Homebrew Suggestion Split screen emulation possible?

[Andrezin0692]

So, i was thinking while playing retroarch, that if you could emulate two legacy systems at the same time, like two SNES games or maybe two gba games with possible link cable emulation. Would be nice to have two people play at the same time, maybe just play the same game while chating or racing. I guess it would be a nice feature to have.
Any thoughts about this idea?

 

[hippy dave]

Certainly possible in theory, I know gameboy emulators exist that do it, I don't know if any of them are in Retroarch or otherwise on Switch.
Did SNES even have link cable games?

 

[Rahkeesh]

Home consoles did not have any of these links to my knowledge, at least until they started getting internet. A very few computer games did though. (Midi Maze.)

 

[Andrezin0692]

Well, linking would be optional, the main idea is just emulate more then one game/system at the same screen, so that two people could play at the same time...

 

[hippy dave]

Oh, again possible, as long as there's enough resources for double emulation. Would be fine for 8bit and maybe some 16bit systems, I know SNES gets more intensive with the more accurate emulators. Don't know if any emulator authors would be interested in implementing it tho.

 

[2Siralv]

Well, linking would be optional, the main idea is just emulate more then one game/system at the same screen, so that two people could play at the same time...

Why have the need to play 2 different gsmes at the same time on one screen? It jst be a huge mess you would have 2 sounds going on, 2 different games and screens if ur thinking of playing splitscreen but having one full screen for each? If thats the case thiers a playstaion 3d tv that has that fearure if u put on the glasses each plauer sees a full screen of thier game isntead of splitscreen

 

[FAST6191]

Did SNES even have link cable games?

Technically yes. Look up XBAND. It is unlikely things will be emulated any time soon -- it came up over at romhacking.net a while back and apparently the hacks (think game genie and then some) the device employed were loaded from the service and stored locally with a battery backed thing, this being the 90s then preservation was not a thing and by the time anybody thought to have a look the batteries had long since died on all the units sourced to test with.

For most practical purposes. No. Nothing like the GBA or even the gamecube with its broadband adapter and mario kart you can do LAN and thus internet if you have a local VPN. (1080 Avalanche, Kirby Air Ride and Homeland being others with such features, though most only care about Mario Kart and Homeland is a Japanese exclusive).


Back on topic, so to speak, then there is little practical value to emulating two 16 bit home consoles at the same time on one machine. If you want to play together over the internet then there are plenty of methods to forward controls and screens/music in the relevant directions, kaillera is a good term to start a search with here.

Two handhelds is a different matter. A favourite article at points like this.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131781/the_internet_sucks_or_what_i_.php
This means that while theoretically you could pump their link cable data over the internet (we had versions of VBAlink that would go over network) then the realities of the thing vs what it expects (not so many lost packets, lag and such in probably not even metre long physical cables) means few ever do and reprogramming a game to handle it... no thanks. Emulating two machines on the same one and doing the controls and screens thing from consoles above with the results of that (possibly also throwing saves and savestates around for things like pokemon) is a far more reasonable thing to do. It should have enough grunt to do it well enough at least up to the GBA and past that point you are back to internet/wireless things that should handle the odd dropped packet.

 

[dormeus]

As an aside, I loved playing command and conquer with my friends over linkcable on the PS1