The state of ~5th-gen console emulation

[youxia]

I've recently put together a PC-to-CRT rig and became interested in 5th gen (or thereabouts) console emulation. I avoided this area for years since the quality was questionable, and also I'm not interested in displaying old games on modern monitors (though now with shaders being extremely good it's also an option).

 

It's really hard to find some conclusive info because people often tend to exaggerate emulator capabilities and veer into vague hyperbole: eg this exchange re Dreamcast on Pi, or the recent Jag thread from this subforum. I understand that this is somewhat subjective, but perhaps we could try to be a bit more exact, with some hardware requirements as well, which emus are best and what amount of games is playable in a near 1:1 state (I'm not expecting 1:1  emulation of 99% of the given systems library, like with 8/16 bit machines, but this could be some sort of baseline to refer to. Also, by "1:1" I don't mean byuu-level of accuracy - I can tolerate some tiny gfx/sfx glitches, but if there are any major problems like slowdowns, gfx/audio stutter, etc then I'd rather not play such game.)

 

Here's what little info I have have at the moment, mostly based on hearsay:

 

PSX: allegedly extremely good (~1:1) across the whole library, the best of the 5th gen? Few games I tired myslef looked this way.

N64: very hard to find unbiased info, so many people "want" it to be great. Is it? It's always been famously hard to emulate.

Saturn: not sure. Few games I tried via Retroarch were a mixed bag.

Jaguar: that thread was a bit vague, so still don't know really

Dreamcast: ok, not a 5th gen but I'm interested (regret selling mine few years back...sob). Can it really run "extremely well"?

3DO: no idea

 

 

 

 

 

[Class316]

I recommend you read my post and go for my suggestions: 

Pretty much all the systems you listed have fantastic emulators. 3DO for instance has an emulator that boasts 100% compatibility (and seems perfect from the few games I tried). 

[youxia]

18 hours ago, Class316 said:

Pretty much all the systems you listed have fantastic emulators

Vaguely enthusiastic statements like this one are the reason why I made this thread in the first place

 

18 hours ago, Class316 said:

3DO for instance has an emulator that boasts 100% compatibility (and seems perfect from the few games I tried). 

...while concrete info like this is much more what I'm after. Even though this emulator seems rather...esoteric (it's an OS?) and things like that could be worth discussing. Same as the 100% compatibility claim: is it the same as 100% accuracy?

 

 

[Class316]

3 hours ago, youxia said:

Vaguely enthusiastic statements like this one are the reason why I made this thread in the first place

 

...while concrete info like this is much more what I'm after. Even though this emulator seems rather...esoteric (it's an OS?) and things like that could be worth discussing. Same as the 100% compatibility claim: is it the same as 100% accuracy?

 

 

Well I gave you the link with advice on which emulator to use for all these systems. 

[youxia]

I think you should re-read the OP mate I'm really not looking for an emulator list, and saying they are "fantastic" is not much of an advice.

[Class316]

31 minutes ago, youxia said:

I think you should re-read the OP mate I'm really not looking for an emulator list, and saying they are "fantastic" is not much of an advice.

You want advice on good emulators for each of these systems. I gave you what I believe run best. You can look into each of those on emulation wiki to see more info. 

 

In the case of 3DO and Jaguar there is literally one choice. Even for Saturn not much more than one choice. 

 

For N64 anything besides ParaLLEl has issues. I tried a random sampling of 5 games (not even obscure ones) and ParaLLEl an all 5 well whereas other emulators had major graphical glitches on 2-3 of those 5. 

 

[zzip]

On 2/7/2021 at 9:27 AM, youxia said:

Jaguar: that thread was a bit vague, so still don't know really

There's no perfect Jaguar emulator.   You might find that a game that doesn't run or runs poorly on one runs great on another and vice versa.   Some games will work great, and some won't work very well depending what hardware features they depend on

 

The Jaguar Emulator in Retroarch works pretty well (Virtual Jaguar).    Another good one is "Project Phoenix"

[Class316]

11 hours ago, zzip said:

There's no perfect Jaguar emulator.   You might find that a game that doesn't run or runs poorly on one runs great on another and vice versa.   Some games will work great, and some won't work very well depending what hardware features they depend on

 

The Jaguar Emulator in Retroarch works pretty well (Virtual Jaguar).    Another good one is "Project Phoenix"

 

You could argue there's no perfect emulator period. At best you have an emulator with 100% compatibility. 

 

But Project Phoenix is the best Jaguar emulator. It is better than virtual Jaguar. It run almost every game: http://www.arts-union.ru/node/66

 

Only snag of Project Phoenix is no save states. 

[zzip]

8 hours ago, Class316 said:

But Project Phoenix is the best Jaguar emulator. It is better than virtual Jaguar. It run almost every game: http://www.arts-union.ru/node/66

 

Only snag of Project Phoenix is no save states. 

Project Phoenix has the best emulation for Jaguar, but the emulator itself is full of quality-of-life issues.  For one, I wish it didn't force you to use its front-end, I would rather run it with my own.  Others have complained that if you try to remove a game from project phoenix, it physically deletes it off your hard drive.   It hasn't been updated in years now.  I would love to see an update address the user interface issues.

[Class316]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

Project Phoenix has the best emulation for Jaguar, but the emulator itself is full of quality-of-life issues.  For one, I wish it didn't force you to use its front-end, I would rather run it with my own.  Others have complained that if you try to remove a game from project phoenix, it physically deletes it off your hard drive.   It hasn't been updated in years now.  I would love to see an update address the user interface issues.

Yes I can agree with this. I don't mind the GUI but yea quality of life wise it could be better. Wish it would get updates.

 

But on the flip side it does almost perfectly emulate two very tough to emulate systems that don't exactly have a plethora of emulators out there. Namely 3DO and Jaguar. Hats of to those Russians for tackling that. 

 

It also emulates Sega 8 bit and Colecovision. But no reason to use it for those. 

[+LS650]

My experience with Project Phoenix for Jaguar was that it was definitely a mixed bag.  Most of the 2D games ran okay, with minor issues, but 3D was all over the place: some games ran fine, but others wouldn't run at all, or were glitchy to the point of being unplayable.

Edited February 16, 2021 by ls650

[Hwlngmad]

On 2/8/2021 at 12:25 PM, zzip said:

There's no perfect Jaguar emulator.   You might find that a game that doesn't run or runs poorly on one runs great on another and vice versa.   Some games will work great, and some won't work very well depending what hardware features they depend on

 

The Jaguar Emulator in Retroarch works pretty well (Virtual Jaguar).    Another good one is "Project Phoenix"

Needing to check out some Jaguar action on my Shield TV.  Glad to hear that it works reasonably well.