Mesen 2.0

[RashFaustinho]

Today I discovered that Mesen, the "super inter pares" NES emulator, is expanding by introducing new supported systems.

Currently in 2.0:

• NES
• SNES
• Game Boy (Color)
• Game Boy Advance
• PC Engine
• SMS/Game Gear
• WonderSwan (Color)

It’s especially useful because of the filter settings. With a single emulator, you can apply the graphical configurations you need for sprite-based games, and they’ll carry over seamlessly from one console to another.

And, of course, you can replace various emulators like bsnes, mGBA, etc., all in one go.

I'm not sure about accuracy - This emu was famous for its accuracy with NES, but I don't know about the other systems. I tried an hacked version of NTSC-J Metroid Fusion and it seems to be working correctly

 

[Gorse]

Hm. Hmmmmm! Hm.

I don't know how much I like the idea of immediately and abruptly expanding this emulator to cover a whole bunch of different systems at once. Mesen is already a really, really good NES emulator (definitely mine of choice for the NES) – why did they feel they needed to expand? Why did they have to bundle all of these other emulators into one? And they're doing... SNES games? SMS/GG games? Gameboy games!? Are these paths not already tread by every other emulator on the bloody planet? What are they looking to achieve, here?

Seriously: Am I missing something? Why would they do this? The other systems definitely aren't going to be as good as, say Kega Fusion (which had over a decade of continuous development, and that still only does 16- + 8-bit consoles from one company). Why would I want my very good NES emulator to suddenly become a sub-par multi-core system? Isn't this going to make the file size go insane?

Well... in any case, I hope they don't F it all up. Mesen really, really is an awesome NES emulator. That's kind of all I need from it, guys.

 

[RageBurner]

I do believe Mesen is very accurate, and while I wouldn't normally advocate for multi-system emulators, this one is an exception.

 

[miguk miguk]

One thing that is close to unique about Mesen is the sprite replacement ability. There are HD sprite packs you can download to go with a small selection of games. (The scene seems stagnant at the moment, though.) It would be nice if they expanded that to work with the other consoles, at the very least the SNES. Combine that with HD Mode 7 and widescreen hacks, and you could make your own HD Remaster of any game.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

It reminds me of Delta a multi system emulator for the IOS (iPhone and iPad). It emulates NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, NDS and N64

 

[RageBurner]

I wish Mesen would come to support the Mega Drive/Genesis, so I would be able to leave KF behind without resorting to Ares.

 

[Leon]

I wish Mesen would come to support the Mega Drive/Genesis, so I would be able to leave KF behind without resorting to Ares.

If only ares would fix it's shader problem and occasional breaking of things like it's cheat system, ares would be by far the best for the genesis.

 

[RageBurner]

If only ares would fix it's shader problem and occasional breaking of things like it's cheat system, ares would be by far the best for the genesis.

Exactly. The only shaders that are close that I want to use are heavy multipass one's that actually rise my GPU's temp quite a bit from idle, so it's quite absurd.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Using as Testing ground for my patched roms since i have the other specialized emulators, loving it due do Interface, let's hope for the best since if everything goes right it may supprass Bizhawk as Saturn emulation

 

[fake-kun]

Exactly. The only shaders that are close that I want to use are heavy multipass one's that actually rise my GPU's temp quite a bit from idle, so it's quite absurd.

Imagine not using the best option because of shaders. Couldn't possibly be me.

 

[RageBurner]

Imagine not using best option because of shaders. Couldn't possibly be me.

Haha, but it certainly is me. Raw pixels isn't proper output.

 

[fake-kun]

Haha, but it certainly is me. Raw pixels isn't proper output.

Thousands of people grew up on raw pixels, I'm sure you'll be fine ; )

 

[RageBurner]

Thousands of people grew up on raw pixels, I'm sure you'll be fine ; )

No, actually we haven't. CRTs blend the pixels. What you see in those panels isn't raw, it's just treated in an analog way. I've explained this in a different thread.

 

[fake-kun]

No, actually we haven't. CRTs blend the pixels. What you see in those panels isn't raw, it's just treated in an analog way. I've explained this in a different thread.

I never saw a video game on CRT in my entire life so I wouldn't know.

 

[RageBurner]

I never saw a video game on CRT in my entire life so I wouldn't know.

It's a bit long winded, but I can explain via PM if you are interested as to not clog the thread.

 

[fake-kun]

It's a bit long winded, but I can explain via PM if you are interested as to not clog the thread.

Sure, why not.

 

[SkoomaCatJesus]

I wish Mesen would come to support the Mega Drive/Genesis, so I would be able to leave KF behind without resorting to Ares.

