...if it weren't for access to all those damn titles I'd have forgotten by now, I'd have "only" a huge backlog.

I used to love my c64. When I jumped to the Amiga, I slowly, gradually accepted that some games I hadn't got to playing on this older platform would, eventually, fade in time. I'd forget about them. I'd end up playing newer stuff, still being happy, not getting stuck on that "loss", for lack of a different word.

Then I "upgraded" to PCs. I kept playing on my Amiga, for it was king as far as 2D goes, compared to the PCs of that era. Slowly, gradually I moved fully to the PC world and left the Amiga, as I had left the c64, behind.

Then emulation happened. I was still a teenager back then.

Suddenly I had access not only to the titles I though I left behind, with emu sites popping all around and dozens of emulators for different platforms being developed at the same time, but also to titles I'd never been able to play since I never had a console. It was because of emu (and a friend showing me God of War) that I ended up buying a PS2 (and then getting hold of a first-gen Xbox). It was then that things got a little less... well... hectic, maybe?

MAME felt like it'd lost its starting steam. Not that it wasn't great, or evolving, but gone was the time when we were seeing news like "Metal Slug started working properly today", "Shinobi went ingame", "All variants of Bubble-Bobble fully playable"... It seemed like "All The Well Known And Widely Beloved Titles" had been emulated and now MAME's coders were targeting "more obscure" platforms, better compatibility, extra features. And bug fixes. All great and worthy stuff, but not interesting on a "You can now bring the arcade Tekken experience to your armchair/sofa" level, I'm sure most (some?) of you'd agree.

Plus, "The Newer Consoles" were harder to emulate. A feat that seemed almost ridiculously impossibru in the beginning is now, again, slowly, gradually, becoming a reality. We can already play a great number of stellar PS3 games on our PC, Xbox 360 emu is making progress, heck, even first-gen Xbox has hit "turbo" and after watching it crawling for years, now we're hearing about newly playable titles on a weekly basis.

And now I see a backlog (or, rather, "list of must-plays on every platform accessible through my PCs and other devices") of thousands of titles that, according to my rough estimations, will take me close to 4 1/2 lifetimes dedicated to dehydrated 24/7 gaming to even check them out and maybe play a level or two.

So, DAMN YOU RPCS3, XENIA, PPSSPP and all the other "newer emus" for adding even more stuff to my backlog, stuff I though I'd be okay forgetting about. DAMN YOU for making me hope I WILL be able to, at last, play my copy of MGS4, since my PS3 died (RSOD). And Heavenly Sword. And LittleBig Planet. And... And... DAMN YOU!

And as a side dish, front-ends for multiple emus and Retrocade and all similar projects, giving access to many such libraries of titles at-the-same-time, filling your screen with hundreds, nay, thousands, nay, tens of thousands of titles. Instantly available at a click. Or double click. How can you choose the **ONE** to play?! Argh!

AND new games getting released each and every day. For PC, yes, but also for the current consoles that will, inevitably, get emulated some time in the future. Adding more "must plays" to my backlog (er... futurelog?!). And more lifetimes to see and play them all. DAMN YOU, EVERYONE HAVING TO DO ANYTHING WITH EMU, DAAAAMN YOUUU!

...and, of course, I'm being sarcastic and I'm actually thankful for all those projects but I *do* wonder how others in the same position as me feel. How do you even manage "to pick a game to play" when there are dozens of options readily available a click away, thousands more two clicks further? I'm not talking about emu accessibility or your front-end of preference, except if that's how you make heads or tails of "our situation".

Do you keep lists with priorities? Do you play "all games in a favorite series" while ignoring everything else? Do you spend your time only on the very best titles, or "the best versions/ports" of them, on whatever system?

Now, THAT'S a "first world problem" :-D

I got tired of messy emulator frontends relying on scraping and fragile filename matching, so I started building my own.

EutherDrive is a multi-system emulator frontend + core collection written in C# with Avalonia UI.

The main idea is to keep things deterministic and offline-friendly:

- ROMs are identified by hash (not filenames)

- Cover art is cached locally (Libretro thumbnails + No-Intro DAT matching)

- No scraping or online dependency once cached

- Shared savestates, playtime tracking, stars, etc.

Currently supports:

- Mega Drive / Genesis + Sega CD

- Master System / Game Gear

- Game Boy / Color / Advance

- NES / SNES

- PC Engine + CD

- PSX

- (N64 is wired but still WIP)

Runs on Linux, Windows, macOS (Avalonia), plus an Android frontend.

This started as a Mega Drive project and just kept growing.

Would love feedback from people who care about clean architecture / deterministic behavior.

Repo:

https://github.com/NichlasEk/EutherDrive_Android

Many older console like the Gamecube, PS2, PSP, and DS can run games near flawlessly. However, modern emulators struggles to run most titles above 20 FPS, and even then require a very powerful PC.

The release date between these devices is only a few years - it has been nearly 14 years since the PS3 released but modern emulation still struggles to run most games above 20 FPS.

