Let's talk emulators:

Communities Gaming
1

First of all, I'm pretty new to the whole emulator thing in general. I've always posessed the consoles I wanted to play games on and I never felt the need to play them on my PC. BUT, with region locks and all kinds of other bs I simply can't play many games for a reasonable price.

So, what are the basics? What are trusted emulators for all kinds of handhelds and old consoles? What are you guys using, where do you get the ROMs? If there is a good, general guide that would be cool. If there isn't, let's make one! I think it would be a good idea to wrap this up in a single thread and make it more accessible to all users. I guess there are some people who would like to try out a few old games or games that aren't released in their region.

Again, if there already is a good summary of this then I'm sorry, please link it to me and just close the thread. I'm happy about all the input I can get here! Thanks in advance.

2

I can help with the emulators but not the ROMs/ISOs, due to legalities and being against site rules. Google will help, just be smart with your downloads. (Watch for the files types the emulators ask for)

However, I can help with the emulators.

For a very strong general use emulator that I use, and many use for being a very accurate emulator is Bizhawk. It's essentially a plug-in client with compatibility with many consoles. I primarily use it for N64 because of how very accurate it is. https://code.google.com/p/bizhawk/

Project 64 is also very popular and very strong for N64 specifically. 1.7 is the very accurate version, while 2.0 is over preforming so it's not recommended. http://www.pj64-emu.com/ 

For strong overall Gameboy/Gameboy Colour/Gameboy Advance, Virtual Boy Advance works well, the installation is filled with bloatware thought because of it's popularity. http://visualboyadvance.net/

Nintendo DS only has DeSmuME as a strong emulator. It's accurate and well made. http://desmume.org/

Playstation/Playstation 2 I like to use PCSX2, it's very strong, a lot of plug-in support. It's difficult to get it running because you need to acquire the appropriate PS2 BIOS also, and that is up to you along with the game ISOs. http://pcsx2.net/ 

Gamecube and Wii are handled by Dolphin, Logan uses it for his Wii. It's really the only reliable emulator for these consoles, with a lot of plugin support and has a very accurate "working games" list. http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/

PS3, Xbox, and Xbox 360, as far as I know they can not be emulated, if not well, at all. You're best to acquire the consoles and games legitimately in those cases. (PS3 has softmod work arounds for that but I can't help with that either)

Other emulators that get the job done, incase Bizhawk is too much of a handful for you

Super Nintendo/Super Famicom

Lsnes is highly recomended for accuracy http://repo.or.cz/w/lsnes.git

Zsnes is easier to use, has a nice UI, but isn't as accurate http://www.zsnes.com/

Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom

Jnes works http://www.jabosoft.com/categories/1

Nestopia works too http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/

 

I hope this helps you out, and if any others have help for you I'm sure they'll pitch in. I can also help if you have any issues setting any of this up, within site rules.

*If you need help with recording, if that may be of your interest I can help you more on that too, since I use these primarily for watching/toying with TAS and other speedrunning glitch discovery.

3

Hikage you are awesome. I used to mess around with emulators in high school. I couldn't remember which ones we used but this helps a lot.  

4

Awesome! Thanks for taking your time and doing a great summary. I understand that you can't post where you get your ISOs from, but that shouldn't be a huge problem. Just to make this clear: It really isn't my intention to use emulators for free games, it's just impossible to play certain games at a reasonable price. Even if I imported them I still couldn't play certain games without a modded DS or an imported model for example. Or older games that are simply too rare nowadays to get them for <100€. Again, thanks for that awesome summary.

5

This.

If you want to set it up as a livingroom/media thing, heres a nice guide for use with a Pi.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-retro-game-console-498561192

6

I think I found my next project. Might use an old pc I have laying around but raspberry pie is definitely worth looking into.

7

I don't think any of use can really say where to get ROMs, as it's a legal gray area - you're allowed to make dumps of your OWN games, but typically you have to do yourself - more often than not, downloading roms from the internet, even if you own the game, is illegal.

VisualBoy Advance is good for Gameboy

Project64 is good for N64 games.

PCSX is good for PSone (usually needs BIOS dump to work though)

Those are the only emulators I use.  

8

The visual boy advance download gave me a virus warning from avira...... I just got it from emulator-zone instead. Also, if I remember correctly Logan said that a save download for the Dolphin emulator is dolphin-emu.org instead, because the site got hijacked or something.

9

Just got a bit of a nostalgia flash playing Banjo and Kazooie (with a bit of input lag, but it's playable). Pj64, Virtual boy advance, DeSmuME and Dolphin are working fine. I just had to find secure download links, it seems like there are a ton of people faking the official websites -.-

10

I spent about a year tinkering around with PJ64 back when it was at like 1.3 or something with Toadstool, a Super Mario 64 editor, and I would make personal mods for the game, none were amazing but I got really familiar with emulators and model editing.

Then while I was at school I picked up my Razer Onza and started to tinker around PCSX2 with optimizing some PS2 games for PC to get them to run in 1080p with like 4x AA, I had Shadow of the Colossus running on a 5670 looking more clean than Crysis 2 maxed out, at 60FPS too.

There's quite a lot of Linux support in the emulators I mentioned also, most requiring Wine, but still a lot of support (most of them run more smooth and clean on Linux distros also.

11

I only really use these as TAS tools (TAS are Tool Assisted Speedruns, aka making programmed inputs for a game being played frame by frame in emulator) So I just linked the sites that I remember to be correct.

The ones like Bizhawk and Lsnes, being TAS Tools primarily, those are definitely the legitimate links, and I tried the VBA link download because I didn't have mine installed and it was safe for me after dodging all the bloatware. And many Anti-virus do pick up some Emulators as false positives due to plugins and hardware access that some require. The rest of the pages looked right when I looked through them.