Classic Console Emulators

[bewton]

So I'm starting a project in my basement/mancave. I have a pretty sweet entertainment center setup with speakers mounted on the wall, TV, couches and all that stuff. Now I want to hook up one of my old computers to the TV and have it act as the ultimate emulator system so me and my friends can play all those classic games we loved so much as kids.

I'm pretty noob to emulators/roms so I thought I'd ask you guys for some insight. I'd like to get a couple classic controllers for most systems. I've tried a few n64 to usb converters and they are crap. I did find a direct usb n64 controller that may work good but I'd like some verification that it works properly before I purchase it. http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f08c/? ... 4AodnSsAjw

I'm looking for the following emulators+controllers...
-nes
-snes
-ps1
-n64
-sega saturn

Also if there are other common issues with emulation that I need to know about please let me know as well.


Thank You In Advance!

[An1maL]

sup brandon. for the snes, http://www.snes9x.com/ is probably the best, stable on all games and the rom's aren't hard to find. project 64 was the best for N64 last time I used it http://www.pj64-emu.com/. this site is pretty reliable for ROMs: http://coolrom.com/roms/. however last time I just downloaded a massive torrent pack of n64 roms and just picked the ones I wanted.

alternatively if you have a wii or wii u a lot of nintendo's old games are on that virtual console shit so you could just hook your wii up to the tv, and have it all on one system. even better if you can homebrew your wii and get all the emulators on that.

most games should emulate perfectly on SNES and N64, should have perfect framerate, as long as your PC is not super old. the odd game might have some missing textures but there's usually some external graphics plugins you can get to optimise things, if you google around there are whole wiki's devoted to it. never tried to emulate any PS stuff so not sure about that.

as for controllers, N64 is tricky because it's all dual analogue these days. it's hard to find anything with 6 right thumb buttons. I got one of those USB converters but I haven't actually tried it yet, a friend of mine said it worked really well though. I'd be skeptical of that direct USB one too - might be worth a shot though. I've tried playing N64 roms with just an xbox 360 controller and it isn't too bad, the right analogue stick acts as C-buttons

[dat xero]

the emulator zone is a good site for most to all of these. the emulators even have ratings next to them too in stars (more stars usually just means most stable, more features like netplay, etc.). Fusion is a good one i just used for sega genesis. i used to be way more into this and have an emu for classic console on my external but i can't remember which ones i have without checking (at work now so can't look) but that site is a good place to start. free roms and cool roms are good sites for pretty much everything. love classic consoles =)

[nik]

no love for sega genesis? :/

I would either buy the actual system.
or play them on emulators using one controler. For example the xbox 360 controler.
I have a ps2 to pc usb cable. This works ok, but the analog stick doesn't seem to work (or the game I played just doesn't support it).

won't feel the same yes. But the real controler + emulator also isn't exactly the real deal.
I played alot of emulators when I was still on dial up (56k) internet. Mostly snes, nes, and genesis.
I don't remember the names of the emulators, but it worked ok. Also had neo geo emulator.

I have always had problems with emulators for disc based systems like psx. I don't know why. Maybe I'm an idiot.
If I had money to spend I would buy the real deal. Skip the nes (too many problems with dust etc). Buy a snes with mario allstars (some nes games), mario kart, killer instinct, donkey kong, super metroit, some rpgs, super mario, zelda link to the past etc..
Should have realised this some years ago. Prices seem to have gone up over here.

[Red---]

sup brandon. for the snes, http://www.snes9x.com/ is probably the best, stable on all games and the rom's aren't hard to find. project 64 was the best for N64 last time I used it http://www.pj64-emu.com/. this site is pretty reliable for ROMs: http://coolrom.com/roms/. however last time I just downloaded a massive torrent pack of n64 roms and just picked the ones I wanted.

animal has the right idea. I cant speak too much into these as I havent used them in years but on my computer my nes is called Jnes, my playstation is called ePSXe and I have a few others you didnt mention likes ps2, sega genesis and gameboy advance. some can give you video problems but each emulator has settings you can play with to fix it.

these days i use the wii like he said. the homebrew channel, i've got n64, nes and snes. but if you wanted a huge collection for each system you would need a pretty big USB stick or just get an external hard drive. then you could also download any wii game you wanted.

not sure what to tell you about controllers, the wii gives you a lot of options but computer i always used the keyboard or this snes type controller i cant find anymore, it had macro abilities even 12+ years ago. made megaman X hadouken easy haha

[bewton]

Thanks for the input guys. Definitely helping me make a decision. I actually have a home server setup and I'll just use ethernet to grab the roms where-ever I want in the house. I do have a Wii but you have to pay like $5 a game. Is there a hack that will allow you to install all of those games for free or something?

