WORST emulator you've played on?

[Karnik]

Well, someone mentioned Neko Project II as the worst PC98 emulator: absolutely ridiculous!!! I won't mention the users involved so as not to argue and ruin the friendly atmosphere. It's actually the best emulator of that old jpn PC, available on multiple platforms with good results (even on PSP it works great; tested extensively and thoroughly). Already  Anex86 and  T98-Next were good emulators a few years ago, but NP2 has always been the best in terms of performance and more compatible with the titles. Dosbox-x on the other hand is too recent and incomplete. If NP2 seems slow it's because it emulates the PC-9801 ( a 286 PC) and the games ran slow, with fairly long loading times and transitions, like on real hardware: these were the standards of that time, and it emulates it perfectly. Instead  NP2kai emulates a PC-9821 (386 pc) which was faster and tolerated more sophisticated and demanding games. Games that seem slow on NP2 actually reflect the original game speed (e.g. in Farland Story VI the transition between images is not immediate, but slow and smooth, or the loading of music tracks takes a few seconds). If anyone with actual experience knows more than me, I expect you to correct me.

It's true that everyone is free to rave and say what they want here, but if someone dares to say nonsense like the Earth is flat or the moon is made of cheese, I can't ignore them and look the other way.

 

[Ikagura]

I have a hard time properly emulating micro computers myself.

 

[Shameless]

Little while ago i wanted to get some 3D models out of Armored Core and found an emulator that does a graphics dump to pull models n textures, Avocado was the name. Game ran terrible and the visuals artifacted like nothing else. The whole 3d draw-call dumping thing is super duper cool tho, you can take kinda 3d model screenshots of the game.

 

[DanCalibur]

I have a hard time properly emulating micro computers myself.

Yeah, those are a bit more complicated. I had a nice surprise with PC98 emulation on retrobat with the NP2Kai core. It was almost a plug and play experience, it even allows mouse emulation on a controller for couch gameplay. I just finished Dragon Knight 1 (graph paper and all) with absolutely no problems.

 

[Cheela]

i think the worse experience i have with emulation was a gameboy emulator for java phones that i had to play pokemon crystal in my first cellphone. other than that... yeah Nesticle, the audio was soo off and the color were weird. But it was the first time i could play the Mario games on NES when my father taught me about the games he played when he was a child.

 

[gamecomrade]

Before BigPEmu came along and rocked the crap out of Atari Jaguar emulation, for many years the only emulator in active development was Virtual Jaguar. An utter dumpster fire - after being in development for 10+ years it still had less than 30% compatibility rate, and even games that worked, did so incredibly poorly.

NullDC was another terrible emulator that barely ever worked. I remember struggling to get something, ANYTHING to work on it.

 

[GeoHikari]

CITRA, sadly.

As this emulator are discontinued due for the Nintendo's famous ''anti-alternative methods to play their new releases'', the emulator itself are bad optimized even in Gaming PCs. Many games are not compatible, and others even shows slowmotions in GForce micros.

And before the release of Redream, the only way to play emulated Dreamcast games are on DCemu. The system are hard to understand, and an amout of games are half compatible.

But no ones, for me, are poorly made than CITRA.

 

[Johnadams1811]

PCSX2 1.6 was the hell in itself, and it's worse if you can't have a good computer to run it out (GTA SA and Devil May Cry setup was a nightmare)
It's more personal, but i can't figure out Saturn emulators, including RetroArch

 

[Tbest25]

CITRA, sadly.

As this emulator are discontinued due for the Nintendo's famous ''anti-alternative methods to play their new releases'', the emulator itself are bad optimized even in Gaming PCs. Many games are not compatible, and others even shows slowmotions in GForce micros.

And before the release of Redream, the only way to play emulated Dreamcast games are on DCemu. The system are hard to understand, and an amout of games are half compatible.

But no ones, for me, are poorly made than CITRA.

I see what you mean, but considering that Citra is the only reliable 3ds emulator(as in can run games a consistent framerate) i still think it came a long way until his last update. Funnily enough, i play all my 3ds games on my phone, that is more potent than my notebook. It's not the best emulator in the world, but gets the job done.

 

[GeoHikari]

I see what you mean, but considering that Citra is the only reliable 3ds emulator(as in can run games a consistent framerate) i still think it came a long way until his last update. Funnily enough, i play all my 3ds games on my phone, that is more potent than my notebook. It's not the best emulator in the world, but gets the job done.

I understand.

Next year I will buy a new and more potent Android. Maybe this one can work the entire CITRA. All of emulators I have installed are on my PC.

 

[Ikagura]

I tried Citra only once for SSB.

I prefer playing 3DS games on the 3DS unless there is no other alternatives.

 

[GeoHikari]

PCSX2 1.6 was the hell in itself, and it's worse if you can't have a good computer to run it out (GTA SA and Devil May Cry setup was a nightmare)
It's more personal, but i can't figure out Saturn emulators, including RetroArch

I have a PS2 console, when I buyed on 2014(this year marks the 10th anniversary of that day).

