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(Alternative subtitle: You must delete your ROMs 24 hours later)
Welcome FamiRetro! Here we can discuss emulation of all sorts! From software emulation, to our favourite handhelds, and to FPGA solutions such as Analogue products and MiSTer. There's an absurd amount of ways to play our favourite games!
Please respect the rules of Famiboards! We’re here to discuss different emulators, new emulation products, and development on products & projects such as MiSTer. This is not a space to make bigoted or gross comments. And, despite the subject matter, this is not a space to share pirated content or linking to illegal sources.
However, this is also not a space to discuss the morality of piracy. It is acceptable for people to be discussing about pirated content, such as ROM images, in this space (within reason). It is not acceptable to be finger waving or policing people about such pirated content. If you wish to discuss the morality of piracy, then you should make a new topic.
That said, the official stance from Famiboard's on Piracy can be found here.
When NESticle, one of the most easily accessible NES emulators of the 90s with a… choice of a name, became widespread in use, our approach to retro games completely changed. From there a suite of features are now expected in any emulator that releases today: screenshots, input recorders, netplay, save states, rewind, frame skipping… and even memory watchers so you can change game values live!
All of these wouldn’t be possible for retro games without software emulators and the dedicated developers who have spent many years creating & maintaining emulators. There are literally hundreds of emulators out there to try out. For the NES alone you have the likes of Mesen, Jnes, NEStopia, FCEUX and many more. And then you have the multi-system emulators like higan, RetroArch, and BizHawk which can play all sorts of systems with their own set of features.
Emulators for newer generations of games exist as well, all the way up the Switch! These emulators tend to have enhancements and resolution scaling features as well, allowing you to play your favourites like Super Mario 64 in 60 FPS at a 4K resolution, HD texture packs galore. Just as Miyamoto intended!
All jokes aside, there’s just so many benefits to playing retro games through software emulation, thanks to their accessibility and the ability to make tough-as-nails games such as Ninja Gaiden much easier to play through with the use of save states and rewind. And that’s not even getting into things such as ROM hacks and fan translations! Emulators have really paved the way to make all of our favourite classics so much more than just games, they have allowed us to continue to experience our favourites in all new ways.
Some emulators you can check out:
- Mesen — NES; includes fun features such as HD Packs
- bsnes-hd — SNES; includes features like HD Mode-7 and overclocking
- Dolphin — GCN+Wii; THE standard for modern console emulation
- Duckstation — PSX; a relatively new emulator with loads of features
- PPSSPP — PSP; so many games trapped on PSP made accessible
- MAME — A rather complicated emulator but the best way to play Arcade classics
Of course, it goes without saying, but the more modern a console you are trying to emulate, the more exponential power you’ll need for a computer to be able to run such games. But if you have the means, it’s definitely worth trying your favourites at 4K resolutions.
But if you don’t care too much about power, there are more dedicated and convenient ways to play some of your favourite games.
While software emulation tends to have a high degree of accuracy while offering more esoteric features, there’s no better feeling than just sitting down on your couch after a long day of work and just pushing a button to make the game go. And there’s where hardware solutions come in!
Of course, hardware emulators include official solutions such as Nintendo’s very own NES Classic Edition, SNES Classic Edition, Game & Watches… as well as SEGA and Playstation’s own mini consoles. But while those are fun to have and show off, that’s not what we’re really here for.
While console clones such as RetroNs and the like have been around forever, multisystem hardware solutions like the Raspberry Pi have really made the idea of “How do I play Super Nintendo and then Genesis without getting up?” appealing and widespread in use. There’s now whole RasPi distros like RetroPie basically giving an easy all-in-one access to playing basically anything you want, from Atari 2600 to the Dreamcast.
One popular idea for people was to take GameBoy shells and stick a Raspberry Pi in them to have a very capable portable solution to playing your games. However, this required tools & skills that the average person wouldn’t have easy access to. And while there’s a whole slew of accessories that you can purchase for an easy drop-in solution, a new kind of economy popped up…
From there, portable gaming has come into play. They tend to be cheap to buy, very accessible, and have a lot of potential for customization. Between Anbernic, PowKiddy, and Retroid, it is currently a cutthroat marketplace with a race to have the cheapest & most powerful portable possible. The past year has unfortunately led to a bit of a stagnation in innovation with most of these handhelds not being able to play beyond PSX (thanks to the dreaded RK3326 CPU refusing to die). But, there’s still a lot of potential in this space.
