Emulation quality

I'm thinking of starting to use Wii Homebrew, and would largely be using it for emulation of NES / SNES games. I've watched a few YouTube videos demoing homebrew emulator functionality, but the quality of the videos is suspect and I don't feel I really got a good enough demonstration. When emulating NES / SNES games, what kind of frame rate and quality could I expect? Is it identical to playing the game on the original console?

Thanks in advance.

YouTube videos are not exactly a good way to check on quality. In my eyes, the emulators we have for the (S)NES are damn near perfect, and I switched from digging out my SNES once in a while to using my Wii plus homebrew emulator. No framerate issues at all (apart from those the game themselves have on the original system), and the picture looks exactly like on the real thing, only with better video quality (Dunno about other systems, but my SNES offers composite at best.)

So yeah. If you ask me, it's not identical to the original system, it's better. The only thing one might not like is the fact that you can't use the original controllers, at least not without building yourself an adapter.

Snes9x has excellent compatibility also, so pretty much every game will run at full speed. The only game where I have noticed any issues is with Seiken Densetsu 3, which suffers from occasional sprite glitches and a bit of slowdown. Even this is absolutely minimal.

Fantastic. Thanks for the prompt replies!

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zman
The only thing one might not like is the fact that you can't use the original controllers, at least not without building yourself an adapter.

You could use a classic controller which is very similar to the SNES controller. And the wiimote serves excellent with as a NES controller.

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profetylen
You could use a classic controller which is very similar to the SNES controller. And the wiimote serves excellent with as a NES controller.

Uh yeah but it's not so good for SNES games. I set my controller for SMW so that A was run, B was spin jump, 1 was run also, and 2 was jump. It works well but I can't get past the 3rd castle!!!! Maybe it's because I edited it so that there's 5 mega moles in the room with the Koopa Kid. Nah!

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z400100500
Uh yeah but it's not so good for SNES games.

Did u read the whole of my post?

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profetylen
You could use a classic controller which is very similar to the SNES controller. And the wiimote serves excellent with as a NES controller.

Haha, lots of moles :D



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2009 07:22PM by profetylen.

SNES emulation is sadly not gonna be that good. =\ snes9x is a flawed emulator, with many bugs and many games having incorrect sound. Compare FF3's sound effects to the cart and you'll find a great deal of difference. :( Most people might not be able to tell the difference, but that's because usually the best known games are emulated well. Stuff like FF3 wasn't played by that many people on the snes compared to SMW. Sorry, man. A new SNES emulator needs to be made for the Wii, and no one wants to do it.

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I.S.T.
SNES emulation is sadly not gonna be that good. =\ snes9x is a flawed emulator, with many bugs and many games having incorrect sound. Compare FF3's sound effects to the cart and you'll find a great deal of difference. :( Most people might not be able to tell the difference, but that's because usually the best known games are emulated well. Stuff like FF3 wasn't played by that many people on the snes compared to SMW. Sorry, man. A new SNES emulator needs to be made for the Wii, and no one wants to do it.

My finger is hovering over the delete button on your comment.
What the hell are you talking about? SNES Emulation on the Wii is close to if not already perfect (which I think it is). Tantric has evolved his version of Snes9x beyond just a mere port and added a large and varied myriad of new features and even some improvements over the original emulator. Have you even used the emulator? Specifically the latest version of it? Apparently not.

Also, I've used Snes9x for the pc and as far as I can tell, it appears to be pretty much perfect as well. Maybe what you need is a new sound system, not a new emulator.

Furthermore, your statement contradicts itself horribly. Example: "FF3's sound effects to the cart and you'll find a great deal of difference." Next sentence: "Most people might not be able to tell the difference" Wow, what a great deal of difference there must be then.

Even if your complaints have even a slight grain of truth buried in their outright laughable contradictions and nonsensical organization, a small sound issue is no reason to write an entirely new emulator. Just ask Tantric fix the sound instead :P (Which he'll probably do in like 10 minutes since hes an amazing emulation god among men) And again, I'm pretty sure these sound issues don't even exist in the latest version of the emulator.

Also, to the original poster of the topic, theres a video of the SNES Emulator in action here: [www.youtube.com] (Note that its of a version slightly older than the current version)



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2009 04:44PM by Arikado.

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Arikado
Furthermore, your statement contradicts itself horribly. Example: "FF3's sound effects to the cart and you'll find a great deal of difference." Next sentence: "Most people might not be able to tell the difference" Wow, what a great deal of difference there must be then.

Thta's not a contradictioan at all.
Just because many people can't tell the difference, doesn't mean there is not a difference.

His argument is, that many people can't tell the difference, because they do not know the original or do not know it well.
For example: I couldn't see a difference, because I never played the game on a SNES, I only played the GBA port.
On the other hand: many Sonic collections have a slightly different jump sound, but I only heard people mention that a few times.

No, the contradiction is in "A great deal of difference" is obviously not a giganto-humongo major difference if "Most people can't tell" but instead a very minor difference. Granted, it may still feel like a huge difference to a hardcore fan, but that is not how he suggested it.

Snes9x r0x.

nuff said,

kthxbye

The reason most people won't be able to tell the difference is they've never experienced the original game, only the imitation. That was my point. Yes, my language was confusing, and I apologize for that. I think in contradicting sentences that only make sentence to me, and I don't always catch them when making a post or writing, well, anything.

