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Fixing That Old Game System
larsoncc writes "Emulation is a great way to preserve past game systems, but what if you could keep these digital dinosaurs running for decades? Well, you can, and some of us do. It's not easy for me to 'let go' of that vintage (circa 1978) Magnavox Odyssey2, or toss my Atari 7800 in the closet because I don't have a power supply. Here's my article to help you solve common problems with 15 different systems, and general tips for the others. Viva la TI-99/4a!!"
Here's the coral cache link, and here's a list of the systems included in the article:
Odyssey^2
Atari 2600
Intellivision
Atari 7800
TI-99/4a
NES
Genesis
Sega CD
Turbo Grafx
Saturn
Dreamcast
PS2
XBox
GameCube
GameBoy Advance
PIXEL PERFECT??!?! Hahahahaha! There are lots of holes in your arguments, man. Here is a tip, Star Ocean does not look like that pixelated buggy mess on a real SNES.
Well, the SNES emulators such as ZSNES and SNES9x don't emulate things correct down to the last pixel. Here is a good article describing many of the inaccuracies of SNES emulators. Hell, the co-processor used in many SNES games, such as Pilot Wings and Super Mario Kart still doesn't have all of its opcodes emulated!
Also, can you tell me what happens when you have a game that displays at native digital resolution X with refresh rate Y, but your computer is not capable of displaying resolution X and your CRT can't do refresh rate Y? You have to scale up the game's resolution, but that causes aspect ratio problems as computer CRT's have a slightly different aspect ratio than NTSC TVs. So you get both aspect ratio distortion and aliasing, unless the resolution your computer displays is a perfect multiple of your console's resolution, which is highly unlikely. To correct for aliasing due to scaling, emulators typically blur the image to get rid of the jaggies. Compare an emulated SNES game side by side with a real SNES. Big difference! Oh, and back to the refresh rate differences. Games sync to the refresh rate of a TV, a rate that your CRT cannot do as it is a really low refresh rate. So if you spend allot of time you can get your OS to use a really high refresh rate that most CRTs do not support, but is a perfect multiple of the native SNES refresh rate...
Should we even get into the fact that the OS your emulator is running on is not a real-time OS, and most likely has latency spikes, causing the occassional stutter, hicup, etc? Early consoles such as the SNES have no underlying OS, so the timing of each instruction is always the same, always precise... and some games actually depend on the percise timing because they are all written in machine language... unlike later game systems such as the Playstation, for which games were programmed in higher-level languages such as C and displayed graphics and played sounds using high-level APIs. Hence for these later systems, precise pixel perfect timing issues are not as important.
My point is that this is all very very far from pixel perfect. But I guess you have never really compared both side-by-side.
On the topic of console controller adapters. Most of the console adapters suck. They don't support other peripherials like light guns, spinners, and paddles. There are some exceptions. The Atari 2600 has a great controller adapter that supports every 2600 peripherial and the N64 Adaptoid is another good adapter. However, many of the PSX adapters have serious lag issues... some worse than others.
The SNES is a really big offender. Almost all of its USB adapters just plain suck. The "Super Joy" USB adapter won't let you press the X and B buttons at the same time, and the same goes for the Y and A buttons. That is a serious problem for some games. Not to mention that the SNES adapters also have latency issues.
On your last point, yes emulators are the long term future of classic games, but if we all throw away the real thing too early, we will end up with subpar emulation that isn't as good as the real thing. Some gaming systems, such as the NES have highly accurate emulators such as FCE Ultra and Nestopia... but other systems such as the SNES have a long way to go before I put my SNES in storage.
Well, while blowing on a cartridge may seem to make it work, it's actually doing it more damage and will end up corroding the contacts. If you need to clean your games, try using a baby wipe - keeps my Mega Drive and SNES carts in fine order.
If you're still having problems with the NES, try either repairing or replacing the cartridge connection within the console. As you insert and remove games, the contacts slowly get bent out of position, until they eventally fail to touch the games when inserted. You can either bend the contacts carefully back into place, or buy a cheap (under £2, so I believe) replacement. Either way, enjoy your NES! (I was always a Master System player myself...)
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race