Emulation accuracy: which software to use?

[spenoza]

Why did you use an apostrophe for CDs? Apostrophes are for possessive, not for plural.

Why did you write "1" instead of "one"? Numbers smaller than 10 are written.

Because I'm not writing a research paper. Also, apostrophe misuse is a major pet peeve.

No, you can use apostrophes, too.

1980's *or* 1980s
VCR's *or* VCRs

Said no style guide ever. I like you, but you, sir, are no style guide. Unless you're talking about clothing. Then you are probably a great style guide.

[Keith Courage]

Ootake and magic engine are great for the PC. However, if you want to play on a CRT TV as to keep it feeling original then a softmodded xbox with mednafen is fantastic.

[ClodBuster]

I like Ootake, but then it is the only PCE emulator I've tried so far. Was this the one that refused to read CD images and insisted on having CD-ROMs being read from a physical drive?

Regarding silly use of punctuation marks, that's what is called the "idiot's apostrophe" in Germany. Since for German, there's no apostrophe even for possesives. Here are some examples that would make every German language teacher's skin crawl:






Some even confuse the apostrophe with French accents grave and acute, creating a crazy spacing between letters. D'oh!

[gheebee]

I like Ootake, but then it is the only PCE emulator I've tried so far. Was this the one that refused to read CD images and insisted on having CD-ROMs being read from a physical drive?

Pretty sure that's MagicEngine, I remember reading something from the person that made it saying that they had no interest in giving it the capability to read disc images. You can still use images with it though, all you have to do is mount them to a virtual drive with something like Virtual CloneDrive and MagicEngine won't know the difference; discs probably load faster that way too.

[spenoza]

I know Ootake can cache data from CDs to speed things up a bit. Maybe accuracy isn't the most important issue for most users, then. I guess maybe that sweet spot of accuracy, ease of use, and cost.

[Mednafen]

BizHawk is the emulator I'm watching for the future. It uses the Mednafen core for PCE emulation

It does not.

[Michirin9801]

When I'm just casually playing PCE on the PC I use Ootake for the CD-ROM games and Magic Engine for the HuCard games, I know Magic Engine is by far the worst in terms of accuracy, and being paid doesn't help it either, but it feels so good to use! I like emulators that let me do CRT-esque filters, in Magic Engine I can use bilinear filtering + 50% opacity scanlines and it looks pretty good, I'd use it for CD games as well but it can't load disc images, but Ootake is good enough for that, and the CD install option is nice because I don't have to keep mounting the CD image with Daemon Tools every time I wanna play Asuka 120%...
It doesn't have much in terms of filters though, a 4:3 stretch and 50% scanlines are as close as I can get to a CRT look...

I only really use Mednafen to test the Huzak updates elmer sends me... On the PC at least, because WiiMednafen is by far the best emulator on that system, it's exponentially more user-friendly than its PC counterpart, even if playing CDs in it isn't the easiest thing, but it works! Although I mostly just play the Virtual Console releases of CD games if I'm gonna play them, that's much easier, and well, I can get some .wad files with injected CD-ROM images and play CD games that weren't released on the VC such as Asuka 120%, Ys 3 and the Ys 4 fan-translation for example...

One last emulator I also use is NitroGrafx for the DS, but that one is only for when I'm out and about and really desperate to play some PCE (which happens more often than I like), it works with both HuCard and CD games, but the DS's resolution is lower than the PCE so some detail is lost, and if I'm not mistaken, it's using the GB/GBC's DAC emulation built into the DS to do make-shift PCE sound, it works, but the waveforms have their vertical resolution halved (read: there's a loss in sound quality), the volume control is lowered from 32 levels to only 4 levels, so any semblance of attack or decay in the soundtracks are lost, it can't play frequencies as high as the PCE, so a lot of the higher-pitched notes are lost, and it doesn't play any samples, so the drums and voices in a whole bunch of games are missing... Oh and, the CD audio is too quiet...

It's still worth it if you only have a DS or 3DS (like me) with a DS flash cart and REALLY wanna play some Street Fighter 2' Champion Edition or Detana! Twinbee on-the-go, but if you have any other means to play PCE on the go (unless it's PCEadvance) you're better off not bothering with this one...
I'll just patiently wait until someone decides to make a PCE emulator for the 3DS, hopefully 3DSMednafen...

[spenoza]

BizHawk is the emulator I'm watching for the future. It uses the Mednafen core for PCE emulation

It does not.

Oh, I thought it was a natural evolution of mednafen-rr and PCEjin. Do you happen to know what core they are using?

[Mednafen]

Oh, I thought it was a natural evolution of mednafen-rr and PCEjin. Do you happen to know what core they are using?

AFAIK, it's original.

[spenoza]

Yeah, some of their documentation suggests that. I'll need to look more closely. They claim better accuracy than mednafen and PCEjin, but I don't know how sure I am of that.

[geise]

Best way to test accuracy is to load up Popful Mail in every emulator.  Ootake uses a hack I believe to fix the graphics glitches in the intro cut-scene. Magic Engine has the graphics issues. Not sure how mednafen handles it. Temper by Exophase from the GP2X / Wiz days was able to get it to work and runs anything flawlessly from what I tested,  but that will not really help anyone these days.  It was an emulator built from the ground up as well.

[Gredler]

Maybe should I make a seperate thread for this, but I've recently often thought of how fun it'd be to play some online matches and coop of PCE games with some of you all; is that something that is a decently working feature in any of these emulators?

[imparanoic]

Try retroarch on the PSVIta It plays and looks great on the OLED screen.
CD's and Hucards.

retroarch playstation (vita) tv also works, uses ps3 or ps4 dual shock controller, hdmi

however, i can't cdrom games working though

[zetastrike]

I used to use mednafen, but the drag and drop and lack of any built in GUI made me not use it very often.  I tried setting up an emulator for my PSP, but it needed too much tinkering to get games to work and some wouldn't run correctly no matter what I did.

[Gentlegamer]

I like Ootake, but then it is the only PCE emulator I've tried so far. Was this the one that refused to read CD images and insisted on having CD-ROMs being read from a physical drive?

I use Ootake, and yes, you have to at least mount the CD image on a virtual drive first, but then Ootake has the option to import the image so that you don't need to have it mounted.