Emulating PS2 games on PC and mobiles can be tougher, depending of the RAM and model. Otherwise, there are the Redream, who easly runs Dreamcast games even in low micros.

 

[Tbest25]

I understand.

Next year I will buy a new and more potent Android. Maybe this one can work the entire CITRA. All of emulators I have installed are on my PC.

It doesn't need to be a powerful device, last generation stuff to run most 3ds games. Mine is moto g with 6 gb ram and 128 gb of internal memory. It has decent processor, and that's it. With this phone, i could play fire emblem birthright, mario kart 7 and even kingdom hearts dream drop distance, that i thought it wouldn't even start, but i manage to beat the first boss very smoothly (i was only testing to see if my phone was capable of running the game so i didn't go beyond that, could have slowdowns in other parts of the game, but for what i was expecting, the game worked a lot better than i thought it would).

 

[gokusmacksmyds]

I tried using retroarch's beetle core for saturn emulation but to map the controls is a nightmare.
The UI doesn't label 6 button gamepads correctly so you're pretty much bound to spend over an hour just figuring out what button you're mapping to where, even using a labelled diagram it wouldn't map correctly, I got so frustrated I uninstalled the entire thing and reverted back to mednafen with the GUI add-on.

Whenever I look up if other people have the same issue it's always a reddit thread mentioning the need for better controller mapping for the saturn / megadrive and a bunch of fanboys calling the OP a idiot or denying there's any issue, which has put me off retroarch completely

 

[Ikagura]

I tried using retroarch's beetle core for saturn emulation but to map the controls is a nightmare.
The UI doesn't label 6 button gamepads correctly so you're pretty much bound to spend over an hour just figuring out what button you're mapping to where, even using a labelled diagram it wouldn't map correctly, I got so frustrated I uninstalled the entire thing and reverted back to mednafen with the GUI add-on.

Whenever I look up if other people have the same issue it's always a reddit thread mentioning the need for better controller mapping for the saturn / megadrive and a bunch of fanboys calling the OP a idiot or denying there's any issue, which has put me off retroarch completely

I managed to bind correctly all buttons for Burning Rangers.

 

[gokusmacksmyds]

I managed to bind correctly all buttons for Burning Rangers.

Fair enough.
It's possible and probably the best way to upscale saturn games if thats your thing,
I'm just surprised retroarch doesn't have easier mapping for saturn gamepads after all these years.

 

[Ikagura]

Fair enough.
It's possible and probably the best way to upscale saturn games if thats your thing,
I'm just surprised retroarch doesn't have easier mapping for saturn gamepads after all these years.

Agreed, good emulators should have at least a base binding and allow analog L/R to be used like the usual.

The 3D pad is also convenient to have proper controls in 3D games.

 

[VampireLord1024]

I can't say that I've ever played on any bad emulators, as they've all worked pretty good for me.

 

[miguk]

I generally can't hate on emulators because they're mostly free software that contributes to bettering game preservation. Even quickly outdated ones like ZSNES have some value (although I could never see why people still loved it after SNES9X hit the scene).

That said, I hated NESticle. Not because it has been long outdated and replaced several times over by better emulators. Not because it forced fullscreen into a non-standard environment. No, it's because of the moron aesthetics. I don't ever want to use any software that turns my mouse cursor into a big bloody appendage, throws a bunch of extremely ugly spritework around like an old-school virus, and has a rather unsettling lewd icon.

I'm not a prude, mind you (I tend to play uncensored hacks when they are available, and I have some PC98 games). I just don't want to drown in the brainrot of a 14 year old every time I play a game.

 

[BassForever]

Ok to say that one is better than the other, but to say that Zsnes is the worst snes emulator (as the thread title asks) is clearly false. Anyway buddies like before.

To be fair the thread is "worst you've played on". I know there are far worse emulators out there than ZSNES, but the length of time I used it vs my frustration with it makes it hard to beat. Most other emulators that frustrated me I gave up on quickly.

 

[newageretrohippie]

The worst emulater i ever played on was a handheld dingux style called a "PCP Station" [sic].

i got it off wish.com 7 or 8 years ago... oddly enough it played neo geo and cps1 ok, but it was extremely bad at anything LESS powerful than that. weird

 

[Moreno909]

MAME despite being famous is horrible in user-friendly matters

 

[Ikagura]

MAME despite being famous is horrible in user-friendly matters

Sadly I cannot disagree.

 

[YoshifreakZX]

I would say ZSNES, but at the same time it's too nostalgic of an emulator for me, so probably ePSXe because it used to act really stupid with an old controller of mine and the interface being... just not good.

 

[Patches]

Not an emulator, but using my xbox one as a rig in commercial mode was going awesome until they updated it to block emulators and other tools and locked my mfing gamesaves inside. I was mid way through valkyria chronicles ii and didn't pick it back up for a year or more. It was much more entertaining emulating on my xbox opposed to my pc or phone, but no fun is allowed. (I know dev mode works, but that just sucks and wouldn't help my situation. I would like to see some mad lad put a brave browser UWP onto the xbox store though.)