Gaming console emulators
I'm looking to play some old NES games and need a good emulator. I have an 1.33 GHz iBook (last revision) with 1.5 GB RAM, so I'm assuming I can handle the beefier emulators, although all I really want is something that is flicker-free.
Currently, I am using "Nestopia" which unfortunatly has some flicker problems. Can anyone suggest an alternate program? (I have google-searched to death, but can't find a good comparison anywhere).
Also, if you know of any good SNES or Amiga emulators, that would be rockin' too. I need something to hold me out until the Wii comes out...
Currently, I am using "Nestopia" which unfortunatly has some flicker problems. Can anyone suggest an alternate program? (I have google-searched to death, but can't find a good comparison anywhere).
Also, if you know of any good SNES or Amiga emulators, that would be rockin' too. I need something to hold me out until the Wii comes out...

Comments
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/22029
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/11337
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/7960
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/2763
Amiga:
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/14044
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/10845
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/10847
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/14607
There are 3 SNES emus on Mac, ZSNES, SNES9x and BSNES...only SNES9x will run or run acceptably on the iBook.
Anyone know of an original NES emulator?
Originally posted by acr4
Anyone know of an original NES emulator?
http://www.zophar.net/mac/nes.html
RockNES is the best one:
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Games/RockNES.shtml
NES games don't play quite so well because they are 8-bit. Newer systems don't really like 8-bit colour (256 colors). My screen messed up anyway when running some NES games. I think the SNES games were generally far better quality so I just stick to them under SNES9x.
The NES is not a computer, and coders have had trouble writing good emulators for it. Thing is, though, that it would be easy to write a really good NES emulator if you can be guaranteed to have 3 cpus cores.
Originally posted by acr4
Alright, thanks for the heads-up.
Anyone know of an original NES emulator?
I'd recommend Nestopia: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15241
But there's a small chance that it flickers if you're using some of the more processor intensive graphics filters such as HQ2X or HQ3X. Give it a try though...if it doesn't work, RockNES and many other NES emulators exist for Mac.
Originally posted by Aquatic
It uses a PPC so I'd imagine emulation on a G4 or G5 would be pretty fast. Then we could play Melee.
I think Gamecube is way off. They can't even do PSone properly for OS X. Forget Gerrit, I want Connectix back (virtual game station - damn you Sony, grabbin' it before an OS X version). Whoever worked in that team were emulation gods.
I've tried the latest version of Sixtyforce and it is an improvement but Mupen64 still rivals it (use 0.4 not 0.5) and it doesn't really play games well enough to be usable. SNES9x plays SNES games perfectly and I expect the same from emulation of newer systems.
For all the hassle, for anything higher than a SNES, you're better off buying a second hand console.
I think the games companies should put their smart caps on and actively develop emulators for desktop systems and then sell game roms on itunes or something. It's not like they are profitable as consoles any more.
So, what about a NES emulator that doesn't stutter on a 867mhz G4? Anyone got an old RockNES??
Originally posted by Marvin
I think Gamecube is way off. They can't even do PSone properly for OS X. Forget Gerrit, I want Connectix back (virtual game station - damn you Sony, grabbin' it before an OS X version). Whoever worked in that team were emulation gods.
Sony locked down a large part of what made VGS work really well. There was a lot of litigation, too. It's very, very possible to make a good emulator if you have either some form of schematics or a lab full of expensive equipment. Especially since MIPS and PPC have similar ISAs. Making a PS1 or 2 emulator for Intel wouldn't be as clean, but it's still something that wouldn't be dreadfully hard to do if Sony weren't so opposed to it. If anyone makes a decent PlayStation emulator (1, 2, PSP) is going to get hit with a buttload of litigation.
At one point I actually set out to write a NES emulator written primarily in PPC assembler, used Altivec, and leveraged the GPU. It turns out that it's a good thing I got a job that summer instead. Between the NES and the new batch (360, PS3), consoles have been more or less just PCs, and they are very easy to emulate if you don't have to reverse engineer them. Since the SNES hardware is almost identical to that from an Apple IIGS, it was very easy to build good SNES emulators.
For example, I'd assume there is a great XBox 360 emulator that runs on quad G5s. (That is, the one that MS used while the 360 hardware was still in development) It just that you'll have a hard time reverse engineering an XBox 360.