Emulation where to start

[pix07]

As everyone knows there are tons of emulators.

But which should we choose?

Which emulator can be best?

And what platform should we prefer ?

Does frontends are needed?

Which fronted is user friendly?

Use virtual gamepad or real one?

Hardware or software emulation?

Feel free to discuss in this thread.

I hope that thread help everyone which knows how to setup emulators and for beginers.

[ulaoulao]

Which emulator can be best? - This needs to be broken down.
>What emulator is most accurate
>What emulator is fastest
>What emulator is most feature rich.

And what platform should we prefer ?
With the likes of RetroArch this is becoming irrelevant. It is more of a choose your own.

Does frontends are needed?
Depends on the person. Honestly there will never be a need.

Which fronted is user friendly?
Depends on the person. What is friendly to one is not to another.

Use virtual gamepad or real one?
I'm too bias here.

Hardware or software emulation?
Too vague.


But this is all old news and times have changed. There are issues beyond what you mentioned like, you need more then one emulator as some emulate game X and some do game Y, and some emulators are active others not. Some of the devs are "not nice" so you can not reason with them, some emulators are only on windows, and some do not support xinput, and the list goes one...

So how do we fix this? --- use RetroARch like emulators. In RA you can select the core, frontend or OS. You can play with any controller you want and on any device you want. The best part is that if you do not like something you can change it in the same environment. This paradigm spawned in to many other projects. If you like emulation to be near perfect, then look up the MiSTer, if you like using your windows box, use RetroARch. If you want to use your pie, see retroPie. It is important to know that these projects are not new emulators, they are just a compile of all emulators "cores" in to one. This is just how things are going to be in the next few years to come.

All of that aside, it all comes down to preference. I still use my old fronted with separate emulators in my main emulation room. Mainly because its there. I also have a room I use the MiSTer connected to a CRT, and I have a nvidia Shield running RA for the living room. Everything uses a Bliss-Box so the controller is like it was intended to be. You would never know the difference from the MiSTer from the real NES. So, to my point, its all subjective.

[pix07]

Thank you for answer.

I hope it helps.

[kelsin]

Thank you for answer.

I hope it helps.

pretty cool.