“Emulators for playing older games are immensely popular online, with regular arguments breaking out over which emulator is best for which game. Today we present another point of view from a gentleman who has created the Super Nintendo emulator bsnes. He wants to share his thoughts on the most important part of the emulation experience, accuracy.”
Good find – I like seeing stuff like this about emulation 🙂 I was watching another video on youtube recently documenting the example they describe with Timecop’s sound on the SNES. I’m about to embark upon the task of writing a Sega Master System emulator in Java. A daunting task for me but an exciting one none the less :-p
Is there a particular reason you’re doing this in Java.
Is it the language you’re most comfortable with, or is there a requirement that it be written in Java?
First and foremost due to my comfort using Java, but a secondary aim is because I know it will be even more difficult, given Java’s lack of suitability for precise timing etc. I think it can handle a master system if I code it properly but as I have never before written an emulator it shall be good fun 🙂 I thought a Z80 is as good a place as any to start.
It is true there are many master system (and other console) emulators written in C/C++, but not many in Java. Basically I like a challenge :-p
I was enthusiastic about this some time ago but indication is Sony and Microsoft just isn’t game…as yet. The technology is there but a big catalogue to emulate isn’t. It was disappointing when they pulled that Playstation 2 emulator for Android. Most developers is favouring the ipad…like EA.
Hope Android will catch up here in the near future.
http://www.mobilephoneconnect.com/tech-news/ea-claims-ipad-is-faste…
Wont it be nice to a console type Android gaming device in the future. (many games just is not that suitable for tablets). The processor power is almost there.
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phone…
There was a rumour Nvidia is working on emulator.
http://www.sleetherz.com/android-news/nvidia-will-release-playstati…
Maybe there is some new development I don’t know off?
Edited 2011-08-09 17:31 UTC
I really enjoyed that read!
Even though emulators exist, I’ve been collecting old consoles in the recent years.
There’s a certain irreplaceable experience of popping a cartridge into a physical NES, and pushing the power button (and then often blowing out the cartridge and trying again) that re-creates a historical period of my youth that an emulator cannot replicate.
I’ve also found that it gives my children a good perspective on how gaming was before their time. Emulators are fun to see how the games looked and played, but seeing the physical console and its controllers, and how they actually worked, is priceless.
Don’t blow on the cartridges or system. It makes the problem worse.
What happens is, tiny droplets of saliva, as well as moisture from your breath, collect on the contacts, and dirt sticks, making the connections even worse.
Heh, thx
I will very often use some 91% rubbing alcohol to clean them (but the classic “solution” everyone always suggests is blowing on them)
More often than not – the cause for bad NES contacts is the pins being loose or bent out of place on the NES 72pin – I have repaired plenty of these by re-adjusting them with a small metal pick.
Pretty much every console I obtain gets a thorough cleaning and necessary repairs (including a teardown of the controllers)… so my stuff is generally pretty clean anyway
I am a huge SNES fan since it was my first console. But I think the Wii does a great job with SNES games and I have re-bought numerous SNES games since I don’t have that the system anymore. I will give this one a try, though ZNES works well for me.
I tried the emulator and the game I tried ran really slow. (Super Ghost and Ghouls japanese version),
Im using a Core i3 with a 1gb NVidia vid card.
From the article, it sounds like using more than one core isn’t possible, so I assume that since I’m running a quad i5 at 2.67ghz, I’m pretty much boned, since I fall short of 3ghz.
Unless I am mistaken, the fastest a single CPU core goes on x86 (without overclocking) is around 3.8ghz, and seems we’ve been at this speed even since the P4 was around, so I’m not sure single cores are going to get any faster than this for the foreseeable future.
The article does mention that it’s multithreaded.
It mentions cooperative threading, so that would be one CPU thread. It says emulation is inherently serial, and that’s correct. It’s because the timing is so important in old game programs. The cooperative threading would just make the programming more flexible, because he also wants to separate the functions of each coprocessor.
Great point, thanks!