Homebrew Which is better: Original 3ds or vita for emulators?

longernohuman · Feb 4, 2020

Hello,

I have the original 3ds and vita, which one of them is better for emulators?
right now I want to play mega drive and game boy advance games, so is it better to play them on vita or original 3ds?

xXDungeon_CrawlerXx · Feb 4, 2020

Hardwarewise I'd say the PSVita.

The 3DS’s graphical power lies somewhere between the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube on a good day. The New 3DS has 10MB of dedicated VRAM and graphics don’t look nearly as nice as the Vita’s.

The Vita is a handheld graphics powerhouse, and sits somewhere between the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3 in comparison (closer to the PS3). It has 128MB of dedicated VRAM and games look gorgeous on its LCD screen.

There's much more Homebrew for the 3DS than for the PSVita, but the PSVita has some very good emulators, too!
http://wololo.net/2019/10/20/tutori...arch-on-your-psvita-and-making-it-look-great/

Also the PSVita can play PSP and PS1 Games natively.

83TropicStorm · Feb 4, 2020

With GBA, the 3DS is gonna be more accurate if you use VC injection (since the 3DS has a "Gameboy Advance" built in). I cannot speak for MegaDrive on the system though.

Although I haven't actually used a Vita and assuming there are MegaDrive and GBA emulators on there (which there most likely are), the Vita is probably your best bet as the better screen will make games look less fuzzy because of the higher resolution screen and the games will likely run better too due to more power to work with.

That's just my two cents though, I'm sure there are many people more qualified to answer this question than I am.

Rahkeesh · Feb 4, 2020

Megadrive old3DS you are stuck with picodrive, which generally looks fine but the audio is inaccurate and music can go out of sync. Vita can run GenesisPlusGX which is far more accurate emulator. You can also run sega CD games.

You can't beat GBA VC for accuracy but then you have to inject each rom, can't use savestates, and need to jump through some hoops for cheats. Vita recently got gPSP in Retroarch running very fast, so compatible games run quite well, although some of the more intense ones won't boot for me at all like doom, wolfenstein, duke nukem and iridion 2. Scaling GBA games to fullscreen is also a headache on the 3DS low resolution, its a bit more of a tossup emulating 240p home consoles but I much prefer vita for emulating handhelds due to the scaling.

I would say SNES is a tossup, fullspeed SNES on both systems means using some old version of snes9x which has iffy audio. New 3DS is better in this regard with its VC.

Pretty much every 8-bit system should run equally fine on both hardware, its just a matter of the screen and scaling which the Vita is better at.

Deleted User · Feb 4, 2020

xXDungeon_CrawlerXx said:
Hardwarewise I'd say the PSVita.

The 3DS’s graphical power lies somewhere between the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube on a good day. The New 3DS has 10MB of dedicated VRAM and graphics don’t look nearly as nice as the Vita’s.

The Vita is a handheld graphics powerhouse, and sits somewhere between the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3 in comparison (closer to the PS3). It has 128MB of dedicated VRAM and games look gorgeous on its LCD screen.

There's much more Homebrew for the 3DS than for the PSVita, but the PSVita has some very good emulators, too!
http://wololo.net/2019/10/20/tutori...arch-on-your-psvita-and-making-it-look-great/

Also the PSVita can play PSP and PS1 Games natively.

I'd say somewhere between gamecube and wii

longernohuman · Feb 5, 2020

So the vita is the better choice overall than the original 3ds?
and does anyone here played mega drive and gba on vita? how do they run on it?

Rahkeesh · Feb 5, 2020

You have both systems, right? Just download Retroarch onto Vita and see for yourself.

GenesisplusGX core is not at playable speeds on old3DS, neither is gPSP. Both run fullspeed on Vita.

On old3DS you are looking at Bubble2006k's picodrive and either GBA VC injection or Gericom's GBARunner2.

longernohuman · Feb 6, 2020

Rahkeesh said:
You have both systems, right? Just download Retroarch onto Vita and see for yourself.

GenesisplusGX core is not at playable speeds on old3DS, neither is gPSP. Both run fullspeed on Vita.

On old3DS you are looking at Bubble2006k's picodrive and either GBA VC injection or Gericom's GBARunner2.

I haven't hacked none of them yet! and I'm planning to hack only one!
So I understand that mega drive games run better on vita. but what about gba games? do they run better on vita?

the_randomizer · Feb 6, 2020

Vita is top notch for PSP, PS1 emulation as it's native and has high compatibility, that said, GBA is pretty good (almost 100% full speed with gPSP), but SNES requires overclock*

*that is if you want to use a core that doesn't have garbage audio emulation

Rahkeesh · Feb 6, 2020

They are both dead consoles now, just hack both...

Look at the New Super Ultimate Injector program. That's what you have to use to get the super accurate GBA on 3DS. You have to go through a process to add each individual game to the home menu. Its hooking into the Ambassador Virtual Console setup, so launching each game is going to reboot like you are using a DS cart or DSi game. You get to choose between original resolution, which looks like the size of an original GBA screen when used on an XL model, or some chunky scaling to fullscreen. You can hack in cheats into the rom itself, will have savegames but no savestates. For some games NSUI will hack in sleep mode but not all (without sleep mode when you close your 3DS, sound and display shut off but game is still running internally consuming battery.)

If you don't mind all those hoops and want full accuracy and compatibility for GBA, 3DS is the way to go. If you want the convenience of just dumping a bunch of roms in a folder and launching the games in a single emulator title, with a better screen, more flexible scaling options and savestates, instant pause or suspend, go with Vita, it will play most of the library fullspeed with only rare issues.

Mega drive games are playable on old3DS but the audio is much better on Vita. Mega CD is also iffy speed on old 3DS and pretty good on Vita.

SuperDan · Feb 6, 2020

Vita definitely I have both . Plus the original 3DS is crap .. You need a New 3DS ... If you are going to buy one

yuyuyup · Feb 6, 2020

Important choice: New 3DS with Native NDS (no good NDS emus yet for Vita) and improving ps1 support, vs Vita with perfect ps1 and PSP, which is more important to you

Zense · Feb 6, 2020

yuyuyup said:
Important choice: New 3DS with Native NDS (no good NDS emus yet for Vita) and improving ps1 support, vs Vita with perfect ps1 and PSP, which is more important to you

Looking at his original post, I take it the more important one is the one that plays gba and mega drive games the best.

Tbh I would think they are equally as good right now.

The Real Jdbye · Feb 6, 2020

Multimegamander said:
I'd say somewhere between gamecube and wii

Agreed. I've seen games on 3DS that look just as good as Zelda TP did back when it was new.

Deleted User · Feb 6, 2020

Vita. Plus, the OLED Vita looks incredible and the games developed for it looked like full console experiences.

WRC on Vita looks mighty impressive. On the 3DS? It's kinda like a low budget Android arcade racing game.

Pipistrele · Feb 6, 2020

For emulators, definitely Vita - more homebrew, better performance, the second best option after Switch really. For native games, 3DS.

Deleted User · Feb 9, 2020

longernohuman said:
Hello,

I have the original 3ds and vita, which one of them is better for emulators?
right now I want to play mega drive and game boy advance games, so is it better to play them on vita or original 3ds?

megadrive runs great on both, but dpad placement is way better on the vita, gba runs only at full speed on vita, the analog stick is placed on a better place in the 3ds, however, it cant really emulate 5th gen games, so if you are only gonna emulate, vita wins, if i recall correctly you can pair a bluetooth controller to it so you can have a better analog stick placement if you want to emulate 5th gen consoles

Homebrew Which is better: Original 3ds or vita for emulators?

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