Question regarding Mesen and Blast'em.

Yarmongrel

With these two emulators (particularly Blast'em) having relatively low system requirements and the Pi4 getting an official build, I was wondering if there were any plans to include these two emulators in a future release.

mitu

Mesen might be added - though I'd be curios to know if there's something specific that it offers, what's not present in the other emulators.
Blastem, as far as I know, is x86 only and would be usable only on a PC installation.

Yarmongrel

Mesen is widely regarded as the most accurate NES emulator, so that would be its main extra offering. Then, there would be the select HD Packs, but that would likely require the next Pi iteration to run well.

As for Blast'em, I'm not quite sure about its main branch, but I can tell you for sure that Michael Pavone ported it to the Evercade, which uses a Cortex A7.

mitu

@Yarmongrel said in Question regarding Mesen and Blast'em.:

As for Blast'em, I'm not quite sure about its main branch, but I can tell you for sure that Michael Pavone ported it to the Evercade, which uses a Cortex A7.

That may be, but I don't find any reference that it runs on the RPI, on the contrary (from the Blastem site):

Despite this high accuracy, even the most demanding software runs at full speed on modest hardware like a 1.6GHz AMD E-350 laptop. In the future, I would like to port it to the ARM architecture and optimize it further to run on systems as modest as the original Raspberry Pi.

Did you manage to run the libretro core on the Pi ?

Yarmongrel

@mitu I haven't, no. But from what I read over on Twitter, the current ARM port has the 68k core replaced with Musashi's:

https://twitter.com/mikepavone/status/1110944955197882368

...which kinda negates the accuracy advantage a proper full port to ARM would have.

Given that, and the fact that Genesis Plus GX is looking into getting MD+ compatibility, then I guess we might as well just wait for Michael to finish the proper full port.

grant2258

Musashi's is the most accurate 68k core you can get not sure what you problem with it is

Yarmongrel

I never stated I have a problem with Musashi's 68K core, but it has stopped being the most accurate core for a while now.

Blast'em, for one, does not use it, and it's considered the most accurate-yet-usable Megadrive emulator for a reason.

Even MAME's 68k core is not plain Musashi, but rather a modified version of it.

The point being (and which you apparently missed) that a less-accurate version of Blast'em is not worth it over excellent alternatives like Genesis Plus GX.

mitu

@Yarmongrel lr-mesen can be installed now from the experimental section, you'll need to update your RetroPie-Setup script first. The Blastem core doesn't have yet an ARM version, so we'll have to wait and see when one gets released.

grant2258

@Yarmongrel yea mame has a few modifications they also put changes upstream to the official Musashi. I havent used blastem so couldnt comment on it being less accurate or not what 68k core is blastem using?