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What happens when that hardware stops working? 20 years on. How much does a working SNES go for? What other hardware can play SNES games?

PC, of course. Next, get a torrent from Pirate Bay and start playing.

Those damn pirates, always preserving culture for future generations...

I think this says otherwise.

This guy is one of the authors of ZSNES and since it can use all those shiny wrappers he talked about, just playing a game and roughly measuring the time between a defined action on-screen and the corresponding sound event is probably already sufficient. Add some perception of crackling and stuff and youll get the list he was talking about. By the way: This latency issue is very application-specific. For example, Mednafen has much better latency with ALSA than with OSS.

It's got a field that says "I am a robot" checked off by default. A human should obviously see that and uncheck it. Those registrations that come in with it checked are blackholed. It's definitely cut down on the SPAM accounts since they enabled it.

mix in a little WiFi capability for leeching off hotspots, and you now have a true hacker toy that can lug anywhere!

PDAs and Smartphones just don't cut it. They suck for doing stuff like coding and compiling your own programs.

The ZSNES developers for one prefer how Qt works and R. Belmont (of MAMEdev fame) also stated that the only reason he used GTK+ on the Linux port of Audio Overload was because various portions of the code weren't compatible with the GPL. If they had been, he'd have used Qt instead. I also prefer Qt, hence why I use KDE in preference to anything else and why I view the possibility of Mozilla using Qt with some excitement.

I'd go as far as to say that GTK+'s 'killer feature' these days is the licence. The fact that it uses the LGPL as opposed to the GPL and was open sourced well before Qt is why it's remained so popular. In most other respects, Qt is the better toolkit.

Indeed! You can play Shadowrun under XP or Linux today if you wish.

I am a ZSNES developer, and that website is one of my homepages. I wasn't refering to ZSNES in my question though, however there too I get every now and then people telling us to stop bothering to support a particular OS when support for that OS is already in place and not really changing.

In regard to questions of portability, my team has ported >15% of the assembly in ZSNES to portable C, and really fixed up some of the underlying code. We've also now cleaned it up to the extent that it runs on all x86 OSs we have access too, including Mac OS X. We sent a lot of patches in to Apple in the process because they had major bugs with their development tools such as their assembler not handling a decent percentage of the assembly syntax properly. And we're not done yet, it's a big project to say the least, but we have a party for every 5% of assembly code we port. At this point pretty much all the large side features have been ported to C, and we plan on making headway into some other major components. Our biggest victory no doubt though was porting all the file reading/writing code to C, dealing with files in assembly is just nasty.

If you want to see the headway we made with ZSNES, get the latest code from SVN, directions here: http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7371

Being familiar with something and being proficient in something are two entirely different things, wouldn't you agree?

"The Linux package managers are all mediocre. You have to be aware that one thing will break another, that this library is incompatible with that etc."

Ever heard the phrase 'DLL Hell'? What about 'VXD Hell'? Windows equivilents of library incompatibilities. As for all of Linux's package managers being mediocre, you're right, I concede. Urpmi, yum, apt, etc. are all crap compared to Windows' package manager called... oh wait. Windows doesn't really have a package manager, all software is responsible for its own installation and removal. Didn't install right? Too damn bad. Won't uninstall? Tough titty. Installing software in Windows is only as good and trustworthy as the software you're installing. Apps like Norton Antivirus and AOL for instance are nearly impossible to remove completely because their uninstallers do not have your best interests in mind. Doesn't it make more sense to have a package manager be responsible for how software is added and removed? Besides, a modern distro's package manager handles all dependancies and conflicts automatically. It basically boils down to clicking a static box next to a discription of the program you want to install from the package manager's list and clicking "Install". It will handle all of the dependancies automatically. In urpmi, my update script consists of only two lines, it works unattended and it never fails.

"When is the last time your wife installed a major new piece of software on her system? Did she get you to do it or did she do it herself? How often does she do this? What does your wife actually use the system for? Email, web browsing and the occassional openoffice document is my guess. Perhaps instant messaging too? Maybe a little graphics editing ala gimp if she's adventurous? I'd guess that's about it. Answer these questions if you want to retain any credibility."

