WORST emulator you've played on?

[thecatillaccat]

Yabause, I get it, Sega Saturn is hell to emulate, but i couldn't even get mine to play flipping Twinkle Star Sprites, a game barely demanding (It's only 60MB)
Other one must be Ootake, a Turbografx Cd, menu way too minimal, commands for settings, barely acurracy in BARELY DEMANDING games, and worst of all, no support for CD games, considering they are exclusives there, i call it awful and it deserves the No Reccomended in Emulation General

Fortunately as soon as i grasped Bizhawk, both of them are easly supprased and i can finally enjoy Panzer Dragoon and Gradius II

God. Yabause. I am vomiting emotionally.

 

[Bakuma1997]

The snes emulator on the ds for the R4 (snemulDS). I tried to play SMT 1 and I had to lower the graphics setting of the emulator to minimun and then the emulator crashes itself. And another one would be the majority of the old N64 emulators on portable consoles like the one on psp that have like one compatible game and the sucessor on vita is not that good either.

Any desktop console past 16 bits run badly there, Jenesis also gives the suck and is allegdly the best of both aviable

 

[RageBurner]

Yabause, I get it, Sega Saturn is hell to emulate, but i couldn't even get mine to play flipping Twinkle Star Sprites, a game barely demanding (It's only 60MB)
Other one must be Ootake, a Turbografx Cd, menu way too minimal, commands for settings, barely acurracy in BARELY DEMANDING games, and worst of all, no support for CD games, considering they are exclusives there, i call it awful and it deserves the No Reccomended in Emulation General

Fortunately as soon as i grasped Bizhawk, both of them are easly supprased and i can finally enjoy Panzer Dragoon and Gradius II

I don't like Yabause or any of its forks either. It doesn't seem to be able to maintain a consistent framerate and keeps tearing the image, and it doesn't map my controller right, either.

Hard to argue against Mednafem for Saturn if you can run it (the Mednaffe front-end is great).

 

[BomingWaffle]

I don't really wanna call it bad because it's still very much playable but using the GeePee32 is still a very sad reminder of cases of lack of game preservation in some area.

It's the only emulator I know of for the Korean handheld GamePark 32. I think I had trouble running it at 1st because I needed a bios and trying to find that out was very hard. I feel very lucky someone helped me with it but such a shame there's like no info on what to do.

My only problems with the emulator itself are still sort of big ones tho, no audio is able to be played and you can't really make the window bigger without stretching it (it has two size options that are still pretty small).

I have a English patch of a game I hope to someday I be allowed to upload here, it's kind of out of the way to get it and something I also needed help with from the same person.

 

[AceOfAces]

NESticle. Just... yeah.

 

[thecatillaccat]

NESticle. Just... yeah.

The best, and the worst. Rest in power, you glorious bastard.

 

[otogirisou]

MAME because it takes a lot of time getting used to it, especially everytime the ROMset was updated, the emulator never mention it, make users wondering why some games doesn't work.

Neko project II similar to MAME. Plus, the save states were shared between games (at least by default), which is weird.

PK201 the need to constantly renaming and moving files is redundant, i hope someday there's a PlayStation emulator with built in PocketStation emulator.

Those BSNES/Higan version with folder system. Glad they ditched it.

Any android emulator because they are either bloatware or straight up malware.

 

[DunkeyKong]

Before Duckstation…there's ePSXe, and dear god

I really don't like how even after I did everything right, it still doesn't work, doesn't run any games, overall it's awful

The one that I hate the least, maybe Retroarch. And yes some says emulation is easy (for some that is). But even the most expert couldn't handle "that" kind of UI

This is reasonable of course, because it's a multiplatform type of emulator. I would love it if it shows you an option after you download it to change it to"user friendly" UI, would've made it much easier for me to explore

But at least it can run games (not just one system too) so…better than ePSXe

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Yeah. You needed a frontend, managing per-game configs (essential for PS2) was a nightmare, it was unstable, the list goes on.

Ive used it all my late teens and had no idea it got simpler! I have 5 ps2s now, last time I used it mustve been like..2016-17?

