Wii Saturn emulator questions/comments
Posted by DevilRy
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Wii Saturn emulator questions/comments April 18, 2009 02:01AM | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 11 |
I know there's already Yabause Wii, but has anyone tried this emulator? Do you have to have Linux on your Wii to run it? I've tried it on Vista and it seems to run pretty poorly, much worse than SSF (which actually runs fairly smooth). I'll have to wait until the 4.0 menu workaround gets released in any case, I just wanted to collect some info on this and other Saturn emulators beforehand. The Yabause forum users seem to have a lot of the same questions as I do, but no one seems to have any answers. I've spent the greater part of a half an hour trying to find something, ANYTHING on their website and others about how to run Yabause on Wii and I came back with a big fat nothing, other than the claim that it runs on the Wii at the top of their front page. Looking over their compatibility list, it looks like most of the games I want to play wouldn't work anyway... :(
So, in conclusion: Is Yabause any good? If so, how do you get it to run on the Wii? Can the Wii's DVD drive even read Saturn discs or would I have to run games off their ISOs saved on the SD card? Could you run SSF on the Wii?
Sorry if these questions seem newbish, any answers are appreciated, thanks in advance!
So, in conclusion: Is Yabause any good? If so, how do you get it to run on the Wii? Can the Wii's DVD drive even read Saturn discs or would I have to run games off their ISOs saved on the SD card? Could you run SSF on the Wii?
Sorry if these questions seem newbish, any answers are appreciated, thanks in advance!
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Re: Wii Saturn emulator questions/comments April 18, 2009 02:32AM | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 157 |
Good question.
From what I've read, the Yabause Wii app is at an extremely early stage. Saturn emulation is not particularly well-developed in general, and I think that getting it to run acceptably on the Wii is even harder. The wiki page says that some games run at 5-10 fps, which is promising from a technical point of view but not so much from the point of view of someone who actually wants to play Saturn games on the Wii. Check out the Yabause site for more info, I suppose. Also, given your assessment of Yabause's performance on your presumably fairly powerful PC, how effectively do you think the humble Wii can run the same program?
As regards the loading method, the Wii cannot read CDs, as far as I know. From the looks of things, at the moment the program only supports loading roms from SD, but if the project sees significant development you can be sure that they will implement stuff like DVD and USB loading in future.
To get it to run, download the file from the wiibrew wiki page and follow the instructions there. Alternatively, you can download it via the homebrew browser app directly onto your SD card in your Wii. You don't need Linux.
In short, it's not very good if you want high-fidelity Saturn emulation.
As regards SSF, if it is open source, then it is in theory portable to the Wii, as is any emulator. However, the power of the Wii plays a large factor in whether it can actually run effectively or not. If it's not open source, then no port.
From what I've read, the Yabause Wii app is at an extremely early stage. Saturn emulation is not particularly well-developed in general, and I think that getting it to run acceptably on the Wii is even harder. The wiki page says that some games run at 5-10 fps, which is promising from a technical point of view but not so much from the point of view of someone who actually wants to play Saturn games on the Wii. Check out the Yabause site for more info, I suppose. Also, given your assessment of Yabause's performance on your presumably fairly powerful PC, how effectively do you think the humble Wii can run the same program?
As regards the loading method, the Wii cannot read CDs, as far as I know. From the looks of things, at the moment the program only supports loading roms from SD, but if the project sees significant development you can be sure that they will implement stuff like DVD and USB loading in future.
To get it to run, download the file from the wiibrew wiki page and follow the instructions there. Alternatively, you can download it via the homebrew browser app directly onto your SD card in your Wii. You don't need Linux.
In short, it's not very good if you want high-fidelity Saturn emulation.
As regards SSF, if it is open source, then it is in theory portable to the Wii, as is any emulator. However, the power of the Wii plays a large factor in whether it can actually run effectively or not. If it's not open source, then no port.
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Re: Wii Saturn emulator questions/comments April 18, 2009 04:03AM | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 3 |
1. The Wii can't read Cd's, or DVD's unless thy're game discs or you have the homebrew launcher thing that boots stuff from dvd's.
2. Maybe Vista is slowing the games down a little (like everything else)
3. The Saturn isn't exactly a great system to emulate; it's hardware is funky to say the least.
And if anybody asks, the Yabause version on the HBB is old. Don't use it.
2. Maybe Vista is slowing the games down a little (like everything else)
3. The Saturn isn't exactly a great system to emulate; it's hardware is funky to say the least.
And if anybody asks, the Yabause version on the HBB is old. Don't use it.
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Re: Wii Saturn emulator questions/comments April 19, 2009 05:15AM | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 11 |
Thanks for the advice, guys!
After some investigation I don't think the Wii would run SSF, which has some pretty gnarly technical restrictions I guess I didn't notice at first. For instance, SSF requires the processor to have the SSE2 instruction set, which I don't think Power PC/Hollywood does, correct me if I'm wrong.
After some investigation I don't think the Wii would run SSF, which has some pretty gnarly technical restrictions I guess I didn't notice at first. For instance, SSF requires the processor to have the SSE2 instruction set, which I don't think Power PC/Hollywood does, correct me if I'm wrong.
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Re: Wii Saturn emulator questions/comments April 19, 2009 11:42AM | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 276 |
it's not only CPU instructions... SSF is (probably quite entirely ) coded in X86 asm and the sourcecode is not even available: the only one that could port it to the Wii would be the author itself, and this would still require a complete rewrite, not really worth considering how many years the original SSF development took him so far !!
seriously, don't get your hope on such things, opensource emulators designed for portability, like Yabause, are your best chance to play Saturn games one day.... with the downside of being less accurate and less optimized, until someone put some serious work on it.
I once spoke with Fabien Autrel, the developper of Satourne... and I remember him telling the Saturn was probably the most complicated console ever to emulate :-/
seriously, don't get your hope on such things, opensource emulators designed for portability, like Yabause, are your best chance to play Saturn games one day.... with the downside of being less accurate and less optimized, until someone put some serious work on it.
I once spoke with Fabien Autrel, the developper of Satourne... and I remember him telling the Saturn was probably the most complicated console ever to emulate :-/
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