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Retro gaming/emulating on consoles via VC/PSN is still light years behind.

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nkarafo

Member
Homebrew emulators and Roms/ISOS was the very reason i got into PCs ever since 1998. Despite this, i'm still interested in supporting services like VC.

When i first heard of VC in Wii, i was very excited. Despite having so much stuff in my hard drives, i bought the console anyway, just for this service. My expectations were high.

-I was expecting a huge library of games to choose from. Instead, i got only a handful of games for each console.

-I was expecting low prices, but the games were more expensive than they should.

-I was expecting the best versions of each game. Instead i got 50hz versions.... Seriously, 50hz PAL roms are considered JUNK in the emulation community. We only use them if for any reason the NTSC/US rom is not working at all. So, in other words, Nintendo were asking me to pay for junk versions. Today, you also get stuff like Yoshi's Island on GBA instead of SNES.

-I was expecting perfect emulation. Instead i got some textures missing in some F-Zero X tracks (i haven't played more games for more than a few minutes).

So, after wasting money to buy all that junk that i usually delete from my hard drive (i didn't know i was buying pal versions, i had to see it for myself while playing) i realized that neither Nintendo or Sony are trying enough to make money from this. Emulation on PCs exists since forever and they know it. They know that so many people love retro games and have easy access on them for free. They know that they lose money from people like me who download everything. They know that they can't make every server that hosts roms to disappear, they tried this already.

So they decided to get some of that pie themselves but instead of being competitive, they do the worst they can, as if they are actually trying to push you away. I wanted this to be good but it isn't.

PC/Homebrew emulators have gone a long way. There are some very interesting things going on lately. There are frontends, like Hyperspin, that look amazing. You get a video preview of every game with a box art/cart art and other details as you select it. With nice looking backgrounds and stuff. You also get all these nice screen filters that either improve the image in various ways or makes it look like its running on a CRT, with scanlines, bloom effects, curvature, color bleeding and other things, all optional. And look at all these amazing GBA/GBC/Classic GB screen filters in Retro Arch.

And what do you get in VC? Expensive PAL versions of a handful of games.

Am i the only one who thinks Nintendo's and Sony's efforts in this department are laughable at best?
 

Rulp

Member
100% agree. Terrible effort on Nintendo and Sony's part. I have no incentive to buy retro games through their services because I would still have to play the vast majority of my games on something else. It's just pointless.
 
The OPs first few sentences lol

bish.jpg

I do completely agree though, EU gamers really shouldn't be suffering with PAL versions of games years later. We get the occasional NTSC game that works fine, so why can't we get every game as the NTSC version?
 
I agree that it's a poor effort, but I understand that the people who really care that much about retro games are a small minority and that's why Sony/Nintendo don't care either.

Also, this thread was a bad idea.
 

GuyKazama

Member
I'm still waiting for online multiplayer in the VC. I swear I was able to play Contra co-op networked via emulation in college 15 years ago.
 
100% agree. Terrible effort on Nintendo and Sony's part.

What is this "effort" you speak of?

These idiots are sitting on a gold mine. If they were to really beef up their older selections, make the presentation better, even add achievements... I mean gawd. It was fantastic on Xbox 360 getting older games like Symphony of the Night and being able to adjust the screen settings and having achievements. That's great, and should be the standard. I'm not sure just how much the demand for this meets the general consumer's desire, but I would like to see some actual effort beyond just releasing a handful of games here and there.

It was really bad on PS3 how you'd download say a PS1 classic but not be able to alphabetize them; you could put them into folders but it was still an unattractive mess, aesthetically. Being able to have a separate SD card channel on the Wii, and the virtual console games having their own screens and being able to organize them was awesome.
 
Licensing is a bitch

Hence why a method that doesn't involve any real form of licensing has a much superior diversity to it.
 
So you are saying it is better to pirate your ganes than to pay for them? That the companies lose money on people like you and don't deserve your money?

Maybe with more money and interest the service will improve.
 

perorist

Unconfirmed Member
I only bothered with Nintendo's since i don't have a PS3/4 but from what i read, it it doesn't seem to be much better.

But it is much better. Out of the 4 problems listed in the OP, the only one that is still an issue is the 50hz PAL one for EU regions only. Well, I doubt the emulation itself is 100% perfect but it's pretty damn close and I've never heard of something like missing textures on PS1 games from PSN.
 
Emulation isn't perfect since you need really powerful hardware to perfectly emulate games if what i heard is correct.
They can't put everything on there since they need to resubmit them and test them, also some of the games would be very hard to get on there for legal reasons since some of them are over 20 years old.
I do agree that they should be cheaper at least.
 

nkarafo

Member
So you are saying it is better to pirate your ganes than to pay for them? That the companies lose money on people like you and don't deserve your money?

Maybe with more money and interest the service will improve.
No, i'm saying that they don't try enough considering what's already out there. As for me, personally, i already explained that i wanted this to work (also i am into emulation way before VC started). I want to support them but how can i do it when they offer me the worst of the worst?

I mean, PAL versions? In this day and age? Really?
 
Hyperspin looks absolutely fantastic. I have a huge Dreamcast collection, hundreds of games.. I saw a youtube of Hyperspin running with a Dreamcast conf. I would LOVE to get it set up purely with the Dreamcast config alone but have heard it can be a pig to set up.....
 

