Homebrew CatSFC vs. VC Injection on N3DS

CatSFC or VC Injection


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Picasso-Jazz

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Hello, this is my first post, so please tell me if I'm doing anything wrong or posting in the wrong forum :P

I plan on getting a New 2DS XL once I save up enough money for it, mainly for GBA and SNES emulation. I've already gotten the GBA games covered, but for emulation accuracy, I was wondering in particular which of these options I should choose for SNES games.

I won't list every SNES game I want to play here, but I will list what would probably be the most problematic ones here, based off of some research I've done separately:

  • Star Fox 2 (NOT THE BETA - SFX Chip 2)
  • Chrono Trigger (Has some minor but noticeable lag on my O3DS w/ SNES9x)
  • Star Fox (SFX Chip)
  • Super Mario RPG (Pre-rendered GFX)
  • Yoshi's Island (SFX Chip 2)
I'm less concerned about the Star Foxes and Yoshi's Island since I know that the Super FX chip is very hard to emulate on 3DS, but getting Yoshi's Island to run at a decent speed would be nice. Any help is appreciated, thank you! :]

edit: grammers
edit 2: grammers strickens agen
edit 3: i said that i fixed the grammar in edit 2, but in reality i just said i did. now it's actually fixed.
 
Last edited by Picasso-Jazz,

CheatFreak47

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I actually would recommend Snes9x by Bubble2k16 for all of these games, frankly.
It handles all of the games you listed pretty much perfectly on n2DS/n3DS consoles.
Yoshi's Island is the only one I ever see a couple hitches in but it's pretty infrequent and the game is sitting at 59.9 fps about 99% of the time.
 

Picasso-Jazz

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I actually would recommend Snes9x by Bubble2k16 for all of these games, frankly.
It handles all of the games you listed pretty much perfectly on n2DS/n3DS consoles.
Yoshi's Island is the only one I ever see a couple hitches in but it's pretty infrequent and the game is sitting at 59.9 fps about 99% of the time.

Thanks, I'll keep this in mind. I might use CatSFC for Yoshi's Island, though.
 

Rahkeesh

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Bubble 2k's version of snes9x was tweaked mainly for o3DS, I would give it a try if you haven't. It puts the 3DS GPU to work in emulation to offload the CPU some. The latest version offers an alternate audio engine option to help maintain full speed. Not sure it would keep up in the super fx games on o3DS but it should open up quite a bit of the SNES library.

While the N3DS VC is way more accurate, AFAIK it doesn't handle Super FX at all. Meanwhile Bubble's snes9x on New3DS actually runs Starfox at a better (still below 60) framerate than the original. (i.e. they aren't emulating cycles properly, but I prefer it that way.)

mGBA has trouble maintaining fullspeed on n3DS in over half of GBA games, especially the bigger budget ones. Typically it struggles around 45 FPS and you get massive gaps/garbling in the audio. While passable I would never buy a N2/3DS specifically for it. GBA VC injection should already work about as well on old 3DS as new.

For the same money a PSP might deliver better results for non-VC emulation of these two systems, and open up PSP and PSX games, so that is worth considering too.
 

Picasso-Jazz

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Bubble 2k's version of snes9x was tweaked mainly for o3DS, I would give it a try if you haven't. It puts the 3DS GPU to work in emulation to offload the CPU some. The latest version offers an alternate audio engine option to help maintain full speed. Not sure it would keep up in the super fx games on o3DS but it should open up quite a bit of the SNES library.

While the N3DS VC is way more accurate, AFAIK it doesn't handle Super FX at all. Meanwhile Bubble's snes9x on New3DS actually runs Starfox at a better (still below 60) framerate than the original. (i.e. they aren't emulating cycles properly, but I prefer it that way.)

mGBA has trouble maintaining fullspeed on n3DS in over half of GBA games, especially the bigger budget ones. Typically it struggles around 45 FPS and you get massive gaps/garbling in the audio. While passable I would never buy a N2/3DS specifically for it. GBA VC injection should already work about as well on old 3DS as new.

For the same money a PSP might deliver better results for non-VC emulation of these two systems, and open up PSP and PSX games, so that is worth considering too.

Thank you for the response :]
I own a PSP 3001, but the audio quality for SNES games isn't up to par for me. I also really only like a couple PSP/X games to be honest, so I won't be using this. But I guess I'll stick to the Bubble2K version of SNES9x for my N2DS. I'll work out what to do with the SFX chip games and see what games do work with injection, because if the accuracy is the same or that game is already on VC I'll use that.

On the GBA side of things, I've used mGBA for Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, and it's horrible. My injected games have worked flawlessly and NSUI even supports 128k saves and RTC for Pokemon Generation 3, so I think I've gotten myself covered.

EDIT: I've also had other problems with emulation on the PSP in general, such as games running poorly, a user interface I can't bother with, and a bunch of other things, but thank you for the suggestion anyway.

EDIT 2: To clarify, I'm talking about mGBA on 3DS. mGBA on PC is the best GBA emulator by far, I don't know how they managed to mess it up so badly on 3DS.
 
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kuwanger

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runs Starfox at a better (still below 60) framerate than the original. (i.e. they aren't emulating cycles properly, but I prefer it that way.)

I'm pretty sure Starfox at 60 fps would be unplayable. The original only ran at something like 15 fps. :) Honestly, I prefer the slow downs because I've become used to playing it that way.

For the same money a PSP might deliver better results for non-VC emulation of these two systems, and open up PSP and PSX games, so that is worth considering too.

