Homebrew Retroarch is Now King

[MarioKartFan]

After years of the 3DS feeling like an unwanted stepchild, I can confirm that the 3DS port is now up to snuff, on “New” 3DS hardware, anyway.

Picodrive, Gambatte, Fceumm, FreeIntv, GPSP are all running full speed, with excellent sound, graphics support and save states / fast forward functionality. Most cores support rewind functionality too without dropping speed below 60 FPS.

GPSP no longer crashes!

PCSX-Rearmed runs Symphony of the Night and Suikoden II full speed, without hitching.

Really excellent work. Thanks to the devs who have shown us some love and to @justinweiss for eliminating the need for GBA injections.

 

[Plasmaster09]

After years of the 3DS feeling like an unwanted stepchild, I can confirm that the 3DS port is now up to snuff, on “New” 3DS hardware, anyway.

Picodrive, Gambatte, Fceumm, FreeIntv, GPSP are all running full speed, with excellent sound, graphics support and save states / fast forward functionality. Most cores support rewind functionality too without dropping speed below 60 FPS.

GPSP no longer crashes!

PCSX-Rearmed runs Symphony of the Night and Suikoden II full speed, without hitching.

Really excellent work. Thanks to the devs who have shown us some love and to @justinweiss for eliminating the need for GBA injections.

On an old 3ds it's still pretty bad though.
gpSP doesn't even START- it always gives me the exact same "arm11 exception" crash every time I try to start a game.
I tried mGBA. It's slow as balls.
Gambatte manages to make GBC games lag on a 3ds, which is practically an achievement. Same for... all three NES emulators, somehow.

 

[SuperDan]

I guess I will have to give it a whack tomorrow.. Thanks for the heads up

 

[Clydefrosch]

how long did you test gpsp?
because no one changed anything about that core and it always crashed randomly. meaning at times it does after 2 seconds and others, it does after 2 hours.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

On an old 3ds it's still pretty bad though.
gpSP doesn't even START- it always gives me the exact same "arm11 exception" crash every time I try to start a game.
I tried mGBA. It's slow as balls.
Gambatte manages to make GBC games lag on a 3ds, which is practically an achievement. Same for... all three NES emulators, somehow.

yeah, for o3ds, you gotta use the standalone emulators by bubble2k16. retroarch for picodrive.
gba emulation will never work on o3ds, use vc injects

 

[Plasmaster09]

how long did you test gpsp?
because no one changed anything about that core and it always crashed randomly. meaning at times it does after 2 seconds and others, it does after 2 hours.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


yeah, for o3ds, you gotta use the standalone emulators by bubble2k16. retroarch for picodrive.
gba emulation will never work on o3ds, use vc injects

Not even for Picodrive- bubble2k's ported that too and it's just... better.
Good thing I'm getting a n3ds xl in a week or so- that'll provide much better emulation.

 

[MarioKartFan]

I tested GPSP for 6 hours today - Minish Cap and Yoshi's Island. Not one crash. I tested for 4 hours yesterday - zero crashes.

Picodrive Retroarch is better than bubble2k's port on a New 3DS. Rewind support puts Retroarch over the top.

 

[Vieela]

on o3DS vc injection is the way to go. never had a crash using vc injects on gba.

 

[Pickle_Rick]

On an old 3ds it's still pretty bad though.
gpSP doesn't even START- it always gives me the exact same "arm11 exception" crash every time I try to start a game.

This doesn't happen to me. Delete RetroArch entirely and install the latest stable build.

I tested GPSP for 6 hours today - Minish Cap and Yoshi's Island. Not one crash. I tested for 4 hours yesterday - zero crashes.

Picodrive Retroarch is better than bubble2k's port on a New 3DS. Rewind support puts Retroarch over the top.

The only one that's still better is bubble2k's SNES9x port. Everything else is better in RA.

yeah, for o3ds, you gotta use the standalone emulators by bubble2k16. retroarch for picodrive.
gba emulation will never work on o3ds, use vc injects

Not true. Old 3DS can run gpSP just fine with dynarec on.

 

[Clydefrosch]

Not true. Old 3DS can run gpSP just fine with dynarec on.

not in my experience, but i haven't really looked much at the o3ds gpsp since i moved to a n3ds myself.

I tested GPSP for 6 hours today - Minish Cap and Yoshi's Island. Not one crash. I tested for 4 hours yesterday - zero crashes.

Picodrive Retroarch is better than bubble2k's port on a New 3DS. Rewind support puts Retroarch over the top.

to be fair, I've heard people say that in previous updates too, but I'll test it out i guess

worked for 15 minutes in ff6, then crashed in golden sun as i was entering isaacs name
crashed twice in golden sun before being able to enter names.
worked for 2 levels in kirby nightmare in dreamland, crashed during whispy woods battle.

so yeah. I assume you either did not spend 10 hours testing this, or your were incredibly lucky.

