A Quick Guide to [Some] Modern Emulation!
DISCLAIMER: Video Game Piracy is not something this site or any of its affiliates condones! You should only use emulators to play copies of games that you legally own! They are meant to be used for personal convenience, not as ways to avoid supporting game developers.
Now that the legal jargon is out of the way…On Episode 52 of the Button Smashers Podcast, the topic of emulation came up and Sade and myself mentioned how far emulation has come and how even very modern consoles can be emulated quite well. Q’s unawareness of this fact led him to tell me how cool he thought it would be if we had an article covering some of the better emulation options out there so that people like him would be able to understand what choices there were for people wanting to enjoy some of their favorite games on their PC, either just for convenience or because they want to record or stream some of their gameplay.
This article will serve as a quick guide to some of the systems that I enjoy emulating and will include my choice for best emulator for that console, and potentially some runner-ups.
FCEUX (NES): For the original Nintendo Entertainment System, I recommend a nice little emulator called FCEUX. This program provides ton of functionality, including the ability to make internal game-play videos, and offers playback for all regions of the NES game console, including the Japanese Famicom and the Famicom Disk System add-on. I have not been able to get XSplit to “hook” to it through Game Source capture, though you can easily use its Screen Region (window capture, basically) to hook into the game and everything will run flawlessly.
ZSNES (SNES): Many years ago, SNES emulation was a toss-up between ZSNES and another emulator called SNES9X. However, over the years, ZSNES came to surpass its competitors in terms of quality, emulation speed, and compatibility with pretty much all SNES/SFC games ever released. The “final” version of the program was released back in 2007, and honestly, there isn’t really anything more that could need to be added to it. The program has tons of built-in options, including methods to “smooth” the graphics and make them look more HD in style, including upsampling the resolution to resolutions of your choice. I recommend running the emulator in full-screen mode (with filters turned on) and using VSync to keep it looking nice and smooth, but for recording or live-streaming, you may need to run the application essentially in full-screen windowed mode (due to its age and therefore compatibility), which will allow it to hook into the application of your choice with no issues at all.
Visual Boy Advance (GB/GBC/GBA): When it comes to emulating the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance, Visual Boy Advance has the market cornered. The program was last updated back in 2005, yet much like ZSNES, there really isn’t a whole lot more they could add to it. I tend to run the application in Windowed mode (mainly because of the low resolution of these games anyway) and it has no problem being window-captured by modern recording software.
Fusion 364 (SMS/Genesis/GG/32X/CD): For an all-in-one emulator that will run pretty much anything from the Sega Master System, Genesis/MD, Game Gear, 32X, or Sega CD, Fusion is probably the best option out there. Compatibility pretty much seems to be 100% and everything runs at full-speed. Fullscreen is what I’d recommend for most games, though if you record/stream you might need to run it in windowed or full-screen windowed mode to hook into the program, though it will run just fine in this mode.
Project64 (N64): This one seems to be a toss-up as other people seem to like 1964 as their N64 emulator of choice. Yet, it seems to mainly come down to personal preferences. Personally, I like the versatility and the interface offered by Project64 and I find that it runs everything quite well. One thing you might want to do if you give this one a try is do a quick Google search for the latest build of the Rice Video Plugin, which will add DirectX9 capabilities and therefore allow for better Game-Source capture by recording tools as well as overall better graphical options (such as more advanced AA to smooth out the graphics) and smoother play.
NullDC (Dreamcast): For a while, finding a good Dreamcast emulator was tough, yet NullDC seems to be the best deal in town currently. The graphics scale pretty well to modern displays, the options are pretty solid (even if slightly confusing at first), and the program offers effectively full compatibility with Dreamcast games. In terms of recording or streaming, the program seems to hook just fine into Game-Source options of both XSplit and OBS, so if you want to share your play experiences of the Dreamcast, you should have no problem at all doing so.
PCSX2 (PlayStation 2): For the PlayStation 2, PCSX2 should meet most all of your needs. The program is pretty easy to use with lots of options (including great graphical scaling and tuning to make the games look much better) and yet can be tailored to your own tastes and computer hardware. The only downside is that while compatibility is very high, there are a couple games that may present problems while running them (the game Gun being one of them, which I know because I tried running it on a whim one day and had some issues with it). That said, those cases should be few and far between, and if you really need to run a certain game that PCSX2 cannot handle, there are alternatives you can track down to meet those needs.
So, these are the programs that meet my current needs in terms of emulation, yet this is by no means an all-inclusive list. In fact, I may need to do another guide in the future to include some of your options for systems that I did not go into in-depth, mainly because I am not currently using those programs. These might include good PlayStation (PS1) emulators, such as ePSXe or PCSX-Reloaded, and ways to emulate the GameCube (Dophin being the current standard).
