Best retro emulators to run on a Pentium 2?

[Marcos Moutta]

Hey! I recently got an old PC with a Pentium 2, an s3 Verge GX2 (4MB VRAM) and 64 MB of RAM. It's running 98SE but I could go for another OS if it makes sense (except XP since it nukes the performance).

I'm trying to figure out what are the best emulators for it. Here are the ones I've figured out so far-

 

SNES - Zsnes
Mega Drive - Kega Fusion
N64 - UltraHLE or Corn
PS1 - PSXfin, Emurayden or bleem

 

Curiously enough, I still don't know which VCS emulator to use, even tho it's one of my favourite consoles. 😝 I also have no idea what to use for Game Boy, PC Engine etc.

Suggestions?

[The Usotsuki]

Back in the day, on late 486 hardware, I ran mostly DOS emulators - NESticle+LoopyNES, NO$GMB+DBOY, Genecyst, ZSNES, BRSMS, BRMSX+NO$MSX, ApplePC.  Think I used PCAE for 2600 back then.

[Tanooki]

I was about to parrot that one, NESticle as childish as it is, and limited on mappers, most the primaries do work.

I will add though since it was just my friend who made it, and I was the guinea pig for it, but grab FWNES it beats the shit out of it.  It was last updated in 1998.

 

FWNES supports far more mappers, but the real reason it exists, he wanted to emulate the Famicom Disk System including its extra audio channels, and it does.  He created the .FDS format, file format, header info, emulation platform, and ability to read the FDS bios to do so correctly. ( https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/FDS_file_format )  It is the reason why FDS emulation existed as it started there.  It is also capable of running most the known mappers from 1998 including quite a few taiwanese unique ones for pirate carts as well which is a bonus.  If nesticle chokes on it, this won't if you keep the time frame in mind of what was known 20 years ago.

 

https://www.zophar.net/nes/fwnes.html

 

Sadly the author vanished around then, being Taiwanese he hit the age of required conscription due to the CCP trolls across the taiwan straight, never came back.

 

I would never suggest running it on anything but a period PC, it was never utterly finished so one thing it didn't do was speed throttle, so if you run this on a 1GHZ and up computer it's out of control, and I read one note for DOSBox running too fast, but that one person probably could have been too clueless to run a CONF file to limit cycles.

[Austin]

I'd stick with the DOS emulators personally, though the novelty will wear off as a lot of emulators have come a long way since.

 

For PC Engine, I'd go with Magic Engine. It's one of the most polished emulators from back then and it's still a good experience now.

 

I didn't start using Kega until the XP era, so I can't vouch for it on Pentium II hardware, but Genecyst should run really well. For Master System, I really liked Meka. Kind of like Magic Engine it had a good interface and a lot of options.

12 hours ago, The Usotsuki said:

Back in the day, on late 486 hardware, I ran mostly DOS emulators - NESticle+LoopyNES, NO$GMB+DBOY, Genecyst, ZSNES, BRSMS, BRMSX+NO$MSX, ApplePC.  Think I used PCAE for 2600 back then.

This really carried through the Pentium II and III era too, honestly. Windows emulators just weren't as efficient on that level of hardware, and that'll especially be the case with the OP's Pentium II.

[Tanooki]

I'd second that, I own a copy of Magic Engine, and MEKA was a gem too back in the 90s.  I would stick to DOS as much as possible as Austin said, far less overhead, just you, the emulator optimizations of the code, and pure DOS. FWNES was DOS based, not sure why some garbage now writes Windows.

[Marcos Moutta]

@The Usotsuki @Austin @Tanooki

 

Thanks a lot! I checked out every single emulator you guys recommended, and I am now set. I managed to find a suitable emulator for every single console I want to play! I am really happy 😆

 

But I just realized I have an issue. How do I plug in a controller? My PC has USB ports, but I highly doubt I'll have any luck with my PS4 controller. Do I need to go hunting for an old controller?

 

(BTW, I forgot to mention I upgraded to a Geforce 2 MX and 256MB of RAM. Still stuck with the 300MHz pentium 2 tho)

Edited March 10, 2023 by Marcos Moutta

[Tanooki]

You'll have to get something older, earlier USB-A era stuff just to be certain.

 

Must be like 5-7 years ago now I found a small stash of old gravis gamepad pro controllers (clone of sony ps1 pre-dual shock) at a goodwill.  They're just perfect for any non-3D title due to the no-analog.  For what you're trying to play mostly they'd be perfect, and they're utterly cheap on ebay even.  They do come with a usually lost screw in joystick into the d-pad, I wouldn't use it, novelty wears thin fast but avoiding it would save a little vs a collector or purist wanting that extra bit.  I just googled it, shipping aside there's a new in box one rotting on there for $20obo.  Seems cheap given how many sell loose for $10-15 anyway, maybe your best option.

[Austin]

Some will work with USB. For that, I use a Sony PS1 Classic controller. It gets recognized by Windows 98 SE and works great in the Windows games in particular.

 

For DOS programs, you may need to use a controller that goes into the Game Port slot, usually found on the sound card. For something like that, you have a lot of options, but the Gravis Game Pads are okay for that (the "Pro" model is the better of the two). Example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/354631755181?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=j1oinzser2c&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=2FzUndi_Toq&widget_ver=artemis&media=TW

Edited March 10, 2023 by Austin

[zachub03]

I'm running a machine of similar vintage, slightly newer (PIII 700mhz, 512mb ram, S3 Savage/IX 8mb vram, Windows 2000 SP4), and I've also been experimenting with emulation.

Here's the list of emulators I use:

NES: BioNES 0.2

SNES: ZSNESw 1.51 

GB/GBC: BGB 1.5.10

Genesis/Master System/Game Gear: Kega Fusion 3.64

N64: Project64 1.6

GBA/DS: No$GBA 3.05

Wonderswan: WSCamp 0.21 

MAME: MAME 0.37b5 (MAME 2000) 

Hopefully this helps you find more options!

 

 

 

[MrMaddog]

Best web site for looking for old emulators is Zopher's Domain, it's been the go to site since the 90's.

 

[Tanooki]

That's a big 100% on that last post.  I would say go look at Dave's Video Gaming Classics which turned into Advanced Media Network but it folded, and then kind of didn't but came back at some crap level.  Zophar though, if it's still him, no idea, but it was always on top of things too as well as DVGC was in the day with around the clock updates back in the peak era of the 90s into the 00s.

 

Zophar's is a time capsule, you'll find mentions of old DOS emulators for all sorts of consoles, handhelds, stand alone to multi-arcade emulation packages(aside from obviously mame.)  I used it to confirm the last release of FWNES as I couldn't remember.

[Marcos Moutta]

On 3/12/2023 at 10:02 PM, zachub03 said:

N64: Project64 1.6

GBA/DS: No$GBA 3.05

These run well on 700MHz? That's bonkers