Emulators?

I got some emulators going through my arcade cabinet. I just built using arcade sticks but if your planning on gaming from your couch, I would suggest a Xbox360 wireless controller for Windows.

Emulators :

NES - Nestopia
Genesis - KGEN
SNES - ZSNES

Rest just do a google search on.

I would also suggest you check out MAME32 emulator for all those old school coinop arcade games..no quarters required

I'm also using zsnes to emulate snes games, it works like a charm

I too use Nestopia and Zsnes. But I've heard that bsnes is the best SNES emulator right now. I've never heard of Kgen but I use Kega Fusion. It emulates the Genesis, SMS, 32X, Sega CD and the Game Gear.

Hmm, I looked up KGEN and it looks like Fusion is a decendant of it.

I think snes9x is better then zsnes, but I have never tried bsnes.

snes9x has better scaling options (the 4x filters are perfect for 1080p), unless I missed the same features in zsnes. I also like that it uses a standard windows interface.

Wireless controller is a bit of a no brainer, Xbox 360 controller.

Yeah sorry thats the one I have running. I was thinkin back in the day when I used KGEN.

bsnes is the best SNES emulator nowadays.

Anyone have a good front end like gameex ?

Hyperspin is really the best front end out there in my opinion

I wouldn't personally. NES/SNES/Gen etc. rely on D-pad for controls and as much as I love the XBox 360 controller, the D-pad on it is HORRIBLE. I personally use replica controllers from Nintendo Repair Hut and USB adapters from RetroZone for emulators. Their controllers are functionally identical to the originals but with longer cords.

If you want wireless I would suggest a Logitech F710, the sucessor to the Cordless Rumblepad 2.

I used Maximus frontend for my arcade cabinet. Hyperspin was too much of a resource hog for my c2d machine. It was alot easier to setup then Hyperspin and GameEX. Pretty much just tell it where the emulator and the roms are then goto town.

+1


Also check out HyperPin, if you are into Pinball.

Exactly. Anybody playing 2D games with a 360 controller is just doing it wrong. The D-Pad is one of the worst in gaming history. There are companies out there that take retro controllers and modify them for USB. You can get actual NES, SNES, Genesis controllers, etc, etc.

There are quite a few people that use Saturn controllers modded with USB for use on their Playstation 3 in fighting games. They swear by the Saturn D-Pad which is normally considered the best D-Pad of all time. Since they use USB, I would assume that they would work perfect on a PC.

I guess everyone has different levels of desire for purity when it comes to retro gaming. I can't personally imagine buying 2 of every retro controller and adaptors and having all this crap sitting around my living room just because "that's how it should be played".

Comments about the 360 d-pad are fair. I really don't think it's that bad though, unless you have one of the pads that collide with the casing and prevent it from clearly clicking into place in that direction.

For the most part though I just use the analog stick for retro games. Again, not how they were meant to be played, but it works fine in 90% of games and is much more comfortable.

I also have a SF4 arcade stick which I have configured on my PC so I can play old SF / MK / beat-em-up games with that.

I've gone through a number of controllers on my HTPC. My current favorite is the wireless xbox 360 controller. It's not the best for snes, genesis, and nes retro gaming, but I dislike wires going everywhere.

I used a PS2 controller with a usb adapter for a number of years that was pretty solid. My favorite from a retro-gaming standpoint is the madcatz fightpad for the xbox 360. It has a great d-pad and is similar in many ways to the classic saturn controller - it's a bit bigger but has a similar button layout and a comfortable d-pad. The wireless ps3 version is another option though I had to RMA the one I grabbed, so I don't know how reliable they are.

If you want a fightstick the Tatsunoko vs Capcom madcatz fightstick for the wii is really good. It's cheap - got mine for $20 - compared to other fightsticks and with a mayflash usb adapter it can be used easily on an htpc. I use mine for Street Fighter 4 and have not been disappointed. I've been meaning to try connecting it to a spare wiimote and go completely wireless.

Yeah, I know I go a bit overboard with controllers but have I loved emulator gaming ever since I got into using Mame 8 years ago. Playing Alien vs. Predator Arcade on a classic arcade stick is still fun as hell for me.

I have an old saturn system with Virtua Cop 2 (no crt anymore to play the game these days) and the arcade stick and one controller. Guess I should dig them out and give the controllers a try.