I do believe that Mesen is now connected to developments on Exodus (extremely accurate Genesis emulator). But... It still does not support SEGA CD or 32x (total bummer). I think that is the reason why there is so little homebrew for the 32x and practically zilch for the CD. At least there are gains in proper IDE and library support for Saturn underway (hence the X-men excitement). These emulators exist as a fallacy-result of needing a unified interface for programming these machines. In fact, money would be better spent on a multi-system SDK and DDK environment, a bit more modern than 1993-1995.

 

[Leon]

I do believe that Mesen is now connected to developments on Exodus (extremely accurate Genesis emulator). But... It still does not support SEGA CD or 32x (total bummer). I think that is the reason why there is so little homebrew for the 32x and practically zilch for the CD. At least there are gains in proper IDE and library support for Saturn underway (hence the X-men excitement). These emulators exist as a fallacy-result of needing a unified interface for programming these machines. In fact, money would be better spent on a multi-system SDK and DDK environment, a bit more modern than 1993-1995.

Sadly the best emulator for the genesis currently is retroarch, since ares is a mess with it's shader support and functionality, which now that i've been on linux for 3 weeks, seems to be a os agnostic problem.

 

[SkoomaCatJesus]

Sadly the best emulator for the genesis currently is retroarch, since ares is a mess with it's shader support and functionality, which now that i've been on linux for 3 weeks, seems to be a os agnostic problem.

Ahhh, I see. I forget that there is a greater ecosystem and Windows is not exactly the 'king' of anything (very especially these days). The advent of ARM, as well as RISC, adds to the plurality of woes the community was already facing when arriving at immutable representations of classic systems. I firmly believe the sharp rise of the MISTER, and other FPGA projects, is closely tied to the fragmentation problem. The DE10-NANO is not a beacon of power, but is an immutable base to perfect the absolute edge of efficient expression for a given core. Even I am shocked by the Saturn Core's recent elevation within the MISTER community (literally happened in the last 48 hours or so). In terms of total power, the DE10-NANO is grossly under-powered when compared to standard ISAs, but those systems are very not standard computers.

 

[Leon]

Ahhh, I see. I forget that there is a greater ecosystem and Windows is not exactly the 'king' of anything (very especially these days).

Generally speaking the only major emulator that isn't natively supported on linux is xenia, though there are ways to get it working if you really need to.

Retroarch is more bearable if you use desktop mode instead of big picture mode, but you miss out on a few settings that way.
Overall i wouldn't bother with ares unless you can get the shaders working and even if you do retroarch has better shader support.

 

[SkoomaCatJesus]

Retroarch is more bearable if you use desktop mode instead of big picture mode, but you miss out on a few settings that way.
Overall i wouldn't bother with ares unless you can get the shaders working and even if you do retroarch has better shader support.

I use the nightly for Ares, but would really love to ditch Windows again. It's so frustrating. My favorite flavor of Linux for a long time was Xubuntu. I overshot my current build. it's a bit too high-end, even for my taste. My next system is going to be a Linux focused build. Plus, it is so much easier to build on Linux than windows. Github + Windows is still a complete cluste-f. I miss the days when I could make/build any project from any repo. For many of my emulator(s) (pulls out hair), I use reshade. I get a lot more customization in screens for Lottes and Frutbunn with reshade, but it is yet another program. But... (a very big but) If a new FPGA kit (like next gen) debutes and the community can agree upon it.?.?.? It would make things so much easier for me.

 

[RageBurner]

Having a Linux machine is a very cool idea, but I wouldn't want it to be my daily driver. I've been using windows since W95.

Post automatically merged: Jan 14, 2025

To clarify, I'm not saying it's better than Linux at all, I'm just used to it, like you get used to a car you've driven for years. Is it a super customized JDM jewel? no, not really but it does what it has to do.

 

[SkoomaCatJesus]

Having a Linux machine is a very cool idea, but I wouldn't want it to be my daily driver. I've been using windows since W95.

It's awesome, but you have to be careful about leaving power/performance on the table depending on parts. There is a bit more of a wall in the "general purpose" aspects of what you can and can't do. For the first time, I have an Nvidia card (blessing and curse). In Linux, Nvidia cards are a mixed bag of guessing which features and accelerators actually work (smiles, remembering Linus giving Nvidia the bird). Now, with AMD, that is an entirely different experience. An all AMD machine in Linux is a beast. OMG, I miss my old machine just thinking about it.

 

[RageBurner]

Yeah even as a complete layman I've read time and time again that AMD is the way to go with Linux. I'll keep that in mind if the opportunity ever presents itself.

 

[rodimusprimal]

Once I switched to using Mesen for NES it became my go to emulator for it. But I recently upgraded to 2.0 to use it for SNES and TG16 since I prefer the interface of it over everything else. Only thing is, my ROM folders are separated by console in a way that navigating to a different console is a bit tedious in file explorer.

As for Sega consoles, I'm still using Kega Fusion in compatibility mode. I do NOT like Retroarch on PC, and I don't care for ares, so I really wish a standalone emulator with an interface similar to Mesen was made.