The last time she installed software on it was probably Cedega. Yes, it's not difficult, she did it herself. She uses her system for all the things most people use their PCs for... finances, internet, games, email, IM, office, photo editing, music, photo albums, scheduling, and she plays the occasional emulated SuperNES game as well (with a PSX Controller no less -- how geeky!). So aside from the emulators, pretty normal I'd say. But the whole point was that she has average needs and no problems. I manage several SOHO networks for my workstation, which is probably not an average need, but Linux suits my needs quite well also.

"With XP I learnt about a handful of utils (most GUI driven so you don't have to be familiar with 100 command line options) - I know the control panel well. I know a handful of network utils, and a handful of disk utils. Oh yes I do run a good piece of antivirus software, and a firewall. (The only pain comes when I install new hardware - my last graphics card was hell to install and it's still not quite right but that's either NVidia drivers or my motherboard and/or graphics card are faulty - I'm still not sure which)."

So let me see if I got this straight. You don't know Linux at all, you don't even know XP very well by your own admission, and yet you refuse to believe that a properly configured Linux system can run without issues? Incredible. At this point I realize what an ass I truly am for having wasted my time arguing with you to this point. If you cannot or will not see the folly in your own argument, how can we have a rational discussion on the matter?

ZSNES is mainly in x86 Assembly so that it runs fast. SNES9x is written primarily in C++ with a few parts in Assembly that has been ported to a few different architectures.

While I do appreciate your point of view and you make a very valid point for how this sort of partial compatibility could be very frustrating to the consumer, please don't take it out on our dear friend emulation.

Emulation doesn't suck; what about MAME and ZSNES? In fact, emulation is a great way to ensure near perfect ports of the games, as long as you have the processing power to do so. Moreover, if you have the spare processing power, you can use it to make the games nicer, such as the various stretching / smoothing routines available in ZSNES; your old games actually look better emulated.

The problem seems to come from the difficult to emulate GPU, not emulation itself. As such, it sounds like what Microsoft might be doing is some ad hoc driver system, where each game has a specific driver that handles the GPU calls in such a way as to work for a particular game. Either that or they are actually going to try and emulate the GPU instructions on a piecemeal basis, fixing the most common first, and then releasing version patches over XBox live while enabling games that are "friendly" (IE, emulate well, using the article's vernacular) under the successive versions.

This former does sound kind of flakey, but the latter sounds like a true emulator. Most emulators go through this kind of compatibility shakedown phase since certain instructions are used a lot, whereas other instructions are used much more rarely. The upside is that if they do this, it's possible it will eventually emulate all XBox games, possibly with some graphics enhancing options. I guess only time will tell how well their backwards compatibility really works out.

Well whatever you do don't download the rom and translation patch since that could be thought to be copyright infringement.

You can however download the completely legal emulator since it contains no copyrighted material.

Snes9x 1.43WIP
- Seta special chip emulation enhancements (Feather, The Dumper, Overload, MKendora)
- code tweaks to the ST010 (Nach, pagefault)
- Exhaust Heat 2 and regional ports are playable (Feather, The Dumper, Overload, MKendora)
Snes9x 1.42
- More work on Exhaust Heat 2 (MKendora, Overload, The Dumper)
Snes9x 1.40
- stubbed the ST010 chip in Exhaust Heat 2 (Overload, MKendora)

Too bad the link is off-topic.

On topic though, I definitely want to switch over to Linux. Since ZSNES is available for Linux, that will suit most of my gaming needs as a dedicated console gamer. With that, OpenOffice, and Gecko-based browsers, I'm gradually seeing no need to hang on to anything made by M$ (although I admit I do like their "natural" mice and keyboards.)

Why is it that you can walk up to any book store and pick up titles that were written centuries ago, or purchase movies that date as far back as 1912.. and yet you can't even play a game anymore that came out 5-7 years ago?

One might argue that it's due to technical reasons, but that's no excuse is it?

Why do we find ourselves donating our precious time hacking away at emulators and virtual machines when it should be the people who made the games in the first place that should be supporting them? Does the game industry hold their own products in so little regard that it has already decided that future generations can't enjoy them?

Sure, there's the odd overpriced nostalgia pack put out every now and then, but that's just a drop in the ocean.

I'm glad that some companies have figured this out! I love the latest and greatest games as much as anyone, but my heart still belongs to good old 2-D action games. Ah the memories of dimly lit arcades where you could go and bask in the warm glow of electronic sex, erm I mean video monitors...

