Have N64 and PS1 emulation improved greatly, need some info for a youtube channel

[Shinigami Kiba]

I'm working on a youtube channel and for retro games I decided I'd rather emulate than play on actual hardware, after sitting down and extensively comparing my original games played on the NES AND their emulated versions+shaders in Retroarch I decied that it's easier and more convenient for me to record from RetroArch than my actual systems.
I tested the following games and so no difference whatsoever, I had the games running side by side, on actual hardware on my CRT TV right next to the emulators on my HDTV

NES:
- Little Samson
- Mighty Final Fight
- Rodland
- Super Mario Bros 1-3 - NES
- Over Horizon
- the original first Zelda
- Adventure Island 2

SNES:
- DKC 1-3
- Zombies Ate my Neighbors
- Earthworm Jim
- Axelay
- The Firemen - PAL
- Mario All Stars + World
- Yoshi's Island
- Secret of Mana
- Secret of Evermore
- Boogerman
- Twin Bee - the shmup

MegaDrive
- Alisia Dragoon
- Sonic 1-3 and Knuckles
- Sonic 3D Blast
- Ecco Tides of Time
- Lightening Force IV
- Golden Axe 1-3 - 3 sucks lol
- Alien Storm
- World of Illusion and Castle of Illusion
- Earthworm Jim 2

SMS:
- Wonder Boy 1 and 3
- Sonic 1 and 2
- Alex Kidd - several games of this, i own a bunch
^ a bunch of other games i can't remember atm

Either way I see no difference whatsoever and the games come out very nice with the NTSC Filter/Shader on, they look like they're being played on an actual CRT TV.

Now, when i tried N64 emulation several years back, around 2009 or so it wasn't quite up there with the rest, it wasn't as good as what I was getting on my actual system, has this improved since then? If so what emulator do i want to use through RetroArch to get pretty much indistinguishable results, I was using Project 64 back then and was NOT happy with the outcome, sure games did work and played fine but you could tell they weren't running on actual hardware as opposed to some of the random games i mentioned above.

I have the same question about PS1

thanks in advance

 

[FR0ZN]

For PS1 I would recommend using Mednafen if you are after accuracy.
Mednafen and XEBRA are pixel accurate in terms of looks.

Mednafen however does the CPU emulation more accurately than any other PS1 emulator out there (even those from Sony!).

Afaik RetroArch also uses Mednafen for its PS1 emulation, which is great, because Mednafen doesn't come with a GUI something like that.


I'm not into N64 emulation that much, but cen64 is a cycle accurate emulator, which is pretty much the best you can get.
But prepare your CPU's anus, it's very demanding!

 

[Shinigami Kiba]

Thanks, I have an i7 3820
bsnes seems to have a bit of sound issues sometimes, the accuracy version, so I just use Snes9x and to me it looks as accurate as hardware, at least from my personal comparisons.

In case these PS1 emulators don't perform so well on my system, would it be noticeable/jarring if I use something else, less accurate in technial aspects but pretty accurate as far as visual/audio goes?
I guess PS1 isn't that big a deal if even Sony's emulators aren't as accurate, tho i personally can't tell lol, but N64 is.

 

[stomp_442]

Have you tried using a PS3 to play your PS1 games?

 

[Shinigami Kiba]

I don't have a capture card at the moment, importing one to Macedonia is a bitch since they started stealing at customs A LOT this past year or so, I could easily order one from play asia, probably the only reliable site that ships to my country but there's great risk involved and a ton of extra fees.
A friend will let me borrow his capture card for a bit so that's hopefully be enough for me to capture months worth of material.

Also my PS1 games are a mixed bag of NTSC US and PAL games and some of the best ones I never got original, back in the day during the PS1 days getting original PS1 games here was next to impossible, we had to either use pirated games or not game which of course wasn't an option for me...i dont have anything against piracy mind you.
Though for this channel's purposes I won't mind buying the games legally on PSN as soon as I get a capture card.

As for N64 I have a truly extensive collection but for that i'd rather record from PC if possible, if not i'll figure something out, tho imo it would be better to record from emulation. Also people will know i own the original game because i plan on showing the cartridge before showing gameplay, tho im limiting myself that way since i want to review games i used to have as a kid that i dont anymore.

 

[Shinigami Kiba]

Well when trying to run the installation files for CEN64 nothing happens, hope I didn't download some weird torjan but this looks like the official site:
http://www.cen64.com/

I tried Mupen64 with RetroArch, I was testing Kirby 64 side by side with my N64 and it didn't take long for me to notice graphical glitches even at Very High graphics accuracy
here's a screen:

I'm going to try Project64 now but from what I remember that was even worse

Edit: Project 64 2.2 seems to emulate this better, though finding one without ad ware took a bit of googling, can't believe what the developer of PJ64 stooped down to

Either way PJ64 2.2 seems alright at least for Kirby unless there's something im missing, hope I can use this to represent my games without trying to record my actual N64

 

[Deleted User]

It'd be much easier to use a capture card for N64, standard definition capture cards are really cheap
I don't recall ever having any problems with epsxe besides Mega Man X3 refusing to run

 

[Hungry Friend]

For SNES emulation, the latest SNES9x testbuilds are a great middle ground between ZSNES which is terribly outdated and BSNES which requires a good bit of CPU horsepower for it to run flawlessly. They also have many many more filters and such than plain 9x 1.53 among other little fixes here and there. If you experience audio crackling, switch the audio plugin to Xaudio2 and/or disable hi-res mode in the display settings. However, since the Mana games(both SoM and SD3) and probably Evermore too use hi-res mode for menus and such, make sure it's enabled when you play those games.

It's also much more user friendly than BSNES/higan.

 

[the_randomizer]

Bsnes/Higan Accuracy is absolute overkill and completely unnecessary and is really useful only like, three games, if that. Higan performance is good enough if you must use it, but Snes9x 1.53 test build is the best middle ground.

 

[Hungry Friend]

tbh 9x with the right graphical and sound settings is accurate enough that it feels like playing on a real SNES, and I still have a working SNES. I don't know what games you're talking about but if I want REAL 100% accuracy I'll simply play on my SNES+a CRT of course for true nostalgic bliss.

 

[the_randomizer]

tbh 9x with the right graphical and sound settings is accurate enough that it feels like playing on a real SNES, and I still have a working SNES. I don't know what games you're talking about but if I want REAL 100% accuracy I'll simply play on my SNES+a CRT of course for true nostalgic bliss.

Snes9x also uses Blargg's S-SMP audio core, which has passed all the SPC700 hardware testing and is cycle-accurate to the real deal, I can't tell a diff between Snes9x and a real Snes

 

[Hungry Friend]

The only SLIGHT imperfection is the tiny bit of audio crackling you'll experience no matter what, especially in bass-heavy games(no it's not my speakers) like SF2 Hyper Fighting. It's such a small nitpick though, especially if you've adjusted the settings to your liking. I also really dig all the built in graphical filters and custom shaders available for 9x. You can do everything from playing it raw or with simple bilinear filtering to elaborate CRT filters and 5xBR, and since it's so fast the filters shouldn't fuck with the framerate unless your PC is incredibly old.

Chrono Trigger with a nice little CRT shader:

Spoiler

This image is obviously compressed so it doesn't look as clean and crisp as it does in real time.