Homebrew 32x emulation is now on Wii

[RunningSnakes]

SD/apps/retroarch
USB/apps/retroarch

I used @Wiimpathy separate hex config method. It doesn't seem to have any conflicts with MAME 175 or FBA 181 cores.

Never thought 32x would see light of day on Wii, let alone near perfect emulation and full speed. Thank you for this.

 

[cheloruiz79]

SD/apps/retroarch
USB/apps/retroarch

I used @Wiimpathy separate hex config method. It doesn't seem to have any conflicts with MAME 175 or FBA 181 cores.

Never thought 32x would see light of day on Wii, let alone near perfect emulation and full speed. Thank you for this.

this is a retroarch.dol or 32x.dol? i need to rename the file? not understand. thanks sir

 

[RunningSnakes]

It is Sega 32x core emulator for use in RetroArch Wii. You can rename it, i renamed it Picodrive.dol.

 

[cheloruiz79]

It is Sega 32x core emulator for use in RetroArch Wii. You can rename it, i renamed it Picodrive.dol.

thans sir sory my english no good i undestand now

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

So is this emulator even accurate? Last time I tried picodrive for 32X emulation, it just had glitches.

 

[RunningSnakes]

• Im not positive how accurate it is. In minimal testing, all 32x started & seemed to play full speed with no graphic issues, 10-12 games tested. I tried half dozen SG-1000 games, they all booted, but no video, only audio working on my side. Game Gear booted for me but 5-6 games i tested all had major graphics problems. Master System Alex Kidd & Castle of Illusion play 100% but Outrun hangs/resets at start of 1st race. Gen/MD Virtua Racing, Thunder Force IV, Alien Soldier all play full speed with no issues as far as i played. I have not tested any CD games. Im blown away how well Virtua Racing Deluxe looks & plays, never played before. Ive own the Genesis version since release and still play to this day, and can say the 32x version is beyond expectations. Im very impressed with the emulator, much better than expected.

 

[niuus]

So is this emulator even accurate? Last time I tried picodrive for 32X emulation, it just had glitches.

It isn't, but it works. Perfect accuracy on the Wii doesn't matter for this core since we wouldn't have full speed, and we already have a 100% SG-1000 / Master System / Genesis / Sega CD emulator in GenesisPlus GX. PicoDrive Wii came to fill the last remaining piece of the Sega ecosystem, which is really awesome, taking into account this was considered almost impossible or not worth it for the little Nintendo console.

Super exciting news for the scene. I wasn't this impressed since Wiimpathy's implementation of VM for large Neo Geo games, and previous to that, when mgba was out and blew all expectations of full speed GBA out of the water.

I'm playing After Burner Complete at full FPS as i write this, a pretty surreal moment.

 

[Maeson]

Yeah, I agree, the only thing that Picodrive needs to do for Wii is to make 32X playable and stable enough. Genplus GX is the gold standard for the other systems, not only a great emulator for the Wii, it is a great emulator period.

Since these news I've been having Knuckles Chaotix soundtrack blasting on my mind.

 

[pedro702]

nice i always wanted to play star wars arcade, hopefully with wiiu overclock it can be fullspeed.

 

[Jacobeian]

It's this really cool thing that Extrems added to mplayer-ce a long time ago, it lets you render more pixels, in this case more than 640 horizontally so Genesis games that use a color border can display without any blurry scaling. A few Virtual Console games do it too. I added it to RA as a setting only for a few cores a while back but it's a bit glitchy (no overlays/menu transparency.)

Thanks, I think I have read a Dolphin article about this technique being used by Genesis VC emulator to render the overscan area but didn't understood why back then since Genesis Plus GX emulator doesn't use it while still being able to render colored borders around the active screen. Never noticed it was blurry with left/right borders enabled in this emulator but now you made me interested in trying your modified Retroarch version to see the difference.

Thanks.
I didn't originally know that endianess was the reason it wasn't on the Wii. Would also be nice to
use this on my Rebug CFW PS3.

Yes, Picodrive was initially not portable on big endian platforms as the code was designed for little-endian CPUs exclusively but, looking at the libretro github repository, it looks like some talented and motivated individual has picked up notaz work last years, apparently fixing 32x emulation bugs and also improving overall emulation accuracy, and eventually he ended up adding support for big-endian spme months ago, first targetting some PowerPC MAC platform apparently, which kinda automatically leaded to working support for Wii platform, thanks to Picodrive already being a libretro core and Retroarch already working on Wii. Last but not least, he wrote a PowerPC dynamic recompiler for the 32x CPUs from scratch, which greatly helps getting decent performance on Wii relatively slow CPU.

