Different SNES emulators? ( wonky game compatibility? )

riggles

Hi, using a Pi 3 model B with a good psu+cable, was wondering if there's anything other than the 3 SNES emulators (pocketsnes, catsfc and snes9x next) that are built into retroarch to choose from? Every SNES game I throw at it seems to run really well until I was trying to play some Jurassic Park (U), with the 2010 core it stutters and is very laggy, most notably audio as well as some graphical glitches. With the older cores it works but missing transparencies and sound still crackles just a bit. On the Wii this games runs perfectly in Retroarch 1.3.6 transparency and 0 graphical glitches using the snes9x next core.

What can I do to fix this other than mess around with settings? And what other problematic SNES games are there? I had imagined that Retropie would handle SNES even better than the Wii.

Thanks for your help!

mediamogul

@riggles

The six available SNES emulators available for RetroPie are listed here.

Darksavior

@riggles snes2010 also has slowdowns on my oc'd pi2. I'd suggest using snes2005, but the latest binary and source build has audio bugs on some games, like Wild Guns. I verified the problem by testing the game with the pre-installed snes2005 build that was included with retropie 4.0.2. I'm trying to get a 4.1 image right now to see if that 2005 build also doesn't have the bugs.

Update:
With Jurassic Park:
2005 has the correct transparencies and runs fullspeed here.
2010 has the problems you described.
"lr-snes9x" (latest) has the same problems as 2010. Tons slower too.
I went as far back as retropie 3.6 and 2010 has the same issues.

I did find a workaround for my own issue with Wild Guns, I reverted to 4.1's 2005 and that has the correct audio and I'll be using that as my default. Seems less buggy than 2010 from what little I've tested it.

riggles

@Darksavior Thanks a lot, so seems the latest 4.2 has some problems with the retroarch version it uses? Think I should downgrade to 4.1 or should I wait for a new version? Very new to this :D

Darksavior

@riggles The problem is the current binary/source version of snes9x2005. I don't believe Jurassic Park had any audio issues with the latest version, though. You can extract the emulator from the 4.1 image like I did and throw it in your current setup.

riggles

@Darksavior Did some testing with retropie 4.2 still and decided to put the audio output rate to 44100 " audio_out_rate = 44100 " in retroarch.cfg and now sound works perfectly in jurassic park with no slowdown and the lined transparency works (snes9x2010), only slowdown I ever get now is when a one of those messages pop up in game telling you some info, it's the only time the sound stutters. Also been playing a lot of virtualboy and wow! The 44100 setting made the sound and speed of the games ( especially wario ) near perfect, before in certain sections it would be slowed down a lot.

lostless

@Darksavior actually snes9x2005 is not rendering jurassic park right. SNES9x2010 is actually doing it right. That game uses a kind of a fake high res mode that renders a 640x240 image, but the snes sends out a 320x240 image. So on a CRT TV, every other line blurs together making a kind of a fake transparency. It was a trick used in a couple of game including kirbys dream land 3. The problem is that emulators don't output down to 320x240, and show the full 640x240 image with every other line as a vertical line where there is supposed to be a fake transparency. There is a shader that does the blend, but makes the games look blurry during the 320x240 parts (kirby changes back and forth based on the level) and is slow on a Pi. Snes9x 2005 just ignores it all together and just shows a 320x240 image with no transparency. Bsnes on the other hand (not on the Pi) can detect it and add the blend when needed.