Also I actually do have an snes and n64 but their displays on an hdtv is hideous! I've looked into getting an HD adapter for those systems and it looks like you can buy an HD gamecube cord that works with the N64 and SNES...but it's like 80 bucks and I have no resources that have told me it works.

[An1maL]

hmm the wii route could be the one to go down bewton. yeh you can do this thing called homebrewing your wii. it's basically like jailbreaking your phone - you disable the security software and load up a kind of operating system on the wii. so you can play pirated games, aswell as all kinds of software. you could connect it to a harddrive to give lots of space, and then play NES, SNES, N64, gamecube and wii all on one console. it's pretty difficult to do though and there's a small risk of bricking your system. see http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_setup

if you need to connect the wii to a HD monitor instead of TV and you don't have the right connections, I bought this the other week : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wii-HDMI-Conver ... B007PY3ZPG . I was pretty skeptical but it actually works really nicely, upscales it to 1080p I think

[Crono]

snes - snes9x
n64 - project64
gameboyadvance - visualboyadvance

Only ones i remember off top of my head atm. I'll check the rest when i get home.

[bewton]

Nice Brock! I think I'll go with that. My wii is basically a dedicated netflix machine right now anyway, so I'd say it's worth the risk!

[dat xero]

i soft modded my wii back in the day pretty easily with some zelda save exploit. at this point i have no idea what version of custom firmware is on there lmao and if there is even a relevant update tree with said firmware as i still never use it but i remember it was pretty easy transferring over/installing homebrew and roms/disc images once i got the hang of it. it also supports external storage. my friend has his modded with an external hdd plugged into it, maybe like a 1TB, with all kinds of roms, wii games, gamecube games, etc. loaded onto it. at this point i couldn't be bothered messing with the wii anymore. i leave a space open in the tv furniture/shelving to neatly fit my closed laptop in and that plays everything. can always buy old controllers/usb adapters for specific consoles and plug them right into the pc and configure them in the emulator. by the time i get a new laptop then this one can just remain a dedicated unit to classic gaming.

[Crono]

If you feel like this is too much work. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ssgam08-20

[dat xero]

doesn't that require the original cartridges though?

[Crono]

It does. But its more fun when you have to blow into the cartridge to make the game work

[ward]

There is zero point in buying a physical console when you can just use emulators on PC. Get a USB PS3 / wired xbox controller and you're good to go. You can map the buttons to better match the original controllers keys.

[TonyMontana]

I used this site,
http://www.vizzed.com
This site had almost every single classic game i could think of on it.
It also has mods too, and some really good ones.
HD - Super Smash Bros from n64.
every game. every console. Don't know if there's a better alternative out there but this site did the trick for me.
I made a Ken Griffey Jr Baseball team for N64 with almost all steriod users and won the World Series it was great.

[mare]

Pretty much what Animal said. Emulators have come a long way compared to what they used to be and nes, snes, master system, genesis (mega drive for you euros ) and even N64 emulators are very stable and have gotten to a point where they can replicate 99.9% of what the original hardware can do. The project64 team in particular have done a lot of work over the years to make their n64 emulator pretty much flawless. On top of this, there are also great texture packs and plugins which enhance visuals making them more pleasing on HD tvs and monitors. I'd recommend Project64 with the glide64 plugin for n64 emulation.

I use ZNES for snes. I haven't used it in a while but I was playing earthbound on it months ago and had zero issues and i really liked the basic gui it utilizes. In general for nes/snes emulation, I am pretty sure you can't go wrong with any of the popular ones listed on emulator-zone.com.

I am not sure about Saturn emulators, but I assume there are some good ones out there, considering the N64 had a more powerful chipset and graphics (i think?). Also, there are some GREAT games on the Saturn, most of which never came to North America, but that's a whole different discussion .

As far as controllers go, I don't know too much about third party usb controllers but I know there are a ton of options out there. Otherwise, if you have an xbox 360 controller, that will plug straight in and you are good to go. A playstation controller will also work but you need to install the motionjoy software and load some drivers to get it to talk, which is pretty easy. I played through the entirety of Majora's Mask with a playstation controller which made playing the ocarina a little akward, but other than that it was fine. It's funny you mention the Gamecube cable. I was actually looking at my N64 and Gamecube cables last night and realized the chord is the same. I checked both on my N64 and they both displayed the signal but I honestly couldn't tell a difference in picture quality.

Lastly, I agree that the virtual console is over priced. There are some amazing games and especially some really hard to find ones offered on the VC but to me it doesn't seem worth $10 for a digital copy of an N64 game or $8 for an snes title, sans cartridge. From what I've seen it's actually somewhat common to hack the wii and there are videos on youtube with detailed instructions. I have not done this, but there are also people who will do this for a price and I imagine with the size of those old games and a 32gb SD card, you could put quite a lot of the aforementioned system's games, if not their entire libraries onto a single SD card.

