SNES diserves a better Emulator!

[Miss Boris Yeltsin]

It's not rose colored glasses. It's just the way things were. I look back on the VHS era and chuckle at how much money we all spent on blank tapes. But it's silly to look back on that and talk about it as if we were all foolish for putting up with it, as if it were possible to hook up a DVR or fire up a µTorrent in 1992. You either taped your shit or you were SOL. Obviously it's archaic now. But back then it was top of the line and did its job. It's not foolish or an excuse to point that out.

I'm not sure who's really saying people were fools - certainly not me. People who put up with it TODAY are fools, but like you said, it's not like there was much of a choice.

The closest I get is shaking my head with a wry chuckle - "man, how did we ever manage to put up with that?" - but nothing more than that.

[BetaWolf47]

And lest anyone get me wrong - byuu (the BSNES coder) is ridiculously talented and creating incredible work. I agree that his endgoals are noble in their intent, and can even understand why he doesn't include native .ZIP support. He deserves a ton of credit for taking the time to explain his decisions. It's just frustrating that you have to jump through hoops and waste a ton of hard drive space* to fully experience the latest versions. It's a bit of a catch-22, as well - he sorta scoffs at people who collect entire ROMsets, but when you have to manually extract and rename every single ROM to get it to work in BSNES, I think you'd be crazy not to download the whole ROMset and do it all in a single batch. Otherwise it's a 2 minute clicky-clicky-tidy-namey ordeal every time you get the urge to play a new game.

*hard drives may be relatively cheap, but try collecting lossless audio concerts and doing video work from time to time while stomaching 2+ gigs of wasted space - the true limiter isn't the amount of space on a single drive, but rather the amount of slots and ports and power outlets to plug the new hard drives into!

I thought the reason for not including .rar and .zip support was because Windows had file compression built in. You can right click on "properties" and tick the box that says "compress files to conservce space" and it'll do its job without changing the format. Granted, I just prefer to zip them myself.
Hard drives aren't cheap anymore by the way.

That's how I feel about it, too. I love the philosophy behind bsnes. I think it's not only the way of the future but also a fantastic endeavor to preserve the hardware (at least a super close approximation of it). But back in 1998 we weren't gonna be running no bsnes. I mean, really. It just wasn't happening. And to look back on that era and scoff is silly. It was what it was and time/technology pushes forward. Those emulators served their purpose when they mattered. That's really what's important. I think the real complaint isn't so much against ZSNES and SNES9X as it is against the community being against change, even when that change is for the better (standardizing formats, eliminating copier headers, etc.).

ZSNES and SNES9x are still useful for being runnable on netbooks. SNES9x is the next most accurate emulator after bsnes, while ZSNES hasn't been updated in five years. Heck ZSNES is trumped by even SNESGT right now. Either way, I wouldn't run bsnes on an Atom or an E-350.

I'm not sure who's really saying people were fools - certainly not me. People who put up with it TODAY are fools, but like you said, it's not like there was much of a choice.
The closest I get is shaking my head with a wry chuckle - "man, how did we ever manage to put up with that?" - but nothing more than that.

Actually, we still put up with a lot of crap. Blu-ray players need to be constantly updated to play newer movies. Streaming video reeks of lossy compression. DVD recording has input latency. Our video games are plagued with DLC and DRM. We never needed to put up with that in the 90's. I'd like to say we're going to look back on this stuff and wonder how we put up with it, but it doesn't look like the current trend of inconveniences is going to end. The industry has a stranglehold on legitimate consumers.

For the most part, I skipped over DVD unless there was something new I had to own. The video and audio quality wasn't that much better over VHS to me. Blu-ray, on the other hand, is a night and day difference. On a personal note, I still use VHS to record gameplay. I do have a DVD recorder which I thought had no input latency, but when I went to record a fighting game match, there it was.

[Rob2600]

I'm far from a Super Castlevania IV expert, but I've seen a number of reviews that seem to agree with the 'blurry = better' opinion.

That makes no sense. Super Castlevania IV is a beautiful game. The only reason I could see blurring the graphics is if someone really really hates pixel graphics and blurs *every* retro game. There's nothing about SCIV that would warrant blurring more or less than any other retro game.

Pop it into an emulator and see for yourself. The (non-blurred) graphics are still fantastic today.

[JSoup]

That makes no sense.

Welcome to the internet.

[TonyTheTiger]

How a game is "supposed to look" is certainly up for debate. I happen to think that S-Video and up often ruins some intended visual effects on certain Genesis games where the designers counted on some blurring to happen to squeeze out some additional colors/effects. Of course, to counter that, there's also the simple fact that games overall do look better when you start moving past composite. It's one of the reasons why I sort of hedge the difference and opt to use the best natively available output on my consoles (when practical) but never mod them to use unintended ones. It's somewhat arbitrary, I know. But I like to get the best out of my consoles as I can while at the same time remain committed to an "authentic" experience that is as close as possible to what was originally intended. It's a work in progress philosophy. That being said, I've never really had this issue with Super Nintendo. I don't remember ever seeing anything on the system that looks as if it's aesthetic design counts on bleeding or blurriness.

In the realm of emulators, I figure the argument is much the same. There's really no difference between saying an emulator looks "weird" on a certain display and saying a SNES looks "weird" on the same display via S-Video or something. But even if it does look weird, unfortunately the NTSC filters that are supposed to make emulators look like they're displaying on an old CRT end up just looking strange and awful.

[Zing]

Why was this thread created when bsnes exists?

[theclaw]

How a game is "supposed to look" is certainly up for debate. I happen to think that S-Video and up often ruins some intended visual effects on certain Genesis games where the designers counted on some blurring to happen to squeeze out some additional colors/effects. Of course, to counter that, there's also the simple fact that games overall do look better when you start moving past composite. It's one of the reasons why I sort of hedge the difference and opt to use the best natively available output on my consoles (when practical) but never mod them to use unintended ones. It's somewhat arbitrary, I know. But I like to get the best out of my consoles as I can while at the same time remain committed to an "authentic" experience that is as close as possible to what was originally intended. It's a work in progress philosophy. That being said, I've never really had this issue with Super Nintendo. I don't remember ever seeing anything on the system that looks as if it's aesthetic design counts on bleeding or blurriness.

In the realm of emulators, I figure the argument is much the same. There's really no difference between saying an emulator looks "weird" on a certain display and saying a SNES looks "weird" on the same display via S-Video or something. But even if it does look weird, unfortunately the NTSC filters that are supposed to make emulators look like they're displaying on an old CRT end up just looking strange and awful.

Yeah I think we need to look at this from developers' point of view. I'd argue composite based effects are the exception, not the rule. No doubt they sometimes happen of course.

Console makers had a reason for dropping composite based PPUs as soon as they could. And why would most self-respecting creators LIKE what RF or composite most commonly does to their work? That'd be silly. They know how rich it looks from the hardware end after all. Plus major developers have enough money they'd be able to run multiple types of TV and monitor in the studio for comparison.

[Berserker]

Today bsnes has become the first SNES emulator to achieve 100% compatibility.

Just thought that diserved some recognition.

[charles__99]

Nothing brings back the nostalgia like cleaning the cart, tossing it in and grabbing an official snes controller...no emulator can ever bring back the good times like that.