/vr/ - Retro Games

Post #1:

So I have this cool setup with a good CTR TV and all my consoles from NES up to PS2~GCN hooked in there.
I recently installed the latest RetroArch on my GCN on a SD card. It works flawlessly.
I just made a comparision of NES Mega Man games running on actual hardware in one channel and running on my GCN on another, and it looked amazing, almost identical to the original. Better than any filter.

I was thinking of getting a NES flashcart soon, but this changed my mind. I have a PS2 gamepad adapter for GCN, so I have my favorite joystick in there too.

I'm making this thread because I keep seeing here people trying to hook up a laptop to a CTR TV. Well, if you have a modded GCN or a Wii, you don't have to. Just buy this $3.40 SD card reader http://dx.com/p/wiikey-sd-card-adapter-for-wii-3993

RetroArch is amazing. That is all.

Post #1:

So I have this cool setup with a good CRT TV and all my consoles from NES up to PS2~GCN hooked in there.
I recently installed the latest RetroArch on my GCN on a SD card. It works flawlessly.
I just made a comparision of NES Mega Man games running on actual hardware in one channel and running on my GCN on another, and it looked amazing, almost identical to the original. Better than any filter.

I was thinking of getting a NES flashcart soon, but this changed my mind. I have a PS2 gamepad adapter for GCN, so I have my favorite joystick in there too.

I'm making this thread because I keep seeing here people trying to hook up a laptop to a CRT TV. Well, if you have a modded GCN or a Wii, you don't have to. Just buy this $3.40 SD card reader http://dx.com/p/wiikey-sd-card-adapter-for-wii-3993

RetroArch is amazing. That is all.

And after some anon asked how to do it...

Post #2:

I'll spoon-feed you, becuase this whole thing gave me a lot of headaches, and I want to save else someone the trouble. The first few guides you'll find googling around will mislead you into thinking you either need an Action Replay disc to boot and run stuff from the SD card, a tedious patching proccess, etc... Actually, the process can be much simpler.

The thing is, most of these guides are obsolete now that the apps continued to be developed for the Wii, and adding GCN compatibility somehow ended up working just as well.

So here's all you need to buy

- A Wiikey SD from dealxtreme (see OP)
- A SD card (contrary to the "only old non SDHC cards work" stuff pointed out in various guides, thanks to new versions of homebrews you can use almost any SD card, I use a 32 GB Sandisk)
- A XenoGC chip, or any modchip, in case your GCN isn't modded yet.
- Optional: PS2 gamepad adaptor easily found on ebay

Here's the files you need:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/osj34jlfvcfgmyv/gamecube.rar

(Included:
- Bootable "swiss" disc
source: https://code.google.com/p/swiss-gc/downloads/list
(I'm providing mine instead of you giving you the source because I made it into a bootable disc myself. There's an iso provided in the official developers website, but it didn't work for me)
- Latest retroarch build for gamecube
source: http://forum.themaister.net/viewtopic.php?id=347

And here's what you need to do.
- Burn a bootable disc with "swiss", which is a homebrew that let's you run both homebrew apps (.dol format), and GCN games (.iso or .gcn format), so if you have a big SD card, this is pretty much the only disc you'll need from now on (doesn't work with the Gameboy Player Start-up disc though)
- Put the retroarch folder in the SD card with some roms (check the website for emulators and formats supported), and to the GCN through the Wiikey.
- Every retroarch core has its own .dol. Run the emulator you need that's about it.

And after some anon asked how to do it...

Post #2:

I'll spoon-feed you, becuase this whole thing gave me a lot of headaches, and I want to save someone else the trouble. The first few guides you'll find googling around will mislead you into thinking you either need an Action Replay disc to boot and run stuff from the SD card, a tedious patching proccess, etc... Actually, the process can be much simpler.

The thing is, most of these guides are obsolete now that the apps continued to be developed for the Wii, and adding GCN compatibility somehow ended up working just as well.

