Worst emulation experience(s)?

[A4lmond]

I tried emulating Mario Sunshine on a 15 year old laptop that had RAM issues as a teen, the game opened and ran at like 3 fps, then I got a blue screen during a cutscene, the screen froze and went black for literally 3 days and then randomly showed a blue screen again before going back to “normal” with the emulator still open, took me, no joke, like 2 hours just to close it because of how slow the laptop was.

Anyway now I know Mario Sunshine sucks without a controller so I wouldn't have played even if it ran well lol.

 

[flamesoul32]

The funniest experience for me has been exploring Vita3k on my Odin 2 (so Android). At this point some games work great, specifically I love playing two of my favorites Odin Sphere and Muramasa by Vanillaware. However when I first tried emulating Odin Sphere it literally did not load the background of any active scene.

So cutscenes, menu, UI, and your character worked flawlessly...just any scene were you were controlling your character was seen as your character walking on a black void. Killed the idea of having one of my favorite games portably for a long while (never had an actual Vita, only owned the game on Ps2 and PS3).

 

[Iraito]

Pcsx2 maaaaaaaaaaaaaaany years ago with suikoden III, it was lagging hard, it had corrupted textures, weird visual glitches etc. and yet i finished it

 

[Tilo]

Vita3k but I'm hopeful it'll become better in the future.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

Jaguar was such a shitshow that I never fully recovered.

Why waste the time. The Jag-U-R. blows. Did you really have an overwhelming need
to play Trevor Mc Fur or could you not live without the "Where did you learn to fly lady"
Again WHY. Id rather play toilet simulator. Wait if you are lucky enough to have the Jaguar CD
it looks just like a toilet.

Sorry Waffles, I luv ya but come on. Maybe if "you did the math" it might of worked. ( see I said the thing)

 

[Tabajara]

i remember trying play n64 on first xbox, the original xbox long time ago. That was a terrible experience, lol.
Less than a half of games booted and the games that actually worked had audio ou visual gliches. The first xbox had only 64mb of ram p3 cpu. Despite the efforts from the devs, the only game fully playable for me on n64 emulators for the original xbox was mario 64, lol

 

[majorseamen]

SNEmulDS used it to play earthbound on my ds a while back backgrounds didn't work music was all weird and it was pretty laggy
but somehow managed to finish the game on it if you dont have anything but the ds with r4 chip and you want to play some snes games it can suffice there isn't really an alternative​

 

[Deleted member 924886]

I've always had problems with N64 emulators. I have no idea, regardless of whether I had a powerful or a weak device, something always didn't work. It's a shame because there are some good Zelda hacks that I would love to play.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Saturn was... Interesting, but I got there in the end.

 

[Ikagura]

I remember using a Dreamcast emulator on mobile... it was always resetting each time I lowered the app.

 

[Deleted member 924886]

I remember using a Dreamcast emulator on mobile... it was always resetting each time I lowered the app.

Redream is a very good Dreamcast simulator and it works with any device.

 

[Masterofthefalcon]

I feel like N64 emulation has gotten worse over the years. Getting N64 to work without graphic or audio issues has always been difficult for me. Usually no matter what emulator I use or what settings I use it never runs as well as other emulators like Dolphin or even Duckstation. Got to the point that I just just wait for a PC port of any N64 game or play it off an N64 everdrive. Though it has been a few years since I've tried any N64 emulation.

 

[Rocket2049]

ZSNES is super duper TERRIBLE for some games
really bad sound quality
FF games various graphics issues (in FF5 you can't see yourself "underwater" i had to guess where i was!!)
i couldn't beat mario RPG because of a bug (might've been my save file idk)
i got stuck in R-type 3 because the walls on the final stage didn't move out the way (i'd crash and die over and over, there was no cheat codes to not die on wall contact)
but the 3d mode7 graphics were TERRIBLE AS HELL (mario kart, flying ship parts on FF games, f-zero, yoshis island 3d world map and etc)
it absolutely the emulator you should NEVER use
...so guess what emulator i used from like 95 up until the late 2000s!? i was pretty dumb back then lol.

SATURN
SATURN
SATURN!!!