 

[RageBurner]

Ive used it all my late teens and had no idea it got simpler! I have 5 ps2s now, last time I used it mustve been like..2016-17?

Yeah it's much better to use and better optimized. It got to that "better than the real thing' point mature emulators evolve into. Of course a purist will never agree, but not everyone is a purist (myself included).

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Before Duckstation…there's ePSXe, and dear god

I really don't like how even after I did everything right, it still doesn't work, doesn't run any games, overall it's awful

The one that I hate the least, maybe Retroarch. And yes some says emulation is easy (for some that is). But even the most expert couldn't handle "that" kind of UI

This is reasonable of course, because it's a multiplatform type of emulator. I would love it if it shows you an option after you download it to change it to"user friendly" UI, would've made it much easier for me to explore

But at least it can run games (not just one system too) so…better than ePSXe

How come epsexe was difficult for some people? I had no problem with it when I was 16

Yeah it's much better to use and better optimized. It got to that "better than the real thing' point mature emulators evolve into. Of course a purist will never agree, but not everyone is a purist (myself included).

I really wish converting vga to rgb on a crt was easier (send this to a normie to confuse him)

 

[DunkeyKong]

How come epsexe was difficult for some people? I had no problem with it when I was 16

The old versions used to be complicated, not exactly hard but it still doesn't work sometimes

But again, not everyone knows (especially me) how to use some emulator. Also 16? Sounds like you're really good with this stuff before

 

[Lee__Kanker]

The old versions used to be complicated, not exactly hard but it still doesn't work sometimes

But again, not everyone knows (especially me) how to use some emulator. Also 16? Sounds like you're really good with this stuff before

I mean you put the stuff in the right folders then load the .cue file right? Mapping every single button was a bit of a pain and sometimes I had to do it twice or thrice but it wasnt the end of the world

 

[DunkeyKong]

I mean you put the stuff in the right folders then load the .cue file right? Mapping every single button was a bit of a pain and sometimes I had to do it twice or thrice but it wasnt the end of the world

Right…but I guess I just did something wrong, maybe because my 12? 15? years old self doesn't like how it doesn't managed to work even with tutorials

I did remember the folder stuff though, not sure if it was in the right order or folder

 

[AceOfAces]

I mean you put the stuff in the right folders then load the .cue file right?

Sometimes. Some games wanted the .bin file instead. For ages it didn't allow live disc swapping so stuff like Monster Rancher was unplayable and playing multi-disc games was complicated. You generally had to download plugins from external sites rather than them being bundled with the emulator. You had to make sure you had the right bios file because there was not usually a home-made emulated bios.
If you're ancient and are used to fiddling stuff in batch files, running stuff from DOS, etc. it was fairly easy, but that's not the PC experience for a lot of people born in the 90s or later, and of course being an emulator at the time there was some chunky CPU overhead and it could be pretty scattershot on whether a game worked, and if it didn't work, if it was your fault because of a misconfigured setting (what's a tooltip lmao) or if it was just a problem with the emulator (compatability wikis didn't exist, for example).

Xenia is still like this but most other emulators are a lot better at explaining themselves nowadays. RPCS3 is probably the next problematic one because PS3 games can do some really weird things like load a UI layer over an FMV and RPCS3 is not set up to cope with that, so playing the Masoukishin games on them is awful.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Sometimes. Some games wanted the .bin file instead. For ages it didn't allow live disc swapping so stuff like Monster Rancher was unplayable and playing multi-disc games was complicated. You generally had to download plugins from external sites rather than them being bundled with the emulator. You had to make sure you had the right bios file because there was not usually a home-made emulated bios.
If you're ancient and are used to fiddling stuff in batch files, running stuff from DOS, etc. it was fairly easy, but that's not the PC experience for a lot of people born in the 90s or later, and of course being an emulator at the time there was some chunky CPU overhead and it could be pretty scattershot on whether a game worked, and if it didn't work, if it was your fault because of a misconfigured setting (what's a tooltip lmao) or if it was just a problem with the emulator (compatability wikis didn't exist, for example).