So here's all you need to buy

- A Wiikey SD from dealxtreme (see OP)
- A SD card (contrary to the "only old non SDHC cards work" stuff pointed out in various guides, thanks to new versions of homebrews you can use almost any SD card, I use a 32 GB Sandisk)
- A XenoGC chip, or any modchip, in case your GCN isn't modded yet.
- Optional: PS2 gamepad adaptor easily found on ebay

Here's the files you need:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/osj34jlfvcfgmyv/gamecube.rar

(Included:
- Bootable "swiss" disc
source: https://code.google.com/p/swiss-gc/downloads/list
(I'm providing mine instead of you giving you the source because I made it into a bootable disc myself. There's an iso provided in the official developers website, but it didn't work for me)
- Latest retroarch build for gamecube
source: http://forum.themaister.net/viewtopic.php?id=347

And here's what you need to do.
- Burn a bootable disc with "swiss", which is a homebrew that let's you run both homebrew apps (.dol format), and GCN games (.iso or .gcn format), so if you have a big SD card, this is pretty much the only disc you'll need from now on (doesn't work with the Gameboy Player Start-up disc though)
- Put the retroarch folder in the SD card with some roms (check the website for emulators and formats supported), and to the GCN through the Wiikey.
- Every retroarch core has its own .dol. Run the emulator you need that's about it.

>>774886
Swiss is really tempting, but it looks like it has awful .iso compatibility - at least, going by the Google wiki. Do you use this function at all? How well does it work if you do, in your opinion?

On the topic of retro, though, do all of the emulators function as well as their Wii versions? I have both a GC and a GC-compatible Wii, but part of me wouldn't mind ditching the Wii for the GC for the sake of the Game Boy Player.

>>774886
Will this work if I use action replay and boot into the modified os and booted the disc?

>>774916
In my experience, the only issue I've found with GCN games has to do with videos and audio stream (extensive voice acting for example) suffering some hiccups. So, for some games you won't notice nothing wrong at all, and for some you might be irritaded by the hiccups (which can be fixed with some options fiddling in some cases). I personally don't mind this. I think it's a good option if compatible mini-DVD are scarse and expensive where you live (my case. There are no Ritek discs here anymore), but if you're a purist for 100% performance, you're better with discs, or a Wii.

(Gameboy Player is what made the decission clear for me. I have a lot GBA collection and a GBA flascart)

About emulators, I can't compare since I don't own a Wii, but I tried Nestopia, Snes9x, a Genesis one (don't remember which), and FBA CP1 and CPS2 cores. Everything has worked perfectly for me, EXCEPT Mega Man X3 dropping fps at some points, a problem I assume happens on special-chip games only, because, for example, Mega Man 7 works perfectly. (I haven't tested it extensively yet because I have all the SNES games I want, I did all this mostly for NES and Genesis)

>>774915
Yes. The important thing is to get to run swiss from a dol file. I did the Action Replay method before, and it's a lot more tedious since you have to boot on AR, which loads "sdload" on a patched non-HD SD card that has to be no bigger than 2 GB, then load "swiss" from it, and THEN switch to a bigger 32 GB optionally once you already loaded swiss, and ONLY THEN, load RetroArch.
So if I were you, I'd mod that GC only for the sake of not going through that awful process each time you want to play, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

(XenoGC modding is as easy as it gets, it's a cable-free soldering on 5 well-marked little spots and that's it. The chip costs $5 in deal4days.com)

When you need to play an SA1 chipped game on SNES9x you'll wish you were running the same .dol on a Wii.

Here's another tip. Running RetroArch on a Cube or Wii you want component cables if you have the inputs. S-Video if not. You want to turn bilinear filtering to point filtering. You want your aspect ratio 4:3 obviously. You want to double your horizontal resolutions when setting resolutions before playing each game: for Nestopia you set 512x240p not 256x240p (if you can; you'll need to set 384x224p to play SFII with CPS1 core). Snes9x you want 512x224p (239p for some secret games people won't list) or 448i if it's Doom or something. When you play X-Men or Turtles in Time for the arcade with friends you set it to 608x224p. You set Genesis and Metal Slug to 640x224p. Etc.