Any 3DO or NeoGeo emulators out there that work well?

x2

Anyone remember these?







Image is big so here is a link.

Amber Ale:

That Neo-Geo game in that cool advertisement is Cyber-Lip. I absolutely loved that game. It just had that super early 90's arcade flavor. Awesome game!

I had never, ever seen a Neo Geo advertisement....seriously to me the Neo Geo was the same as the GunCon, something outrageously expensive only listed in B&W ads in the back 3 pages of gaming magazines of the time.......

Yeah, I remember the (still to this day unequaled) high prices of NeoGeo systems. A fully loaded Xbox 360 package doesn't cost as much as those things did back in the day. You could buy every other system out there at the time and still have money for some games for the price of one NeoGeo console.

I think they were like 700 or 800 and the games were about 200 each, give or take. Amazing to play in the store demos, and that is where my experience stayed.

I owned a Neo-Geo for a very short period of time in 1993. What happened was, I had this big collection of Super Nintendo and Genesis games. A buddy of mine had a Neo-Geo, and I was playing some games at his house like Nam 1975 and Magician Lord and stuff like that. I was really blown away by how amazing the Neo-Geo seemed in comparison to the normal games I was playing.

It was a really dumb move on my part, but I basically sold off my entire collection of SNES games and Genesis games, and the systems, etc, etc. I sold it all via the classifieds of the local newspaper. I did try to make sure to get as much money as I possibly could for my stuff, but still, you take a big loss when you sell things like that. I took that money and went and got myself a Neo-Geo. I started off with like 3 or 4 games. I had Nam 75, Super Baseball 2020 and Cyber-Lip. Those were my first three games. I played the crap out of Super Baseball 2020 and Cyber-Lip. I played a bit of Nam 75, but not as much as I was expecting.

Well, basically, I ended up having that Neo-Geo for about 6 or 7 months, and tried out a few more games, but ultimately, I ended up selling it all off and going back to the Super Nintendo and Genesis. So, it was like a 7 month love affair with a Neo-Geo.

Want to hear a sad tale? I live in CT, and we have this amusement park called Lake Compounce. Ok there is a lake there too, and they built an amusement park around it. Mind you, this thing was like THE thing to do in Central Connecticut in like...the 40's and 50's...by the 80's the place was run down, falling apart. They did have a big old arcade tho, and one day in the mid 80's when they were going out of business they had FOR SALE signs on all the coin ops.

$50 bucks. $100 Bucks. Back then it may as well have been a million dollars, and of course "Where would you put this thing!?" comes to mind, not like I had a place of my own I was just going into High School.

They had all the classics, and even mechanical games that pre-dated the "video" games......games like this: I hope they all found good homes, but I'm guessing most found a trash compactor...those old giant mechanical games were just too huge to move around. There were two I loved, one was this big cushioned chair you sat in, it was some "FIGHTER ACE" type game. (no that ain't the name). The chair swiveled left and right which in turn had a joystick on one of the arms of the chair. On a curved screen was projected enemy aircraft that would appear, and you used the swivel of the chair andt he joystick and a button on top to "shoot them". Mind you this is pre-electronic gaming, this is like late 60's early 70's.....lots of "projected image" games existed then. There was another one.....a helicopter simulator, where you were basically seeing on screen a blow-up of what was obviously a miniature model of a city...very cool stuff.

EXAMPLES of the types of games I'm talkin bout......

Damn... You'd be rich now if you could have bought all those games. Those rare ones would go for top dollar. Of course, storing them is the biggest problem, and it's doubtful that you would have held onto them long enough for their rarity to really be a huge factor in the price.

Thats the thing......if you had the space to store these things, they'd be full of mice and all of their rubber parts would need to be replaced by now, all the adhesive would be shot, the PCB's would have cracked, wiring would be chewed and so on and so on

Plus, "rich" is a relative term...if you paid $200 for something that sold for $4,000...its a nice bump but its hardly going to get you rich. and I think you'd find most people don't want to spend thousands on a 300lb+ wood and metal machine with a game that gets dull after about 10 minutes

A lot of those vintage machines like the examples I used up there are more fun to look at than to actually play, as was the case even back in the 70's and 80's when you could throw all the quarters you wanted to into them. After a play or three you'd be like..."Crap, is that skinny dude still hogging the Asteroids machine?" like we all were....