Every comparison I've seen shows PSP being inferior in accuracy in both SNES and GBA games--the latter especially as GBA "VC" injections effectively turn the 3DS into a GBA and so should have 99% accuracy (only games requiring special peripherals, link connection, etc shouldn't work). Similar is also true on the XBox. This is no sort of insult, and I entirely understand some people choosing less accurate emulators if it means playing PSP/PSX games, but I wouldn't buy a PSP for its superior emulation capability.
 

Picasso-Jazz

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Yeah, I dug up my old PSP after seeing how the emulation scene was for it, but I did more research on it and it turns out that 3DS is just flat out better for Nintendo games. GBA games have native support on 3DS, too, even if it's still GBA emulation, so the accuracy I've gotten for them is perfect with NSUI. Not to mention, the 3DS has a ton more games released for it that I like when compared to the PSP, so I'll be sticking to the 3DS.

SNES games on PSP have just been plain bad for me. Every game has really watered-down audio, a lot of Mode 7 games have to have the audio hertz lowered to run at a decent speed (which just compounds the first issue), many games that are either Mode 7 compatible (i.e. Pilotwings) or released later in the SNES' lifespan and are too taxing for my PSP to handle (i.e. Super Mario RPG), and overall it just hasn't worked out for me.

EDIT: I swear I can write in English just give me a few thousands edits
 
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Rahkeesh

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I'm pretty sure Starfox at 60 fps would be unplayable. The original only ran at something like 15 fps. :) Honestly, I prefer the slow downs because I've become used to playing it that way.

Try it, its quite playable. The game uses the equivalent of frameskipping when the Super FX can't keep up, much like most modern games. So everything happens at roughly the same speed in 60 FPS, just smoother.

Although yes it will probably mess with you if you learned the game at the lower framerate. The Sonic CD remake special stages sure threw me for a loop at 60 FPS when I can nail them effortlessly on the 20 FPS original.

Every comparison I've seen shows PSP being inferior in accuracy in both SNES and GBA games--the latter especially as GBA "VC" injections effectively turn the 3DS into a GBA and so should have 99% accuracy (only games requiring special peripherals, link connection, etc shouldn't work). Similar is also true on the XBox. This is no sort of insult, and I entirely understand some people choosing less accurate emulators if it means playing PSP/PSX games, but I wouldn't buy a PSP for its superior emulation capability.

I clearly called out non-VC. While the GBA VC injection is quite good, it lacks some conveniences of actual emulators. PSP actually has a fullspeed if hacky emulator available so it wins by default for that system. Since the OP mentioned a n3DS for GBA I presumed emulators were something being considered, since AFAIK there's no difference in VC injects between old and new.

On the n3DS I've had trouble with speed on the non-VC SNES emulators that aren't the oldest snes9x. Since bubble2k's version of snes9x already runs a good chunk of the library on o3DS, an n3DS doesn't look to me like its going to offer a huge upgrade, except for super FX style games, or if you want to go injection happy for non-SFX games.
 

kuwanger

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Try it, its quite playable. The game uses the equivalent of frameskipping when the Super FX can't keep up, much like most modern games. So everything happens at roughly the same speed in 60 FPS, just smoother.

That's 15FPS though. The game doesn't simply do frameskipping when the Super FX can't keep up. The game actually slows down. Emulators that don't do proper cycle counting end up effectively overclocking the SuperFX chip emulation and the result is not equivalent to merely a less choppy experience. Having said that, to achieve the equivalent of 60FPS you'd want to overclock the Super FX by something like 1600% and the CPU by 400% and issues vblanks at 240HZ so the 15FPS engine would be tricked into running at 60FPS. That would be unplayable. :)

Ie, I was making a little joke.

I clearly called out non-VC.

Sorry, I misread what you wrote, but I don't find it useful to limit yourself to non-VC emulators as a comparison without good reason. That's like talking ignoring PSP's PSX support and only going with PCSX rearmed because having to use PSX2PSP is undesirable and doesn't offer enough emulation features like save states.

While the GBA VC injection is quite good, it lacks some conveniences of actual emulators. PSP actually has a fullspeed if hacky emulator available so it wins by default for that system.

Looking some more and one of the major example of a choke point in gpSP Kai emulators in Golden Sun looks okay, so perhaps I'm wrong about the state of GBA emulation on the PSP. I'd still tend to value accuracy over emulation features. I wouldn't call it a "win by default" just to have emulation features if it also includes the risk of game crashes (not sure how common they are, if they've been fixed, etc sadly).

On the n3DS I've had trouble with speed on the non-VC SNES emulators that aren't the oldest snes9x. Since bubble2k's version of snes9x already runs a good chunk of the library on o3DS, an n3DS doesn't look to me like its going to offer a huge upgrade, except for super FX style games, or if you want to go injection happy for non-SFX games.

Are you talking about Retroarch cores? My own experience on the Vita is that anything over the Snes9x 2005 has speed issues, and the 3DS doesn't fair any better. bubble2k's snes9x seems to work well as you say on anything not Super FX (at least it works well on MMX3). I haven't tried much Super FX games on most any handheld because only the latest/near latest snes9x seems to get the Super FX timing right and those versions come with pretty substantial system requirements.

Really, if you have video of either the PSP or n3DS running Starfox correctly at 59.8 fps without frame drops I'd be interested to see it. Unfortunately, few people on Youtube seem to want to enable FPS display which makes most sorts of comparison videos through it pretty useless.
 

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