a PC(They bought the parts, I just picked them out, put it together and installed Windows 10 for them). We used it constantly for like two months and now we barely touch it.

I have the original Odroid Go and it is the absolute drizzling shits. Do not buy it. I can't imagine the Chinese handhelds on Retromimi and places like that are any better. If you're anything like me the GPi is what you're looking for. Drop the extra money and get that and get yourself a good image from Arcade Punks.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Is there any universal launcher menu that just works for very large numbers of roms and isn't Retroarch? Back in the original xbox era it seemed like a solved problem, there was just a frontend library that most homebrew emulators used that gave you everything in a nice flat list and could optionally show a screenshot. Everything nowadays seems to be up its own ass about collecting metadata and in the case of Retroarch it means hardcrashing (and losing scan data) if you try to scan directories containing large non-rom files and/or mame CHDs. The only other alternatives (notably Hyperspin) seem to be really ugly and topheavy and start getting into gigs of ram usage if you scan big collections.

 

[Oaat]

Is there any universal launcher menu that just works for very large numbers of roms and isn't Retroarch? Back in the original xbox era it seemed like a solved problem, there was just a frontend library that most homebrew emulators used that gave you everything in a nice flat list and could optionally show a screenshot. Everything nowadays seems to be up its own ass about collecting metadata and in the case of Retroarch it means hardcrashing (and losing scan data) if you try to scan directories containing large non-rom files and/or mame CHDs. The only other alternatives (notably Hyperspin) seem to be really ugly and topheavy and start getting into gigs of ram usage if you scan big collections.

If you just want a text list you can point retroarch to a directory without having it scan to make a playlist. Personally I use Launchbox which looks less obnoxious than Hyperspin, and isn't overly picky with the roms you use.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Is there any universal launcher menu that just works for very large numbers of roms and isn't Retroarch? Back in the original xbox era it seemed like a solved problem, there was just a frontend library that most homebrew emulators used that gave you everything in a nice flat list and could optionally show a screenshot. Everything nowadays seems to be up its own ass about collecting metadata and in the case of Retroarch it means hardcrashing (and losing scan data) if you try to scan directories containing large non-rom files and/or mame CHDs. The only other alternatives (notably Hyperspin) seem to be really ugly and topheavy and start getting into gigs of ram usage if you scan big collections.

A friend of mine associated rom-files with the respective emulators in windows using "open with... always open with this application". Double click on a .smc in explorer and it opens in zsnes for example. Then he dumped all his roms in one folder. Gross, but it worked. It will probably be complicated to do that with ISOs and MAME might be a nightmare, but snes, nes, genesis, gba, N64 and probably everything else that has its own file extension will work.

 

[Pissmaster]

Universal launchers on PC just seem to be a cursed thing. Like I really don't get how the fuck nobody can just make an emulator you can launch from Steam, pick your game from a big fancy menu that just displays whatever's in your ROM folder for that emulator, and play it. The Xbox port of SNES9X could do it just fine 17 years ago. And of course, I mean one that can just launch straight into fullscreen mode, and have Xinput ready to go.

The only emulator on PC I know of that actually does that is PPSSPP. And that emulator's open source, so why don't they just steal its UI and apply it to everything else?

Or hell, everything I've tried on Android seems to be able to do that.

 

[Basil II]

Universal launchers on PC just seem to be a cursed thing. Like I really don't get how the fuck nobody can just make an emulator you can launch from Steam, pick your game from a big fancy menu that just displays whatever's in your ROM folder for that emulator, and play it. The Xbox port of SNES9X could do it just fine 17 years ago. And of course, I mean one that can just launch straight into fullscreen mode, and have Xinput ready to go.

The only emulator on PC I know of that actually does that is PPSSPP. And that emulator's open source, so why don't they just steal its UI and apply it to everything else?

Or hell, everything I've tried on Android seems to be able to do that.

Here's your answer

 

[werbwub]

The only emulator on PC I know of that actually does that is PPSSPP. And that emulator's open source, so why don't they just steal its UI and apply it to everything else?

The reason why PPSSPP has that type of GUI is that the emulator was designed to run on mobile devices. RPCS3 also has a rather nice GUI, and in my opinion, surpasses PPSSPP.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

As the UK mourns the death of the Argos catalogue, I just wanted to share the fact that you once could have bought Super Metroid for £20

 

[XYZpdq]

I know actually using the PSP's UMD drive is basically for speds, but it really has one of the best-feeling "drive bay open"s of anything that plays video games.

 

[Beluga Le Vampire Hunter]

I thought I'd contribute to this thread with some help to those who are having trouble launching PS1 files from RetroArch.