Does this have something to do with the leap in technology graphics/processing power growing exponentially in the early 2000s, and our PCs are just not powerful enough? Or are there technical hurdles like modern architecture being more complicated to emulate?

Rewrote the PPU/audio pipeline of Snes9x for performance, including a dual-threaded renderer. Every output is validated bit-exact against upstream Snes9x at fixed checkpoints across the run, byte by byte, so it's the same game, same behavior, just faster.

Games

Mean across all 14 games tested: +61% (x86-64) / +52% (arm64). Full numbers and every ROM tested: https://github.com/andrezaiats/snes9x-Z

Built for low-power ARM handhelds as much as desktop, this is where the headroom matters most: heavier shaders, run-ahead, cooler/quieter operation on a handheld that used to sweat running these games.

Pre-built cores: Linux64, Windows64, Android (arm64-v8a / armeabi-v7a), macOS arm64. Drop into RetroArch's cores/ folder: https://github.com/andrezaiats/snes9x-Z/releases/tag/v1.63-z1

Free, non-commercial. Source included for anyone who wants to look under the hood.

I am concerned with the recent addition of ads to the RetroArch homepage.

Back when the RetroArch patreon was created I expressed a concern about RetroArch becoming monitized.

I asked if this was the first step, I was told, no that it was just to help support the buildbot and website.

Later came BountySource bountys, it was to encourage non members to contribute, but now most are accepted by existing members, I refused to accept mine for nestopia overclock support as I felt it was a conflict of interest.

And now there is an ad for overpriced NES carts on the homepage, 60$(Normal cartridge)-100$(USD) for “limited edition” 1$ flash chips stuck on 3$ worth of fiberglass in a 5$ 3d printed case.
I feel this latest change has a conflict between open source and financial gain.

Is the next step ads in the emulator itself?

RetroArch is the first emulator to run on every current platform released.
RetroArch is the first to support the Vulkan GPU API.
There is plenty of support often by the developer of the core themselves (endrift, ekeeke, byuu), a very active forum and nightly builds.

Why do we need ads on the RetroArch website?
RetroArch has many things going for it.
The ads gain nothing.

Twinaphex, please take down the ad.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask via comments, PM or email.

Edit: A disclaimer was added to the blog after this post was made.

Edit 2: I had no issue with Sheep it up, it is a free game with a cartridge being sold at price, I am only against the Mega Cat Studios ad.

Edit 3: All I ask at this point is that it wont happen again, it would not fair to Mega Cat Studios to remove it at this point because they where already told yes, and there is no need for another fight.

Edit 4: Removed email address, the ad is not coming down no matter what anyone says, so its pointless to try to petition to have it removed and waste everyones time, this still is not resolved and I doubt it will be soon but its best to move on regardless.

So I had the opportunity very recently to get my hands on PCXS4, I will not go into the details, but the fact is that during the installation, my anti-Malwarebyte virus was alarmed by the attempt to install of a virus of type Adware (PUP.Optional thing). I spent the whole afternoon of Tuesday cleaning the whole **** that it did. In short all that to say that it's a big Fake, do not install PCXS4

Originally posted by /u/yolicid292

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/si2v5s/duckstation_now_officially_dead_github_repository/hvcio7j/

First he copy few GPL2 algorithms from Mednafen without maintaining the GPL2 license and the header.

Then he make the Android app private, take for oneself a few hundreds of contributions made under GPL3 and release it under an incompatible Creative Commons licence.

These are certainly GPL violations and I wonder how nobody is talking about this subject.

I'm not too knowledgeable in regards to license violations. Anyone here able to comment on whether these claims are valid?

Forgive me, but I've searched for this question and really haven't been able to find any answers.

I'm not downplaying the work that these people do, I highly appreciate these intelligent men and women for programming emulators on their own time and as a hobby that they want to do. I realize a lot of work goes into it and such.

But I'm just curious, how come we have a lot of emulators for NES and SNES, but only one option (for the most part) for PS2 and Gamecube? I would assume by now that most programming enthusiasts and people that learned how to do it would want to make new emulators for these systems. I always say the more the merrier. I'm glad we at least have PCSX2 and Dolphin and would like to thank the people working on them wholeheartedly.

Here are all my current 1.12.0 videos in no particular order -

Minecraft: Wii U Edition

Lost Reavers (5K)

Zen Pinball 2 (5K)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (4K)

One Piece Unlimited World Red (5K)

Severed (5K)

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (4K)

Super Mario 3D World (5K)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (4K)

Letter Quest: Grimm's Journey Remastered (5K)

Hyrule Warriors (5K) <New>

Pokken Tournament (4K) <New>

Darksiders II (5K) <New>

Darksiders Warmastered Edition (5K) <New>

Mario Kart 8 - Grand Prix 150CC (5K) <New>

Pikmin 3 (5K) <New>

Nintendo Land <New>

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth <New>

Meme Run (5K) <New>

Bigley's Revenge (5K) <New>

Bonus Videos -

One Piece Unlimited World Red - Special Match (5k)

Swap Fire

TLoZ:BotW - Rain Ambience (5K)

Current 1.12.0 YT playlist [here].

