Preferred emulators on the Mac

[derFunkenstein]

Anybody out there emulating consoles on a Mac? What are your preferred emulators? I've got a 2017 iMac 27" (Core i5, Radeon 570 Pro, 16GB RAM) and I'm just starting out with the system.

 

So far I grabbed Redream for Dreamcast games and has handled the games I want to play great. I even popped $5 for the premium version, and Dreamcast 3D games rendered at the native resolution of 3840x2880 (a 4:3 equivalent of the native res) looks GORGEOUS. Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur, and Tony Hawk 2 look great. 2D fighters with 3D backgrounds, like Marvel vs Capcom 2 aren't quite so great, but the backgrounds are nice at least. And totally 2D games like Worms World Party are blocky, but that's the nature of the system. I don't mind supporting emulation projects if they're making progress, and this at least looks pretty good.

 

For just about everything else, there's OpenEmu. Haven't played with it TOO much but it seems to like what I've played on Genesis, Sega CD, etc. Looks like a Mac-specific port of RetroArch with a less controller-friendly UI. I might go regular RetroArch down the road, I dunno.

 

There's one pretty glaring hole, though, and that's PS2. I have a bunch of PS2 original discs and a USB DVD drive, and I'd love to play those still. PCSX2 is on the system but he official build is years old at this point, which is disappointing. I've found instructions for using WINE but I haven't tried it yet. I'd rather find a native build if one exists. Anybody playing PS2 games on a Mac with any decent results?

 

Feel free to chime in with anything you think is better than what I've listed above, too.

Edited July 15, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[Flojomojo]

PlayOnMac might be a good alternative to Wine. It should make things a little simpler if you can't just run Windows via VirtualBox or Parallels. I think your setup is strong enough for a little emulation inception.

[Mr Robot]

For consoles its OpenEMU if you like pretty, Retroarch if you like flexibility.

 

For more modern consoles (Saturn, Jag, PS2, XBox, etc.) there is no good emulation option. There are some poor emulation options, but no good ones.

 

Dolphin (Wii, GC) runs well on Mac.

[derFunkenstein]

PlayOnMac might be a good alternative to Wine. It should make things a little simpler if you can't just run Windows via VirtualBox or Parallels. I think your setup is strong enough for a little emulation inception.

I'd never heard of this before, but it seems pretty cool, like an easy Wine front-end. And you were right, PCSX2 runs great on my Mac at higher resolutions. It can definitely handle the emu-ception. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

I tried OpenEmu because CD-based systems are a pain in RetroArch. Or at least a year ago they were. You had to manually create the playlist, and that sucks. OpenEmu, by contrast, figured it out automatically from the Cue sheet. I had to make m3u files for multi-disc games, but that's easy, and 90% of the images I have are single-disc games.

 

Redream doesn't seem to like WinCE-based games, but that's OK. Most games aren't WinCE-based.

[Lordmonkus]

Redream doesn't seem to like WinCE-based games, but that's OK. Most games aren't WinCE-based.

 

Yeah Windows CE games are currently broken in Redream but hopefully will be fixed soon, other than that it's an awesome Dreamcast emulator and one I am looking forward to seeing more development on. It's so easy to use out of the box and runs great.

[cybercylon]

For the Windows version of PCSX2, you might want to give Crossover a try. One of the posts has some libraries you need to install.

 

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/pcsx2

 

First screen shot shows version 1.4 playing FF X.

 

Now the thing with Crossover is I've never gotten a controller to work.

[Flojomojo]

I've considered a lifetime license of Crossover but it never quite works for anything I want to do. It's free to try and worth a look for sure, though.

[derFunkenstein]

Well, after my initial first impression of PCSX2 in PlayOnMac, I've dumped that install. I got my first taste of 3D emulation on the system, and it's ridiculously slow, because it only works in PlayOnMac in software emulation mode. I had been playing Disgaea 2 and it ran at a great, solid 60fps. Then last night I fired up Final Fantasy X and....nope. Looks like I had overstated it before.

 

It's not a deal breaker, though. I kept my SCPH-50000 PS2 with the official network adapter and a cool IDE-to-SATA adapter that works great with 2.5" hard drives. It boots off the hard drive and plays pretty much everything. It and my Saturn were the last two consoles that I wanted to check out before I sold them, and I'm definitely holding onto the PS2. I might hold onto the Saturn, too, particularly because there's no interest in it here.

 

The native port of Dolphin has been fine. The emulator warns me that performance will be "horrible" but it does Gamecube games fine from what I can tell. Tony Hawk 3, Spider-Man 2, Mario Sunshine, and Super Monkey Ball have no problems. I haven't played any Wii games on it yet because I don't have a Dolphinbar.

[cybercylon]

I got PCSX2 to load under Crossover, made an ISO copy of my Tales of the Abyss game, and loaded that. The audio once it gets to the title screen seems a bit choppy to me.

 

I can't get further than that as I haven't been able to get a controller to work under Crossover (maybe there is no way....).

 

This was on a 2012 MacBook Pro... my newer machine would probably fair better maybe with the audio, but I am not planning on messing with it further.