Difficult to emulate classic games?

[MarcusRaven]

I need some games that have a history of difficult emulation. I'm NOT asking for links. Only names. I need games for NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance. Here's a few that I know of, please add whatever you think of:

NES
Castlevania III
Mother

SNES
Star Fox
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Earthworm Jim 2
Star Ocean
Sim Earth
Far East of Eden Zero

Genesis
Road Rash
Road Rash II
Road Rash 3

GameBoy
???

GameBoy Color
Shantae
Rayman
Rayman 2

GameBoy Advance
DK King of Swing
Gunstar Super Heroes
Sigma Star Saga
Wario Land 4

These are the ones I know of from personal experience. Compiled the list from suggestions thus far. Got any others?

(I understand that emulators have come a long way over the years, and that's part of the reason I'm putting this list together. I need a list to properly test with the wave of PS3 emulators that are being released.)

 

[duffmmann]

Hmm, I think that this has more to do with your emulator and not the roms. Because I've played Star Fox, Mario RPG, and Yoshi's Island through numerous times on my SNES emulator with no problems. I can't say for Earthworm Jim 2 though, I don't think I've ever tried to emulate that game.

 

[granville]

Those SNES games listed are very easy to emulate on any of the best emulators besides ZSNES (which despite being very fast and old PC-friendly, has become incredibly outdated and buggy). If you use SNES9x, SNESGT, or even bsnes (though that one is very slow unless you have a hefty rig), you should have absolutely no errors in any of those listed games. I heard it was SNES9x that was ported to PS3, so there's a good chance it will play most SNES games pretty well.

Newer ZSNES versions have serious issues with Mario RPG in terms of stability. The emulator will frequently freeze up the game in menus and level up screens. The text boxes will also glitch up and cause stuttering and slowdowns. As for EWJ2, i found the game almost unplayable due to the random frequent freezes. The sound effects are garbled as well. I don't recall any issues with Yoshi's Island, and i haven't tested Starfox extensively in it.

Unless of course we're talking about games that are CPU-intensive or require a beefier PC. Can't help you there.

In terms of GBC, Rayman and Rayman 2 are rather glitchy in some emulators.

 

[JonthanD]

I can save you some time with the SNES list, on your list of hard to emulate SNES games the only one that wouldn't work for the newest build on the PS3 is Yoshi's Island.

On the Genesis I would bet money that one or more of the Road Rash games will not emulate properly

I am not sure what EA did back in the day that makes it to hard to emulate those games right (although on the PC Gens they work perfectly.)

NES, just have to check the different mappers as long as those are compatible your golden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Management_Controller

Castlevania III is a popular one to mess up... (Why is always the games I like that are hard to emulate...)

You could just about copy the list of games that do not work with the different 3rd party "compatible" hardware like the FC Twin or that Retron 3.

 

[Rydian]

NES...
Anything with a high mapper number is likely to be unsupported in a random emulator, stuff like Action 52.
Mother has some crashing issues depending on the circumstances.


SNES...
Star Ocean was notoriously difficult, needing a graphics pack on some emulators, and not working at all on others.
Sim Earth wouldn't even play right in ZSNES.
Far East Of Eden Zero had compression crap like Star Ocean, if I remember right.


GBA...
Wario Land 4 seems fine until you press the frog button in a level. The graphical effects that persist in the background can bring an emulator to it's knees depending on the system.

 

[RNorthex]

afaik every snes game that uses superFX got quite a bit of a problem running on some emulators
sad...i still hope for a good yoshi island port some day

apart from that, actraiser/starfox/castlevania4 nes multiple-game cartridges
others i don't know of

 

[Hells Malice]

I've never had a problem with any SNES, except Star Ocean. Haven't tried it in ages though. I played all of the SNES games you listed flawlessly with ZSNES.

I've played TONS of NES games, and never had a problem.

 

[MarcusRaven]

Thank you for all your input so far. I understand a lot of these games play fine now, but if they have a history I want to know about it.

A friend of mine keyed me to some games he's had issues with.

SNES - Ballz 3D

GBA - DK King of Swing, Gunstar Super Heroes, and Sigma Star Saga.

Going to update my master list up there here shortly. Once I think I have a good list, I'm going to do one massive review on all the (dedicated) classic emulators put out so far for PS3. (The one that can emulate a whole bunch of stuff I really didn't like at all. Too many minor issues dedicated emulators don't have.)

EDIT: I'm seeing a lot of issues with Yoshi's Island, and even though that one took a while to emulate properly, I've never recently had an issue with it. Even on the PS3 version of SNES9x it works wonderfully.

EDIT2: After updating the list, I guess the original GameBoy was just so easy to emulate. Lol. I'll probably just end up showcasing some MegaMan games on it then.

