Worst emulation experience(s)?

[Morgan Katarn]

Have you tried the emulator since 2.0? Most game specific settings are applied automatically now.

nope have not used it in like 8 years I think. I mean no need when I can just put games on my 2TB sata disk and start up free mac boot and play.

 

[Retro Doomer]

Well my worst Emulator experiences I had where.
Ps2.Mostly because if have a very very old Computer

and this is why most games run like our politicians run our countries utterly rubbish.
And so I gave up on emulating Ps2 as I lack the financial means of purchasing a good Computer or even just the upgrade parts for my current one.

Sega Saturn.It does run better for the most part but even then I experience often a large framerate drop much to my dismay and it gets very slow.

Nintendo 3ds.I did try one game and it was so slow like our politicians making any decisions
needless to say I gave up on it very quickly as I have not much hope for it.

PSP.It is a mixed bag some games run great while others do not to the point of not loading or
breaking mid game.

NDS.Also a mixed bag I get some slow frame rates which can be annoying but unlike when I emulate Ps2 games its acceptable enough for me as I still can play the games on that system without to much annoyance.

 

[Reticent]

RetroArch is the reason why I use standalone emulators, lol I feel like I'm doing so much backtracking when tinkering with settings and trying to find what I'm actually looking for

 

[NeonKnights]

RetroArch is the reason why I use standalone emulators, lol I feel like I'm doing so much backtracking when tinkering with settings and trying to find what I'm actually looking for

This. I tried using Retroarch for a while but I had so many issues with it I switched to standalone emulators and never went back. Now I'm spending more time playing games instead of trying to deal with the clunky UI and messing with settings. I also dislike using the UI in general. I might give it another chance though but only for using CRT filters to watch EVA on it someday.

 

[Langoblian]

Had a really crappy $100 laptop as a kid that I wanted to use to play The World Ends With You, I made it through maybe half the game on NO$GBA with the game chugging pretty poorly, I mostly stopped because I was underleveled since I was trying to coast through the game as much as I could without engaging in the combat as playing it with a mouse made my hand hurt. I'm glad I finally got a DS later on and played the game on there, one of my favorites to this day.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

I remember that when I was a kid I was emulating paper mario 64, but the game ALWAYS crashed right after that one cutscene where peach meets that little star whose name I forgot

 

[JoystickV2]

Emulating N64 and Dreamcast on my Raspberry Pi was always a roulette of chaos. It could either end with a rather decent emulation of the game or CHUGFEST 2019 EDITION!

For Dreamcast at least I could play Project Justice rather well (as long as I didn't select the construction site, that place was glitched up the ass), and Tech Romancer worked fine too (some minor graphical glitches, but nothing that horrible), but none of the N64 titles worked that well, they always had some problems with the graphics ç.ç

Also, not a console, but rather two games: F-Zero GX and Bloody Roar: Primal Fury.

In my previous PC (which wasn't that good), F-Zero GX usually ran well, but if I tried to run at 720p and up, it had some really annoying stuttering. In my current PC, it works well enough at least, even if I believe the game is sometimes having a micro stutter during the menus, but gameplay is smooth.

But Bloody Roar for some reason ALWAYS has some moments where the framerate drops to single digits before going back to normal, and I tried multiple ISOs from this game and they all show the same results ç.ç

 

[TheSoulWalker TheSoulWalker]

MAME and Xemu both SUCK to get working. Always hated having to have BIOS files on Emulators and Xemu needed a formatted fake HDD to run on top of it, and then MAME's issue with needing multiple versions of the same rom zip folder in order to play games. It had a heavy hand into why I said screw it and started collecting physical games.

 

[DanCalibur]

Trying to run PCSX2 on my old AMD Phenom 2 X4 with a GeForce 8400GS

 

[Luxfin]

My worst emulation experience is blunt rotation of pain. For reference, my uncle gave me his old Windows 8.1 Thinkpad back when I was 8 or 9 and that was how the following nightmare that happened to me before I got a semi-decent pc later on:
DeSmuMe constantly crapping the bed if I mess the graphics setting or it completely speeds the game up to unplayable levels if I set 100.
ePSXe displayed distorted colors and major audio studders.
Project 64 (in this case 1.6 and 2.0) running like complete garbage or crash at some points along with the stupid plugin system.
Retroarch being Retroarch
Along with MAME not recognizing the games unless I have it in a specific file format along with not recognizing any of controller or not letting me map it on other buttons except one.

 

[Danteh]

Welp i had various experiences with crappy emulators or experimental ones.

I have a ''magic'' PS3 and i found out that is ''possible'' to emulate PSP games on the PS3. So i installed the required apps, and some PSP roms like Metal Slug XX and Metal Gear Ac!d obviously didn't work properly and the games that i tried to run are glitchy or just stuck on a black screen and i gave up it happened like 7 years ago

4 Years ago i played the first Wild Arms using Retroarch i don't remember if i was using BeetlePSX or PCSXRearmed and i cannot beat the game because the game freezes when you visit ANY store.

