Xbox 360 Emulator 3.2.4 Bios Download No Survey
Rayén Rundall
Lately I've been spending most of my gameplay time on various console emulators, playing games that I either missed or enjoying the effects of high resolution/texture packs for games I played in the past. I don't see much discussion about emulators here, so I figured it would be nice to have a thread where people can discuss various emulators, texture packs, romhacks, etc. and ask questions.
I'm about to start Majora's Mask 3D on Citra with an HD texture pack/controller-friendly HUD and a re-orchestrated music mod. I think it's really cool that you can use gyroscopic controls for aiming. First I'm going to finish Ocarina of Time via Ship of Harkinian, what an amazing port that is. Every feature you could ever ask for is there. What are some cool emulation-related things you guys have been doing? Obviously, don't share links to illegal files.
I meticulously set up a comfortable single controller setup for the 3ds remake of Samus Returns with an xbox controller (three of the four directions on the right analog stick corresponded to three tappable buttons on the touchscreen, and clicking the stick tapped the middle (turned samus into a ball)). Then I set up a custom visual set up where the bottom screen showed on the main screen roughly where the automap would normally appear (very small =v=). It's my preferred way to play that game now. If I ever find a way to recreate the visual set up for the steam deck's resolution I might migrate to playing it on there (where i emulate most things these days)
After doing some research, I actually bought a Retroid Pocket 3+ and filled it with my own ROM collection, and from there started to catch up on playing various Mystery Dungeon games like Shiren the Wanderer. And yes, it runs Doom. The official Bethesda port made for Android, in fact.
Besides being a million times better than having a billion little logic probes everywhere on some no longer manufactured piece of hardware, it is just a ton more convenient than having to have a bunch of cartridges laying around. I remember getting into emulation back in around 1998 or 1999, playing Megaman 4 on a 486. Good times.
My BF is hugely into emulation since about 2019 or 2020, it's how I got to revisit a buncha classics and play stuff I missed out on, but he loves and breathes it, more so than modern games but I can't blame him lol. He was heavily into RetroArch earlier on but since switched to ares in the past year or so.
Using Mac Emulators on my laptop when I'm away from my desktop PC: OpenEmu is a neat little package that organizes my roms, and I mostly use it for NES, SNES, and Game Boy roms. So far, I haven't found any downsides. I don't really Emulate 3D games that much.
Nah, I prefer to use original hardware, unless there's a native port, but then it's not considered emulation. It's not like I own every single console though, I only own the ones that I like and have something that emulation doesn't do well, like PSG and FM synthesis, complex controllers setups or responsive controls.
The 3DS, the N64 and the PS2 have very unique characteristics for me, the double screen scheme is the whole point of the console, it improves games by letting you interact with the menu without the need to pause. And both the PS2 and the N64 have pressure sensitive buttons and extremely precise analog sticks, more precise than the PS5 controller even.
With even older consoles I particularly like the audio, which is hard to replicate, in the Doom Unity port they could have used an emulated SC-55 for the music, but instead they recorded it directly from the original, and it makes it sound much better than a lot of source ports.
I tend to only prefer the most accurate emulators out there, like Mesen for NES, Ares for SNES, Sameboy for Game Boy(and GBC), mGBA for Game Boy Advance, BlastEm for Mega Drive, Emulicious for Master System(and Game Gear). Sadly, some of these accurate emulators have poor or no debuggers, so sometimes I'm stuck with debugging my games on inaccurate emulators, which rubs me the wrong way.
Lately I've been into emulation of pocket computers/programmable calculators, such as the Sharp PC-G850 and Casio FX-870P/VX-4. Most, if not all the relevant resources are in Japanese, but they're worth checking out and tinkering with. (Make sure to check out Inufuto's stuff if you're into really old, obscure Z80-based consoles/computers and love some arcadey original titles as well!)
I generally play on actual hardware, but I also emulate every now and then. As long as I get to play cool games, I really don't care, :P
One thing I personally like is hardware carts with ROMs that you can load into a console. I have a GBC flash cart with the Crystal Clear Pokemon ROMhack written to it, and I also have a multi game cart for DS that takes an SD card and has a bunch of DS ROMS and emulators for other consoles. Ever played Shining Force for the Genesis on a 3DS? It's lit, man.
