Jaguar Emulator

[joshuarayborn]

Ok, I lost my Jaguar to theft a few years back. I was wondering if anyone has ever made a Jaguar Emulator for Nintendo Wii?

[The_Laird]

No and I doubt there ever will be one. There isn't even a proper emulator for the PC.

[avanteproject]

Would the Wii even be powerful enough to run a Jaguar emulator? A lot of PC's have some trouble with certain games.

[Sypran]

Would the Wii even be powerful enough to run a Jaguar emulator? A lot of PC's have some trouble with certain games.

 

Probably I mean there is a PS1 emulator on it, and the VC is nothing but emulators and it runs N64. and I haven't really ever had a PC with problems with certain games (other then problems with the emulator it's self, or running a rapid 80-99% speed, but that is a 6 year old laptop...)

Hmmm... though emulation with the jag on PC is far from perfect... if someone was that devoted maybe there be a chance. But I haven't seen an update in PT in years, and I can't ever get VJ to run without crashing.

[Starcat]

I never could get Virtual Jaguar to work properly, although I heard it should be better than Project Tempest.

PT runs a lot of games just fine. Mainly 2D games, but Tempest and AVP seem to be emulated quite good too.

At least that's my impression from a quick look.

Of course games that push the system real hard or that use special (not emulated) coding tricks won't work.

The main problem is there hasn't been any update on Project Tempest for ages. So Virtual Jaguar is much more up to date.

 

I think the Wii could run a decently programmed Jaguar emulator just fine. There just has to be somebody to port and optimise the existing emulators and work on improving them.

 

Then again, for some Jag games you just don't have enough buttons to play (no keypad) unless you use a keyboard or virtual keyboard using the wiipoint as pointer to select (dial ) the number you want.

[Austin]

I think the Wii could probably handle a Jaguar emulator. The problem is that there hasn't been a proper Jag emulator written for any platform yet.. Supposedly it's very difficult to emulate. Until that happens, don't expect to see what's available ported over to any other system.

Edited March 10, 2010 by Austin

[overridex]

At least Virtual Jaguar is still being developed, though slowly, and is open source - so if it gets to the point where it's playing games well it could certainly be ported to consoles.

 

-Dan

[Starcat]

Funny enough, I wanted to give Virtual Jaguar a try again yesterday. It has been many years since I tried it and it never worked for me. I never tried the latest version on current hardware before.

No change though. It always hangs before anything of any game is even displayed.

I just don't know how to get it to work.

 

I tried Raiden, which is technically a game simple to emulate, I guess.

It was one of the first that ran flawlessly on Project Tempest, too.

I also tried more complex ones like Tempest 2000, but of course no luck there either.

The screenshots on the website show a lot of games in action, even a lot more than PT can emulate, but I just have no luck getting it to work.

[busterm]

Funny enough, I wanted to give Virtual Jaguar a try again yesterday. It has been many years since I tried it and it never worked for me. I never tried the latest version on current hardware before.

No change though. It always hangs before anything of any game is even displayed.

I just don't know how to get it to work.

 

I tried Raiden, which is technically a game simple to emulate, I guess.

It was one of the first that ran flawlessly on Project Tempest, too.

I also tried more complex ones like Tempest 2000, but of course no luck there either.

The screenshots on the website show a lot of games in action, even a lot more than PT can emulate, but I just have no luck getting it to work.

 

 

If you go to the forums on the VJ site you will find a more updated version there than on the main page. It works under visat/win 7 and even under 64bit. Its the only copy I could ever get to work so I would highly recommend it

[kskunk]

To answer some of the technical questions:

 

The Jaguar is harder to emulate than the PS1. And obviously, there's a lot more money/fame/users/bragging rights/whatever in making a PS1 emulator. So you'll see many more finished PS1 emulators.

 

Jaguar emulators need more CPU power than PS1 emulators. This is because the PS1's graphics operations are relatively conventional, and with a few tricks they can be mapped to modern graphics chips. The Jaguar's graphics operations are unlike anything built since, and must be entirely software emulated, which requires a powerful CPU.

 

The PS1 also has only a single processor, with relatively well-defined rules of concurrency between the processor and custom chips. In English, it means the emulator program has less to keep track of and fewer special cases.

 

The Jaguar, with its multiple processors and many glitches, has a tendency to run games that rely on timing side effects and hardware bugs. Emulating everything according to spec might not result in a working game. Emulating the true, sub-microsecond-level, timing interactions and bugs is incredibly complex, far harder than the life of a PS1 emulator.

 

Simpler hardware isn't just easier for developers, it's easier for emulator authors!

 

- KS

Edited April 12, 2010 by kskunk

[kool kitty89]

At least Virtual Jaguar is still being developed, though slowly, and is open source - so if it gets to the point where it's playing games well it could certainly be ported to consoles.

 

-Dan

I couldn't get Virtual Jaguar to work in XP and can't in Vista (32-bit) either... PT Works just as well in both, an din spite of the "2+ GHz" requirement for full sound emulation, my 1.4 GHz Athlon Xp 1600+ worked fine for full-speed with sound in PT. A lot of games don't work properly or at all though.

 

To answer some of the technical questions:

 

The Jaguar is harder to emulate than the PS1. And obviously, there's a lot more money/fame/users/bragging rights/whatever in making a PS1 emulator. So you'll see many more finished PS1 emulators.

 

Jaguar emulators need more CPU power than PS1 emulators. This is because the PS1's graphics operations are relatively conventional, and with a few tricks they can be mapped to modern graphics chips. The Jaguar's graphics operations are unlike anything built since, and must be entirely software emulated, which requires a powerful CPU.

 

The PS1 also has only a single processor, with relatively well-defined rules of concurrency between the processor and custom chips. In English, it means the emulator program has less to keep track of and fewer special cases.

 

The Jaguar, with its multiple processors and many glitches, has a tendency to run games that rely on timing side effects and hardware bugs. Emulating everything according to spec might not result in a working game. Emulating the true, sub-microsecond-level, timing interactions and bugs is incredibly complex, far harder than the life of a PS1 emulator.

 

Saturn Emulation has some of the same issues, doesn't it? (though 3DO would also shares the quadrilateral rendering, the hardware is simpler like the PSX and all games were programmed via an API/library not direct hardware -a lot of PSX titles being like that too iirc)