Emulating PS1/N64/GB games on Raspberry Pi 3B+
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Hey all,
I'm looking at emulating ps1/n64 games onto an rpi 3B+ for my brother. He's away in the military and I figured a lightweight emulator would be ideal for his barracks and for his deployments. Where should I start with this? I've already made a retropie emulator with strictly nes/snes games and I know that emulating PS1/N64 is possible but it takes some more tweaks. Where should I begin and does anybody have any advice?
Thanks for your time!
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@PiGuy87
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Playstation-1
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Nintendo-64please note that whilst PS1 is near enough perfect, nintendo 64 is fairly hit and miss on a 3b+. i would be tempted to ignore it entirely, between the performance issues and crashes.
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@PiGuy87 PS1 doesn't need much tweaking. But you should look into scanlines / smoothing to make the games look better.
Some of the older N64 games run fine without overclocking. You should definitely put Mario kart 64 and Super mario 64 on there. Doom 64 and Wipeout 64 run great too.
For Gameboy it is fun to know that right after selecting a game, you can press a button to open a menu. Here you can choose a different emulator (lr-gambatte). This lets you play multiplayer gameboy games. A few days ago I had a blast playing Tetris against my brother.
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It is been already said, but I want to add my own opinion. I use an overclocked Pi 3B, which should have very similar performance to 3B+.
Playstation games works quite good (I play on lower resolution), maybe here and there a bit of slowdowns or some graphical issues on rare cases, for the most part you can throw any game and it works. A few games may require or can benefit from analog sticks, most are playable without. Where you CAN hit problems is with multi disc games like Final Fantasy series and Metal Gear Sold. This is a part where you should take care, if you want include such games, especially if it is for someone else. I have around 50 games or so in my collection. Great system to emulate. :-)
Nintendo 64 is veeery bad on any Raspberry Pi at this time of writing. There are games out that works quite good, but you have to figure out which games works best with which emulator setup. Also because of the gamepad layout, it can be pain to set it up. I have only 10 or 15 (forgot the count) games in my system and only because the most other games don't work. Some games seems to work and after playing minutes they get worse and worse or just stay in bad emulation state. Only start emulating N64 on a Pi, if you really have time and nerve for it.
Those 3D system just don't look good as traditional 2D consoles of 8 and 16 bit era, especially because the processing power is limited and can't make the games look better. My advice is, ignore N64 for now and start with Playstation only. Don't forget making backups by creating image files of you micro sd card.
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@dankcushions said in Emulating PS1/N64/GB games on Raspberry Pi 3B+:
@PiGuy87
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Playstation-1
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Nintendo-64please note that whilst PS1 is near enough perfect, nintendo 64 is fairly hit and miss on a 3b+. i would be tempted to ignore it entirely, between the performance issues and crashes.
I'll definitely check those github links out. I kind of had a feeling N64 wouldn't even be worth it.
@BobHarris said in Emulating PS1/N64/GB games on Raspberry Pi 3B+:
@PiGuy87 PS1 doesn't need much tweaking. But you should look into scanlines / smoothing to make the games look better.
Some of the older N64 games run fine without overclocking. You should definitely put Mario kart 64 and Super mario 64 on there. Doom 64 and Wipeout 64 run great too.
For Gameboy it is fun to know that right after selecting a game, you can press a button to open a menu. Here you can choose a different emulator (lr-gambatte). This lets you play multiplayer gameboy games. A few days ago I had a blast playing Tetris against my brother.
basically in terms of gameboy I would emulate pokemon games. Most likely Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal
@thelostsoul said in Emulating PS1/N64/GB games on Raspberry Pi 3B+:
It is been already said, but I want to add my own opinion. I use an overclocked Pi 3B, which should have very similar performance to 3B+.
Playstation games works quite good (I play on lower resolution), maybe here and there a bit of slowdowns or some graphical issues on rare cases, for the most part you can throw any game and it works. A few games may require or can benefit from analog sticks, most are playable without. Where you CAN hit problems is with multi disc games like Final Fantasy series and Metal Gear Sold. This is a part where you should take care, if you want include such games, especially if it is for someone else. I have around 50 games or so in my collection. Great system to emulate. :-)
Nintendo 64 is veeery bad on any Raspberry Pi at this time of writing. There are games out that works quite good, but you have to figure out which games works best with which emulator setup. Also because of the gamepad layout, it can be pain to set it up. I have only 10 or 15 (forgot the count) games in my system and only because the most other games don't work. Some games seems to work and after playing minutes they get worse and worse or just stay in bad emulation state. Only start emulating N64 on a Pi, if you really have time and nerve for it.
Those 3D system just don't look good as traditional 2D consoles of 8 and 16 bit era, especially because the processing power is limited and can't make the games look better. My advice is, ignore N64 for now and start with Playstation only. Don't forget making backups by creating image files of you micro sd card.
Very helpful. The big game I wanted to include on the RPi was FFVII and obviously that is multi disc lol so I wanted to see how I could make that work.
Ultimately it seems like N64 is a no go and I shouldn't even bother. Maybe I'll see if I can get a more powerful computer to emulate N64 games on.
Any other advice guys?
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if you set DEFAULT_FREQUENCY = 12000 in mupenplus64.cfg and overclock core_freq to 500 you will get better performance. I run ocarina of time on a pi2 smoothly.
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@dankcushions said in Emulating PS1/N64/GB games on Raspberry Pi 3B+:
@PiGuy87
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Playstation-1
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Nintendo-64please note that whilst PS1 is near enough perfect, nintendo 64 is fairly hit and miss on a 3b+. i would be tempted to ignore it entirely, between the performance issues and crashes.
Well luckily the crashing has been fixed now. :-) I personally think you can have a very good experience with N64 with a core of titles that run well. Yes you will hear some audio dropouts here and there but for the most part many games run well, especially as stated before the Mario and Zelda games. It can be a bit of a project getting it right what with changing emulators and settings etc but it's worth it. Currently playing through Majora's Mask and Goldeneye 007 myself. The latter does have some audio dropouts but nothing game-breaking and boy it has aged well as a game! Also got Banjo on the go too. Have a look at overclocking the GPU, it really helps. I've also altered some sound settings which I think aids the dropouts a little.
As long as your expectations are more realistic and don't encompass the entire library you'll have fun. The N64 work on the Pi has not been in vain imho. :-)
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@Ranma navigate to: /opt/retropie/configs/all/autoconf.cfg
and make sure that mupen64plus_audio = "0"
This will improve audio for N64 on the pi. It reduces audio drop out when the fps dips.
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Thanks yes I'd already done that. :-) I also added lr-mupen64plus and made a couple of tweaks in the audio settings there, such as setting latency to 128 rather than 64, and setting the resampler to lowest rather than lower. Seems to take the edge off lag sometimes.
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