The reason I mentioned the FF3 problems is simple: it's a problem few know about because they've never played the cart. Arikado, have you? I have. I used to own it and i've sunk 200 hours into it, possibly more. The only emulators I've found who get it right are bsnes(Which uses blargg's sound core.) and snesgt(Which seems to have scratchy sound in general, but I was using a beta version at the time. I'm not counting an output issue against it's sound accuracy, that's just not fair).

The sound effects have the wrong pitch, many of them are played just a little too fast, and in general it just doesn't sound right. if i still had the cart and the equipment i'd make recordings right now.

arikado, here's a link proving snes9x's inaccuracy in general(Note, zsnes has many problems too. they usually manifest in different games/in different ways, however.): [www.snes9x.com]

I'm sure you recognize zones and byuu.

snes9x is obviously less accurate and outdated compared to zsnes and even more bsnes but the former is not portable and the later requires too much CPU power, hence why snes9x has already been emulator of choice when porting to something else than a PC...

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A new SNES emulator needs to be made for the Wii, and no one wants to do it.

quoted for the reason described above and to show how you are wrong
a new emulator (means, coded from scratch) would be pointless because it would be like reinventing the wheel and you will still need to sacrifice accuracy against speed on the Wii. Bsnes is damn accurate but also (relatively) slow, at least , CPU requirement is quite high, sadly you can't have both...
Fixes to the current snes9x code based on the current emulator's experience is a lot wiser imo, but will always be limited to a certain point like bug fixes in the emulation core (ie, I doubt you will ever have perfect binary reproduction of a real SNES, it takes way too much CPU horse power to handle)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2009 10:38AM by ekeeke.

I'm not arguing for a bsnes on the Wii. that is a pointless endeavor at best! Just a more accurate emulator than snes9x. The reason I want a more accurate emulator is the amount of bugs snes9x has, and that many of the emulation problems cannot be fixed without rewriting it. =\

But, if the Wii is too slow to go even a little above snes9x accuracy, then I guess this argument is moot. :(

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Just a more accurate emulator than snes9x.

which one ? there aren't so many, which make the choice quite limited
zsnes is written in assembly and optimized for PC platforms, which makes its port quite the same as rewriting everything from scratch
snesgt is not opensource
bsnes would run at 10fps
other emulators are outdated and does not match snes9x compatibility

a new emulator especially for the Wii ? all the above projects came out from many many years of development and unestimated hours of work/research. It's ok because PC platforms are meant to stay on the market and get updated, but not the Wii, which is the reason you won't see anything really "new" but only ports of already existing emulators with far or less optimization work and eventually some bugfixes if you are lucky.

that's also why the best answer to "snes9x has bugs" is "do the best you can to fix them", not "let's port another emu"
some stuff might be fixable because they were due to misinformations or mistakes on how to emulate some part of the SNES while some others would require very precise timings and chip emulation synchronization to get "perfect" accuracy... unfortunately, this can not be achieved without very high requirements.

Would fixing Snes9x's current sound bugs (i.e. such as FF3/6 sound/music) be extremely difficult on the wii/gamecube port? I recall that the old 1.43 wii ports had the option to switch it off/on in the game menu. Why I can't notice the difference now, I don't know.

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zman
YouTube videos are not exactly a good way to check on quality. In my eyes, the emulators we have for the (S)NES are damn near perfect, and I switched from digging out my SNES once in a while to using my Wii plus homebrew emulator. No framerate issues at all (apart from those the game themselves have on the original system), and the picture looks exactly like on the real thing, only with better video quality (Dunno about other systems, but my SNES offers composite at best.)

So yeah. If you ask me, it's not identical to the original system, it's better. The only thing one might not like is the fact that you can't use the original controllers, at least not without building yourself an adapter.

Classic Controller. It was designed with SNES in mind. 'Nuff said.

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I.S.T.
The reason most people won't be able to tell the difference is they've never experienced the original game, only the imitation. That was my point. Yes, my language was confusing, and I apologize for that. I think in contradicting sentences that only make sentence to me, and I don't always catch them when making a post or writing, well, anything.

The reason I mentioned the FF3 problems is simple: it's a problem few know about because they've never played the cart. Arikado, have you? I have. I used to own it and i've sunk 200 hours into it, possibly more. The only emulators I've found who get it right are bsnes(Which uses blargg's sound core.) and snesgt(Which seems to have scratchy sound in general, but I was using a beta version at the time. I'm not counting an output issue against it's sound accuracy, that's just not fair).

The sound effects have the wrong pitch, many of them are played just a little too fast, and in general it just doesn't sound right. if i still had the cart and the equipment i'd make recordings right now.

arikado, here's a link proving snes9x's inaccuracy in general(Note, zsnes has many problems too. they usually manifest in different games/in different ways, however.): [www.snes9x.com]

I'm sure you recognize zones and byuu.

I agree with you, the sound in Snes9x isn't perfect, but in the PC port, it has sync while in the wii/gc port, it isn't noticeable. Is there a way to fix it?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2009 08:57PM by the_randomizer.

Sure, let me click my magic "fix" button. *click*.

Seriously, of course there's a way to fix anything - the question is does someone have the ability, motivation, and time to do so?