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

[Dark Edea]

Not to mention games themselves. I tell my friends and coworker to just get an everdrive if they want to get games for there systems as they are too pricey anymore for people to start collecting.

So glad I had good taste and good sense as a teenager and don't have to buy any of these overpriced games.

 

[Maurice Caine]

Personally, Dreamcast emulation is a pain in the ass. No matter how hard you try, some of the games will either run like shit, have graphical issues, or both. The others run just fine. Still less of a pain than Saturn emulation, though.

I dunno, I beat Shenmue in NullDC then a Second time in Demul. Minor graphical issues in NullDC and perfect emulation in Demul.

 

[Calandrino]

Figured this was the best thread to ask this in since I have very little experience with emulators.

I really want to play Dragon Quest IV, but the game is outrageously expensive, both on NES and on DS. I don't normally emulate games because I like the experience of having the game in my hand plus I have the hardware to play the game. However, I don't have the money to buy a $150 game right now so I figured I could emulate DQ IV on NES (I don't really think emulating the DS is gonna get me the full experience).

What's surprising though is that I'm having trouble finding a decent NES emulator. I easily found good ones for the GBA and the SNES, but I tried two for NES and both of them couldn't do what I wanted them to. The first one was FCEUX, which had a completely fucked aspect ratio. You could get the game to run in 4:3, but unlike every other emulator which represents the aspect ratio with black bars, FCEUX does this thing where the borders of the screen are the primary color of the screen at the time. I hate it. It's hideous, and you can't fix it. Digging around online indicated that's just how FCEUX works. Then I tried Nintendulator, but I couldn't get the fucking thing to recognize my controller's inputs. It would either spit out a random button number from 1-9 or it would give me X rotation, which basically means it didn't work. And I couldn't figure out how to fix the aspect ratio from the menu (it's probably buried somewhere but that controller's a major barrier).

The long and short of it is, are there any decent NES emulators that work normally? I know I'm decades late in asking this but it's shockingly hard to find, unlike with the SNES and GBA.

Pretty sure you don't need to hack a DS to run NES emulators, although I haven't had positive experiences with them (it's not going to be better than emulating on PC). Everdrives are great but a popular game like that is probably on lots of multicarts, like people have said.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Anyone remember using the floppy disk piracy system on the SNES while the SNES was still alive?

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Pretty sure you don't need to hack a DS to run NES emulators, although I haven't had positive experiences with them (it's not going to be better than emulating on PC). Everdrives are great but a popular game like that is probably on lots of multicarts, like people have said.

I was referring to emulating the DS remake Dragon Quest IV got.

 

[Calandrino]

I was referring to emulating the DS remake Dragon Quest IV got.

Oh right that's actually pretty clear on a better reading. Well, you don't have to do any hacking either way.

One thing I could add is that cheaper flash carts and multicarts can have some oddities when it comes to saving, if you go that rought... pretty sure my multicart only allows one save altogether, if you play a different game and save it overwrites it. Some Genesis flash carts require you to reset rather than power off to retain a save, perhaps some NES flash carts work similarly.

 

[Dark Edea]

Looking to emulate NES? Animal Crossing is your answer.

 

[garakfan69]

I decided to go full autist with my Amiga emulation.

So first I fished out my old favourite Amiga joystick to try to create an USB adapter for it.
But it turned out that the joystick barely worked so I had to disassemble everything and clean the switch contacts first.
I also discovered that the plug was broken.
Making the actual adapter after all this was pretty easy; basically just downloading a USB library for my blue pill board and writing a few lines of code.

I love this thing, it's basically a small arcade stick that firmly mounts on any table thanks to its suction cups and takes abuse like Summer Games like a champ.
I ordered a knockoff Mega Drive controller off Ali that I can scrap to get a cheap replacement cable. Then I can make something less ugly with proper DB9 sockets. I also should do something about the rust.

For the actual emulation I used ClassicWB (pre-riced Workbench) and the whole WHDLoad archive so I can comfortably launch games from inside Workbench:
(contains NSFW It's amazing that in 2021, you can still get online furry porn with an Amiga.)

 

[Judge Dredd]

After re-installing Project 64 with angrylion to play the Dinosaur Planet leak, it got me playing N64 games again.

I'm way behind on my N64 emulation news.

Project 64 has a number of errors. Smash Bros runs too fast, games like Body Harvest have parts that run too fast, and some games crash or don't work right. I don't care about upscaling or mouse controls. I just want to play the games as close as I reasonably can.

I remember hearing about Cen64, but that seems to be vaporware.


On a related note, feel free to recommend N64 games that aren't the usual games like Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

 

[Marissa Moira]

After re-installing Project 64 with angrylion to play the Dinosaur Planet leak, it got me playing N64 games again.

I'm way behind on my N64 emulation news.

Project 64 has a number of errors. Smash Bros runs too fast, games like Body Harvest have parts that run too fast, and some games crash or don't work right. I don't care about upscaling or mouse controls. I just want to play the games as close as I reasonably can.

I remember hearing about Cen64, but that seems to be vaporware.


