Both are awesome.
One for general use, not scuffing up my gear or games, travel, etc.
The other when I want to really have a beer and just retro out for an afternoon.
This is like people who insist building your own PC is easy.
No. It’s not.
It is if you know everything about it sure, but that applies to most things.
I don’t care about your raspberry Pi that I have to house, program, etc. I just wanna pop in a game and have it work. Easy peasy
I agree that it’s easy in the sense that you can learn enough to do it via YouTube.
It’s certainly not always easy to actually do the thing though.
Sure it ain’t as easy as just using a console, but batocera on pi is ridiculously easy compared to most other solutions:
- Download the batocera image
- Flash it with raspberry pi image writer
- power on the pi
- connect a Controller
- connect it to network
- the pi will automatically appear as network share, just drag and the Roms
- play
If you already have used a pi and disregard the download time this can easily be done in less than ten minutes. I know first hand using something like a Gameboy/DS is way more convenient, but compared to how long it took me to get the game running that came with my Xbox one that’s at least twice as quick (not even considering Xbox 360 games on one) so I’ll gladly take the time to learn how to setup and then do it
I setup and love retropie, but I will say that I was surprised at how many emulation issues I had even on some PS1 games. mostly it was framerate or processing issues, tried same emulator on my laptop with no problem.
raspberry pi is very affordable but it was surprising to me that the hardware specs were a limiter given how much of an increase they were over the ps1
I was thinking about using mine for this. Maybe I’ll limit myself to 2d retro games then.
still works and is fun, I think if duck station would have been finished for pi it would have been better probably.
true that 2d had no problems for me though, on pi400
Aren’t they kinda of hard to get a hold of still? During the pandemic they were going for 100$ and up
you can at least get them directly instead of paying scalpers now, but yeah it’s still $80 for an 8GB board.
FPGA master race!
I feel this in my very soul.
My only real problem with emulation is that I haven’t found a good way to connect my pc to a crt. I’ve been wanting to play oot randomizers on a proper display but I’m not willing to buy an everdrive at the moment.
I know this is the exact opposite of what you want in a sense, but with a little fiddling you can make the highest definitions of TVs look pretty crappy and old with fancy emulator settings. I had a friend with so many scan line and fuzzy plugins and crt color abberation and flicker fakers installed, i swear it was basically the same thing visually
It’s not just “worse” graphics. CRTs have little/no input lag, which is crucial for some older games like Punch-Out!.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to stick to original hardware, if you already have it or can afford to buy it.
Setting up a Pi or other single-board system as a dedicated retro game emulator is also an absolutely valid choice IMO. It’s a fun, generally affordable little project that you can tinker with forever, e.g. changing cases and controllers, UI tweaks, ROM file organization, per-game settings optimization. But I don’t think that it’s ever been the “best” emulation option for anyone who didn’t already have their heart set on “doing something fun and interesting with a Pi”.
The smartphone you already have, dedicated retro gaming handhelds, Android TV boxes or sticks, and cheap/secondhand/already-owned PCs (desktop, notebook, or kiosk) all arguably match or exceed the performance and value-for-money of any Pi-based system.
Yet in any thread where someone new to emulation is asking for advice, there’s always a flock of folks who suggest getting a Pi like it’s the only game in town. It honestly baffles me a little. Especially because almost all of them are just running a pretty frontend over Retroarch, and Retroarch is available for virtually every modern consumer computing platform (and so are a lot of pretty frontends, if that’s a selling point).
For context, I’ve got a dozen or so retro systems, but I prefer to emulate as much as possible.
Emulation is nice because it removes a lot of the friction between deciding I feel like playing a given game and actually playing it. Dealing with worn out controllers, dead parts, wonky connections just to squint at a fuzzy screen. I much prefer seeing it upscaled on my modern screen and grabbing whatever controller is convenient to play with
It’s why I’ve used a GameCube controller on the Wii, WiiU, and Switch—coincidentally I adore the Switch Pro controller on PC. And yet, a friend of mine thinks I’m crazy and still rocks the N64 controller.
Some things just fuse into you and you get more dopamine from the “thing” than the thing playing on it.
That’s really cool and I’m glad people want to maintain the heritage of gaming, but I’m the exact opposite. I never want to play on old hardware or even use old style controllers again if I don’t have to.
Some controllers are almost integral to the experience. Intellivision and Colecovision come to mind. Having said that, emulation and modern controls are generally great, and generally my preference.
It’s difficult to play N64 games without an N64 controller.
This is kinda sacrilege, but old games kinda suck by modern standards. They lack a lot of quality of life stuff that has long since become standard and tend to be more focused on providing a difficult and frustrating experience.
There seems to be a sweet spot in the early 2000s 2D games and later 00s 3D games, where games started to become more forgiving, included meaningful mechanics, and the graphics were getting good enough that you’re not just squinting to try to figure out what this blob is supposed to be. Plus that’s also the timeframe that a lot of current major franchises were started or at least got perfected so you’re now digging into current franchises backlogs
I like to use controllers that have new tech but the old layout for the beat of both worlds
I have a friend like this, I’m a Nintendo collector and enjoying the hardware is my hobby. I know it’s an expensive endeavor, and I don’t expect anyone else to do it. I genuinely think any game should be up for piracy and emulation support, and it’s incredible what can be done to make games look, sound, and play better than the original. But when I’m sitting there having fun with Metroid Fusion on my GBA SP and you sit there going “why would you ever do that when emulating is cheaper and better” I don’t think you’re conversing in good faith.