Emulators like MAME and ZSNES are a blast when you just need a quick game to let off some steam or kill some time. When on the go the old Gameboy Advance really has you covered with tons of classic games available as well.

You could easily put together a cheap computer with one of these. The system requirements of a P3 700mhz wont exactly break the bank, and you could still probably get a desent sized hard drive and still pay less than a PSX or TIVO-like device. Besides, who needs the ability to play PS2 games when there are much better games you could play with that computer.

It's going to be great if Woo sticks even a little to the game. I haven't played the original NES I or II, but Metroid III got me hooked. I remember I could never beat the game when I was younger, but thanks to ZSNES and other emulators, I finally beat the game the other day with 89%. It's a very addictive game.

You can get ZSNES here.

You can get the super metroid rom here.

To see some amazing game play action (100% at 1 hour), see here.

Yeah, you are a bit out of touch ;^)

Check out the results of a quick search on MobyGames for a list of Metroid games Nintendo has produced. If you're looking to try a recent one, I higly recommend Metroid: Zero Mission, though IMHO the best one is Super Metroid (which you can try on an emulator if you can't get the cartridge / don't have a SNES.

i have a problem with nostalgia in video games.. i always think back to how many many many hours of fun i had with my snes crpgs.. but when i go back to them, i can only stand the slow game play, crappy gfx, and horrible sound for only an hour or two, and i give up in frustration

Go get ZSnes.

Filters do wonders for graphics, turning pixelated mess into crisp, clean, detailed images. Sound comes trough fine on modern soundcards - in fact, both WinAmp and XMMS have SNES SPC plugins available, allowing one to play those tunes through them.

For control, I use Gravis Gamepad Pro, which happens to have the excat same button placement as the SNES pad with two extra buttons - and, as it happens, also works perfectly with various Playstation emulators.

Emulation quality isn't a problem nowadays either - everything I've thrown to ZSnes has worked perfectly, with two expections (which I believe to be because of corrupted ROM images).

It even has a fast forward button for speeding the emulation through slow moments ;).

The best games I have are played through the emulator; it isn't nostalgia (can't be, because I first played most of them with the emulator), it's simple fact.

On the bad side, the Linux port apparently has more hardware requirements than the Windows version, and even a small slowdown is quite visible with these games :(

Where are you going, my little console?
turn around and you're new
turn around and you're old and you suck
turn around and you're selling for $2 at the flea market, and still no one will buy you

As it happens, I sold my old 8-bit NES a few years ago for about 5 dollars...

And yes, I have a NES emulator too :). Playstation emulator, too, but it taxes my poor 1 GHz Duron to its limits ;(...

RPGs? ZSNES and your favorite method of getting ROMs, but don't tell the thought police.

If you are somewhat dissapointed with DW7, you should pick up some emulator a patch, and the Dragon Quest 6 rom (which you should find easily by yourself).

It is easily the greatest of all Dragon Quest/Warrior games, with an inmense world to explore, which is designed in such a way, that every new transport medium you get, opens at least two new locations, with fun minigames or cool places to go, which are not obvious at first, so you expend some time exploring.

That game is the best of the series. I am waiting for Square Enix to make a new version of it, like they have done with every Dragon Quest before that.

Isn't it just easier to download a nice N64 emulator (Project 64, (Nemu64), same with SNES (ZSnes), and if you know where to search, you can find every game for the systems, not all of them work perfectly, but hey it's emulation.

Things do not need to be open to be good. I think closed, fixed consoles make for better games in the long run

Actually, I had my gaming start with the atari 2600. But I still consider the few short years of the SNES the golden age of gaming - the point where graphics, gameplay, music, and all the other aspects balanced perfectly.

• How well does the emulation work? If there's any emulator for PC that emulates all the SNES games (or whichever kind) in existence, i've yet to hear about it.

• And does it have enough processing power to run the non-native code without any slowdown or such?

zsnes also has a linux port.
http://www.snes9x.com/
http://www.zsnes.com/

"...all sorts of video games (if you know where to look).

That sounds cool. Where might I find information?

"...all sorts of video games (if you know where to look).

That sounds cool. Where might I find information?

If you love 2D games, then I suggest the following two top quality opensource emulators in addition to MAME:

FCE Ultra is an opensource Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator.