• Im not positive how accurate it is. In minimal testing, all 32x started & seemed to play full speed with no graphic issues, 10-12 games tested. I tried half dozen SG-1000 games, they all booted, but no video, only audio working on my side. Game Gear booted for me but 5-6 games i tested all had major graphics problems.

Picodrive does not emulate SG-1000 video modes neither Game Gear hardware (mostly extended color palette and extra START button) and will treat those games as Master System games, which would explain the issues you noticed.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

There seems to be a test version with improved performance:

https://github.com/libretro/picodrive/files/6351669/retroarch_wii.dol.gz

Hopefully it will be merged soon :-)

More info here: https://github.com/libretro/picodrive/issues/149#issuecomment-824121476

I've tested this version and I'm amazed by the overall performances. I've never tried a real 32x, but emulation seems pretty solid and running ar full speed.

@Jacobeian @niuus yeah, pretty exciting times for the wii. Dynamic recompilers are popping up like mushrooms lately (dosbox, 32x... what's next?). It's almost suspicious, can it be that we are starting to see the fruits of the Leak that happened some months ago?

 

[pedro702]

does sega 32x cd games work? tryed to get them to work with no luck.

Also save states work? i did a save state on star wars arcade 32x and when loading it would just crash for me.

 

[niuus]

does sega 32x cd games work? tryed to get them to work with no luck.

Not sure as i have never tested, but my bet would be "no", as Sega CD 32X emulation is AFAIK uncharted territory on any homebrewed console. I have only known about one emulator that does it, which is Kega Fusion. Since it is the same creator as the emulator inside the PolyMega, i guess that one could have support too. It could be temporarily broken on the Wii, too. Do you have all the needed bios files in the expected place?

Also save states work? i did a save state on star wars arcade 32x and when loading it would just crash for me.

Not working, yet.

 

[pedro702]

Not sure as i have never tested, but my bet would be "no", as Sega CD 32X emulation is AFAIK uncharted territory on any homebrewed console. I have only known about one emulator that does it, which is Kega Fusion. Since it is the same creator as the emulator inside the PolyMega, i guess that one could have support too. It could be temporarily broken on the Wii, too. Do you have all the needed bios files in the expected place?


Not working, yet.

yes i do have all the bios of sega cd afaik 32x doesnt need a bios on itself? only the sega cd bios?

oh i see save states are still wip, but regular 32x seems spot on seriously star wars arcade runs flat 60 fps on it, damn good imo.

 

[niuus]

Retroarch 1.9.2 stable has been released, a great build for PicoDrive and Wii U Pro Controller users on the Wii, since the previous experimental build broke support for that controller.

 

[MatioMania]

I hope 32X will get added now to Genesis Plus GX

 

[niuus]

• I have not tested any CD games

Tested and working with Earthworm Jim.

yes i do have all the bios of sega cd afaik 32x doesnt need a bios on itself? only the sega cd bios?

Tested and working with Corpse Killer 32X CD, Fahrenheit 32X CD, and Surgical Strike 32X CD. Full speed perfect cheesy FMV goodness.

 

[MatioMania]

I can't get RetroArch is show up in the Homebrew Channel

I copied the RetroArch Folder in Apps. like

SD/apps/retroarch-wii

Anyhoo, I testing 32X though Wiiexplorer Browser

 

[pedro702]

Tested and working with Earthworm Jim.


Tested and working with Corpse Killer 32X CD, Fahrenheit 32X CD, and Surgical Strike 32X CD. Full speed perfect cheesy FMV goodness.

so what am i doing wrong i load the cue file and get booted back to picodrive menu? what bios do you have? does it need any other bios besides the sega cd bios?

 

[DominoBright]

so what am i doing wrong i load the cue file and get booted back to picodrive menu? what bios do you have? does it need any other bios besides the sega cd bios?

I'm guessing you have the Sega CD BIOS in the system folder. (Never used RA on the Wii so I'm just guessing that's where it goes.) Have you played regular CD games with it successfully?