>>775005
>When you need to play an SA1 chipped game on SNES9x you'll wish you were running the same .dol on a Wii.

Yeah that's what I thought.
Personally I think I have all the games with special chips I'm interested in covered with my SNES collection, but it's a good point to be taken for people who might consider this setup.

>Here's another tip. Running RetroArch on a Cube or Wii you want component cables if you have the inputs. S-Video if not. You want to turn bilinear filtering to point filtering. You want your aspect ratio 4:3 obviously. You want to double your horizontal resolutions when setting resolutions before playing each game: for Nestopia you set 512x240p not 256x240p (if you can; you'll need to set 384x224p to play SFII with CPS1 core). Snes9x you want 512x224p (239p for some secret games people won't list) or 448i if it's Doom or something. When you play X-Men or Turtles in Time for the arcade with friends you set it to 608x224p. You set Genesis and Metal Slug to 640x224p. Etc.

Thanks for these! I was wondering which resolution was the best for each system/kind of game. I'm gonna save this for future reference

As a token of my gratitude, here's Roll

>>775126
You definitely don't have this SA1-chipped game >>758556 only just translated to English despite being Ocarina/Wind Waker's first game (using Zelda 3 engine).

>>775334
Thanks for the tip, I guess, I didn't know about that game

Sega Master System: 256 x 192p (512x192p)

>>775126
Why doesn't it just automatically set the video mode to whatever's native for the game? IIRC, Flipper/Hollywood gives you complete control of video timings.

>>778127
Because, according to co-developer SquarePusher, asking for such things means you are a troll. He will ban you. If you ask JUST right then he will say "thank you for offering to program this, please submit a formal notice on the code site".

He says that resolution tricks are "hacks" and feels games should be played on modern displays using high quality scaling filters. His attitude is that we should be grateful that he lets us determine the resolution for each game and have him add custom ones to each new release. He feels that if we really feel we know what resolution is best then we should be able to easily set it ourselves. He feels he is better than us and that we are beholden to him for taking other people's work on emulators and building an overblown frontend for them. He feels we won't notice that Mednafen on Wii implements these automatic resolutions properly.

>>780876
I've got a Qoob Pro and a fantastic knowledge of C. Where's the source code?

>>780905
I think the main source has the makefiles for the Wii/GC ports, make sure to call your fork the "Squarepusher is a crybaby faggot edition"

>>780876

In other words he can't figure it out.

Don't emulators from Wii homebrew channel provide a similar experience if the Wii is hooked up to SDTV? Only with much easier setup?

Automatic resolution switching would require a big list of metadata like MAME and MESS use. Of course, this means the list of metadata already exists. You need to know which games use what...consoles supported a variety of resolutions.

>>781063
Retroarch for Wii is the only solution on Wii I've found (aside from the official VC emulators) that can do NES without shitty/janky scrolling, probably due to bad vsync implementation in FCEUGX. That's pretty much all I use it for, along with GBA emulation.

Haven't really noticed much of a difference between Retroarch's cores and the standalone SNES9xGX and Genplus GX.

The best Neo Geo emulator for Wii is injecting roms into the VC emulator.

Best PCE/TG-16 emulator is WiiMednafen. For some reason the Mednafen PCE core included in Retroarch for Wii is noticeably inferior.

>>781106
Yeah I tried to run a bunch of ROMs in the PCE core in 0.9.8.4, only Bonk III loaded. Maybe it was Bonk II.

So is it much easier to do on Wii? I just tried using the Browser and it crashed on me the second I tried downloading Retroarch.

>>782608
I dunno if you're talking about on a Wii but you need the latest system software, either 4.3U (which destroys your mod) or update the IOS to 52 or some weird modded d2whatever.