Gaming Emulating on my N3DS

[DoItRight]

I've recently upgraded from a 3ds to a N3DS, and it's awesome.

This leads to my question, What's the best way to make this console into a Nintendo emulation extravaganza.
Meaning:

• Which consoles can I effectively emulate/play on the N3DS?
  
• How can I best emulate all possible consoles on the N3DS?
  
• What is the most effective way to store MANY games from NES, SNES, GB, GBA, GBC, DS?
• Should I be running games off my flash card for any of these systems?

I understand installing games as CIAs might be the most effective, and I might do that for some titles, but I would love to have a way to just drag big folders of roms to have on hand if possible.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Bubble2006 made several emulators for Old3DS (!), Picodrive (sega), TemperPCE (turbografx), Snes9x, VirtuNES. They are all pretty simple and fast, and load roms quickly, but make some compromises on accuracy.

The latest Retroarch stable is actually optimized properly by default. This will give you some more accurate fullspeed options on a New system with GensisPluxGX, snes9x2002, and NEStopia. In addition FBA for Neo-Geo and Capcom Arcade 1 & 2 run extremely well. I think there's also decent support for Atari 2600, MSX, and some other 8-bit things but I haven't played with it myself.

mGBA is a very accurate emulator but is too slow for many GBA games. However it also plays GB/C quite well. There is also gambatte on Retroarch for GB/C but it seems to crash IF I use save states. gPSP is a bit of a trap, it runs GBA games fullspeed with the dynarec on but is extremely crash-prone. The dsi version of GameYob runs GB/C very well but I would only use for tiny native-sized display because it will scale poorly.

There is both standalone and Retroarch support for the Atari lynx. The standalone has some audio sync problem after a while, while the retroarch core doesn't support save states.

 

[DoItRight]

Got it, so GB, GBC, NES, SNES are all no problem. Which emulators would YOU choose to run these systems on?

And are there any good options for GBA right now? I see you listed two with some negatives, are either of them really usable?

 

[H1B1Esquire]

I recommend sprite-based games for PSX (PCSX R)
There's also Sega CD .cia files (look for them)


If you look around, there's a thread detailing which emulators work and which have mild issues.

 

[Rahkeesh]

To keep it simple I would start with Bubble's four emulators. They work pretty well for most things and are easy to set up and fast to use. If you get annoyed by things being a little off then you should look into setting up Retroarch, which is more fiddly and slower to load, but can run some games better, and handles sleep mode/home menu properly. Although retroarch is the only way to play neo-geo and those run surprisngly flawlessly.

I generally use mGBA to *try* GBA games, but most have varying levels of the sound getting garbled due to not quite running at fullspeed. I end up doing VC injects on games I actually want to play through, yes its a pain to set up, but its the only way to get the full experience on 3DS.

My experience with PSX hasn't been great, even sprite-based games are difficult to run at fullspeed with frameskip. Again its way more tolerable if you shut off the sound but I always want sound. Most of the Bubble inaccuracies are in sound in the first place.

 

[DoItRight]

I recommend sprite-based games for PSX (PCSX R)
There's also Sega CD .cia files (look for them)

If you look around, there's a thread detailing which emulators work and which have mild issues.

What, you can play PS1 games on the N3DS?!
Please link that thread to me if you run across it.

@Rahkeesh Thanks for the pointers. It seems like Retroarch is a good fit for me, I don't mind the effort in setting it up (Or are there other major issues?). And if it works with the sleep mode best, that's a top priority for me.

 

[H1B1Esquire]

PS1 games on the N3DS

Here's a start, so you know what works:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/pcsx-rearmed-compatibility-list.489357/

 

[Rahkeesh]

In Bubble's emulators the top screen goes black when you return from sleep or home button. The emulator is still running and you can navigate the UI on the bottom screen to do a save state and then exit out properly, but its a bit annoying that you have to basically restart the emulator.

Retroarch is the one-stop shop though, just get the CIA from the latest stable, copy the retroarch folder over to your SD, install and run the CIA, load any core in there and it will be installed on your home menu. You just need a little patience as it always needs some time to restart a core when loading a rom, which isn't so much the case for Bubble's emulators.

 

[TheMotleyCat]

You can get an emulator on your 3DS??