Sentenza

Member
Emulation isn't perfect since you need really powerful hardware to perfectly emulate games if what i heard is correct.
Not strictly incorrect. The problem is more that what you heard is a vague statement.
"Powerful hardware" is very relative. A lot of modern hardware is infinitely more powerful than old consoles like NES, SNES, ecc, so it really isn't an issue. You can afford pretty much perfect accuracy and perfect performances.
When it comes to more "modern" systems, like PS2, GameCube, Wii, then your argument may play some significant role... But then again we got to a point that a good-but-not-incredible system of today (like, say, mine) can already emulate these consoles at full speed 99% of the times.
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
rip
But yes I agree. There's so much wasted potential with those services as of today. It wouldn't be impossible to implement filtering options and things like that. Maybe multiplayer using synced game sessions (3DS NES games does this I believe)/link cable emulation. M2 seem to put a lot of work into their re-releases and compilations that puts these to shame (filters, region select, modifiers), even Nintendo's own 3D Classics. 3DS GB games doesn't even have Super Game Boy support or GBA flags activated, which made me avoid some games.

And the 50Hz situation is just awful, but I have to give Nintendo some credit for finally giving us most 60Hz versions. I believe the European PSOne/PS2 classics are done for, sadly.
I won't pay for a 50Hz game ever again, not even for 0.03€. The games needs to be accompanied by NTSC versions or no buy.
When the Wii U N64 VC games comes around they'll probably all be 50Hz versions if Nintendo doesn't wake up.
 
Emulation isn't perfect since you need really powerful hardware to perfectly emulate games if what i heard is correct.
They can't put everything on there since they need to resubmit them and test them, also some of the games would be very hard to get on there for legal reasons since some of them are over 20 years old.
I do agree that they should be cheaper at least.

2D emulation is near perfect, on the PC at least
We are talking about emulators that were perfected over 10 years ago for pretty much all 2D consoles.
That was done largely by one or two people working on any specific emulator in their spare time & for free.
 

oldmario

Member
No, i'm saying that they don't try enough considering what's already out there. As for me, personally, i already explained that i wanted this to work (also i am into emulation way before VC started). I want to support them but how can i do it when they offer me the worst of the worst?

I mean, PAL versions? In this day and age? Really?

they still have to support people that don't have a 60hz hdtv since ps3 is still able to run on a crt screen most of which only supported 50hz
 
2D emulation is near perfect, on the PC at least
We are talking about emulators that were perfected over 10 years ago for pretty much all 2D consoles.
That was done largely by one or two people working on any specific emulator in their spare time & for free.

Wrong the cycle accurate emulators for those old 2d systems just started to show up a couple of years ago. Higan (formerly known as BSNES) is the most accurate SNES emulator and requires a CPU in the 3 GHZ class. Its the closest you get to real hardware on a pc.
 

nkarafo

Member
they still have to support people that don't have a 60hz hdtv since ps3 is still able to run on a crt screen most of which only supported 50hz
So... give those 6 people the option to D/L the 50 hz version and let the rest have the proper version?
 

SuomiDude

Member
Honestly I'm happy paying 5€ for some NES games when they cost 15 to 150€ on actual NES. Same goes for SNES and all the other games. I just bought Fire Emblem on Wii U, no need to try to find a real copy of it on ebay or such where you can't know if the game is a legal copy and if you want to box and manual, you need to pay ridiculous amount of money. I paid 4,69€ for that game (it's on sale).
So no, the prices aren't too high in many cases. Sure the very first NES games aren't worth anything, I paid 30c for Donkey Kong, and I think it was too much for such a crappy game, but oh well. On the other hand I got Super Metroid for 30c as well on VC, so sometimes you can get super deals.
And being European, most of the games are now the US versions, but even if they aren't, you don't get worse version than you would get if you bought the actual PAL copy. It's just that PAL versions aren't as good as US versions. But like I said, most games are now US versions on VC.
What I agree with is that there should be much much more games released every week. Like at least 2 games for each possible console, and there should be all consoles on Wii U that were on Wii and more.

Oh and you're admitting piracy and seem to enjoy doing that, so :/
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Well yeah, of course it's better on PC where you can just download all of those old libraries of games without having to pay a cent. From what I've played of VC and PSN stuff it seems fine to me. If a texture is out of place I wouldn't notice, nor would it drive me to illegally download a copy off the internet.
 

DeadTrees

Member
PC/Homebrew emulators have gone a long way. There are some very interesting things going on lately.

Hey, you know what else is interesting? Web caching.

Right now i have more than 500GB of ISOS and full rom packs for almost any gaming device from 6th gen and below.

Despite having every NES/SNES/GB/N64 game in my hard drives

Announcing a couple of games for SNES, as if its something to brag about, isn't very impressive when i have access to every single SNES game, by downloading a 500MB torrent file.
 

nkarafo

Member
I agree, especially on the frontends and the hyperspin stuff. Is it so hard for something similar in a service we pay for?
 

nkarafo

Member
Hey, you know what else is interesting? Web caching.
Well thanks, i already mentioned that i made some edits in the OP. So, from the whole discussion this is the part that interest you? How about the actual thing i'm trying to discuss? Also, how do you know that i don't own every game in physical form?
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Emulation on PCs exists since forever and they know it. They know that so many people love retro games and have easy access on them for free. They know that they lose money from people like me who download everything.

Damn, I thought piracy was frowned upon.

This is like challenging Nintendo to "Get Gud" with your emulation or else "I'm just going to illegally download everything". Actually it looks like you already did.
 
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