ZSNES is an opensource Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator.

I have MAME and the two emulators above installed on my computer, and I went to Radioshack and bought two Playstation to USB adapters, so that I could use standard Playstation controllers to play the games emulated by these applications.

I have over 10,000 2D games that I can play on my computer now. Out of those, I probably play 30 on a regular basis. Great fun!

We had a very lengthy discussion on various smoothing engines over at the zSNES board a while back, you can read that thread here.

The *real* homepage of the 2xSaI algorithm is:

Kreed's Homepage: 2xSaI : The advanced 2x Scale and Interpolation engine

It is totally different for Scale2x, which is the link that was given. 2xSaI was orignally developed by Kreed (a.k.a. Derek Liauw) for the SNES9x Super Nintendo emulator. Oh, and technically, it IS a blurring algorithm, just a smart one.

You can find lots of info here and here.

The *real* homepage of the 2xSaI algorithm is:

Kreed's Homepage: 2xSaI : The advanced 2x Scale and Interpolation engine

It is totally different for Scale2x, which is the link that was given. 2xSaI was orignally developed by Kreed (a.k.a. Derek Liauw) for the SNES9x Super Nintendo emulator. Oh, and technically, it IS a blurring algorithm, just a smart one.

You can find lots of info here and here.

Why not smack on a few IF interpreters for playing some of the excellent (and free) text adventures out there? I particuarly recommend (Win)Frotz.

Also, MAME and ZSNES are excellent arcade and SNES emulators.

For eye candy, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Xaos. Mmm. Fractal zooming. So pretty. Plus, a good introduction to the mathematics of fractals.

ROM sizes are usually 1mb, 2mb, or 4mb.

Sometimes they are bigger, sometimes they are smaller.

The world's greatest emulator

"with the sole reservation that they can't run Final Fantasy any more"

Let them have reservations no more! Just plop down a couple bucks for the Playstation version and download epsxe. FF7,8 and 9 all run like a dream on my Gentoo box (Tactics runs very well with some weird map oddities, but doesn't bother me). Need to play the SNES versions? They run picture perfect on ZSNES or SNES9x which both have excellent Linux ports and it's trivial to find the roms for FF2 - 6. NES emulators for Linux can get you the first one. After all, the PC versions of FF are just ports. :)

We used to play Quake II a lot. We even managed to play Diablo I together for about 14 hours. We did get a networked Super Nintendo emulator (ZSNES) running and had some fun playing 2-player stuff on there. But now that we've got a kid running around, we can't both get 4-10 hours of uninterrupted gaming at the same time. So we primarily we play crap from Yahoo! Games like Pool, Blackjack and Hearts.

The basic Installer module would have simple functions for doing things like extracting files from a tarball, substituting strings in skeleton configuration files, and downloading stuff from the Internet. (Ultimately, it would be nice to allow something to say "I require Library X v 1.1.2" and the installer to check the dependency and then, if needed, tell the user: "You need Library X, would you like to download it now?" or "You need to upgrade Library X, download the upgrade?" by doing an apt-like lookup.)

The thing that was cool about my design is that in the "installer" Perl script, you specify basic information about the information you want to collect and the processes you are running, and it gets displayed via another module which you know nothing about.

What made this nice is that the base-line installer was CLI only - displayed strings straight out, ignored graphics, asked information via ReadLine. I had plans for an ncurses module for a slightly more graphical environment as well as plans for a GNOME or KDE environment.

(Realistically, only the GNOME one will likely be completed simply because GNOME already has Perl bindings, and AFAIK KDE does not.)

Oh, and for the inevitable "why Perl?" questions, there are several:

1. It must be "cross-platform" - without compiling. Most if not all Linux distros include Perl.
2. It needs to be simple to write.
3. I know Perl much better than, say, Python.

Yeah, other languages may be up to the task, but Perl's fairly simple. (As long as you don't do any OO-module based stuff, like I was in this project... Actually, using Perl Objects isn't difficult, but writing them is annoying.)

I kinda put this on hold, but if other people are interested, I can try and revive it - it's very-pre-alpha and really pre-planning - there's a lot of ideas and very little implementation.

(That and my current pet-project is an SPC player based on zSNES's SPC emulation. Neither have anything released - yet.)

zsnes does doesn't it? Dos emu, yessiree.