Who here uses game emulators?

[Rob Williams]

As much as I anticipate upcoming blockbusters, there's nothing in gaming that gets me quite as excited as reliving old classics... the games I grew up with and sunk a lot of time into. I recently stumbled-upon a good Sega Dreamcast emulator (I will be doing a write-up soon), and I got to thinking... who here uses game emulators on a regular basis, and what platforms do you focus on?

I am sure Mario will chime in here, as he's a mega MAME fan. For me, I love running NES, SNES, Neo-Geo and now Dreamcast games, though I am going to delve into MAME soon

[Greg King]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

As much as I anticipate upcoming blockbusters, there's nothing in gaming that gets me quite as excited as reliving old classics... the games I grew up with and sunk a lot of time into. I recently stumbled-upon a good Sega Dreamcast emulator (I will be doing a write-up soon), and I got to thinking... who here uses game emulators on a regular basis, and what platforms do you focus on?

I am sure Mario will chime in here, as he's a mega MAME fan. For me, I love running NES, SNES, Neo-Geo and now Dreamcast games, though I am going to delve into MAME soon

I play the occasional NES game. Thanks to a good friend, I now have a reason to use DOS-Box on a regular basis. I would LOVE to get into some of the old SNES and Genesis games but haven't had the time or desire to play around with them.

I played a log of N64 in college and shortly there after I played my favorite N64 games in emulation but they were slow and kind of shitty.

I love the Dreamcast forever.

[MarcN5]

When I'm looking for a quick game distraction, I'll sometimes fire up MAME or Project64.
And, I've even fired up DOS-Box when I want a blast from the LONG-time past.

[marfig]

You betcha. MAME since 1998 baby.

Other than arcade machines, there's two other plaforms I'm mostly interested in:

• The ZX Spectrum. I use Spectaculator and ZXSpin to emulate a collection of around 400 games.
• MSDOS. I use DosBox to emulate a collection of around 8,000 games and software.

These three are my primary emulation interests. I've caught up with the PC very soon. In 1989. Since then my interest for consoles was basically over and before that the ZX Spectrum was my only love. So I don't share the passion for other devices.

However, I do tend to go a little over the sole purpose of emulating games. I'm interested in other aspects of computer emulation.

For the ZX Spectrum, I learned how to program the Z80 processor, an 8 bit processor capable of 16 bit addressing and arithmetic still in widespread use today. It was actually through this experience that soon after I began to learn 32 bit assembly. As for MAME, for years I've been wanting to build a MAME arcade cabinet myself. A project I will for sure start sooner than later. Concerning DOS, I'm also interested in applications, not just games. In fact, while not exactly an emulation, I do maintain a MSDOS 6.2 virtual machine for several years now. I do test most of the MSDOS applications I get my hands on in DosBox, But invariably almost all end up in the VM.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Greg King

I played a log of N64 in college and shortly there after I played my favorite N64 games in emulation but they were slow and kind of shitty.

You got that right! I ended up giving up on the N64 after a time, although current emulators (mupen64plus in particular) are alright. There's still a lot of unsupported games though, including the one I'd want to emulate the most, Donkey Kong 64.

Originally Posted by MarcN5

When I'm looking for a quick game distraction, I'll sometimes fire up MAME or Project64.
And, I've even fired up DOS-Box when I want a blast from the LONG-time past.

How does Project64 compare to mupen? I forgot about that one so I gotta give it another go...

Originally Posted by marfig

The ZX Spectrum. I use Spectaculator and ZXSpin to emulate a collection of around 400 games.

That's a bandwagon I've been meaning to jump on since there seem to be a ton of classics there. Been wanting to give Manic Miner a go for quite some time.

Originally Posted by marfig

I do maintain a MSDOS 6.2 virtual machine for several years now. I do test most of the MSDOS applications I get my hands on in DosBox, But invariably almost all end up in the VM.

Hmm, I never considered running a DOS VM before. What hyperviser are you using?

On another note, I somehow got on a kick tonight and looked through a bunch of old CDs, and I can't believe some stuff I stumbled on. I found a ton of old emulators, but one stood out - "Nightmare". This was the first "working" Sega Dreamcast emulator, circa 1999:



This thing is so obscure that I couldn't even find a real mention of it in Google.

[MarcN5]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

How does Project64 compare to mupen? I forgot about that one so I gotta give it another go...

I haven't used mupen, so it's hard to say. Project64 is more application & menu-like, whereas from what I can read, mupen is a console app.
BTW, Project64 1.6 DOES play DK64.

Only real trouble I've had with Project64 is that when I brought it over from an XP system to a Windows7 system, I had to run it with a login with admin rights.

[marfig]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

Hmm, I never considered running a DOS VM before. What hyperviser are you using?

VMWare. Unfortunately VirtualBox only supports Windows NT versions. It does seem to run MSDOS, but to my knowledge it isn't officially supported and emulation is buggy. VMWare supports MSDOS 6.x officially. Only that. But I've ran successfully prior versions of it without any issue. I also ran successfully DR-DOS 5.0 and 6.0.

I find it more practical to run a DOS VM than setting up a DOSBox environment for MSDOS emulation. There's also issues of software compatibility that necessarily crop in once you start wanting to work with applications. Especially programming stuff. DOSBox is mostly concerned with getting games running.

My interest in a DOS VM is mostly a matter of nostalgia. I keep in there my most beloved applications and games (stuff like Norton Commander, C&C Red Alert, DJGPP or dBase II). I don't fire it often. But sometimes I get the bug.

[DarkStarr]

I lost my copy of C&C RA2 I had it all setup and everything but somewhere, somewhen it got lost (or deleted or something)

Anyways I do some gameboy emus and I tried a few NES and stuff but the PS2 emus are fairly good, played kingdom hearts and some FF10 on it with no real glitches. Haven't tried many more than that however, I really just wish I could get a Xbox emu or heck an old xbox and 250 gb (or so) PATA drive to make a clone of the box I have that cant open the tray anymore.