For most consoles extremely accurate emulators already exist. (to the eye, ear, and thumbs anyways) If anything emulation improves video/audio, although its still possible to simulate much of the classic feel. There are plenty of filters to make games look like an old TV while still outputting at a screens native resolution and almost eliminating the annoying delay that us LCD owners experience. (like most of the PS2 library in 480i) Too bad PS2 emulation isn't quite there yet. If you have a decently modern mac/pc you should be able to emulate most cartridge based consoles at a perfect framerate. Also, IPS patches are one of the best things that has come out of emulation. You should check out http://www.romhacking.net/ if you aren't savvy.
As for owning the games in real life? Well... I would say that the majority of you won't be able to keep more than a hundred games in plain sight once you "settle down". Just keep the really good games around.
As for racket's original question. The lack of the hard console and the annoyances and joys that it provides keep emulation from being authentic. You can't tilt your PC for pinball or blow on it to make the NES and SNES games launch properly. You also don't have a game genie that makes the console hard to fit back on the shelf.
marurun wrote:I think a lot of the emulation challenge has to do with the screen. Computer screens, CRT or LCD, have much higher display resolution. Lower-res graphics just don't look right on them no matter how you adjust the filters. Low-res graphics are pretty much meant for TV screens, as TVs just naturally adjust the image just so. Although Genesis games do often look better on the computer due to their really poor quality video output to TV.
ZNES and I believe one of the Genesis emulators have a filter called NTSC. This adds that rainbow-dots that you get from your old TV on the graphics. With this implemented, the emulation appears 100% accurate to an old-school TV. Give it a try.
Thanks for that tip about ZSNES Kiger. Do you happen to know which of the Genesis emulators has the NTSC filter?
In any case, for me the half the fun of retro gaming, is collecting rare titles, the box art and labels and just having an authentic piece of gaming history.
That being said, even though I own many actual systems with various amounts of games, lately I have been getting into emulation more and more. I try to recreate the experience as accurately as possible, I really hate using PC gamepads or the wrong controllers to play emulators. So id like to share with you guys what I do with my setup, and I will try to post some pictures later if you would like to see it.
Currently I just moved, I do not have a game room, but in my bedroom I have the following setup:
A Samsung 26 inch LCD TV
A Toshiba P15 S479 Laptop with TV out and Windows Media Center edition
-Super Smart joy adapter
-Genesis to USB adapter
-NES to USB adapter
-PS2 to USB adaptor, with a Neo Geo stick 2 (replica of Neo AES joystick)
A bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse.
Now basically I have the Laptop hooked up to the PC port in back of the Samsung,
I then use this as an all in one Home Theatre style PC in the bedroom, I can lay in my bed and check email, play games, watch DVDs or whatever with this setup. Its really cool.
So in regards to the gaming, I hook up any controller I have to the corresponding adapter, lets say I want to play Genesis games, I hook up my 3 button genesis pad to the usb adapter, plug it into my laptop, and im laying around playing sega pretty accurately, it makes the games look alot better than if I had hooked the genesis directly up to the HDTV, because as many of you know old consoles look pretty bad on Modern LCD sets.
Now the only problem I have, is as some other guys said here is the pixelation of playing the games on a hi res set, a regular CRT is best to play old games hands down. So recently I ordered a small toshiba CRT that can use S-Video.
This is about as close as your gonna get it to the real thing, a wireless keyboard and mouse, controller adapters, and a laptop that has TV-Out, if you set up up like this, you will be surprised how close the games look to the actual hardware, running the Emulator via S-Video on a CRT TV really does the trick.
GFX and sound not being accurate are my highest peevs.
Though for NES, SNES, MS, GEN, SCD, PCE, PS1, etc, I play them all on my TV with good emus (if they're not accurate enough, I find another one - hence why N64 gaming still kinda sucks).
I just bought a video card that had TV out and a really long video cord (and audio too). Then I'm using USB adapters with USB extention cable and original controllers. Sure I only use the NES, SNES, PS1 version Saturn pad, and PS2 pads, it covers most of the bases.
And by the time I've loaded my ROM and started playing on TV, I've forgotten what I did to get there (until I die and use a save-state).
It took a little work but I've got a damn fine set-up that takes the place of keeping so many systems hooked up to my TV.
Got to be the controls. N64 emu is dire on pretty much every platform. It's quite scary how inaccurate/unsensitive the n64 stick was. This is impossible to recreate in my oppinion as every single analogue pad has different degrees of dead zone which the n64 just ignored.
MAME/Arcade on the other hand is a different story. It's completely unfeasible to collect arcade machines. In fact i would bet a large sum of money on it being completely impossible. I do agree that emulating mame does take away the skill that is required to play these games as you don't need to worry about the amount of money you're piling into em. (theres only legal/moral issues stopping you wiring a coin slot onto your handbuilt arcade cab though ). Thats one of the better things about building your own cabinet as you get as close to the real thing as possible (as long as you don't wanna play vector games without a vector monitor). All the controls are the as close if not better than having the real cabinet plus you get the same look and feel as in the arcade. once the game loads up theres no way of telling that you're not playing the real thing to the untrained eye.
Dont tell Durkada, Majors, or myself, that is unfeasible to collect cabs. Durkada has about thirty, Majors ten, myself six. Number seven should be coming to me Monday though...
I meant collecting in the same sense as collecting for a console. Where some collectors have hundreds of titles for one system and try and attain everysingle retail release.
To a degree that is true. There are alot of PCB collectors for arcade games, but no where near as many as console gamers. When you actually look at it, arcade cabinets are not really that expensive. Ive never spent more than $200 on one, granted I have sold them for alot more than I paid for them. Granted collecting all of the CPS2 or NeoGeo games is fairly easy.
Sadly my Donkey Kong Jr cocktail fell through - dealer was really shady and would not let us see the inside or take pictures of it.
Sad to hear that. I'd love to collect arcade machines but i don't have the money or the space.
I agree collecting AES/MVS boards are easy, and just getting a jamma cabinet and plugging em, fair enough.
I meant like original whole arcade units with the correct decals for the right game etc. Surely that must be very unfeasible to have the original cabinet for every single arcade considering theres maybe 4k games for mame alone?
However if space and money was no issue i'd definately be filling a warehouse with every arcade cab i can get my hands on!
fastbilly1 wrote:Dont tell Durkada, Majors, or myself, that is unfeasible to collect cabs. Durkada has about thirty, Majors ten, myself six. Number seven should be coming to me Monday though...
Just keep the really good games around.
). Thats one of the better things about building your own cabinet as you get as close to the real thing as possible (as long as you don't wanna play vector games without a vector monitor). All the controls are the as close if not better than having the real cabinet plus you get the same look and feel as in the arcade. once the game loads up theres no way of telling that you're not playing the real thing to the untrained eye.