On the other end, there are portables such as the GPD Win and the Steam Deck. However, while you can definitely load your favourite emulators on them, they are meant to be for general-purpose gaming and not really an all-in-one solution for retro games (not to mention, very pricey!).
On that note, there is one last (and very exciting, IMO) avenue for emulation.
Standing for Field-Programmable Gate Array, it is a relatively new solution for game emulation. In essence, FPGA is intended for developers to recreate CPUs and computer hardware for testing purposes. Once FPGA became more accessible, people figured out that they can be programmed to essentially recreate retro computers & consoles within the limits of the FPGA board.
And through FPGA, there are some products and devices that give you near-zero input latency while being able to display to an HDTV (or CRT TV!) while either loading ROMs or using actual physical carts to play. It is a fantastic plug-and-play solution to playing retro games!
Analogue is one of few companies to make use of FPGA in commercial products in such a way. They have branded themselves as being the modern solution to retro gaming. Starting with their Nt Mini (which is permanently out of stock; why not check out the RetroUSB AVS as an alternative?), NES games on an HDTV have never looked or played so good!
Their products (when in stock) range from the Super NT, Mega SG, the DAC (which allows you to use your Analogue consoles on a CRT TV) and related accessories for those consoles. Their upcoming lineup includes the very sought-after Pocket (for all the portable games; and will definitely release by the end of 2021… maybe) and the Duo (for the PC-Engine fans out there).
While the company may try to claim FPGA is not (or better than) emulation, that’s not inherently true! It is a different kind of emulation, a more bare-metal-hardware than software kind, and programming an FPGA device still requires skilled programmers. But despite the gripes people may have with Analogue themselves, it is very hard to deny that their products are high quality and excel with what they provide. Then of course, there’s jailbreaks that you can very easily install on your Analogue console that opens up some very nice features, such as save backups, enabling cheat codes, and our favourite: loading ROM backups off the SD card.
There is also a community-driven alternative to Analogue’s products that, while expensive to get into, can really open your eyes to all the value FPGA really brings to emulation.
Say hello to the MiSTer Project! Not explicitly a console or specifically made for FPGA emulation, the heart of the MiSTer is the DE10-Nano Development Kit. At some point, some very smart people wanted to have extremely accurate versions of the Commodore A[Mi]ga and the Atari [ST] that started out as the MiST project which exploded into a whole community with the MiSTer for general purpose FPGA games emulation.
There’s not exactly a single definitive place for all of your MiSTer news and goods because it is very much community driven across multiple hubs. Dozens of people in the retro games community have their fingers in the MiSTer pie, so to say. From sharing news, maintaining one of many GitHubs, creating tons of different cores (which are the different consoles, computers, and arcade boards that allow you to play your games), and of course selling MiSTer addons.
In the last year especially, development on the MiSTer has exploded! It was once thought to be impossible but we are slowly and slowly getting close to seeing the PSX and the Sega Saturn become playable on the MiSTer. And that wouldn’t be the case without talented developers such as FPGAzumSpass and Sergey Dvodnenko. And let's not forget jotego as well, who has been porting an absurd amount of arcade boards such as Capcom’s CPS-1 & CPS-2 to MiSTer. It’s been an exciting time!
FPGA is fantastic for playing your actual physical cartridges in the modern age, without worrying about console hardware mods, or latency from converting 240p images to 4K, or having to keep all of your old consoles still hooked up & taking space on the TV bench… instead, you can have a modern, tinier version of that console! Or perhaps a metallic box that just has all of your games ever, hidden behind the TV. Or maybe you have space for a good ol’ CRT to make use of that shiny metallic box. There is so much potential for FPGA to grow right now which makes it a very exciting time for retro games!
With that, FamiRetro, please share your favourite ways to play games through emulation!
(For any input or additional content to add to this post, please either post in the tread while pinging me or PM me directly!)
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They're certainly not mechanically the best but support for them feels damn near universal at this point.
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