I remember back in the day the emulator Snes9x was one of the best emulators for Super Nintendo emulation, but it’s not on the Megathread. Is it no longer trustworthy or was it just missed?

Sorry if this was already asked in this community. I would’ve searched but Lemmy (or at least my Lemmy instance, I suppose) doesn’t seem to have a search function for intra-Community searching.

Cheers.

  • Captain AggravatedEnglish
    27·
    9 months ago

    That the emulator behaves exactly as genuine hardware does.

    For one, there are sometimes hardware quirks in consoles that are used to implement features. Like the video screens along the track in Mario Kart 64, the N64 has shared memory between the CPU and GPU, which they used to generate that effect. It’s difficult to replicate that behavior in an emulator.

    Then there’s lag. You might argue that an emulator can provide a better experience by obliterating lag via brute force, but that wouldn’t be the authentic experience the real hardware would provide.

    Or a simple one I’ve noticed with SNES emulators: None of them get the sound quite right. It’s hard to explain, there’s a high pitched “rattle” that isn’t present on a genuine SNES, it’s almost like any emulation is too perfect and isn’t sanding down a rough edge the original hardware did?