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| tomman |
Posted on 18-11-07, 10:58 (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
 Post: #20 of 1315 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 58 days Last view: 14 hours |
So I was reading some console-related news, just to learn that the Switch is following the longstanding tradition of Nintendo consoles which are emulated Too Soon™. In fact, there are now two very active projects, which are even capable to play retail games: - Yuzu: From the Citra crew (it greatly helped them that both the Switch and 3DS run the same OS), here comes the most advanced Switch emulator so far. Multiplatform, open source, and while it requires a rather new high-end gaming rig (with emphasis on "single-threaded CPU performance") to achieve playable speeds, it can now run several commercial games. Also I like their monthly progress reports (wasn't Dolphin who started with that great idea?). Unfortunately, to get started also requires having access to a hackable Switch to dump a bunch of stuff (mainly keys and sysfiles), a task that seems rather daunting to PokéRAWMz kiddies and anyone willing to just take a look. - Ryujinx: Written in C# (but targeting .NET Core), and not so advanced as Yuzu, but it's already showing some great potential. Plus there is collaboration between Ryujinx and Yuzu devs, so that's very cool. Man, this stuff reminds me back when the GBA was at its apex... and so were emulators, allowing me to play muh Pokeymanz (among other hot GBA games of the era) on my horrible Deceleron box with near-native performance! But the GBA was a far simpler animal, you didn't needed a gaming rig to play, there were no touchscreens or online features involved, and gaming in general was much more enjoyable back then. Still, amazing stuff to see, no matter if you care or not about the Switch. I guess Nintendo is hardly pleased with the news, but I guess they're too busy printing money again. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| Broseph |
Posted on 18-11-08, 07:54 (revision 2)
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 Post: #10 of 166 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 1561 days Last view: 1237 days |
I'm just happy that I can emulate GameCube games relatively smoothly, but very impressive still. You're right though that Nintendo had most of their consoles emulated during their lifetimes pretty much since the N64, I think. Doesn't seem to have hurt them much. I think the GBA was by far the worse case of early emulation: releasing even before the GBA was commercially available (though I don't remember how long it took until it got to a good level of emulation). edit: Also the good old prehistoric days of looking for N64 games on a 56k modem and having to use a Glide wrapper (if you didn't have a 3dfx card). |
| Kakashi |
Posted on 18-11-08, 09:18
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 Post: #13 of 210 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 1876 days Last view: 1848 days |
The GBC had pretty decent emulation at release time. |
| KingMike |
Posted on 18-12-21, 02:35
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Post: #1 of 36
Since: 12-21-18 Last post: 1207 days Last view: 115 days |
Well, GBC was largely an original GB with color and more RAM and such. Though I don't recall how good emulation GB actually was at the time (myself having just a 486 that could barely play anything. It could only handle ZSNES with max frameskip and sound disabled, which also meant many games would softlock). I think no$gmb was considered one of the better emulators at the time, yet I remember its sound emulation was quite ear-piercing. (and also, it cost money to play Color for more than five minutes.) I think I used an emulator called REW for GB/GBC games once I got a better PC that could at least handle 8/16-bit emulation decently. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 18-12-21, 02:44
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Custom title here
 Post: #142 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 63 days Last view: 5 hours |
Posted by KingMike I remember there being a few decent GB emulators at the turn of the century. I didn't get particularly invested in any of them, though. I had arcade emulators(PLURAL!) and console emulators, so I was spoiled for choice, and GameBoy games aren't that impressive once you remove the "portable" aspect. Spent a few minutes with Final Fantasy Adventure(AKA Secret of Mana 0), then went "Okay, maybe now I'll... go play something else. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| tomman |
Posted on 18-12-23, 16:41 (revision 2)
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Dinosaur
Post: #100 of 1315 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 58 days Last view: 14 hours |