Emulation is great to be able to casually play old games. It makes them more accessible to all and eliminates the stress of finding working hardware. It is also a great way to enjoy randomizers for old games that give a ton of replayability to them. Can def recommend a link to the past rando for zelda fans, or really any of the other zelda randos. Basically all, if not flat out all, have them at this point and they have a lot of settings to tailor the experience to your desired difficulty level, map/logic tracker tools to help find what areas you can check with your current load out, and spoiler logs for when you've otherwise given up or feel stumped. Lotta accessibility options available. I know many of the pokemon games have randos at this point too, as well as many other games.
I am pretty big emulation enthusiast, especially on dedicated hardware instead of just running emulator on my everyday pc. My first dedicated hardware for emulation was Raspberry Pi 3 with RetroPie that was able to handle PS1 and pretty much anything lighter. Couple years ago I upgraded to old Dell Optiplex so I was able to also play N64 and Dreamcast. I am pretty heavily focused on arcade emulation because I play mostly arcade ports on consoles anyway.
I do have a collection of older consoles but trying to hook them up to modern tv just isn't worth the time or money for me. It is also nice that one device can play some many different consoles and have so many games without taking extra space. There is also the huge selection of controllers that I can use, including those that need an adapter.
While not a console, I tried at one point to get into Commodore Amiga emulation. Like, I got stuff to work thanks to the launcher that lets you do stuff easily, but I still don't know how to launch games via the command line, because I wanna make bat files so I can launch games through GOG Galaxy. What further complicates things is that certain games are best played on certain Amgiga models/roms (A500, A1000, A600, A1200, etc.), and it just feels harder to manage compared to DOSBox. Though that's probably just because I've had a LOT more experience with DOSBox than FS-UAE. Still, great games on the Amiga.
As for consoles, I'd been playing around with Mednafen for Playstation (and Powerslave on Saturn) stuff when I realized that you could play the PSX version of Quake II with a mouse. So I've been playing that recently, along with Alien Resurrection.
I have Mesen for NES/SNES/TG16/GB, Duckstation for PS1, PCSX2 for PS2, PPSSPP for PSP, Dolphin for GC and Wii, mGBA for GBA, melonDS for DS, Citra for 3DS, and a couple of barebones or defunct emulators for N64 and Sega stuff. My girlfriend on the otherhand is a massive hardware collector, and has an impossibly huge collection of every system known to man. We, uh, conflict a bit there, but we both love retro games to death, just differing in the means to play them.
For me, the main draw is that my saves are futureproof on computer, and can be played with my favourite type of controller, with all kinds of enhancements if needed, like fastforwarding, CRT filters, savestates, and in some cases, you can even link up to this one site and get achievements for classic games if your into that kind of thing (PS1 Doom and Final Doom have complete sets on Duckstation for example)
The key thing for me with emulators though, is being user friendly. Xenia is ass for that, and there is no modern Megadrive/Master System/Gamegear emulator that I know of thats close to how userfriendly Kega Fusion was. N64 is also in a bad place last I knew, with the only accurate emulator I know of having rudimentary half-broken UI stuff. Emulators like Duckstation, Dolphin and PCSX2 are the gold standard for UIs, wish more emulators took an approach like those
My latest ongoing project is the "perfect couch setup" which is basically a big 80+ systems setup made by me from scratch, starting from Channel-F up to the Gamecube/PS2, using a nice fronted similar to Batocera/Retrobat, along with a few secondary frontends for desktop usage.
The list of games is what i consider a "full, curated library". Every single game must have all it's assets (snapshot/video/box-art). No gaps allowed. If some assets for some obscure games don't exist, i make my own. The whole setup must be fully operated via a gamepad so i mostly use RetroArch except for a handful of systems. All cores/emulators must be the most accurate available. Everything is setup for the lowest input lag possible. Each system must have the best screen/CRT/handheld shader tailor-made for it. And if i use a 16:9 screen, each one has it's own themed bezel.
The whole project must be 100% portable and easy to backup. Copy the whole thing to a 6TB external HDD, change the drive letter for the correct paths and play without changing or re-configuring anything. Which i have achieved.
The most accurate one atm is Ares. It uses an original core and for graphics it uses Parallel RDP, which means the graphics are pretty much perfect. It's not complete, but i think it's 90% there. It's the only emulator accurate enough to play most N64 game at the correct speed. And the UI is fine and very easy to use, even though Ares is a multi-system emulator with more system cores.
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