On a related note, feel free to recommend N64 games that aren't the usual games like Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

Harvest Moon 64
San Francisco Rush/San Francisco Rush 2/San Francisco Rush 2049
Beetle Adventure Racing
Mischief Makers
Goemon/Mystical Ninja
BattleTanx/BattleTanx 2: Global Assault
Rogue Squadron
Shadows of the Empire
Space Station Silicon Valley

 

[Gingervitis]

I just want to play the games as close as I reasonably can.

If you were an autist like me, you'd get an N64, a flashcart, a controller, a replacement joystick, and a good composite -> HDMI converter.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

a controller

I would like to know; is that N64 Brawler controller any good? I see people use it and if nothing else the analog stick looks like it won't dig into my thumb.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I would like to know; is that N64 Brawler controller any good? I see people use it and if nothing else the analog stick looks like it won't dig into my thumb.

There are many third party options that still exist today

Seriously you can usually find real third party pads for dirt cheap. Many controllers from that era are such odd shapes or looks like they belong to an entirely different system.

 

[Gingervitis]

I would like to know; is that N64 Brawler controller any good? I see people use it and if nothing else the analog stick looks like it won't dig into my thumb.

No idea. Again, I used the original controller and replaced the stick. I havent heard a lot of good things about the other 3rd party ones though.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

On a related note, feel free to recommend N64 games that aren't the usual games like Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

Hybrid Heaven. It's not great but it is certainly unique.

 

[XYZpdq]

Anyone remember using the floppy disk piracy system on the SNES while the SNES was still alive?

I remember for a while roms would come presplit for those

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I remember for a while roms would come presplit for those

That's how they were distributed, further split into 120kb archives* I think, there might not have been any real standard and this was a fucking long time ago. Then they had to read all the disks into memory before they could be played. That also limited the size of the games that were playable to what could fit in RAM. Obviously you wanted the full 32Mbit of memory. Games using extra ships could not be played so for Super Nintendo that makes it less useful these days.

One interesting feature I never actually saw used was that they could WRITE games to cartridges just like a devkit. Not to regular ROM cartridges obviously even though I tried just to see what would happen, maybe it would fuck up my savegames, but no.

*breaking things up into archives was meant to reduce the loss if something fucked up so only a small part of something larger had to be downloaded to fix it. Losing combined 10x120kb archive file download on 9,600baud sucks, losing and redownloading 1 out of those 10 is not as big of a deal. They were cleverly formated as spare parts and would be a big thing going forward in the warez scene. It was also possibly to tell what something was depending on the files sizes of the split archives, downloading [Game] in 1.44MB archives it's a rip, 15MB is an ISO and so on. Really fun, I miss that retro piracy.

 

[Gingervitis]

On a related note, feel free to recommend N64 games that aren't the usual games like Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

Diddy Kong Racing, which is Mario Kart 64's better cousin
Mischief Makers, because its a fun platformer made by Treasure, the same guys that did Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy
Starshot: Space Circus Fever, an ok game with bland level design, but god damn are the dialogue and setpieces great.
Glover, a fun game where you control a glove instead of your usual mascots
Magical Tetris Challenge. It's Tetris with Disney characters.
Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage, because its a good game and I totally don't want to see how gullible you are
Sin and Punishment, an on-rails shooter with a weird control scheme (it uses the left and middle prongs of the N64 controller, as opposed to middle and right or left and right.)
Donkey Kong 64 is pretty well known, but the undeserved hate it gets makes it pretty underrated atm. Its not as bad as DKC3, at the very least

 

[Billy_Sama]

After re-installing Project 64 with angrylion to play the Dinosaur Planet leak, it got me playing N64 games again.

I'm way behind on my N64 emulation news.

Project 64 has a number of errors. Smash Bros runs too fast, games like Body Harvest have parts that run too fast, and some games crash or don't work right. I don't care about upscaling or mouse controls. I just want to play the games as close as I reasonably can.

I remember hearing about Cen64, but that seems to be vaporware.


On a related note, feel free to recommend N64 games that aren't the usual games like Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

Some I don't see posted but I enjoyed
Ogre Battle 64: A RPG strategy game with mostly sprite based graphics which stands out for the N64 library. One of my favorites.
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness: It might be a weird Castlevania 3D game but its fun and an improvement to Castlevania 64.
Clayfighters/ Clayfighters Sculptors Cut: Silly game but enjoyed it.
Star Soldier Vanishing Earth: Fun Shootem up.
Doom 64: This got ported to new consoles but its a complete original Doom game that been ignore since people thought it was a straight up Doom port.
Paperboy 64: Fun Arcade game.
Mega Man 64: only if you never played Mega Man Legends.
Shadowgate 64: Fun 3D adventure, might want to have a guide in case you miss to pickup something.
Blast Corps: Underrated Rare game but still fun
The Bomberman games even though they merge in my mind but one of them has some killer music.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

On a related note, feel free to recommend N64 games that aren't the usual games like Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

I'd unironically suggest Superman 64. I got it as a joke gift last Christmas and it's really fucking terrible, but being 20+ years removed from its release, not to mention the fact it's not as expensive as it was back then, it was a hilarious experience. It was like watching Troll 2 all over again; you can only experience so much through watching others play it online, but it's another thing entirely when the controller's in your hands and you're the one guiding Superman through rings.

If you've got $15 to spare, I'd highly recommend tracking down a copy, maybe having some friends over and marvel at the sheer awfulness of it all.