Xenia is still like this but most other emulators are a lot better at explaining themselves nowadays. RPCS3 is probably the next problematic one because PS3 games can do some really weird things like load a UI layer over an FMV and RPCS3 is not set up to cope with that, so playing the Masoukishin games on them is awful.

I dont remember not being able to do disc swap but I never tried it, I do remember requiring the right bios and plugins; Id just google stuff on a game to game basies (I dont remember there being an epsexe wiki but googling always solved my issues), I still use specific bios I thought emulated bios equal less compatibility
I had a pretty good 700 euro laptop so no cpu issues but I can see that not being most people

Ofc I only played some 20ish games as finding a modded ps1 in italy is as easy as finding bread in a bakery


So now its as simple as famicom and game boy emulators?

 

[Mr. SyS]

PocketNES in Visual Boy Advance. Emulating an emulator is cool in a meta sense but performance takes a nosedive.

 

[ZeraX7]

Every Saturn emulator
No$gba was my friend back in 2007 or something when I could emulate DS games on my old junk PC so can't hate it much even though it's obsolete now

 

[Boo Man]

Yeah. You needed a frontend, managing per-game configs (essential for PS2) was a nightmare, it was unstable, the list goes on.

wow ok im trying to use it to play light gun games and yeah i dont like it compared to new versions but i dont think new versions can do it or if they can i dont know how yet
https://www.sindenwiki.org/wiki/PCSX2
all the other emulators were easy to setup but it sucks for PCSX2

 

[Ikagura]

ZSNES, while great for its time, has become less convenient for me until I got into SNES9x and BSNES(HD).

ePSXe as well.

Yabause kinda worked for Radiant Silvergun but Yaba Sanshiro is better. Although Beetle Saturn is how I ended up finishing Burning Rangers.

 

[Bakuma1997]

PocketNES in Visual Boy Advance. Emulating an emulator is cool in a meta sense but performance takes a nosedive.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?!?!? *Universe collapses*

 

[DanCalibur]

Regarding zsnes I absolutely disagree. On ms-dos it was the best snes emulator available, with a great interface, and a lot of graphic and sound options, and good performance. I wonder if we're talking about the same thing. With due respect, some people speak just to say something, without knowledge of the facts and against all evidenced

Regarding zsnes I absolutely disagree. On ms-dos it was the best snes emulator available, with a great interface, and a lot of graphic and sound options, and good performance. I wonder if we're talking about the same thing. With due respect, some people speak just to say something, without knowledge of the facts and against all evidence.

To me ZSNES is THE most iconic emulator ever, I really miss that classic interface. I was forced to move to Snes9x simply cuz ZSNES is broken on newer Windows versions.

 

[Urutau RX]

If I had to pick one, it would be a nes emulator for nokia phones
I don't remember the name, I think it was NEScube or something like that, in any case I didn't manage to play anything at all, it only allowed me to click in the rom at hand and only see the title screen, with midi-like versions of the music, no matter what buttons I pressed, nothing happened
I still have my nokia asha somewhere, I kinda miss the cool themes it had from time to time

 

[Karnik]

If I had to pick one, it would be a nes emulator for nokia phones
I don't remember the name, I think it was NEScube or something like that, in any case I didn't manage to play anything at all, it only allowed me to click in the rom at hand and only see the title screen, with midi-like versions of the music, no matter what buttons I pressed, nothing happened
I still have my nokia asha somewhere, I kinda miss the cool themes it had from time to time

Nah! NEScube was a great emulator for Series40 phones. If it didn't work in your case, it was for one of these reasons: 1) s30 operating system (not s40), 2) MIDP 1.0 phone (must be 2.0), 3) SD card inaccessible (no permissions), 4) potato phone.
It's actually an excellent emulator, only in your case it failed; on Nokia 206 it runs a little slow but on Nokia 301 it is perfect. It is possible to play both with roms on micro-SD and with roms already attached to the emulator via PC (in this case slightly faster).

That said, I'm glad someone still appreciates these old models; I still play Gameloft java games there.

 

[DanCalibur]

EPSXE was amazing, we were still using bleem! at the time, it was a huge advance.
Pros: You can tweak everything
Cons: You have to tweak everything