The problems you've been having is mostly due to the ECM file. All you have to do is change the ECM file to a BIN file. Here's how:

1. Download this tool: https://www.mediafire.com/file/q2slybft4iuoxm6/ecm_tools.zip/file

2. Then extract the zip folder with WinRAR or 7Zip to your preferred destination.

3. Find your ECM file and drag it to unecm.exe and the BIN file will show up.

4. Open up RetroArch and set the game to launch to the BIN file.

Hope this helps!

 

[Stasi]

I've been subbed to this channel for a while and people might like it. Guy makes videos focusing mostly on emulation - reviews Chinese handhelds, mini PCs, has guides on setting up Pi boxes and using old PCs as emulation stations. I like his videos, well made and informative with no soy faces and time wasting. Just gets straight to business.

 

[Marissa Moira]

So with recent news that Toys R Us is still rumored in looking to expand and open new stores in North America after this Covid bullshit is over. It sounds like they're going to bring back the Ticket system that they used in the 1980's to the early 2000's to the stores they plan to sell games in.

They still own the property to many defunct TRU locations and those may be the first to be revived.

How their new model works is that the different companies will lease out sections of the store to sell their product in and since games are very diverse, having a booth with the games stored inside of it and the walls filled with tickets makes the most sense from a space saving perspective.

 

[Pee Cola]

Looks like the new ZX Spectrum Next Kickstarter has attracted over 3,000 backers since it launched a few days back. Apparently, it hit its initial target of £250k within 5 minutes of going live.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I've been subbed to this channel for a while and people might like it. Guy makes videos focusing mostly on emulation - reviews Chinese handhelds, mini PCs, has guides on setting up Pi boxes and using old PCs as emulation stations. I like his videos, well made and informative with no soy faces and time wasting. Just gets straight to business.

A slightly similar channel that I like is Budget Builds on Youtube. He buys and tests all kinds of old garbage to see how it stacks up today and what it can be used for gaming wise and what settings/resolutions are possible. It can be called "Modern games on retro hardware" and it is very informative, he recently did a video on running games like GTA5 on an old 256MB gpu and it runs 30+ fps at 720p with normal settings.

It's a good guide for those that need a computer and have a total of 30 bucks to spend.

 

[Vapewizard]

I've been heavily hit with N64 nostalgia recently and I remembered how cool I found it as a kid that Rayman 2 came with this world map. The instruction booklet is also aesthetically pleasing. In hindsight this game is kind of fascinating cause compared to the rest of this franchise it's such an outlier tone-wise. Seems like the first game had the wacky pop culture slapstick feel, then this game took a turn towards moody fantasy with themes of slavery and pollution caused by rampant industrialization and afterwards it just went straight back to slapstick and fart jokes with Rayman 3 and never looked back.

 

[Back me up!]

I've been subbed to this channel for a while and people might like it. Guy makes videos focusing mostly on emulation - reviews Chinese handhelds, mini PCs, has guides on setting up Pi boxes and using old PCs as emulation stations. I like his videos, well made and informative with no soy faces and time wasting. Just gets straight to business.

ETA Prime is great cause he is legit enthusiastic about Retropie/low cost pc emulation and has gotten big enough that people are sending him stuff to test out/ disassemble and show off. He is pretty much the best destination for anything related to Retro focused hand-helds.

 

[Dean Pentel]

Anyone here playing PS1 games on PS2 slim? That's working for me. I also have an old school Game Genie disc for PS1 that still works, as does the PS1 memory cards. That was a surprise.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

Finally got retroarch working on my new labtop... Starting with gameboy games since those should be easy to run

 

[Jean Lafitte 1812]

Anyone here playing PS1 games on PS2 slim? That's working for me. I also have an old school Game Genie disc for PS1 that still works, as does the PS1 memory cards. That was a surprise.

PS1 on PS2 tip: PS1 games can't read a PS2 memory card, but PS1 saves are perfectly safe to be copied to and from PS2 cards. Considering how much bigger the PS2 memory cards are it's a good way to store PS1 saves, especially for games with multi-block saves like RPGs and RPG Maker. Might be able to do this with a hard drive too, but slims don't support hard drives.

 

[Back me up!]

So if any one wanted to get into Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R) it's now even easier: The fans over at Reddit have created a launcher that automatically updates and patches the game along with downloading HQ music. There is even a feature to create a .apk file so that it will run on Android native devices.

r/AM2R - AM2R 1.5.2 Release + the AM2RLauncher!

157 votes and 120 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

You can get the AM2R 1.1 zip here. Just download both, open the launcher and point it to the zip file and you should be good to go.