Retro Emulation and Gaming Site wish list

[Harrison]

I'm trying to gather together as many people's ideas for the creation of a retro site dedicated to emulation and retro gaming.

What are the most important things you want to find on a retro site when you are looking to emulate a new system? Or if you are looking to play some retro games on an emulated retro system you are exploring for the first time?

I get frustrated when trying to emulate a system for the first time. Often details about the system and available emulators are scatters across multiple sites and forums and it can take some time to piece it all together and find out everything needed to get the files and run the emulator, plus find out what software and games are worth playing for it.

My idea is to create a new site dedicated to emulation and retro gaming, focusing mainly on emulation.. with each system having dedicated information detailing a brief history of the system/platform/company, the models available with some images, direct downloads for the emulators and supporting files, guides and tutorials on getting the emulators working, and a top 10 (or more) best games to try out first on that system.

Thoughts on this?

And what are the most important things to you when you are looking to emulate a system, either for the first time, or returning to emulating it after some time away?

 

[Justin]

good idea,

for me a perfect world would have one page per emulator with working updated links to the required software, with a user guide with handy hints/tips, it is very easy to forget that it may be the users 1st time using any kind of emulation. so there is no such thing as too simple

 

[r0jaws]

I agree, simple is the key, infact screenshots and step by step setup guides will definitely help out, and will likely attract, and hold users from all over.
I imagine it'll be a lot of work to maintain, when you consider the amount of systems, amount of emulators for each system, and the platforms that they will potentially work on.
Consider the Spectrum, for Windows based platforms there are several emulators, but not all are compatible with XP/ Vista/ 7/ 8/ 8a. So just for a windows user, you could potentially have 2 or three emulators. That's not even considering Mac, Android and Linux users.
If you decide to only focus on Windows, then you run the risk of not being the one stop shop that you want, plus, it's likely that someone else will already be providing better support elsewhere for that particular emulator.

Plus, you'll be going up against The Emulator Zone. They are my go to for any emulation, providing pretty much what you already specify, but with not so much detail. Type emulator into Google, and they are top of the tree!

 

[Harrison]

Yeah, I've used emulator zone a fair bit, plus every other emulation site, but again it's really just an emulator link directory and doesn't provide much information on how well they emulate a system or how to set up and use them.

Also whilst I will concentrate on Windows/PC emulation as it is the best platform for it, I also want to provide details on emulation on different platforms, such as emulators for the Amiga, Dreamcast, Xbox, psp, Android, iOS.. etc.

Another example is setting front-ends up for arcade interfaces, such as Hyperspin. There really isn't much information in one central location for this, or where to get the files needed from.

Obviously this is a long ongoing project, but one I've wanted to do for a long time. And one I think is needed. In fact I've wanted to do this since I first ran the first version of MAME, the original N64 emulator, plus spectrum, bbc, c64 etc emulators on the Amiga.

My plan is to pick one system to emulate at a time, and go through the process from scratch myself, documenting available emulators, files required, how to set them up, guides etc.. but I am currently playing around with different CMS and database site management software to find the easiest solution for blog like editing and updating.



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[NinjaRabbit]

What are the most important things you want to find on a retro site when you are looking to emulate a new system? Or if you are looking to play some retro games on an emulated retro system you are exploring for the first time?

The big one for me is current info on the best emulators covering a particular system, along with exactly what, if any, supporting files are needed. There's more on that at the end of this post, because this also applies to your last question.

This is probably contrary to popular opinon, but one thing I don't like too much are platform/company histories when they're poorly-done. I've seen too many efforts at that end up undermined by posting up user-submitted, poorly-fact-checked documents, peppered with myths and fanboyism in one direction or another. It ends up looking sloppy and poor. Of course, if you'll be handling the histories personally and double-checking any submissions for accuracy, this concern is moot.

I do like shorter-form facts, though, like the year a system was introduced/the years it was sold between, roughly how many known games were released for it, and possibly when the final officially-published game was released during the system's time (that is to say, homebrew released beyond the system's commercial lifespan doesn't count; Though I know this gets sticky with, say, the C64, where there are several companies still publishing for it which aren't freebie homebrew outfits). That sort of thing.

One thing I would appreciate, personally, are different kinds of top ten (or however-many) lists - for example, picks from the site staff, top games by genre, games that were best-rated by the magazines of their day, user-submitted or user-voted top ten lists, that sort of thing. I really value the views of other players, personally, as they tend to be more interesting to check out, and a lot more diverse than most of the phoned-in "Top Retro Games for System X!" articles you see popping up now and then. Links to further such resources in that vein (such as the excellent Kindle book, The Ultimate Guide to Amiga PD Games) are always nice, too.

I find "Worst" lists less useful, though, as for some reason they tend to get overtaken by bandwagon-jumping, such as how people keep listing E.T. for the Atari 2600 as the worst game ever without having played it, or any of the far worse titles on the system, just because they read that in the press somewhere. "Best" lists tend to attract genuine players' opinions far more often.

And what are the most important things to you when you are looking to emulate a system, either for the first time, or returning to emulating it after some time away?

In both cases, as mentioned above, current information on which emulator(s) are the most accurate/polished/etc., seems to be sorely lacking in a "one stop shop" format.