For most people out there (particularly back when the GB was still "hot"), their needs basically boil down to a single franchise: POKéMON. Back in the era, most bugreports received by emu authors were from ROM kiddies claiming that "HALP i can't pokeymanz/I can haz the RAWMz?" (this DID extended sometime after the GBA era, as -until a couple years ago- I still received from time to time those lovely messages in my condition of the LA Spanish localization author for VBA). Most of those people never had any prior experience with the real hardware, they just wanted to play with Pikachu on their econoboxes. ...and to be fair, I'm not excluding myself - while I never pestered any emudev about Pokemoning my 'mons ('cause I never had any trouble with the games), roughly half of my (tiny) GB(C) ROM collection are nothing but Pokemon titles (I dropped Blue/Red after 6 badges or so, and never went very far with either Yellow, Crystal or Gold/Silver). With the GBA, my story turned up radically after playing with the Real Hardware (once again, thanks to my Nintendo-brand cousin), I learned that there was life beyond Pokeymanz, and the rest writes by itself: hundreds of hours glued to my computer monitor (and eventually to my makeshift Gameboy Player, as soon as I got my first laptop with a legit TV output and a cheap USB gamepad: it took me 167 hours on that setup to beat Pokemon Emerald, just to drop that shit after wasting some time at the Battle Frontier) ...damn, I'm now in the mood for some Warioworld 4 :D In other news, Post 100 GET~! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| neptronix |
Posted on 19-02-15, 03:26
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Post: #3 of 7
Since: 02-15-19 Last post: 2083 days Last view: 1991 days |
I think it's really sad how things turned out for nintendo. Once they decided to leap out of the mainstream console race and focus on cheap stuff for kids, it's just been headache after headache for them, piracy wise. Seems like they spend more money on lawyers than clever programming and hardware design. |
| wertigon |
Posted on 19-02-18, 09:44 (revision 1)
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Post: #21 of 205
Since: 11-24-18 Last post: 155 days Last view: 27 days |
Posted by neptronix You seem to be operating on the false assumption that piracy hurt sales. In most instances, it actually helps you more than it hurts you. Think about it; how many times have you downloaded a game from... Well, let's say questionable channels, found out you liked it, and invested in the sequel? Let's take an example. You download and play Xenoblade Chronicles, and like the game so much you buy a Switch and XBC2. Or you play GTA3 and get so hooked you pick up GTA5. And so on. Piracy does drive sales and help new fans find your games. And as DRM increases and more and more hackers say "fuck it", the more larger companies will realise they *need* the piracy, and not the opposite way around. The losers? Crapware/shovelware companies. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME TH... *gets clapped in iron, gagball and dragged away to gitmo* |
| BearOso |
Posted on 19-02-18, 20:14
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 Post: #41 of 175 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1450 days Last view: 1450 days |
Nobody is playing games on these bleeding edge emulators and enjoying it. But if they are, and if they’re that desperate to accept such an inferior presentation, they wouldn’t have bought the game in the first place. No, the reason these emulators are around is because people are curious and enjoy developing them. |
| Kakashi |
Posted on 19-02-18, 23:05
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Post: #86 of 210 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 1876 days Last view: 1848 days |
I know someone who is unemployed and can't be bothered saving up money to buy another console, but has a PC powerful enough to play Breath of the Wilrd on an emulated Wii U and says that, "it was OK once all the textures were loaded". I've been sitting here watching $gf play this game for what seem like a few weeks on the Switch (she says isn't anywhere near finishing it) and I don't believe he ran this game at full speed very often... |
| Nicholas Steel |
Posted on 19-02-22, 08:11 (revision 3)
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Post: #118 of 426
Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 498 days Last view: 13 days |
Posted by BearOsoSo the fanatical fans of ZSNES and UltraHLE2064 were a myth? I mean to imply that there are plenty of people out there that are tolerable of poor experiences... Posted by KakashiApparently emulation performance of the game has improved a lot in late 2018 and throughout 2019, including hacks to remove the in-game FPS limiter. I haven't seen anyone report any problems in the game with an FPS increased above the normal limit but I'm not following the emulation project very closely. AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64 |
| Kakashi |
Posted on 19-02-22, 12:44
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Post: #89 of 210 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 1876 days Last view: 1848 days |
Yeah, my story goes back to some time in 2017. |
| BearOso |
Posted on 19-02-22, 19:55
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Post: #42 of 175 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1450 days Last view: 1450 days |
Posted by Nicholas Steel Do you remember that time? Access to games was much more limited. Games disappeared from store shelves shortly after they were released and the only way to get them was through mail-in companies like Funco. Games like FF5 and SD3 were just translated and only available through emulation or copiers. When UltraHLE came out, the novelty was the higher resolution and frame rate compared to the console. Controllers with analog sticks were less widespread, and that was a big limiting factor. Personally, when I had access to the real thing, even if I had to wait months for a used game to become available, I would choose that above all. There were idiots that accepted the poor presentation, but for the most part I don’t think they were there for the game experience. For them it was a street cred thing that they tried to lord over others. These are the ones who refer to the programs as “my zsnes” or “my Firefox.” It made them think they were superior to those who weren’t in the know. |
