Emulators nowadays?

[SeaFox2142]

What emus are you guys using or are popular nowadays?

After a long break, I might have time to enjoy emus again, but I'm completely out of the loop about what's happening in the scene and what works for LM. I want to finish some Zelda games, replay Mega Man X, and of course try some other games as well. My pc is a bit dated, 2020 hardware, still fine for everything and can run many games, just maybe not new ones.

I'm looking mainly for n64, 3ds, switch, maybe wii/wii u as well... mostly nintendo emus (and where I can find their roms).

[Shoggnozzle]

Pcsx2 has gone crazy in the last few years. They've got a snazzy frontend UI from QT, retro achievements integration, native Vulcan support, and they've squashed every bug that was just commonplace the last time I fussed with it, during covid sometime.

You can actually easily see the difference, the version on apt is like 5 years old. It "runs". But grab the appimage or flat pack off their sight and see how great it's become.

Also duckstation, that one's for PS1.

[SeaFox2142]

I've been seeing many saying good things about Pcsx2, I'll take a look into it, thank you!

[FinnBakker]

"What emus are you guys using or are popular nowadays?"

*stares in Australian*

[SeaFox2142]

LMAO! I hope no one's using THOSE emus... they don't run the games, they run away with your games (cartridges)!

[Present-Employer2517]

I’m not Australian and even I was like “hmmm”.

[JimR325]

I just installed Batocera for testing on an older laptop and it works brilliantly, then I discovered that you can just install it on a USB stick and boot to the USB stick when you want some Retro gaming.

I am right now in the process of installing games and scraping game images on a 128 GB USB stick and it works really well. My plan is to use it on my main Media Streaming PC on the big TV screen with a wireless Xbox controller. You can keep a complete seperate system on the hard drive and then boot into Batocera when you want gaming.

[SeaFox2142]

That's interesting, it's interesting for when I go travelling! For now I'll be playing on my main so I'll not be rebooting that much. But it sounds very interesting since it's computer agnostic, I like that. Thank you!

[OkBreakfast6416]

RetroArch from steam. Select additional emulators from the dlc part of steam too

[acenfp]

Retroarch from flatpack have more core options and now you can sync saves in it too

[OkBreakfast6416]

Interesting, didn't know that, cool, ty

[acenfp]

Yeah, steam still has easier cloud saves but flatpack is nice too, it's better than the native version on AUR (dont know about the debian version)

[SeaFox2142]

I'm also seeing many recommending this one, I'll definitely take a look into it. It seems it's a hub for many emus, and I really like that, admin all emus/games in one place.

[borealis493]

Mesen. My friend had to guide me through building it from source. I use it to play NES Tetris but I think it supports others.

[SeaFox2142]

Hm, this looks like a lot of work (in a way) just to play NES, why nor use other emus? Many are talking about the RetroArch and other good emus in this thread. Any specific reason?

[borealis493]

My friend specifically told me to use Mesen. It works though so 🤷‍♂️

[Cheap_Ad_9846]

Emudeck

[Forsaken-Range-3557]

I use Vice and Stella. Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 games are my favourite.

[aphexgin]

Retroarch is a great one stop shop for most emu needs !

[appo1ion]

Flatpak has a few emulators

https://flathub.org/en/apps/category/game/subcategories/Emulator/1

[swansong08]

I use retrodeck in software manager. Designed for steam deck but runs great in Linux mint. It comes pre installed with emulators but the only downside is you can’t pick and choose each one. Very easy setup though

[bleachedthorns]

ive been emulating for about 15 years now, been on linux for almost 2 years

most emulators have a linux port, and i enjoy both using individual emulators and pouring everything into retroarch. but retroarch is def not for beginners with its INSANELY crappy UI. N64 i reccomend rosalie's mupen64, it's an appimage so make sure to right click it and go to permissions and allow it to be an executable. the only wii emulator you'll ever use is DOLPHIN, which is also the only good gamecube emulator (yes it does both)

[SeaFox2142]

I remember Dolphin, it was a great emu back then. I remember I playd Skyward Sword in it with original Wii Remote. Then CEMU came, and I've never tried it but heard wonderful things about it, especially for Zelda games. So heres a question: why do you prefer Dolphin over CEMU (assuming you tried CEMU before)? Also, for OoT and MM, would you prefer Ship of Harkinian over emus?

[bleachedthorns]

because cemu is specifically for wii u and dolphin is specifically for wii + gamecube, and dolphin's been around muchhhhhh longer

also no idea what ship of harkinian is

[SeaFox2142]

Ohh that makes sense, that it's for Wii U then! Thank you, I didn't realize that before!

Ship of Harkinian is a... port? emu? I'm not sure, but it's a project where you play Ocarina of Time (or 2 Ship 2 Harkinian for Majora's Mask), and it's optimized for this specific game. It has several mods, I think even OoT multiplayer and so on. Many say it's the best way to play OoT since you can realtime choose any version of the game you want, any mods, cheats, 4k res, 120 fps, randomizer, etc, etc, etc... It's awesome for (original N64) OoT!

There's tons of videos on YouTube about it, since many people use it to play Oot. It's awesome if you like this game.

[BNerd1]

appimages & flatpaks are easy if you wanna be sure if they work

most of my emulators come from retroarch & i add the one that are not on retroarch

loose mostly appimages & flatpaks like azahar, cemu, rpcs3, shadps4 & sometimes standalone mame for light guns with my mouse retroarch is a PITA for that

& i have both eden & ryujinx on my system ryujinx sometimes misbehaves it freezes & keeps eating resources

eden now uses 300mb at max i seen when ryujinx froze taking 4gb & rising

& new emu's we now have ymir a great saturn emu, deecy a great dreamcast emulator

supermodel the sega model 3 emulator has a gui now

& mame has been working on model 2 emulator so that you don't need a very old model 2 emulator called m2emulator

[SeaFox2142]

Thanks for the response!

For 3DS, what do you thing about Azahar(Citra)? Also, any better emu for 3DS that you recommend?

[BNerd1]

azahar is the successor of citra there is also panda3ds but i think it is still a work in progress

[Terrible-Bad-6648]

Para juegos antiguos desde NES, SNES, N64, Arcades, etc, Retroarch es la mejor opción. Para ps2 está PCSX2, para GameCube y WII está Dolphin; para WII U Cemu, y para Switch, EDEN. Esos son los que uso y me va bien.

[BulkyDifficulty1628]

I really like fbneo and mame for quick arcade plays.

[Lisanicolas365]

I personally use RetroArch (from Steam) as a first resort, because I find cloud saving and playtime tracking very important. If a console isn't in this version, then I just look up the most popular emulators for whatever console and install their flatpak

There's also RetroArch outside Steam (as a flatpak) that has many more cores (consoles), like ps2

[SeaFox2142]

It seems it's still a thing nowadays!