Emulators??


donburkard

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Hi guys,

 

One of my buddies has an old xbox that he bought off a friend.  I played with it and man was i surprised to find that i could play the Zelda from super Nintendo.  I have a few wireless Playstation style remotes that are built for pc's (Circuit City's loss is my gain).  My question is this,  does anyone know anything about emulators?  Id like to get one that does all the game consoles if possible?  any one have any thoughts for me?

 

thanks

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Hi guys,

 

One of my buddies has an old xbox that he bought off a friend.  I played with it and man was i surprised to find that i could play the Zelda from super Nintendo.  I have a few wireless Playstation style remotes that are built for pc's (Circuit City's loss is my gain).  My question is this,  does anyone know anything about emulators?  Id like to get one that does all the game consoles if possible?  any one have any thoughts for me?

 

thanks

 

Thus far emulators are way behind. Last time I checked they still couldn't run Nintendo Gamecube games at a normal frame rate. There is no single emulator that does all of the consoles.

 

Take a look here for some console emulators

 

http://www.emulator-zone.com/

 

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Oh this is a subject I know very well, in fact Emulation was of the reasons I built unRAID.

 

What do you want to know?

 

As mentioned, there is no emulator that can emulate everything, but you WILL find emulators for specific systems that do a great job.

 

My personal emulation classification is this (and let me know which interests you more):

 

- Arcade (no need to explain this)

 

- Handheld (I am talking about "stupid" handhelds before the time of Gameboy)

 

- Consoles (goes as back as Atari 2600 or even further and up to PS3 and Wii)

 

- Handheld Consoles (this is where Gameboy belongs)

 

- Computers (emulating full computers, along with their custom chips etc.)

 

- OS (emulating -if you can call it emulation- older systems in OS level, not low level but as long as you don't mean "hit-the-metal" software, you should be ok)

 

- Interpreters (these are a very interesting category that "interprets" the language that special categories of games used -mostly adventures- and in fact run it all over again normally)

 

- Multi-Machine (there are few emulators that indeed try to handle a bigger -or smaller- load of machine emulation)

 

My suggestions (from any category above):

 

- MAME - THE DEFINITE arcade emulator. This IS a multisystem emulator (a monster developed by a huge team around the world for years) and is very good at it. You really want to have this. Of course nowadays (that they started to deal even with laserdisk emulation) the full archive is many gigabytes - but with less than a gig you can play the biggest percentage of older arcade (if not all). I suggest using "MAME Plus!" or "MAME Plus XT" for more goodies.

 

- MESS - It is the "MAME of computers". It is based on MAME engine (and development is synced with it). It can emulate a great number of older computers, others very successfully, others less (or not even working ok).

 

- If you had an Amstrad CPC, you want to try WinAPE.

 

- For legendary Atari 2600, you want Stella.

 

- For Atari ST (baaah) you will love SainT and Steem.

 

- For the GOD Commodore 64, you want VICE (the most complete, emulates many Commodore 8-bitters), CCS64 or HOXS64.

 

- For the BEST COMPUTER EVER MADE (read: Amiga), you want WinUAE and you rule.

 

- For IBM PC (this wonderful - bliaaaaah- gaming machine) you can try DOSBox, where you can play even older DOS games!

 

- Gargoyle is the way to go for interpreting various engines like legendary Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls.

 

- SCUMMvm is another definite "MUST HAVE". It started as interpreter for the great Lucas Arts games, but now supports many other mouse driven "point and click" engines.

 

- For MSX and various other machines (not many but it classifies as "multi-machine" emulator) you want to try BlueMSX.

 

- MorphGear is something you'll probably love (emulates some hand-held consoles).

 

- For Spectrum various models you want to try EmuZWin, Spectaculator (commercial!!!) or ZXSpin.

 

The list can grow huge, I just listed some favorites. There are emulators for all classic computers like TI-99, TRS-80, ZX-81 etc. Nowadays for Windows you can find even obscure emulators like Apple Lisa (!) or Amstrad PCW or Jupiter Ace or SAM Coupe etc.

 

For sites to suggest, PM me.

 

The nice thing? Most play well over the network.

 

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OK here are some links you should know if you deal with Emulation, on purpose in no particular order and without explanation (except self-explained domain names) - why? To make you explore...

 

http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.mess.org/

http://www.peterhirschberg.com/handheld/ledhead/index.htm

http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp

http://www.underground-gamer.com/index.php

http://full.pleasuredome.org.uk/

http://www.winuae.net/

http://gbamiga.elowar.com/

http://www.lemonamiga.com/

http://amigasys.extra.hu/

http://mamedev.org/

http://www.mameworld.net/

http://www.lemon64.com/

http://www.viceteam.org/

http://www.scummvm.org/

http://www.ifarchive.org/

http://aros.sourceforge.net/

...and many more you can find by just googling the emulator names I gave you in the post above.

 

 

Happy digging. To people of the eighties these can easily bring a tear to their eye. :D

 

Hope donburkard is covered now.

 

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Holy $#!T!!!  :o That is amazing! Ok well i was just thinking about nintendo, sega, super nintendo, atari, playstation, playstation 2, xbox, gamecube, neogeo, wii,etc.  will those sits point me in the right direction?  I ask because im trying to avoid looking at to much other stuff.  I have a tendency to see and want, therefor if i see any others, i will want, and then have to build another damn server. 

 

 

 

Thank you, by the way. im glad i asked, and kinda scared at the same time.

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I know, I've been in this place a few years ago. Then unRAID came along.

Then hard disks became bigger... :)

 

See my screenshot for emulator names you should look, for the systems you are interested.

I'd say DO NOT stay away from MAME at least (although not a console emulator) - then for the rest decide yourself.

 

Just remember the obvious: The most modern the equipment you want to emulate, the worse the emulation (and more difficult anyway).

Also "the less legal" to get stuff for it (except if you own them of course).

For example PS is there and pretty good nowadays. PS2 emuation lags far behind. PS3 haven't even hear yet. For Wii there is an early attempt, that doesn't go very far from a proof of concept yet.

 

But a SMS or SNES can be in your computer screen in no time.

 

The links and the screenshots are a good kickstart (that nobody gave to me).

 

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  • 2 years later...

Even though the last post was way back I'm taking my chances. I'm also a big arcade & console rom collector. But I'm curious as to what you are using to manage your sets? Do you manage them from within unraid for example or through external access by a windows machine with clrmamepro and such?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I already have most of the collections including matching media (in-game movies, title shots, box art, etc).

On windows I use clrmamepro amonst others to maintain and update the collections. Are there any solutions (apps, scripts, etc) to manage/maintain the collections directly on unraid itself?

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