Want to toss out some alternatives or share your experiences? Feel free to comment! 🙂
Ahem. I’ve, um, ‘seen’ other people use Nesticle for NES emulation, and Bleem for PS1 emulation. Does MAME deserve some mention for being an awesome arcade emulator? Kawaks did a good job of emulating some popular (mostly Capcom and SNK) arcade games too. Or so I ‘heard’.
Nesticle is a good emulator, though I am not sure how modern it now is. One thing I consider (for personal reasons) when I choose an emulator is how well it can be played, but also how well it can be “captured” for streaming or just simple videos. Some of the older software has a lot of trouble with that, so I try to keep that in mind.
NesterDC is actually a good NES emulator that you can dump onto a CD and run on your Dreamcast, if you feel so inclined. Just as a random aside.
But, yes, MAME is a great arcade emulator, I just didn’t include it since this was a shorter guide and mainly of stuff I am currently using.
As for the PS1, I have not messed with Bleem. I imagine it does well, though if I recall it was also commercial, just as Bleem!cast was when they were experimenting with PS1 on the DC and up-sampling the graphics some. So, in that case, I think PCSX is probably the way to go, but others may know of a superior program. 🙂
I’ve never heard of FCEUX. Just a quick breakdown from my side:
Nestopia for NES
ZSNESW/SNESX9 for SNES
Project 64 for the Nintendo 64
Dolphin for the Gamecube and Wii
Visual Boy Advance for GB/GBC/GBA
DesMuMe for Nintendo DS
PCSX1/2 for PS1/2 respectively(I think 2 is backwards compatible like the console, but I prefer to use 1)
Kega Fusion for the Sega Genesis/Master System/CD/Game Gear
I actually just recently, some month or two ago, discovered Null DC, have yet to try it
There’s also MAME and DosBOX, and PPSSPP for the PSP. It’s been gaining popularity and seems to work really well.
There’s also choices of Turbografx emulators, though I’m only familiar with two and I haven’t even played them yet. Ootake, supposedly a Japanese emulator with an interface translated to English, and Magic Engine, considered to be superior but you have to make a one time payment to unlock the full version. Searching around I found something called “Turbo Engine”, but heck if I know how reliable it is.
Also, something that interested me is that older games that never got released outside of Japan get English fan translations, kind of like anime subgroups and stuff, just not as big. I’ve found that it mostly happens for Nintendo’s console games, mostly old, some more modern. Really cool, honestly. Let’s you play games you otherwise wouldn’t be able to unless you could read Japanese.
Oh, definitely!
That’s how I originally got to play Final Fantasy 3 on the Famicom way back in the 90s, when a pretty popular group called deJap translated it to English 🙂 There are many other great translations out there, and it would be impossible to do a comprehensive list. But, Seiken Densetsu 3 is a great one that was translated many years ago, and of course there are the Romancing SaGa games (I know 3 is fully translated and 1 and 2 are at least partially done), and many, many more. You are right – it lets you play games you’d otherwise never have tried 🙂
PS: I just started a new Let’s Play series on Illusion of Gaia, since you got me thinking about it 😛
Fusion is the same one I mentioned I think, I think the version I was running was 3.64 or something. Anyway, the other emulators you mentioned are very solid choices, so thank you for that 🙂
NullDC is what I used in my streams of Sonic Adventure, so that should give you an idea. It’s a good emulator and it does sample the graphics well enough to your display resolution, so the quality overall is very nice.
Back in the day, around 2002-03, I had a paid for copy of Magic Engine. I used it to play Dracula X on the original PC Engine, and it played pretty much flawlessly. I haven’t tried any of the other emulators yet though for that console.
Well I got Magic Engine and Turbo Engine to try out. I actually just tried two games on NullDC yesterday to test them. Shenmue 1 worked great, Shenmue 2 was choppy as heck.
And yeah, that’s kinda of my staple right now when I’m in the mood, is recording older games and emulation. It’s really fun to showcase the oldies.
SNES9X I found out is better than ZSNES in terms of recording because it supports modern OpenGL and DirectX, though OpenGL seemed smoother with recording for whatever reason 😛
NullDC I have not had many problems with, but there are lots of options you can try. One thing maybe with Shenmue 2 is to go into the graphics options and tell it to keep the resolution at whatever the standard is for the game, which is probably 480i or something, rather than forcing the upscaling. Or try Vsync if it is an option (I cannot remember), and see what happens.