Opinions about emulation

[Rtype84]

I've never used emulators before but I was interested in giving it a go. I have a friend that uses his PC but I have also heard of people using a wii or an xbox. I've read up on using my xbox because I don't really play it and I was just wondering if anyone here has done it and what your thoughts were on the two and emulation in general. I'm leaning towards xbox but haven't completely decided. The consoles I would most like to emulate are sega saturn and turbo duo.

[Duke.Togo]

I did a soft mod on my Xbox to mess around with emulation and XBMC years ago, and it works just fine. The problem to me is that the controller is pretty terrible for playing classic games.

[SirPsycho]

I did a soft mod on my Xbox to mess around with emulation and XBMC years ago, and it works just fine. The problem to me is that the controller is pretty terrible for playing classic games.

You must have tried to play Colecovision games with this.

[img width=700 height=591]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Xbox-Duke-Controller.jpg[/img]

[Rtype84]

Luckily i don't have that controller. That thing looks giant!

[Izret101]

If memory serves the center jewel is larger than an Eisenhower dollar.
[img width=531 height=370]http://cdnec1.fiverrcdn.com/photos/1167600/medium/fiver2.jpg?1352342795[/img]


Chances are if you check your local craigslist you can find quite a few modded systems already chock full of EMUs and ROMs.
I have also been lead to believe that the process was relatively easy.

That being said i would personally go the PC route.

[Duke.Togo]

The process is ridiculously easy using the MechAssault method if you can put the save on it.

[Boshamp]

I did a soft mod on my Xbox to mess around with emulation and XBMC years ago, and it works just fine. The problem to me is that the controller is pretty terrible for playing classic games.

You must have tried to play Colecovision games with this.

[img width=700 height=591]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Xbox-Duke-Controller.jpg[/img]

This thing was a PAIN. Ole' Duke gave me carpal tunnel in about 6 hours. ha ha Good memories seeing frustration on my friend's faces trying to play Halo with it.

[GrayGhost81]

I got on a kick of "backing up" Dreamcast games a few years back and in my travels I burned discs full of pretty much every game for each console. The only one that doesn't have a great emulator on DC was SNES, but it's pretty much my go-to when I want to play NES and especially Genesis since I got rid of all my Genesis stuff.

The downside of course is that the controller is almost as bad as the hamburger pictured above.

[bombatomba]

I'd like to add something else: Emulation of hardware when one no longer owns a functioning system, though with legal software in place of ROMS.  For example, I can no longer play either my Sega CD nor Turbo CD games, though with the help of Kega and Magic Engine (respectively), I can continue to play Sonic CD and Final Zone II (?) when I want.  There is also DOS emulation, which is pretty much a necessity if you want to play old PC games and don't actually own a system that will run them. 

The process is ridiculously easy using the MechAssault method if you can put the save on it.

I've been wanting to do this for a while now, but so I can play my Xbox Morrowind with loading times less than a minute.

Sometimes, the emulators give a better experience than the original console.

My favorite example of this is the PSX emulators.  After a bit of fiddling one can get interesting results, especially with some of the later polygonal games.  In the past there was some issue with legality due to needing an original BIOS to run the emulator, but recently PCSX has come packaged with a functioning emulated BIOS that plays all my games.  Very nice.  Makes getting screenshots for PSX games a million times easier.

[Duke.Togo]

Good luck with Xbox Morrowind. I tried several times to complete this game, but always ran into bugs that would cause the game to grind to a halt.

I've been ogling some of the screenshots from a PS2 emulator running FF XII. It's pretty amazing what some of these can do.

Also, plenty of emulation is done on the consoles themselves: compilation discs, arcade ports, backwards compatibly, virtual console, etc. Heck, the RetroN5 is a hardware emulator.

[bombatomba]

Good luck with Xbox Morrowind. I tried several times to complete this game, but always ran into bugs that would cause the game to grind to a halt.

I've been ogling some of the screenshots from a PS2 emulator running FF XII. It's pretty amazing what some of these can do.

I think I clocked in 300+ hours on the Xbox title back in 2004, so much that when I finally faced the final boss it took less than a minute to kill him.  Towards the end I stopped selling items to the Mudcrab and ended up storing everything in those big pyramids scattered throughout the landscape once I learned that you could transport between the strongholds after gathering the indexes.  Game was awesome, hampered only by the extreme loading.  I don't think I ran into horrible bugs in the GOTY edition, though I certainly did in the original edition.

I've seen those same videos and plan to sit down and finally play through it on a PS2 emulator for that reason.  Nuts.

 
Honestly, I think this method is worse experience.  It's faster to read off the hard drive than it is to read off of a CD (unless I'm misinterpreting what you're trying to say).  It would be much better to rip the disc to an image and just load from that.  Trying to load from a disc has always been awful when I've tried it. 

True in some cases, but in this case it's more about preservation of my original collection than anything else.  Plus, some emulators such as Magic Engine do not permit one to load disc images, but require you to own (or burn, I guess) the original disc.  Now, I do actively rip my own PSP discs. which not only makes most of the games infinitely more playable, but helps lengthen the battery life.  I seem to remember Midnight Club 3 taking somewhere in the neighborhood of two minutes to load a track, but ripped the game becomes magically playable.

[Guru]

I really enjoy emulating on the computer, as you have constant updated lists of games you want, and not just a console full of 10,000 games you wont play and most likely with a ton of bugs. But I got the OUYA for Christmas last year and it works as a great emulation machine. Controller isn't terrible, and there are emulators for most systems. If I play emulators on a system its usually the OUYA and it's a nice and cheap console to do so on.

[retrosportsgamer]

I use flash carts for NES, Turbo, Genesis (SMS included + 32X) and SNES. Doesn't stop me from collecting by any means and I like these options so games like Tecmo Super Bowl 2015 can be played on NES hardware and on my CRT.

[stillplayingnes]

I use flash carts for NES, Turbo, Genesis (SMS included + 32X) and SNES. Doesn't stop me from collecting by any means and I like these options so games like Tecmo Super Bowl 2015 can be played on NES hardware and on my CRT.

I picked up a NES Flashcart and it's actually encouraged me to purchase more physical carts.  I gotta try Tecmo Super Bowl 2015 at some point!

[gbpxl]

I had an original Xbox with every emulator from Atari 2600 to Nintendo 64 on it, with thousands of games to boot... that was 'til Microsoft bricked my console (this happened last year)

And that was mostly just a cost saving measure for me and because I didn't have much space at the time. I'm able to play the real deal now and I was never a big fan of emulators or games played on computers to begin with.