Are Nintendo's Virtual Consoles better than the Emulation Scene?

Jiehfeng · Apr 9, 2017

Something that's been bothering me for quite some time is the difference between the two. What I'd think is that Nintendo's Virtual Consoles that have come out for their past consoles are much better than the emulators you could download on PC, since Nintendo would know what kind of hardware the NES, SNES, Gamecube, etc, are, so they'd be able to emulate them well.

But on the other hand the emulation scene seems to be working hard everyday to further optimize their emulation of older consoles, and they run fine too. So I was wondering which side is better?

Kourin · Apr 9, 2017

Nintendo's N64 emulator is by far better. not entirely sure about the others.

gamefan5 · Apr 9, 2017

For N64, Nintendo definitely is better.
For SNES, I guess it depends on the games. Those using special chips, Nintendo might be better at optimizing them.
For other games, hmm... well I know that they handled the NES games rather poorly. You can see the drastic difference between the NES Virtual console games vs the NES Classic games so... Yeah.

Dionicio3 · Apr 9, 2017

It depends on how you're looking at this. If you're looking at this from a speed runner's prospective, Njntendo's VC is 100% better since it is "Offical Hardware". If you're looking at this from a causal gamer's prospective, either one is good. If you're looking at this from a glitcher's prospective, then that just depends on what kind of glitches you're doing.

The Real Jdbye · Apr 9, 2017

Well, it depends on the console you are trying to emulate and what you are trying to emulate it on. Wii U VC is almost universally bad because of the darkening filter they apply to it, which I have no idea why they did that but it looks bad.
N64 VC on the Wii has rather poor compatibility, but the games that do work, work very well.
"Homebrew" N64 emulators have much higher compatibility, but a lot of graphical glitches and other glitches because N64 emulators are really just a hack job and are nowhere near being perfected even today.
Other than that, it's probably about on par. Both run very similarly with few glitches, emulators these days have been more or less perfected to the degree where 99% or more of all games run virtually glitch free but there are a few problem games that either require dirty hacks to work, or a more accurate emulator (which is why bsnes was made)

Futurdreamz · Apr 10, 2017

I want to see what happens with the Switch VC. The Wii U VC had some annoying visual distortions, but the NES Classic has pixel perfect clarity and it's emulator should form the basis of the Switch VC library.

Jiehfeng · Apr 10, 2017

Guess it really depends on the system and games that's being played then. Thanks for all the answers, I get the picture now.

Are Nintendo's Virtual Consoles better than the Emulation Scene?

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