 

[Zense]

I tested GPSP for 6 hours today - Minish Cap and Yoshi's Island. Not one crash. I tested for 4 hours yesterday - zero crashes.

so yeah. I assume you either did not spend 10 hours testing this, or your were incredibly lucky.

Incredibly lucky it is then.

Anyways the random crashes have actually been looked into as the same crashes happened in pcsx_rearmed.
It was announced under the pcsx_rearmed part on this news page by retroarch:
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/category/blog/page/2/

 

[MarioKartFan]

Another two hours of Yoshi’s Island today. No crashes. GPSP works great!

 

[YBLP]

So pcsx is not crashing randomly anymore?

 

[The Catboy]

On an old 3ds it's still pretty bad though.
gpSP doesn't even START- it always gives me the exact same "arm11 exception" crash every time I try to start a game.
I tried mGBA. It's slow as balls.
Gambatte manages to make GBC games lag on a 3ds, which is practically an achievement. Same for... all three NES emulators, somehow.

To be fair, the old3DS has some pretty horrible hardware compared to the new3DS and I don't really think any amount of optimization is going to fix that. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't really hold out much hope for the old3DS.

 

[Zense]

So pcsx is not crashing randomly anymore?

Yeah crashes are gone from my experience.

 

[Feffe]

To be fair, the old3DS has some pretty horrible hardware compared to the new3DS and I don't really think any amount of optimization is going to fix that. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't really hold out much hope of the old3DS.

Yeah, at one point it's impossible not to hit OG 3DS HW limitations. Nothing to blame the devs for. Bubble's SNES emulator does a good job working around those limitations, but as a result, it has some issues, even when run on New 3DS

2. Mosaic effect and mid-frame palette update problems - we use the 3DS hardware for speed; but we have to give up these two features for it. Most games work well without it. If you game's colours look funny, go to the Settings and try changing the palette options.

I haven't tested the latest Retroarch yet (I lent my New 3DS to a friend of mine some months ago and we are in quarantine now), IIRC Gambatte core had some sound issues. I hope they are fixed now.

For SNES game though I reckon injections are still better - most of the games have custom patches thanks to the SNES Classic community and the emulator is tailored-made for the weaker hardware.

 

[YBLP]

Yeah crashes are gone from my experience.

yay

 

[Plasmaster09]

Yeah, at one point it's impossible not to hit OG 3DS HW limitations. Nothing to blame the devs for. Bubble's SNES emulator does a good job working around those limitations, but as a result, it has some issues, even when run on New 3DS



I haven't tested the latest Retroarch yet (I lent my New 3DS to a friend of mine some months ago and we are in quarantine now), IIRC Gambatte core had some sound issues. I hope they are fixed now.

For SNES game though I reckon injections are still better - most of the games have custom patches thanks to the SNES Classic community and the emulator is tailored-made for the weaker hardware.

Really? I've heard the Bubble core works wonderfully on N3DS, no matter what's thrown at it. (Well, except for that one rom hack I can't get to start.)

 

[Deleted User]

Really? I've heard the Bubble core works wonderfully on N3DS, no matter what's thrown at it. (Well, except for that one rom hack I can't get to start.)

There are some issues with Hi-Res text:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/snes9x-for-old-3ds.435568/page-108#post-8116063
post from DiscostewSM pretty much explains it.

 

[Clydefrosch]

There are some issues with Hi-Res text:

wasn't there a mode for these games?
that said, i feel like these were generally problematic on a 3ds because of its low resolution in general. you had to do some flickery stuff to make that mode display at all and it generally wasn't very comfortable

 

[Feffe]

Really? I've heard the Bubble core works wonderfully on N3DS, no matter what's thrown at it. (Well, except for that one rom hack I can't get to start.)

It's based on a very old version of SNES9X (1.43, released 15 years ago) and there are some minor sound and graphical glitches, like the afore-mentioned mosaic effect. IIRC an effect during the battles in Mario RPG is missing. Nothing groundbreaking, but I wouldn't describe SNES9X emulation as "perfect". It is serviceable and - considering the limitations it has on OG 3DS - an admirable effort. That said, it is "good enough" for most people and miles better than whatever the PSP had, SNES on PSP was a nightmare for me.

To be fair even Nintendo emulation has its caveat, with the audio volume generally lower (and of course most special chip games outright not working), but I find it more reliable than SNES9X and Retroarch.

wasn't there a mode for these games?
that said, i feel like these were generally problematic on a 3ds because of its low resolution in general. you had to do some flickery stuff to make that mode display at all and it generally wasn't very comfortable

Yeah no matter what, Hi-Res games will look bad on 3DS. The screen simply doesn't have enough pixels.