Hacking Best SNES emu for Yoshi's Island, Mario RPG, Mario All Stars

[XC-3730C]

What's the best SNES emu for running Yoshi's Island, Mario RPG, and Mario All Stars (this game has an issue with the controller being set to player 2, and I have already tried all suggested fixes with the CFG file) ?

I tried Snes9x 2005, but Yoshi's Island is choppy, Mario RPG runs Ok, and Mario All Stars has the controller issue.

 

[SeongGino]

What's the best SNES emu for running Yoshi's Island, Mario RPG, and Mario All Stars (this game has an issue with the controller being set to player 2, and I have already tried all suggested fixes with the CFG file) ?

I tried Snes9x 2005, but Yoshi's Island is choppy, Mario RPG runs Ok, and Mario All Stars has the controller issue.

Hello!
Preferably, we suggest you leave inquiries such as this in the (pseudo?)official RetroArch/Libretro Vita thread in the future.

Generally, the Vita is close when it comes to SuperFX(2) chip games (Star Fox, Super Mario World 2 - Yoshi's Island) and Super Mario RPG, but it isn't perfect. We suggest using Snes9x 2005 (Non-Plus variant) for these games, or otherwise revert to Snes9x 2002 whenever applicable. Sadly, Super Mario All-Stars and the Controller Port 2 issue is global, and cannot be fixed without a ROM patch (Though one doesn't exist) or the emulator's built-in fix.

Despite what others say, all other emulators are forked in some way from RetroArch's implementation, and thus, performance will be similar -- if not slightly degraded -- in comparison. So... to answer bluntly, RetroArch is your best choice for now, and likely will be for a while. It is still in early nightly format, after all.

 

[XC-3730C]

Ok thanks for the info! I just started migrating to Vita from PSP, so it's all still new.

I did leave a question in that thread asking how to have each system in reteoarch save the default ROM directory, but no response.

 

[SuperDan]

What's the best SNES emu for running Yoshi's Island, Mario RPG, and Mario All Stars (this game has an issue with the controller being set to player 2, and I have already tried all suggested fixes with the CFG file) ?

try this retroarch core Yoshi's Island, runs good & Mario RPG, but as for Mario All Stars i always had problems with that game using any snes retroarch cores so far
but saying all when using this one ,,,, just seems faster than all the rest...

https://www.mediafire.com/download/12qb44mlm1f1wch

 

[Ganoncrotch]

You know for the Vita the best way to enjoy Yoshi's Island at full speed is to go for Super Mario Advance 3 on the GBA, that port of Yoshi's Island works perfectly with GPSP inside Adrenilen, definitely easier to run this than trying to force the SNES version to run correctly. I've had some luck with it in a few of the nightlies but you'll always run into issues with certain stages which make heavy use of the Super FX chip such as "touch fuzzy get dizzy" or any of the boss sprite manipulation effects such as scaling will hit the fps fairly heavily on the SNES emulation which just barely has the power to run the game under normal circumstances.

The only "issue" with the GBA port of Yoshi's Island is that Yoshi has the voice clips from Yoshis Story on the N64, but then again, when it comes to this game it's normally Baby Marios screams which cause the most grief.

 

[XC-3730C]

Which is better for PSP emus and ISO's - Adrenaline or VHBL?

I really wish Retroarch had the ability to save a default ROM directory for each system. I really don't like the interface...

 

[Ganoncrotch]

Which is better for PSP emus and ISO's - Adrenaline or VHBL?

I really wish Retroarch had the ability to save a default ROM directory for each system. I really don't like the interface...

Adrenaline is the one which is likely to get more updates and features (albeit in Feb '17) Where VHBL is pretty much at the peak of what it would offer I would think, best bet would be to set up Adrenaline and get used to that.

You are using the all in one installer for Retroarch and have a default rom directory for that right? Why not go with the individual cores since I seen you raise this same question and grievance a number of times, or why not just make a base folder which you set as the default directory, then add folders into that of each systems game library? that way your default directory will bring you within 1 click of your games.

As for the "no response" to your question regarding how to do it, there is threads stickied here with guides on it, creating new threads of "show me how to do this" when it's freely available on here, surely you can see why people would have issues with someone asking them to read the guides out for each user on here? Or do you not see that?

 

[naddel81]

can someone please enlighten me on the issues for yoshis island, mario allstars and mario RPG?
is it on PSP/PSV only?

 

[Ganoncrotch]

can someone please enlighten me on the issues for yoshis island, mario allstars and mario RPG?
is it on PSP/PSV only?