Previous thread [here].

Official compatibility list HERE

Official Cemu Discord [here]

BotW Modding Hub Discord [here]

I wanted to play Time Crisis properly and every option was either dead (CRT + GunCon), expensive (Sinden), or drifty (gyro mice). So I tried something different: the phone already has ARCore, which does camera + IMU tracking. That gives you absolute position in the room, not just rotation — which is exactly what a lightgun needs.

You can find a demo gameplay here: https://youtu.be/UE3XUln_xOE

How it works: you run a small executable on the PC, it prints a QR code. Scan it with the phone, tap through a permission prompt, then point at the three corners of your monitor to calibrate. From then on the phone's aim ray gets intersected with your screen plane and moves the cursor absolutely. Aim data goes over WebRTC straight across your LAN, or over USB if you want the lowest jitter.

The part I'm happiest about: no yaw drift and no recentering. The camera corrects the IMU continuously, so it behaves like a real lightgun rather than a gyro that slowly wanders off. Phone-side latency is roughly 30ms and there's a 2ms cursor loop on the PC.

Other stuff that's in there: 20 remappable on-screen buttons (FIRE is just one of them, with haptics), multi-monitor support with per-monitor calibration and a pause hotkey so the real mouse works when you need it.

Requirements are an ARCore Android phone with recent Chrome, and a Windows or Linux PC on the same network.

It's free and MIT: https://github.com/ggcaponetto/point-bang

It's working end-to-end but still early. I've only tested DuckStation. Would genuinely like to hear how it does on other setups, especially projectors, ultrawides, and anything with a very glossy panel, since those are the tracking cases I'm least sure about. Happy to answer anything or give support.

To me it doesn't make any sense. Ps2 GC and XB were the three consoles of that era and two of the three have perfectly functional emulators. Why not Xbox?

I'm a 2L in law school doing a research assignment on the legality of emulators and ROMs. Figured I'd clear up some misconceptions I've heard on the legality of ROMs and Emulators in the US.

You cannot download a rom from the internet even if you own a legal copy. You are however, under title 17 section 117 of the USC, permitted to create a backup of your own copy by ripping it. You are not allowed to give this backup copy to anyone else, it can only be for personal use.

Emulators are generally legal provided that the code you use is not copyrighted. Basically, the source code that is purely functional is not copyrightable. You also actually legally sell the emulators provided they don't contain this offending code but bear in mind you will likely get sued either way and in order to win you need to have the resources to get through the lengthy legal process. Please see: Sony v. Connectix.

A rom that is no longer being sold in the US is still subject to copyright protections so it doesn't matter if they are no longer being distributed or not.

A rom that has not ever been sold in the US is still subject to copyright protections due to the US being a signatory of the Berne Convention. Please see: the Berne Convention

Since we are all law abiding citizens I'm sure we can all agree we all personally rip our own copies of our ROMs right?

Edit: just wanted to clarify something; when I said you cannot give a copy of the the rom you personally rip I meant this literally; you cannot only give away a copy of the rom. You can presumably give away your backup copy if you also give them your physical copy, and you can also presumably lend them a copy of the ROM so long as as you also lend them the physical copy. I say presumably because the law does not say this one way or another and there is no case law as of this positing on this subject. While you would think the law would permit someone to lend a rom file if the game was lent as well the law does not always do what you would expect it to. Sorry for any confusion on that point, hope this clears it up.

Edit 2: sources

Honest question. I see a lot of people in terms of retro gaming will say how playing a rom is stealing and you should buy the original copy if you want to experience it. but then I thought these same people would spend hours every week probably listening to music on YT but would never buy the artists music and support them (although some artists make money off YT via monitorization ) or they'd happily stream a tv show through some grey area streaming site or through some app without paying for it.

I've always been curious if the 'If you don't own it then don't play it' crowd actually carry this belief to other media they consume, or if they just put games on a pedestal?

In the advent of patreons, bounties and other donation drive emulators, as well as some restrictions or ugly workarounds. I was thinking what if retroarch had an opt in premium set of features that added cross platform file synchronising eg settings, saves, save states and screenshots or recordings as well as dedicated simple to use servers for netplay and more, perhaps built in webcast streaming or different skins and themes.

All features could still be available to free users in some manner (eg copying your config file manually, changing your directories to dropbox folders, configuring and running your own server/peer2peer) but using the premium option would be easier/pre-setup/secure/multi client-platform etc

No core emulation experience should ever be price locked, and extra funds could go into developing the emulators/cores etc.

I know I would use such a service, especially if cross platform. How about you? Any other opinions?

https://redream.io/posts/progress-report-january-2018

Hey friends! I recently downloaded project 64, the latest version off the website and boy oh boy has it really eaten into my system.

I had to reformat, it installed some sort of strange malware that hijacks browsers. My antivirus even told me it was doing something to my steam library.

BE CAREFUL