I ask because I decided to try out PCSX2 for the first time in many years today and was blown away by things like the resolution scaling.

When I first started using emulators having save states and the ability to rewind in GBA blew me away.

I am wondering what features, added by emulators, you really appreciate or would make going back to the original console difficult? Are there any emulators you’d highly recommend to a friend who is into retro gaming but never really tried out emulation?

Are there some emulated consoles that don’t quite have the feature set of the native experience? For example I haven’t tried out Xenia but I know a bit about the history of 360 emulation and why it’s lagged behind (Modern Vintage Gamer I believe has a decent video on this I’d link if I wasn’t on mobile). Is it missing some key or quality of life features?

Thought this could be a fun Friday discussion for this community

  • Malix
    26·
    1 month ago

    Dolphin - absolutely banger of a gamecube/wii emulator. It has absolutely everything imaginable.

    Dolphin has so much customization if needed, it even allows typing mathematical equations to alter analog stick sensitivity curve. My mind was absolutely blown when I found that out. Added some tiny tweaks to it to “round out” the curve a bit, as I felt like the small movements didn’t really register as neatly as I would have hoped, and with small mathy-math-math input it was great. For the life of me I can’t remember what the equation was, probably squareroot or squaring the analog input so it curved a bit. (EDIT: I did the equation for trigger, not analog stick, but option for the stick is still there)

    Mesen is also quite dope for NES, at least the version I’m still using. I’ve understood the current version bundles nes and snes into same application? Either way, probably still pretty much top tier.

    IMO, best features:

    • integer scaling to big image, bilinear scaling back down to fit to screen. Less blur and pixels stay (visually) same size without distortion
    • online play

    ScummVM, not really an emulator per se, rathar an interpreter (afaik). Essentially it lets you play old (and some new) adventure games on modern systems. It does all adlib/midi/mt32 (with roms you need to source yourself) and graphics tricks. Unified settings and all my adventures in one places? Easily scummvm over actual retro-pc/mac/amiga/whatever.