The OFFICIAL Emulation / Simulation / FPGA / Pi Thread!

[R3C]

Now I know what some of you may be thinking. Shake, where's the emulation thread?

HERE IT IS!!!!

[McNevin]

Nice, glad to see this thread!

Go School!

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So I'm definitely having trouble with arcade emulation. I tried to put a few arcade roms on the Lakka, but it failed to match anything in the rom database for the scan. At first I thought it was due to the age of my 2008 [J3RK's EMU Folder]TM, but even after downloading the latest full FinalBurnAlpha set, it still fails to recognize certain roms.

So in conclusion, I played a couple (and I even completed the whole game!) of hacked versions of Final Fight (one even included an added fire magic ability), because I couldn't get it to identify the primary rom.

[R3C]

I would go to the PleasureDome tracker, and grab the latest MAME ROM set from there. The Final Burn set works ok for some things, but not as well for others. I think most modern arcade emulators are based on the newer MAME sets.

Go school!

[R3C]

I just beat Wizards and Warriors a couple of weeks ago on the MiSTer.

I've also been enjoying all of the Compile shooters (Aleste, Super Aleste, Spriggan, Blazing Lazers, etc.) Very enjoyable games.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I just did me up some vintage Soul Calibur! It plays quite nicely through nullDC.

[McNevin]

Soulcalibur actually plays almost perfect on the Pi 4 + too! I forgot how much I love this game!

I also love me some Wizards and Warriors. Gonna have to play me that next, too.

[R3C]

I played Iron Sword maybe six months ago. I made it to the fire level, but lost steam around that point. I don't think I've ever seen it beyond the fire boss actually. I think we actually played this one together way back and also got to the fire boss. (If memory serves...)

I need to get back to some classic games soon. Hollow Knight just took over all my game time though. I'm mildly obsessed for the time being.

[McNevin]

Yes, Ironsword, a true classic. Yes, I don't believe I've ever finished that one, however I do agree we got close together. I owned the actual cart, so we may have even played it on actual hardware too!

Might try to see what I could do with savestates. I'll definitely need something to equalize age related video gameage skill decline...

[enderzero]

This might be a bigger question (but hey we have time, right?) but what are the various pros and cons to using FPGA/MiSTer vs. Raspberry Pi vs. a cheap windows setup for a emu-centric box?

[McNevin]

The way I understand it, and maybe J3rk can elaborate, is that the FGPA MiSTer is emulating the game system via hardware, vs software emulation which you would find on your windows pc. The hardware emulator is therefore more efficient and you get a truer experience. The con is that it's expensive.

As for the Pi they are cheap and they are everywhere. I first ran Lakka on a circa 2013 dual core AMD Fusion box and it under performed to my expectations. I've read that LibRetro devs favor ARM and the ARM code is better optimized. You can get a Pi 4 + with case , cables, and fans for under $100. (This is what I got).

CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 4GB Basic Starter Kit with Fan (4GB RAM) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VYC6S56/re ... JEbCA5SCWZ

There are definitely cons to lakka , it's getting better all the time, but it can be frustrating. If you do have a cheap spare pc you might put lakka on it to see if you like it. If you do, like I did, that will prob lead to a pi purchase.

There are also other Pi based emu platforms: RetroPi, RecalBox, Batocera which I have not tried. I chose Lakka because of the couch style GUI , vs the desktop experience I've seen on RetroPi. However I do think there are couch style extensions for it.

Anyway hopefully this helps

[enderzero]

Interesting, so setting aside hardware emu in MiSTer (which does sound pretty awesome), why go Pi vs an old PC? Mostly just form factor? IE you'd rather have a tiny little emu box than the full size PC your last PC inevitably was? In other words, it would be way more expensive to build a new mini ITX or whatever box? How would you compare linux emu sw as opposed to the PC sw landscape?

Back to MiSTer, how much hardware support is there? Up to things like N64/PS1? How about newer arcade stuff from the 00s era (ie capcom fighters, etc.)?

[R3C]

I’m typing this on my phone, so could elaborate later.

The main thing about FPGA is that the original chips are being simulated on a programmable logic IC. This means that all the logic gates and behaviors are exactly 1:1 with the original hardware. Indistinguishable to the software (assuming a complete implementation of the core).

This means low or zero input latency for one thing.

I thought playing old games worse because of my age could be a thing until I started playing on FPGA. Turns out I’m pretty sensitive to latency with 2D games. I am just as good now if not better than I ever was playing with low latency. I thought for the past few years that I was just starting to suck at old games

I’m glad to say that isn’t the case. I’ve beat games on the MiSTer now that I had written off.

It really is night and day in my case.

As the good Admiral mentioned though, no FPGA solution is what I’d call cheap. MiSTer can be cheap or expensive depending on the options you want and the systems you’re interested in running. For example many Neo Geo games need the 128MB RAM card rather than the 32MB card.

You could run TurboGrafx, Genesis and a few others on just the FPGA board with no additional addons though.

There are also the Analogue FPGA systems like the SuperNT but those do one system, and are ~$200. So for about $250-300 for a full-blown MiSTer you get consoles and computers galore.

Putting one together is totally fun, and it’s fun to watch new cores progress. Much like the good ol’ days of emulators.

If you’re more into later consoles like N64/PSX etc. the Pi is probably the better way to go.

Also, it’s still good to have a MAME PC. The MiSTer supports a lot of classic arcade systems. However, even though they are more accurate, you can’t beat MAME with several thousand games and hugely flexible control setups.