Retroarch again i tried to play Super Castlevania 4 and it was glitchy unplayable etc even with other games like Super PunchOut and Final Fantasy VI

When i was a kid my older sister had a Nokia phone with a NES emulator it came with Battletoads Contra Adventure Island and Battle City. This is probably my WORST experience with emulation because the emulator was so bad that the games didn't have sound and you cannot even beat the first level in those games because the emulator crashes in the first 5 minutes it feels like playing on those old NES emulators from the 90s

 

[Aziamuth]

On my oldest PC, getting Dolphin to work past 20 FPS was nigh impossible. I got used to it.

 

[moonbits]

Trying to run PCSX2 on my old AMD Phenom 2 X4 with a GeForce 8400GS

You were asking for it.

 

[DanCalibur]

You were asking for it.

A lesson well learned, now I'm pretty sure that GPU was slower than the onboard graphics

 

[zacharinolongpants]

Wii U emulation was weird as hell when I tried it some years ago. I remember it came with its own like... private client to get games and stuff. I bet it's better now, but between having the big second screen controller be represented by a window on the computer and the games still having glitches and spotty compatibility, I gave up on it.

 

[redux007]

Title can be misleading, but by that I mean what were for you the worst console experiences you've tried (or attempted) via emulator in the past (or even present).

• PS1 to emulate, for me, was pure chaos with BIOS and finding the right ones. I did got the gist and made work ePSXe even in my first smartphone ever. Duckstation then made everything so much easier.
• Nowadays stuff like Dolphin and PCSX2 works amazingly, but the latter was a huge pain to make it start on my previous PCs (obviously far weaker) and when I tried to emulate many games it lagged like hell. Games like FF X and JoJo Ougon No Kaze worked fine, but then 2006 ones like Dawn of Mana or JoJo Phantom Blood for PS2 it was pure hell. 4 FPS of (already) horrid gameplay.
• Lately with VBA and Project64 I'm having some issues of optimization, but if the later can still be bearable, trying Sonic Advance 3 on VBA was atrocious. No idea since most of other games work fine. But I should learn how to use proper settings (and make it look like this)

Any arcade emulator, ever. Just went a few rounds with a handful of them and they're uniformly horrid. Primarily terrible GUI's mixed with extremely demanding and weird compatibility issues.

 

[Nickakyoin]

RetroArch is the reason why I use standalone emulators, lol I feel like I'm doing so much backtracking when tinkering with settings and trying to find what I'm actually looking for

RetroArch for me was good (even if incredibly clunky to make it work) for online multiplayer with friends. Aside from that it always felt like a mess. Also, for some reasons, PS1 games patched in english never seemed to work properly.

 

[Jdan-S]

Emulating NES and Sega Master System on original PS1 hardware:

However, the disc was still useful since you can access all the ROMs on PC and play them on a proper emulator.

 

[Franz_Thieppel]

My worst experiences were definitely with RetroArch. I've never gotten angry and actually cursed at a piece of software like I did with that one and its insanely baffling errors, crashes and design choices.

But it gave me my best experices too. None of its problems changed the fact that it's the best and I still won't use standalone if I have a choice.

 

[Nickakyoin]

My worst experiences were definitely with RetroArch. I've never gotten angry and actually cursed at a piece of software like I did with that one and its insanely baffling errors, crashes and design choices.

But it gave me my best experices too. None of its problems changed the fact that it's the best and I still won't use standalone if I have a choice.

Yesterday night I was already in the desperate mentality in the attempt of making the Battletoads arcade. I hate so much that when you're in-game and go to the Retroarch options you need to return back in the main menu and then search the "resume game". But watch out from pressing Esc twice, otherwise say bye to your progresses.

Beside that the program still slaps and managing to make CRT and Arcade filters properly working was a dream coming true.

 

[merzbun]

not really too excruciating but the first time i tried to play the translation of saturn baroque i patched it manually (which i had never done before) and was just using retroarch cores (didn't really know how to actually set up an emulator) and the result was... interesting. basically all of the text was like, stuck between layers of graphics on the screen? like it would show up in the sky but all ground and npc sprites would block it. i've never seen something like that before or since it was really funny. complete mess lol. thanking god every day that i understand the basics of emu now and i never have to use retroarch again

 

[semyaza]

Rpcs3+drakengard3 was the worst but also the best emulation experience, i played it when rpcs wasnt as far into development and while i love the game it clearly needed another century or two in the oven, shoutout to the OGs out there who did this beauty on real hardware

 

[Crashbandi]

For me now its the Big N last gen console. I got a certain Pirate game working pretty decent. However with no change to setting or anything I'll try to restart a stage and there'll be no background or other characters on screen just brown nothingness. I'll just be getting my ass whooped by invisible enemies.

 

[Xarr]

The only major issues I have had is with Sega Saturn emulators beetle and kronos, and Opera 3DO retroarch core was kind of a pain but my complaint about it is I couldn't get cheats or the game guru cheat save device to work.

 

[DjQuick2008]

The only major issues I have had is with Sega Saturn emulators beetle and kronos, and Opera 3DO retroarch core was kind of a pain but my complaint about it is I couldn't get cheats or the game guru cheat save device to work.

I tried getting saturn to work the other day and had no luck guess ill stick with it on my handhelds for now or my retrobat hard drives.