First tried Yabasanshiro, couldn't even get it to start
Second tried MEDNAFEN, worked on light ones (The Twinkle Star Sprites port) but heavier ones were out of the question, and them its lack of hud made it a chore to play
Third i played Kronos, the so called Saturn's Duckstation, it ran perfectly... but it didn't detect controllers and it was as responsive as a sedated sloth anyways

Mercifully fourth time was the charm and now i emulate it with Bizhawk

you can give medanfen a UI, mednaFFE, its what i use, my emulation is flawless (anything i tried)
btw, bizhawk uses Mednafen for saturn emulation, so its effectively the same thing in different UI

you should check out the new emulator Ymir, it's quite good
sound quality worked better,
it SUPPORTS CHDs which you should be using for a much smaller rom size!!
the rewinding feature is done very smoothly.

 

[Bakuma1997]

you can give medanfen a UI, mednaFFE, its what i use, my emulation is flawless (anything i tried)
btw, bizhawk uses Mednafen for saturn emulation, so its effectively the same thing in different UI

you should check out the new emulator Ymir, it's quite good
sound quality worked better,
it SUPPORTS CHDs which you should be using for a much smaller rom size!!
the rewinding feature is done very smoothly.

May consider it, how good it is with the "Heavy duty" ones (Panzer Dragoon, Shining Force III, Burning Force)

 

[Ikagura]

ZSNES is super duper TERRIBLE for some games.

Yep, Kirby's Dream Land 3 is unplayable with it sadly.

 

[Rocket2049]

May consider it, how good it is with the "Heavy duty" ones (Panzer Dragoon, Shining Force III, Burning Force)

shining force 3 i played disc 1 (japanese translated version) for a long period of time it was perfectly fine nothing i noticed (less issues than mednafen for me, the sound of voices was odd, this didn't happen on ymir)
panzer dragoon just works, zwei also, though i never had issues on other saturn emu for those 2

 

[shannon weed]

Im pretty fine with emulators nowadays


Emulated the 2010 splatterhouse remake on xenia canary and went fine despite a glitch with the subs


My worst experience would be Destroy all humans 2 on pcsx2 some crashes and a clipping issue

Post automatically merged: Apr 6, 2026

Yep, Kirby's Dream Land 3 is unplayable with it sadly.

any SNES emu recommendation for that game?

 

[Ikagura]

Yep, Kirby's Dream Land 3 is unplayable with it sadly.

Any SNES emu recommendation for that game?

I can recommend SNES9x, BSNES, Ares or Mesen.

 

[YoshifreakZX]

Dolphin netplay has been kinda infuriating for me and a couple of friends lately. To the point where we just Parsec instead whenever we're in the mood for GameCube/Wii multi-player.

 

[Zerpina]

Honestly, Xemu has to be one of, if not the worst emulators ever. I will cut it some slack since it was a dead project for a while, but come on. If the team that worked on PCSX2 gave it a shot, I bet it would be close to, if not as good as the PCSX2 emulator in a couple years time....

However, Xemu is only second to RPCS3. It constantly needs to compile shaders and pipelines, and even when set up correctly, the only game I care about, DOA5, constantly crashes. It's such a pain in the ass to get it working properly. I bought a PHAT PS3 and jailbroken it just to avoid just to not have to put up with RPCS3's ass

 

[shannon weed]

dunno if xemu will get updates fixing his issues in the time being

I hope so, because the original xbox catalogue is neat (NG Black, more polished ports, OG Halo 1 & 2, the Sega stuff etc)

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

I emulated the Neon Genesis Evangelion N64 game on God knows what emulator back in 2007/8 and I remember it running like ass.
Not in a "This is too slow but I can adjust" way it would go from full speed to slow-motion and flip between the two with no notice.

 

[RetroPixelLizard]

One bad experience of mine: Trying to emulate the Phillips CD-i.

There Is only one emulator and I remember It being stuck behind a paywall after the demo trial peroid ended, plus It ran way too fast for several games, and elarned It was mostly developed for a port of the CD-i port of Rise of the Robots If I remembere correctly.

Months later, learned MAME can emulate the CD-i and enjoyed a bit of Link: Faces of Evil and The CD-i Tetris, I'm sure there's a real hidden gem stuck on the CD-i somewhere and It could have been Mario's Wacky Worlds If It got finished.

 

[-------]

Nintendo 64 emulators are my enemies.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Nintendo 64 emulators are my enemies.

Rosalie's Mupen GUI may be your solution