Side note, if anyone knows how I can play Splatoon on an emulator using my Wii U gamepad, I’m all ears lol
Do you have original hardware? I hacked my Wii u recently and it’s so easy. Pretendo just let’s you play like normal, no problems
Definitely, I think there was even a hacked splatfest at one point, which would be SO cool to do regularly. I just meant to say that, as far as I’ve seen, the gamepad can’t easily be used to play with if you were to emulate.
Are you trying to use your gamepad as a second screen while you emulate Wii U games on your PC? Unfortunately, I don’t think that has been done yet. I believe the Wii U uses Wifi to send video to the gamepad and no one has made PC software to handle that yet (to my knowledge).
I had heard of people using the Gamepad to mirror the game playing on their PC.
- https://www.slashgear.com/1343071/use-nintendos-wii-u-gamepad-computer/
- https://gbatemp.net/threads/use-the-wii-u-gamepad-on-pc.627503/
If you are trying to use your gamepad as a second monitor for Wii U games you would probably have better luck getting a Steamdeck (Youtube link may contain helpful comments).
I sold my Wii U already so I don’t think I can be of actual help to you.
Yeah, effectively I’d want to use it as you could on Wii U, both displaying the second screen and interacting with the touchscreen. Splatoon in particular is extremely underrated with second screen use, being able to see and interact with the map in real-time is so much more useful than blocking your screen in future Splatoon games
The best of both worlds, I’ve got Flash Carts for all my retro consoles and I’m (slowly) working on ODEs for the others! In the cases where an ODE removes the disc drive, I have secondary consoles! My partner hates that the entertainment stand is covered in video games but loves that most of the boxed games are in storage!
A dream project for me, when I have the space for it, is to have a set of Ikea kallax shelves with a cubby for each retro console with some LEDs inside hooked up to a retropie emulating those consoles so those cubbies light up when that console is being emulated.
I have a lot of the actual consoles and they’re in working order, but it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to get them hooked up, swap cartridges, etc. sometimes. And I have just enough programming and electronics background that I feel up to the task of trying to make it work, just don’t have the space for a big display shelf at the moment.
I can appreciate the experience of playing on the actual hardware and the cases where it’s superior, but for me the experience emulating them is 99% as good with significantly less effort. Totally cool if others prioritize things differently though.
That’s an amazing idea…
Yeah, I like to bring it up and put the idea out into the world whenever I get an opportunity because part of me is kind of hoping that maybe someone out there will do the hard work and write the code and share it online so someday when I have the space for it all I have to do is wire up the lights
Also when it comes time to fill in the gaps in my collection, I can save some money and still get the same effect because the console doesn’t even have to be in working order, it just has to not be too beat-up looking. I could probably even 3d print some dummy consoles to hold me over (though of course I’d prefer to have actual working consoles if possible)
I’m not super techy, but I have an idle raspberry pi and tons of retro consoles… The idea is now in my head.
If you take up the project and decide to make my dream your reality, all I ask is that you share the code
I haven’t done a deep dive into how I’m going to make it happen, my programming is rusty as all hell, and I’ve never tinkered too much with a pie or this kind of project
But on its surface it seems like an easy enough problem, just need to turn on the appropriate lights when an emulator starts.
Easier said than done I’m sure, I also suspect you’d probably need some kind of led controller or maybe an Arduino or something between the pie and the lights, I don’t think the 3.3v it puts out from its GPIO pins would be enough for some light strips.
If someone had a lot of money to throw at the project, I imagine you could also do a pretty cool setup with smart lights like Philips Hue that would be pretty clean and require minimal tinkering with the physical electronics side of things, but you’d probably be throwing as much or more at it in bulbs as the rest of the project put together.
As someone who owns most of the consoles, has Pvm etc don’t play the scalpers game just emulate. Thankfully the bubble has burst on a lot of markets, and we’re seeing more reasonable prices, but the OG hardware can only last so long. If anything grab a controller for each system you love, even saying that, 8bitdo have really stepped up, and I would say surpassed a lot of the old first party ones.
The used game market is still insane, I’m seeing $20-30 for even shit-tier, obscure, normally worthless nes games. If you bought the console while it was new it’s still worth keeping, but absolutely just get a flash cart instead of subjecting yourself to the price gouging retro market.
8bitdo is amazing
It helps that emulators have caught up in the last ten years. When I started collecting consoles there wasn’t a good emulator for the Saturn and even emulating the snes on a mobile device with similar power to a pi was inaccurate at times.
I have less and less reason to want to use original hardware other than nostalgia.
This is a CD vs FLAC discussion.
Not really, some emulators forgo accuracy for speed, since some emulators are unplayably slow when you turn on the 100% accuracy. Speedrunning some games that rely on glitches/exploits have to be done on original hardware or an FPGA solution that’s 100% accurate. Otherwise some glitches just won’t work since a software emulator lays out the memory differently, doesn’t do the instructions in the exact same order or is just too fast. So emulators are lossy.
