What's the best...

[tthurman]

Seems this question comes up quite often in the community as a whole, and while some are accepted as the best emu for certain systems, and many for good reason, things are maturing considerably on this front with MAME.  If you don't keep up with current events, it can be difficult to wade through thousands upon thousands of threads concerning this topic to make you own decision.  

In recent years I've linked several "Top 20 of 20XX" type emu ranking youtube videos, and it's nice to see them in action while also getting the authors comments.  The one caveat with this is with the current rapid release schedule of MAME, this can literally change in a short matter of weeks.  Honestly it was a change that I initially loathed, even somewhat feared, why did the MAME team feel the need to force this on everyone?  For this reason I stuck at 0.161, and in threads I commented as such, Adultery repeatedly mentioned that he felt it was much to do about nothing.  Well he's right, well sort of  It's certainly nothing to fear, just don't use it if that's your thing, but I'm convinced now that it's laying the groundwork to perhaps become "the best".

If NonMAME isn't in your bag of reference sites, then I'd recommend you add it.  It's not a site that is frequently updated, but instead only as conditions warrant.  It seems to me to be an excellent source for unbiased information on what's currently performing best.

While it may not be the be all to end all of sites, it certainly can offer direction to those new to consoles as well as complete newbs just trying to get started in this addictive hobby.  It's pretty exciting to see the growing list where MAME is equal to are even the superior emu , and exciting to think that one day it will be as easy as configuring integrated MAME in GameEx to enjoy the vast majority of your retro gaming.

 

 

[Adultery]

Well like you said, I jumped in and have really seen the benefit of it. I guess in my case it's kind of the sane reason I love RetroArch. It's easier for me to maintain one executable as opposed to several, and in my case anyway, most of the things people play on my cab work fine in those instances.

If you're really hung up on using an emulator to gain access to a handful of games just for your own peace of mind, by all means don't listen to me. I would just prefer having things easier to maintain and still keep all the users happy as opposed to worrying about some freakish hack cart or translation I'll probably never actually play anyway.

/my 2c

[RIP-Felix]

Just tried RA. There is quite a learning curve on how to get things set up within RA. I tried to follow the help directions but when I loaded some "content" within a "core" it just crashed. Obviously I'm missing something. Since GameEX can fronted emus, what is the use of RA? I'm probably just experiencing the repulsion to new ways of doing what I already have working, though admittedly that was probably way harder than this is to figure out. I know, I'm a winer. WAH...Wah!

Ok so a quick search yielded this:

 

 

 

He uses launch box, which looks like a simple frontend. So I take it that RA is a frontend for the setup and configuration of various emulators, which it hosts as cores and runs, but it needs to be launched like an emulator form another front end? Like launch box or gameex? I'm confused. I like the controller setup aspect on a per core basis as that might save me some troubles I been having, but yeah. I'm still suffering from noob fevor with RA.

[Adultery]

Think of RA more like MESSUI. Sure it can function on it's own as a front end but really it's the guts that you'd be focusing on.
The collection of cores in one place and the ability to set things up one time and be set are the real benefits. And of course only having to update one exe.
There's a learning curve with every little thing in this hobby, that's part of the challenge! But there's lots of threads here to help get you started.

[hansolo77]

I wish RetroArch was available easily for the Raspberry Pi.  Then I could hook it into my Kodi installation.  Of course, in the future, I'd want to build a Pi just for GameEx Evolution, and use RetroArch as the emulator.  But that's a long ways off.  Currently if you want RetroArch on your Pi, you have to download a special compiled version from a 3rd party.  If you go to download RetroArch officially, I would assume you want to use Linux (duh) but then what?  The Pi uses the ARM architecture, which only available under the nightly builds (without installer/folder structure).  Sigh..