[bewton]

So I just got my wii hacked with a program called Letterbomb and am running roms and other apps through Homebrew Channel. Thanks for the advice guys, this actually helped me quite a bit. Can put any classic game on my wii, now has DVD functionality so I won't have to buy one of those and it also reads movies of my external hard-drive/server over the network. Basically consolidated everything I wanted to do in my basement into one device!

If anyone has a bunch of roms downloaded hook me up, kind of sucks downloading one at a time.

[An1maL]

nice never homebrewed myself but its sweet!

torrents are best for big packs of roms... e.g N64: http://torrentz.eu/c4c7a943b326c5e91407 ... fd256414ef , SNES http://torrentz.eu/684e3d0cfab237ded715 ... f90fdfa09f (just tick which games you want in your torrent software)

[Red---]

So I just got my wii hacked with a program called Letterbomb and am running roms and other apps through Homebrew Channel. Thanks for the advice guys, this actually helped me quite a bit. Can put any classic game on my wii, now has DVD functionality so I won't have to buy one of those and it also reads movies of my external hard-drive/server over the network. Basically consolidated everything I wanted to do in my basement into one device!

If anyone has a bunch of roms downloaded hook me up, kind of sucks downloading one at a time.

damn man my wii was one version too late for the dvd hack. that server over the network for movies i will have to look up, never thought to link my wii to my lan. sounds great though, glad you got homebrew to work.

if you ever liked super smash brothers. look up what homebrew has done for the wii version

[knockout]

related: if you're kind of casual about it like I am, sh0ts showed me this awesome site snesbox.com - you can play NES/SNES games for free right there in your browser. I'm raping some super mario world atm

[sevEN]

nobody else got a laugh out of the "im starting a project in my basement" opening to this thread??

scott you are getting soft on me

[aLpha.cn-[tang]]

You should get a Sega Gamegear emulator that replicates the feeling of having to use 6 AA batteries and the despair when it dies on you in an hour.

[ward]

You should get a Sega Gamegear emulator that replicates the feeling of having to use 6 AA batteries and the despair when it dies on you in an hour.

Omfg this. The graphics were so glorious, but the battery cost so high.

[aLpha.cn-[tang]]

You should get a Sega Gamegear emulator that replicates the feeling of having to use 6 AA batteries and the despair when it dies on you in an hour.

Omfg this. The graphics were so glorious, but the battery cost so high.

Even the goddamn AC adapter would overheat and stop working. Technology at its finest.

[rehpyc]

6 AA batteries eh?

[dogfire]

So I'm starting a project in my basement/mancave. I have a pretty sweet entertainment center setup with speakers mounted on the wall, TV, couches and all that stuff. Now I want to hook up one of my old computers to the TV and have it act as the ultimate emulator system so me and my friends can play all those classic games we loved so much as kids.

I'm pretty noob to emulators/roms so I thought I'd ask you guys for some insight. I'd like to get a couple classic controllers for most systems. I've tried a few n64 to usb converters and they are crap. I did find a direct usb n64 controller that may work good but I'd like some verification that it works properly before I purchase it. http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f08c/? ... 4AodnSsAjw

I'm looking for the following emulators+controllers...
-nes
-snes
-ps1
-n64
-sega saturn

Also if there are other common issues with emulation that I need to know about please let me know as well.


Thank You In Advance!

I actually bought this:

http://www.amazon.com/SNES-Controller-A ... B002IXZ5DE

I'm using it with ZSNES and I'm having mixed experiences so far. The adapter works great with a single controller, the only thing I noticed is a very very slight delay in processing when I press a button on the controller. When using two controllers the adapter almost always freaks out and stops relaying commands from both controllers. Could be an issue with drivers or I might not have it configured correctly.

Running this with Windows 7 64bit.

[ward]

6 AA batteries eh?

That thing looks like it weighs more than the GG itself.

[Theworst]

I have NES, SNES and N64 all hooked up with each having Zelda ready to play. The game I will never get bored of.


Only emulator I've used was an N64 one so I could play banjo kazooie, I lost my physical copy of it sometime over the years.

[knockout]

nobody else got a laugh out of the "im starting a project in my basement" opening to this thread??

scott you are getting soft on me

ugh, I didn't read the entire post. but you're right, that shouldn't be allowed without any direct response.

[aLpha.cn-[tang]]

6 AA batteries eh?

Sorry we're not all privileged like you, Sean.

[rehpyc]

I figured those things were common, given the necessity over batteries :[

[SpoonIsBad]

I figured those things were common, given the necessity over batteries :[

They were Andy Sheen is just a whiney bitch.

[ward]

I honestly didn't know about the actual battery pack. I ended up just using rechargeable AAs.