This isn't really a complete question, or the first portion of it would be, but the "is it on psp/psv only" part makes it appear that you are asking something else.

If your question is

"What is hard about emulation of Yoshi's Island"
It uses a very late version of the Super FX chip which is rather tough for the SNES to emulate since not only is it running the SNES hardware but also the equivalent of a graphics card plugged into the system along with this game.

If however you are asking

"is this issue with emulation of these titles specific to the psp/Vita"

Well, no it isn't, but PC's now will have no trouble running an emulator at full speed with these games, but any hardware with just just on the edge of being able to run the SNES itself will be severally hampered by the Super FX chip games.


I will add here btw, that Yoshi's and RPG both use the Chip in question, there is little to no issues running Super Mario All Stars or Super Mario All Stars+World Rom on the Vita as that doesn't use any extra hardware chip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX
The same issue happens with Doom on the SNES, again though, that game also has a GBA version which runs as smooth as butter in GPSP for Adrenaline.
But yeah as you can see from Wiki the co-Processor runs at 28mhz, compare that to the 2.7mhz in the base model of the SNES and you can understand why the games which feature this chip really strain emulation of the platform, when you consider that the PSone runs at 33mhz this chip alone is coming close to that in terms of speed and power (but in a far more basic way and without memory)

 

[XC-3730C]

@Ganonctotch,

Thank you for all of your very informative responses!

I got my Vita Slim a few days ago already modded, and it appears to have individual RA systems. I may just have to start over from scratch, because I can't even write to the 4GB card included.

 

[naddel81]

Good to know. How come I can play those games on my five year old iPad just fine?

 

[XC-3730C]

@Ganoncrotch,

At this point, I don't even know if I will be able to install Adrenaline, since it requires a PSP demo (I can't even get on PSN because it says a software update is required) be installed on my Vita, so I will have to try gbSP via VHBL.

 

[Ganoncrotch]

Good to know. How come I can play those games on my five year old iPad just fine?

Well you can also play them fine on a 10+ year old PC Upwards of 15 years without a bother, it's just because PC emulation is a lot more refined that trying to run code on a Vita there is a ton more work done on making it work fast but not accurate, if you try and run something like BSNES on a low power PC you'll find that accurate emulation of some of the Super FX games will still cause 2005 PCs issues where something like SNES9x will run it at 1000fps if you want.

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@Ganoncrotch,

At this point, I don't even know if I will be able to install Adrenaline, since it requires a PSP demo (I can't even get on PSN because it says a software update is required) be installed on my Vita, so I will have to try gbSP via VHBL.

Have you tried this threads guide on installing Adrenaline without a psp game? Could be worth a look.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/want-to-install-adrenaline-but-no-psn-no-problem-sort-of.450551/

 

[XC-3730C]

Yea I am in that thread, but I guess I need a PS3, which I don't have.

 

[naddel81]

Can emulators use the vitas full potential or are they limited to psp hardware?

 

[ma16v3]

Can emulators use the vitas full potential or are they limited to psp hardware?

If they are running directly from the Live Area, then they are native emulators and have complete access to the hardware on the Vita. Doesn't mean it will use that hardware efficiently, though.

 

[naddel81]

If they are running directly from the Live Area, then they are native emulators and have complete access to the hardware on the Vita. Doesn't mean it will use that hardware efficiently, though.

That would be the explanation. I was wondering why my 5 year old iPad could run those emulators/superFX games without a problem. Now I know there is still some optimization to do on PSV.

 

[Ganoncrotch]

That would be the explanation. I was wondering why my 5 year old iPad could run those emulators/superFX games without a problem. Now I know there is still some optimization to do on PSV.

Oh yeah, It's not really down to the base power being used at all but how it's layed out, say the Vita has a far more powerful processor in total than the one found inside the PSP which was just a 333mhz one not unlike that in the PS2 mostly downclocked to 222mhz. But then the Vita has a quad core cpu running at 444mhz per core, but then you need to do a fair bit more work to make sure that emulators are going to make use of the multicore setup rather than just having a single powerful processor I mean back in mid 2002 you had the Pentium 4 which could reach 3GHZ absolutely shaming something like the vita in terms of raw power, but if you had that in a handheld today it would consume the whole battery in about 10 minutes and would likely catch fire before that point. Todays mobile processors are far more about maintaining low speeds spread over multi core chips rather than the sheer raw power approach which older Processors made use of which favours simple emulation programs.