 

[duffmmann]

Oh, I can think of one that wont emulate properly on the vbagx on the wii: Yoshi Topsy Turvey. When you change the option to match wii controls so that when you rotate the controller to rotate the game, the whole screen rotates, and Yoshi still doesn't go the direction you try to move him. And its not like motion controlled gb/gba games don't work properly this way, cuz I've had no problems with Kirby's Tilt and Tumble and Warioware Twisted.

 

[MarcusRaven]

Oh, I can think of one that wont emulate properly on the vbagx on the wii: Yoshi Topsy Turvey. When you change the option to match wii controls so that when you rotate the controller to rotate the game, the whole screen rotates, and Yoshi still doesn't go the direction you try to move him. And its not like motion controlled gb/gba games don't work properly this way, cuz I've had no problems with Kirby's Tilt and Tumble and Warioware Twisted.

I didn't even think about gimmick games. I don't think the PS3 rendition of VBA has any options for that kind of emulation (yet).

 

[duffmmann]

Oh, I can think of one that wont emulate properly on the vbagx on the wii: Yoshi Topsy Turvey. When you change the option to match wii controls so that when you rotate the controller to rotate the game, the whole screen rotates, and Yoshi still doesn't go the direction you try to move him. And its not like motion controlled gb/gba games don't work properly this way, cuz I've had no problems with Kirby's Tilt and Tumble and Warioware Twisted.

I didn't even think about gimmick games. I don't think the PS3 rendition of VBA has any options for that kind of emulation (yet).

Well in that case, there are 3 games that aren't going to work on the PS3 emulator:
Kirby's Tilt and Tumble
Warioware Twisted
Yoshi Topsy Turvey

Also, this is a very small not reallly an issue, but sort of an issue. For vbagx on the wii, the first pokemon pinball (for gbc) has no problem giving rumble (again when you choose match wii controls from emulator menu), but the pokemon pinball rubyand saphire (for gba) will not allow you to turn rumble on within the game's menu (its greyed out even if you have match wii controls on). I haven't tried any other gba games that had rumble, so that may or may not affect other games, but yeah,no rumble for gba pokemon pinball.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Never had any problems emulating SMRPG unless it's on a system not capable of it (like the DS, I think the PSP as well, and it runs meh on Android emulators and probably iPod ones too). But it ran perfectly on my Wii and my PC. Same deal with Star Fox. EDIT: Ran in Snes9x I think.

For Mother you could try the Mother 1+2 GBA game, I'm pretty sure there's a translation patch that has Mother 1 completely translated and some of Mother 2 translated.

As for motion-sensitive games on the PS3 I wouldn't be surprised if they get some Move support in there eventually.

Boktai 1 and 2 has problems mainly because of the sun sensor being gone. There's a patch that allows you to adjust the sun level in-game though, not sure if there's any other solutions to it though.

I've had problems with Conker's Bad Fur Day and DK64 myself. Rare games for the N64 are generally bitchy to emulate, but goddammit they're so awesome. Unless you have the XBLA version of Perfect Dark which means you can easily skip emulating it and probably don't need Goldeneye (since Perfect Dark was far superior and the XBLA version has all its maps and weapons). EDIT: Forget which emulator I was using, sorry.

 

[YayMii]

Yeah, there's quite a few N64 games that are a bitch to emulate.
I never got Conker's Bad Fur Day to work properly, but it doesn't bother me because I have Live & Reloaded on the Xbox.
Mario Party 1-3 has an odd way of rendering text. I couldn't get all 3 games to render text properly when using the same graphics plugin on either 1964 or PJ64. And there might be some minigame inconsistencies too.
But it seems that the VC version of Mario Party 2 does it right

And for the GBC, games with voice or sound clips/samples (such as Pokémon Yellow and Cannon Fodder) have issues with audio.

 

[VentusVanitas]

Another NES game for the list is Final Fantasy VII.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

Another NES game for the list is Final Fantasy VII.

Well, that's your problem right there.

 

[Fudge]

Star Fox 2 (SNES) was somewhat difficult to emulate for awhile. SNES9X and ZSNES can play it fine now though.
EDIT: Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES) was also rather difficult to emulate due to the use of the S-DD1 chip.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

Star Fox 2 (SNES) was somewhat difficult to emulate for awhile. SNES9X and ZSNES can play it fine now though.

The fact that it was a Beta, and never released could have something to do with it.

 

[Rydian]

The original release was buggy, but then somebody fixed almost all the bugs and it works mostly fine now (ZSNES hasn't been updated in years).

I forgot about Street Fighter Alpha 2.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Another NES game for the list is Final Fantasy VII.

Well, that's your problem right there.

He may be referring to this. If there's emulation errors from this it's probably because, according to the article, the hardware and programming of the cartridge itself is different from most NES/Famicom games. It's also an unlicensed bootleg.

But that's just a guess.