For example, I dropped out of emulating the Amiga for a long while. When I stopped, the rather finnicky and frustrating E-UAE was the best option on Linux, and by the time I got into it again along had come FS-UAE, which is a really polished cross-platform work that's the best Amiga emulator I've ever used on any OS. It's got a far better GUI than, and is far more accessible than, the rather confusing WinUAE, even though it shares its proper features, and it's usable on more systems. The problem? The info on this was all over the place, and some of it was out-of-date - it would have really helped to be able to find it all in one place. It was a lot easier to get up and running because FS-UAE is so much better, but it would have still been quicker had there been a one-stop guide that mentioned it. As it currently is, everything seems to still recommend WinUAE, and to newcomers, that's just as bad as E-UAE was - it's borderline impenetrable if you don't know the original hardware well.

To cite more examples in a similar vein: Is Fuse still the best option for ZX Spectrum emulation? Is the build of VICE in the Ubuntu repositories still broken and requiring manual intervention by means of obtaining of the system files and placing them in a particular location in order to get it running (which seems to change from time to time, and the guide I used last time doesn't work now), and if it is how do you fix it? That sort of thing.

 

[Neil79]

Well we do emulators and retro games, and Indie games, and Retro Remakes, and Kickstarters and...... Although we don't do specific guides, maybe you should join our ever growing staff list

http://www.indieretronews.com/

 

[Harrison]

Some very interesting points and thoughts there, thank you.

Maybe a recommended beginners emulator and a more powerful enthusiasts emulator would be good to recommend for systems that have both types available would be good. I'm also thinking a voting system for each system, allowing users to vote on their favourite emulators, but with the ability to change their vote over time as emulators evolve.

Tying it into discussion forums to discuss the emulation on each system should also help to maintain an up to date reference to the current best emulation at any point in time.

Also, trying to get the actual emulator develops involved is a wish of mine to offer update news, but also to receive feedback back from users and to actively discuss them with users. That is always very hard to achieve, even tracking down many emulator developers.

I also want to try and get people on board whom are either specific OS users, such as Linux or Mac, or are enthusiastic about specific systems and emulation such as C64 whom can provide their more focused knowledge and input into those specific sections.

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[Amiga Forever]

I have try Gamecube Emulator with Resident Evil game and Frame per second is like 24 for game and cutscene 12 even thought I have 2GHZ with 8GB Ram and ATI 5870

You might well get gamecube to played very best resident evil there is

 

[Harrison]

GameCube is a fairly new system in the great scheme of things, and being a risc based cpu all such systems are still far from full speed. On a recent i5 or i7 you could get decent performance, although compatibility is still poor, but PSOne/32bit era is still currently really the newest era you can hope to emulate well.

I'm not so interested in emulation of newer hardware though as it's too close to current generation and the original hardware is still easy to obtain, as are the games.. although it's still fun trying to emulate them.

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[sputnik]

I've always liked Zophar's Domain but it does look quite out of date these days

 

[Harrison]

Zophar's Domain has been around a really long time.. I remember using it a lot many years ago as a starting point to explore emulators on many systems, but as you say it is getting very dated and a lot of the emulator pages are way out of date.. take MAME for example. The last update for that was a really old version from 2009. It's also a bit of a mess. Definitely things I want to try and avoid.

 

[ShambleS1980]

think something to consider is listing What it can be emulated on.
like the original xbox can emulate a lot of things. but you cant really emulate an xbox.
some one may be looking for xbox emulator.. this could be for running on the xbox, or trying to use xbox games on a pc.

then things like dolphin really need atleast a core 2 quad cpu as a minimum to even think of playing them. so you may want to have system specs "reccomended" (i wouldnt bother with minimum because the amount of tweaking it takes to get minimum spec systems to run dolphion emulated games at playavble rates would need a whole forum just to cover it.

also Mame could be played on many diferent specs of machine but which version is best for each catagory of machine. and are there any games you cant really expect to play on say a pentium D built system..

or if your emulating a older OS like dos. do you need anything to slow your system down to be able to use it.

i also remember having a fruit machine emulator years ago. which was really handy to figure out what i was supposed to do to get the local machine in the pub to pay out when i was presented with nudges or holds. and it actually did exactly the same thing as the real thing did. (dont really know if that was legal at all though)

but all of this emulation stuff is kind of a gray area in terms of legality. so not really sure about the idea. i like emulatiopn, i use it a lot. but if its leagal or not is prety sketchy. like those abandon ware games you can find.. not to sure about it.

 

[morcar]

I know it might be a lot to ask but for the people who are beginning in using emulators you write a guide for each emulator you put up so they know what to do.

 

[sputnik]

think something to consider is listing What it can be emulated on.
like the original xbox can emulate a lot of things. but you cant really emulate an xbox.
some one may be looking for xbox emulator.. this could be for running on the xbox, or trying to use xbox games on a pc.

Yeah that's why I mentioned Zophar's domain. It's old and creaky but it covers it from both viewpoints - Emulation OF, and Emulation ON. Clearly the sites a bit of a Web 1.0 throwback but some of the ethos is still pretty good.

but all of this emulation stuff is kind of a gray area in terms of legality. so not really sure about the idea. i like emulatiopn, i use it a lot. but if its leagal or not is prety sketchy. like those abandon ware games you can find.. not to sure about it.

It's the ROMs and game images which are the legal issue, not the emus themselves

 

[Harrison]

Not always true if the emulation has to emulate copyrighted code such as a bios or firmware to run games. Look at the first PlayStation 1 emulators as an example of this.

But these are the sorts of information I want to include. Maybe having a fairly clean and easy to use main section for each system and then more details wiki like content accessed if needed, and expanded on over time.

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