| Kakashi |
Posted on 19-02-22, 22:34
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Post: #90 of 210 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 1876 days Last view: 1848 days |
There was also a time when ZSNES was simply the fastest and "most accurate" (I say this because it played more games...there was an arms race between Snes9x and ZSNES until they started working together. Anyone remember the NLKE merger?) |
| Nicholas Steel |
Posted on 19-02-23, 07:53 (revision 4)
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Post: #119 of 426
Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 498 days Last view: 13 days |
Posted by BearOso Apparently no, I don't remember what it was like. I can not recall the experience of purchasing any NES, SNES or N64 games from a retailer. I do know that our NES came with around 50~ games (so it must have been a 2nd hand console purchase or we got a lot of games 2nd hand) and we purchased Trog at some point from a retailer (very expensive according to my parents, but it's a great game), the SNES was brand new from a retailer & included Super Mario All-Stars + World, and the N64 was definitely second hand and came with a bunch of games. AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64 |
| KingMike |
Posted on 19-02-24, 07:13
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Post: #6 of 36
Since: 12-21-18 Last post: 1207 days Last view: 115 days |
I do remember in the GBC days that finding a copy of Crystalis or Dragon Warrior I+II a few months after release at Target was difficult, but they still had plenty of copies of Pokemon Red and Blue. (that is, trying to find a not so popular game being difficult outside of GameStop or online stores) Do you mean people who still play ZSNES and consider it a "good" emulator NOW? Or those who played it when we didn't have better options for emulating games? |
| tomman |
Posted on 19-02-24, 12:38
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Dinosaur
Post: #159 of 1315 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 58 days Last view: 14 hours |
Now that you guys just touched the topic, I must say that my main reason to get into emulation was a economical one: I've never been able to buy any console, at all. The only consoles I've ever been owned were: - a Famiclone that I got as a birthday gift, and that died shortly after that due to a faulty mullticart - my Genesis, which I got as a hand-me-down from a uncle. Aside of those, my contact with other consoles have been severely limited: played a bit on my cousin's N64/GBA, and at the college dorms, a little bit of Xbox/X360/PS2/Wii/DS/PSP. That's all. I had no interaction with other consoles (if anything) beyond seeing them behind a sales display) By the time I was able to earn my own money, I wasn't really into console gaming anymore - a decently spec'd laptop made much more sense for me, and by then my emulation needs have drastically reduced down to a couple Wii/GC games on Dolphin, and the yearly Sonic ROM Hacking contests. But then, emulation let me discover that there was something between the NES and the N64 (seriously, I was unaware that the SNES existed at all... until 2002, and yes, ZSNES was my emulator of choice as SNES9X was kinda slow on my Celeron shitbox), or that there was a mobile companion for the Dreamcast, or that there were N64/GBA games other than Pokemon and Mario. I arrived late to the emulation arena (the UltraHLE era was long over), but not that late (I remember downloading 0-day GBA dumps, playing Sonic Advance 2 earlier than anyone else in my country, etc). I miss those good ol' times... Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| Near |
Posted on 19-02-25, 05:45
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Burned-out Genius Developer
Post: #15 of 51 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1419 days Last view: 1342 days |
> Do you remember that time? Access to games was much more limited. Games disappeared from store shelves shortly after they were released and the only way to get them was through mail-in companies like Funco. That isn't still the case? I even pre-ordered Riviera on PSP from Gamestop, and the store employee opened the only copy they received -- mine -- before I arrived to pick it up. And there was only one Gamestop I could find in Columbus, OH with a sealed copy of Yggdra Union PSP. After that, I just started buying games online. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 19-02-25, 05:55
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Custom title here
Post: #272 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 63 days Last view: 5 hours |
Gamestop has always been a festering hellhole. --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| KingMike |
Posted on 19-02-26, 15:12
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Post: #7 of 36
Since: 12-21-18 Last post: 1207 days Last view: 115 days |
It would sound like I'm the only person who never experienced GameStop opening a pre-ordered game on me. :P |
